I have a group that wants to convert their 5 th level saga characters over but we are having trouble figuring out how much xp is equivalent. Has anyone else converted over their saga characters?

mwodom said:

Yeah. I did this for my play group for our initial play-throughs. For level 5 I'd guess-timate you create your characters and then add… 60-80 points for level 5. I feel that sounds like a lot, but I think the level of power a character could have for that much XP would be about equivalent to a Saga lvl 5 character. Given how fast XP gets accrued in this game, it may actually not be enough. As a GM, I don't think I'd go beyond 100 XP, though, unless you have a very good feel for how player power increases with XP in this new system.

Most characters converted fairly well, but trying to go from Saga's scout class to EotE could cause you a massive pain in the ass. Scout in Saga is/was basically a catch-all class, and while there are some scout subtypes that will fit well in their new eponymous spec, I strongly suspect most won't.

For this reason, I'd recommend the players be given a chance to "re-imagine" their character to better suit the new rule set.

Trying for literal translations of the old characters will just lead to frustration.

Frustration leads to Anger.

Anger leads to Hate.

Hate leads to Sufferrrrrring.

-WJL

I would say don't bother as this system doesn't grow in the same way as the D20 variants.

Kallabecca said:

This. You're pretty much going to have to re-invent the characters from the ground-up, as very little in d20 will readiliy convert to EotE.

As for 5th level, I'd say give them an even 200 bonus XP (to be spent after they've remade their characters using the standard starting XP budget) to represent their being "experienced heroes."

I'm thinking 50 XP would be a rough equivalent of one character level in d20, so being 4 levels higher than 1st would be 200 XP. It's just a suggestion, but depending on how the characters turn out, you may want to scale it back, though I wouldn't suggest going much lower than 25 XP per character level.

We weren't looking for a literal translation of the character classes and skills, talents, etc. The saga rules didn' t really fit the concepts of the characters. They had to cram the concepts into its classes. Its seeems that this system will get them closer to their original concepts. The xp comparison is the big question. Donovan, I was thinking that 160 - 200 range would be about right. Thanks for reinforcing that.

mwodom said:

You're welcome, although that's a ballpark estimate, as the "high-end" PC builds that I and my local gaming buddies used for stress-testing the system used anywhere between 200 to 300 additional XP, and they had the feel of being around 5th or 6th level in comparison to Saga Edition, with the exception of the Force-user I built, who instead felt to be around 3rd level even with 250 additional XP due to the way purchasing and activating Force Powers work.

I think your head's in the right place, mwodom. You know you can't fully replicate the characters - but you CAN let them start over from scratch with an "equivalent" level of XP. What's really tough is that FFGs system is level-less. How DO you measure the "power" of a character in the FFG system? Aside from their total accrued XP? But how does that relate to a level 5 or level 10 character in Saga Edition?

The best method is to eyeball it. And those of us who've played enough Saga and Edge can do this well. I think you are SPOT ON for 200 xp being equivalent to a Level 5 Saga Edition character, in terms of power level. It "feels the same". But here's where we come to a problem. Since you now have a solid ratio (200 XP in Edge equals 10,000 XP in Saga Edition), it's possible to use that ratio to build an Edge- to-Saga ratio for each level in Saga Edition. And here's where it breaks down. Excel gives me this:

Saga Level ; Saga XP; Edge XP
1 ; 0; 0
2 ; 1000; 20
3 ; 3000; 60
4 ; 6000; 120
5 ; 10000; 200
6 ; 15000; 300
7 ; 21000; 420
8 ; 28000; 560
9 ; 36000; 720
10 ; 45000; 900
11 ; 55000; 1100
12 ; 66000; 1320
13 ; 78000; 1560
14 ; 91000; 1820
15 ; 105000; 2100
16 ; 120000; 2400
17 ; 136000; 2720
18 ; 153000; 3060
19 ; 171000; 3420
20 ; 190000; 3800

This… doesn't seem right to me. Why? Now… I'm NO math whiz… so my math here will be extremely simple.

Edge of the Empire recomends granting 10 XP per player, per session (plus an extra 5 if an Obligation was dealt with; in other words - plot advancement). If you take the (rather bold) assumption that a player will personally reduce obligation/advance his plot every third session, you're left with an average of XP per player, per session equal to 11.67 XP (35/3=11.67). We can divide the Edge XP from our fist table by that number to get an average numbr of sessions needed to reach that power level. So let's look at the table again, with new data added:

Saga Level ; Saga XP; Edge XP ; Total Edge Sessions to get to this point
1; 0; 0 ; 0
2 ; 1000; 20 ; 1.71
3 ; 3000; 60 ; 5.14
4 ; 6000; 120 ; 10.28
5 ; 10000; 200 ; 17.44
6 ; 15000; 300 ; 25.71
7 ; 21000; 420 ; 35.99
8 ; 28000; 560 ; 47.99
9 ; 36000; 720 ; 61.70
10 ; 45000; 900 ; 77.12
11 ; 55000; 1100 ; 94.26
12 ; 66000; 1320 ; 113.11
13 ; 78000; 1560 ; 133.68
14 ; 91000; 1820 ; 155.96
15 ; 105000; 2100 ; 179.98
16 ; 120000; 2400 ; 205.66
17 ; 136000; 2720 ; 233.08
18 ; 153000; 3060 ; 262.21
19 ; 171000; 3420 ; 293.06
20 ; 190000; 3800 ; 325.62

So… have your level 5 characters gotten to level 5 after 17 or 18 sessions?? Or much sooner? See… There's… just no way that's correct. No WAY! Unless the Edge rules never intended power to be equivalent (which is probably the case) to Saga. So I don't think we can draw on our "gut feeling about power level" (all of my above speculation was done using the assumption that level 5 in Saga equals 200 XP in Edge ).

All I have to draw on, at this point, is my Saga Experience. In my experience, it takes this many sessions (on average) to reach the next level in Saga:

Saga Leve l; Saga XP; Saga Sessions needed to get to the NEXT level; Total Saga Session Played to get to Current Level
1 ; 0; 0 ; 0
2 ; 1000; 1; 1
3 ; 3000; 1; 2
4 ; 6000; 2; 4
5 ; 10000; 2; 6
6 ; 15000; 2; 8
7 ; 21000; 3; 11
8 ; 28000; 3; 14
9 ; 36000; 3; 17
10 ; 45000; 3; 20
11 ; 55000; 4; 24
12 ; 66000; 4; 28
13 ; 78000; 4; 32
14 ; 91000; 4; 36
15 ; 105000; 4; 40
16 ; 120000; 5; 45
17 ; 136000; 5; 50
18 ; 153000; 5; 55
19 ; 171000; 5; 60
20 ; 190000; 5; 65

This… is about right - in my experience. Assuming the GM isn't massively padding the XP or awarding large story completion bonuses. So if we apply the "11.67" per session XP precept to these numbers… we get the following:

Saga Level; Saga XP; Saga Sessions needed to get to the NEXT level; Total Saga Session Played to get to Current Level; Equivalent Edge XP
1; 0; 0; 0; 0
2; 1000; 1; 1; 11.67
3; 3000; 1; 2; 23.34
4; 6000; 2; 4; 46.68
5; 10000; 2; 6; 70.02
6; 15000; 2; 8; 93.36
7; 21000; 3; 11; 128.37
8; 28000; 3; 14; 163.38
9; 36000; 3; 17; 198.39
10; 45000; 3; 20; 233.4
11; 55000; 4; 24; 280.08
12; 66000; 4; 28; 326.76
13; 78000; 4; 32; 373.44
14; 91000; 4; 36; 420.12
15; 105000; 4; 40; 466.8
16; 120000; 5; 45; 525.15
17; 136000; 5; 50; 583.5
18; 153000; 5; 55; 641.85
19; 171000; 5; 60; 700.2
20; 190000; 5; 65; 758.55

Hmm. Now, if we look at how much Skills, Talents, Specializations, and Characteristics cost… we have to round all this to whole numbers that are mulitples of 5.

So that leaves this:

Saga Level; Equivalent Edge XP (Rounded Judiciously)
1; 0
2; 10
3; 20
4; 45
5; 70
6; 95
7; 130
8; 160
9; 200
10; 235
11; 280
12; 325
13; 375
14; 420
15; 465
16; 525
17; 580
18; 640
19; 700
20; 760

A far cry from 200 XP equaling level 5. [scratches head]

So what's the problem? What's the solution?

Clearly, the Edge designers either intended for character advancement to be MUCH slower than in Saga; or they don't consider character power levels to be as high as they do in Saga. (Either option is probably, though I tend to side with Option 2, considering everything we've seen.)

Any thoughts on this rambling of bad math, poor assumptions, and unsanwered questions, guys???

GM Chris said:

Isn't the extra 5 XP for playing up your motivation? That sounds something that a reasonable role-player can probably get at least 66% of the time.

3WhiteFox3 said:

Pretty sure it is, as the "reward" for dealing with one's Obligation is that it gets lowered, not that you gain additional XP.

GM Chris,
While the effort that you put forth is commendable* in trying to map equivalent XP levels from one system to a vastly different system, a feat that's pretty darn difficult when moving from a level-based to a point-buy system or vice versa (this came up quite a bit in the early days of OCR when peolpe, self included, were curious to see what their D6 characters would look like under the "new system"), if not bordering on the impossible, I honestly do think that trying to break things down "precisely" is a self-defeating effort. After all, not every group used XP advancement the same way, as some GMs might be incredibly stingy while others rival Monty Haul in their generosity.

As I suggested to the OP, try 200 as a ballpark figure to start with, and don't be afraid to adjust that total (up or down) if the feel of the PCs isn't quite right.

*and to be clear, this isn't a veiled insult or left-handed complement. The various charts & comparisons were quite impressive, but at the same underscore the suggestion of "just do what feels natural" in regards to "re-inventing" a WEG/OCR/RCR/SWSE character in EotE. Unless doing excessive numerical calculations and number crunching is your thing, the whole process of trying to map out an exact formula of "what character level equals how much XP" seems a waste of time that could be spent running or playing the; to borrow a term from the Actual People, Actual Play podcast, it's "lonely fun."

I've done a few conversions, and I haven't had many problems with it. You've just gotta have a good concept of your character in mind, and also look at him more as a person than as a bunch of levels.

Good thoughts, GM Chris, and I agree with you and Dono in that you've gotta "do what feels natural."

mwodom, and any others, I'm sure that there are many experienced Saga Edition players, myself included, on these boards that would love to help if someone had a character they'd like to try and "convert." It is doable, you just can't approach it from a purely power-level based perspective.

I think you all have good points.

Honestly, I don't feel you can do a mathematical conversion. And I did a bunch of mathematical conversions to kinda prove my point. (Plus, I had half an hour to kill, thanks to a canceled meeting, and thought I'd play around with some "lonely fun".)

You really do have to eyeball it, I think. But the more I think about it… the more I'm taking issue with THAT. LOL…

Dono - you and others (and myself) are trying to "eyeball" this to make a character with a comparable power level to Saga Edition. I don't think that's a valid perspective. [shrug] (In fact, i find a lot of the fan-based house-rules are trying to "d-twentify" Edge .)

But (not to hijack the original purpose of this thread), I think my ruminations bring up a different point worth discussing. Character conversions aside… it's clear that the design intent behind Edge has players either advancing at a much slower pace, or just not achieving the same power level as quickly. This about this…

You (and I) feel that 160-200 XP is equivalent to a level 5 character… becuase it "feels" like the same power level when we see it in play. But at 10 xp (+5 for playing to motivation each session) - so we say… a balls out 15 XP per session… then it would take 10-13 sessions to equal that power level. Did it take you that long to get to level 5 in Saga?

I just… [sigh]

I don't know what I'm trying to say.

I think we're trying to Saga-fy Edge of the Empire . Dammit, this is a derail. ROFL…

The last thingI want to do is turn EotE into a watered down Saga. I have grown to loath d20 games over the course of my 20+ years of roleplaying.

mwodom said:

I don't loathe them.

But I don't want Edge to be a d20 game, either.

I guess I've gamed with one-too-many rules lawyers and hoarders in my time. My favoritegaming experiences come from White Wolf's storytelling system in the early 90s. I've also really grown to like the 40k rpgs, although I am biased because I have always loved the rich background and fluff if not the hyper expensive products of that universe. I've been craving a scifi rpg with a narrative style and EotE seems to be it.

GM Chris said:

I don't know what your experiences were with Star Wars, but the few I had and from the Rulebook (for RCR vs Saga), it took 10 simple encounters to level from one level to the next, or 3 or 4 challenging encounters. So, that would mean about 1 level every 2 to 3 weeks. So, it isn't unreasonable for it to take 10 - 13 game sessions to get to level 5. Especially with how much time combat consumes in the D20 type games.

GM Chris said:

Well, might be a bit of a de-rail, but it's a valid concern.

My own experiences with Saga and OCR/RCR is that it took much less than 10 sessions to hit 5th level, starting from 1st, but that's been under GMs willing to put the PCs through their paces. After all, the much-praised Dawn of Defiance campaign takes the PCs to 5th level at the end of the second module, and the first one (bringing them to 3rd level) can be run in about 2 sessions total, and the second one in two or three. So it could very well be that the PCs go from 1st level to 5th level in that campaign.

But as you say, EotE is a horse of a very different color, and even at 300 additional XP, the Force-user I was testing (which would take just over 30 sessions assuming the +5 Motivation bonus every other session), and Saga-wise he felt to be about 6th level in terms of power, and reaching that level in Saga Edition would take far less than that many sessions. So I'd call that pretty fair proof that EotE isn't meant for the PCs to become super-powerful in a short period of time, particularly as there are two more corebooks slated for release down the line.

I've tried to keep my house-rule ideas fairly limited, though you've seen the majority of the work I've done. I don't think I've tried to d20-ify this system, as I really do appreciate how much of a change this system is from d20, but simply expand the options available where Force-users are concerned.

Donovan Morningfire said:

I think the information that gets lost in a conversation like this is what the difficulty of the encounters are, and that it mattered in d20 games, and doesn't in EotE. GM Chris did a lot of work and produced the information about how many sessions it took 'in his experience' to move from one lvl to the other. This kind of information is absent from GMC's information.

I can tell you that in my two year campaign I ran in Saga, my experience was very very different than what he described in his list above. I gave the players the XP the book indicated they earned for about 3 sessions. After that, it became very clear that if I continued to give them the XP proscribed by the book, they would be leveling so quickly there would be no way for me to reasonably complete the story I had planned (let alone the two other acts) before they were able to far surpass Vader-esque power levels. The problem was caused by the dictated challenge levels for adversaries being much to low. So I had to increase the CL the players were facing to provide any kind of challenge or danger. This in turn led to massive XP rewards where they were leveling basically every session. I basically threw up my hands when it came to awarding XP, and just told them "Okay, now you lvl".

Different groups may have had different experiences with the difficulty curve, but here, its absent, which means that those kinds of conversions are more difficult to make.

My solution to the conversion has worked well so far. Have the players [re]create their characters in the new system, and then give large XP rewards every session (50-100 XP), until you've worked up to the point where you feel they should be. Everyone can learn the game again, everyone gets to feel how the game acts at different power levels, and GM isn't faced with nothing more than guesswork to determine how hard to make the opponents, since each later session can be planned based on information from earlier sessions.

My players are eager to get back to where they were, but they understand its a learning process for us all. In retrospect, they've appreciated the chance to learn and not get their asses handed to them by foes that would have been pushovers before, but now are a lot more dangerous.

-WJL

Kallabecca said:

You know, Kallabecca, you bring up a highly valid point.

Now - not to toot my own horn too much - but I'd call myself "pretty experienced" with Saga Edition. But your point is a very very good one. Because 1 level every 2 to 3 weeks (1 session a week, I'm assuming) tells me a lot about the TIME your sessions take.

I hadn't even considered that.

My sessions tend to be 10-12 hour affairs with massive numbers of encounters.

So NOW… I'm wondering if the "10 xp per session" guideline is working off an idea of 4 hour sessions? Makes sense. The system is FAST. [scratches chin]

****… you're on to something, sir!

GM Chris said:

Well, for most folks in most RPGs, a 4 hour session is the norm, as that's typically about all that can be accounted for between different folks' schedules and responsibilities. So the baseline 10 XP per session probably is based on that guideline, rather than the half-day mini-marathon sessions you tend to run . Don't get me wrong, they're quite entertaining to read about, but most folks would consider themselves lucky to get a 6 hour session in.

GM Chris said:

4 - 6 hour sessions once a week. Even when I started that was the norm due to other obligations (homework, extracurricular stuff, etc…). That also seems to be the baseline that most RPGs that I've played that AREN'T level-based for determining rewards for the session (Savage Worlds, Shadowrun, GURPS, HERO, Star Wars D6, etc…).

Okay… so now I'm totally convinced. Also, I was emailing Jay Little last night, and asked him (regarding the 10 xp per session guideline), how long he envisioned a "session" to be. His response? About 4 hours.

So there you go.

Kallabecca, your point is EXACTLY correct.

GM Chris said:

I think the problem is that you're falling into the trap of thinking that 1 XP at 1st level and 1 XP at 20th level are equivalent in Saga Edition.

The spine of the d20 system (which Saga is based on), assumes 3 encounters per session, 4 sessions, equals a level. XP progression in Saga is non-linear, meaning that XP values for opponents, and to achieve the next level, increase as level increases. I.e.: at 1st level, your character will earn maybe 200-300 XP per session. At higher level, you'll be earning thousands of XP per session.

EotE on the other had has a flat (linear) progression - regardless of how much XP your character has, they will usually only be earning 10-15 XP per session.

Given that, I think the only way to really compare the characters is to break it down by number of sessions played. So a 5th level Saga PC, with the assumed rate of progression, will have played roughly 4 (number of levels gained) x 4 (assumed number of sessions per level) - 16 sessions. An equivalent EotE character will have earned 160-240 (average 200) XP during that same amount of play time. Obviously, if you have more or less encounters than the asumed default per level in Saga you'll have to tweak those numbers, but it's encouraging to see that it's bang on what people say "feels" right in play.

Note this means your average 20th level Saga PC is equivalent to 19 x 4 = 76 sessions of play, or 760-1140 (average 950) XP in EotE, and gives us the following tables of equivalence:

Saga Level; Saga XP; Average Edge XP
1; 0; 0
2; 1000; 50
3; 3000; 100
4; 6000; 150
5; 10000; 200
6; 15000; 250
7; 21000; 300
8; 28000; 350
9; 36000; 400
10; 45000; 450
11; 55000; 500
12; 66000; 550
13; 78000; 600
14; 91000; 650
15; 105000; 700
16; 120000; 750
17; 136000; 800
18; 153000; 850
19; 171000; 900
20; 190000+; 950+

I.e.: 50 XP per level gained (above 1)

Award them 12 experience per session played. In my experience this ends up being every 3 sessions or so. I would think 150 (round up from 144) points would be reasonable.

Darnit, for a second i thought this thread was about converting saga players but no such luck haha.

EngageEight said:

Force them to prep for and GM a 6-hour Saga game with 4 encounters, for a 6-person party of level 12 or higher characters. That might do it.