Just had a flick through Saga Edition to remind myself how that went, and basically nobody wears armour except the soldier class and NPCs. Unless you have some special soldier feats that allow armour to stack you can either use armour for your defence (with various penalties for movement etc) or a defence based on your level, so past a couple of levels armour sucks for nearly all classes and would only get in the way. So Jedi didn't wear armour in that game but neither did nearly everyone else.

I remember this being discussed with Rodney on an old Order 66 podcast, and pretty much the design intent was to replicate the movies in that you didn't see the good guys wearing armor except in very specific circumstances, namely Han and Luke using stormtrooper armor as a disguise while on the Death Star. But of course there would be players that would want to be Boba Fett, and so the armor talents were included in the Soldier class to let those PCs be able to wear armor and still have some benefit. And of course you then had the Imperial Knights of the Legacy comics so they got a talent to let them be bad-ass while wearing armor.

But yeah, most armor in Saga Edition was fairly useless after a few levels if you didn't invest in being an armor wearer.

Just had a flick through Saga Edition to remind myself how that went, and basically nobody wears armour except the soldier class and NPCs. Unless you have some special soldier feats that allow armour to stack you can either use armour for your defence (with various penalties for movement etc) or a defence based on your level, so past a couple of levels armour sucks for nearly all classes and would only get in the way. So Jedi didn't wear armour in that game but neither did nearly everyone else.

I remember this being discussed with Rodney on an old Order 66 podcast, and pretty much the design intent was to replicate the movies in that you didn't see the good guys wearing armor except in very specific circumstances, namely Han and Luke using stormtrooper armor as a disguise while on the Death Star. But of course there would be players that would want to be Boba Fett, and so the armor talents were included in the Soldier class to let those PCs be able to wear armor and still have some benefit. And of course you then had the Imperial Knights of the Legacy comics so they got a talent to let them be bad-ass while wearing armor.

But yeah, most armor in Saga Edition was fairly useless after a few levels if you didn't invest in being an armor wearer.

That was my impression too, plus it's not like the characters who wear armour in the films (Stormtroopers, Bobba Fett) ever actually benefited from wearing it (we never see a shot deflected by Stormtrooper armour). But an RPG naturally has to add in a lot of things to make a workable game that aren't necessarily covered by the films (when do you see them buying weapons, or using stim packs or whatever?). My approach is always to let players do whatever they find fun.

I wore armour in KoToR, admittedly much to the horror of some of my friends. It blocked some of the powers but not the main combat powers or force heal, so playing a Guardian it was fine. And the exoskeleton armour giving me +2 to strength was lovely for a lightsaber based character.

In both KoToR games I used mods that disabled the force power armor restriction. In both games though, robes eventually become better than armor.