Star Wars Quick Shot: Rules

Last Spring my "sandbox" campaign had been meandering and then a few players were going to be leaving town in short order.  With schedules all over the place, rather than try to force some sort of conclusion to the sandbox, I opted to run a set of Star Wars sessions with the idea that whoever could pop in, would.  One of the players leaving is big into Star Wars, so it figured it would be a good send off as well.

What System?

There are 3 major Star Wars ttrpgs, (and perhaps a 4th coming?), I wasn't in a position to re-learn the old West end Games d6 version or invest in the latest version, so I went with the d20 version.  It has two major advantages, One - the mechanics were close enough to what my player's were used to, so they could quickly pick it up, Two - I already owned the book.

d20 Star Wars has its own set of problems, as evidenced by the fact that it had 3 editions in 7 years. In order to address these, I set about the process I typically use to prepare for a game: make a GM cheat sheet, make a character sheet, and make some pre-gens.  Below is a quick review of the issues I came across and the solutions.

Skills: The standard d20 skill list is bloated, and once you add in Force skills, way too long.  So step one was to cut that down to the dozen or so we see in 4th, 5th edition and other games.  For now Force Skill stay the same.

Wound and Vitality Points: A big flaw in the game is Critical Hits bypass "Vitality" and go direct to "Wounds" which proves too lethal.  So I took that out, and Vitality just sits on top of Wounds.

Jedi Stuff and Balance: The system around Jedi, and some other class abilities, really breaks down at higher levels.  But I knew I was going to stick around 4-7th level, so I wast too worried.  The last bit of business is one of personal taste, I don't like "Jedi" being a starting class.  The resulted in me tweaking the Force Adept Class and Jedi Prestige classes to fit my taste.

Droid Characters: Strangely these are not an option, so I made them one.  At least for Protocol and Astromechs.

This sounds like a lot of work for someone who wanted to start quickly, but the truth is, most of these ideas were floating around my head for years.  It was just a matter of committing them to paper.

With a basic rules framework in place, I was ready to think about the game itself.....