Part of the enduring appeal of Star Wars is the richness of the galaxy, the sense of wonder evoked by the countless worlds, the fantastic creatures, the compelling characters, and of course the droids. there is a sense of something larger, that the Star Wars universe is a thriving place filled with endless possibility. The detail is astonishing—each character, place, and thing has a history, a purpose, and a role in the larger universe, and together, they create the backdrop on which the heroes’ stories are told.
Threats of the Galaxy is a companion volume to the Star Wars Saga Edition Roleplaying Game, offering an enormous selection of creatures, droids, and people with which you can populate the galaxy. With entries drawn from nearly every era of the Star Wars universe and spanning every level of game play, this book is a comprehensive volume that give you even more tools to create exciting and compelling encounters worthy of joinging those on the silver screen.
Using this Book
This book contains a host of characters, creatures, and droids with which you can populate the many worlds and environments of the Star Wars universe. Chapter One presensts a variety of characters, covering just about every major archetype and giving you statistics and advice for using them in the game. Chapter Two describes some of the most notoriuos and monstrous creatures in the galaxy. Chapter Three presents a selection of droids found in the files and the Expanded Universe.
For the Gamemaster
This book is an invaluable reference for Gamemasters. GMs can pull statistics straight out of the book for use at the game table without having to write up the characters themselves. Likewise, GMs can use the creatures as monstrous foes and minions to pit against the players, while the droids chapter is an excellent epansion to the droids described in the Saga Edition core rulebook.
For the Player
There’s also plenty if information in this book for players. The character entries can help guide players’ decisions about what sort of feats, talents, and skills they should select as they advance their characters. The book also features new species, gear and vehicles, talents, and feats, most of which are available to any sort of character. Finally the droids chapter gives players more options for purchasing droids and more choices for building droid heroes.
Building Great Encounters
Threats of the galaxy is first and foremost a toolbox for building great encounters. each entry in this book is an opportunity to dazzle players with interesting and exciting foes, but a statistics block does not make an encounter great or exciting by itself. Your job, as Gamemaster, is to put these characters, creatures, and droids together in such a way as to create a balanced threat that’s both engaging, cinematic, and ensures that all the players involved have something to do. Mastering this process takes time and experience, but there are a few key pieces of advice that can help you along the way.
Environment
The action sequences in the films never take place in a 5-square-by-5-square room, and neither should yours. Consider the droid manufacturing plant on Geonosis from Attock of the Clones. Anakin and Padmé run through a massive industrial environment, weaving their way through dangerous machinery while battling an almost endless number of guards. Although An akin is more than a match for these minor soldiers, he's constantly dealing with the changing and very hazardous atmosphere, even losing his lightsaber to the well-timed stamp of a machine.
When building an encounter, one of your first considerations shouldalways be where the encounter will take place. It’s fine for the occasional, unexpected fight to happen in a mundane environment. but when planning for a fight, be sure to fill the scene with a II sorts of interesting tactical elements to enliven the encounter's circumstances.
For your first few encounters, limit yourself to just a few interesting elements. The more factors you add, the harder the combat becomes to manage. As a good rule of thumb, select three things to make the encounter more engaging, preferably including an environmental hazard, interesting terrain, and something that gives all the players an opportunity to engage the encounter.
Environmental Hazards
An environmental hazard affects both the heroes and their enemies, giving both groups something else to contend with other than just blasting each other to pieces. An easy choice is just to use weather. Fog and rain give stealthy characters a chance to use their sneakier abilities while also evening the odds for lopsided fights by granting everyone concealment. For higher-level heroes, you can up the ante by adding lava, scalding steam jets, aggressive machinery, extreme temperatures, acid raid, poisonous gas, spontaneous pit traps, conveyor belts, and more. An environmental hazard should be dangerous and increase the complexity of the encounter, but not to the extent that the hazard becomes the encounter itself.
Terrain
Combats in Star Wars are rarely of the mundane sort. They occur in places as interesting as the characters involved. The same should be true of encounters. Unusual terrain adds complexity to the encounter, creates opportunities, and ultimately allows tactical-minded players to take advantage of their circumstances. A combat should provide opportunities to jump, climb, slide, balance, and so on. There should be different levels, different chambers, places to explore, and places to avoid. Terrain should also include cover, which can take the form of barriers, curving corridors, and just about anything else you can think of to make movement and the exchange of blaster fire more intertsting.
Terrain is also important for controlling the scope of the battlefield. Star Wars is full of huge, sweeping environments, and battle scenes are often doubly exciting because of all of the action going on in the background. The trick is to create the illusion of space by providing large areas, but with limited options for movement. For example, when Qui-Gon Jinn fought Darth Maul on Naboo, their duel spread across a large area, though in truth their movment was somewhat restricted. Much of the fighting took place on narrow bridges or in the deadly tunnel equipped with the energy barriers. This duel covered a lot of ground, and the environment change as it developed, but although there was a sense of space, the particular encounters took place in controlled environments where the Jedi fought on the bridge, the tunnel, and finally the power generator area, where Qui-Gon was killed.
Something for Everyone
Of the three considerations, this is the hardest to a ticipate. Each group will have a different mix of characters, with different capabllities and motivations. You should pay close attention to the choices the players make and reward those choices in the encounters they face. A character who is a skilled pilot might not have much to do when not battling TIE fighters in space, but an encounter in a starship hangar could give that character a chance to make use of his skills much as Anakin did when Padmé led her forces into the palace to liberate Naboo from the Trade Federation occupiers in The Phantom Menace.
Adversaries
Creating Star Wars encounters takes flair, an ability that’s hard to regulate with strict guidelines. The Saga Edition core rulebook establishes a solid foundation for building encounters in recommending Challenge Levels and variety in the encounters, but this is just the start. As with location, there are three major considerations when selecting adversaries: numbers, variety, and function.
Numbers
The numbers and types of opponents to use in an encounter is probably the toughest decision you’ll make. In Star Wars, it’s not only acceptable, but expected, for the heroes to face numerous foes. Each enemy combatant doesn’t stand a chance against a single PC, let alone a group of them, but together they present a suitable challenge for groups of any level.
When selecting the number of opponents, it’s usually better to use more low-level opponents than fewer high-level opponents. The more enemies on the battlefield, the more targets the characters have to choose from and engage. On the other hand, you don’t want to overwhelm the heroes, or at least not every time, so it’s best to use somewhere between four and eight opponents at a time. Remember, the encounter’s CL should be within 1 or 2 of the party’s average level, so the individual CLs of the various opponents should be 4 or 5 lower than the heroes’ level.
Variety
There’s a certain visceral sense of enjoyment that comes from blasting stormtroopers, but even that grows tiresome after a while. By mixing up the opposition, you can draw from a wide selection of abilities to help make the encounter more interesting.
The best way to do this is to select similarly themed opponents of varying Challenge Levels. This could include pairing up a soldier commander with a feww soldiers and a medic, or an Imperial officer with a squad of stormtroopers. However, don’t overlook combinations of different ypes. There’s no reason why an encounter can’t include a creature and characters, droids and characters, or a mix of all three.
Variety is also served by approaching the same broad character archetype from a number of directions, resulting in “similar” characters at an array of different Challenge Levels. That’s why you’ll find, for instance, the officer (CL 8), the commando squad leader (CL 10). and the mercenary captain (CL 5) in these pages. All of these characters fill the same basic role, but their specific abilities and CLs set them apart from one another.
Function
Many of the characters, creatures, and droids described in this book have sensory abilities that were originally explained in the Saga Edition core rulebook. For convenience and to avoid repetition, those abilities are defined below.
Darkvision: A character, creature, or droid that has this ability can see in the dark, ignoring concealment and total concealment due to darkness. Dark vision is black and white only, so there must be at least some light to discern colors. It is otherwise like normal sight, and a creature the has darkvision can function with no light at all.
Low-Light Vision: A character, creature, or droid that has this ability can see without penalty in shadowy illumination, ignoring concealment (but not total concealment) due to darkness. It retains the abllity to distinguish color and detail under these conditions.
Scent: A character, creature, or droid that has this ability ignores concealment and cover when making Perception checks to notice opponents within 10 squares, and it takes no penalty from poor visibllity when tracking (see the Survival skill).
Ultimately, the question you need to answer when constructing the encounter is: What is its function? How the encounter fits into the adventure’s storyline helps guide your choices about what the heroes should ulttmately face and when. An encounter that is not much more th an an obstacle for the PCs doesn’t need as much detail and variety as the final battle between the heroes and their nemesis, so spend your time and creativity wisely.
Obstacles are the simplest encounters. By themselves, these encounters add little to the story or development of the plot and merely serve as a device to control the pacing of the adventure. Individual opponents should be far below the heroes’ average and as a whole, the group’s Challenge Level should be 1 or 2 lower than normal.
Minor encounters are a bit more involved than obstacles since they affect the outcome of the adventure’s story. A minor combat encounter features opponents tied directly to the adventure’s plot, and the results of the combat might have consequences for the adventure’s outcome. As with obstacles, the individual opponents can and should be far below the characters’ average level, but the total Challenge Level ought to be within 1 of the PC’s average level.
The last function is the major encounter. This is the big one, where the player characters square off against their nemesis in a climactic battle and the outcome brings about the end of the adventure and sets up the next chapter in the campaign. The CL for these encounters can creep over the PCs’ level, and it should. The major villain might be able to handle a group of heroes, but in most cases, you might need to insulate the villain with minions and lower-level adversaries to draw out the fight and to expand the possibilities and developments for the various characters involved.