Introduction

The Star Wars 5th Edition roleplaying game is about storytelling in worlds of lightsabers and the Force. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, SW5e is driven by imagination. It's about picturing the towering AT-AT beneath the stormy night sky and imagining how a squad of rebel troops might overcome the challenges that scene presents.

This book is designed to add another significant layer to your SW5e experience. The rules are designed to work alongside the traditional SW5e ruleset, and so an experienced player should have no trouble jumping right into the book. For the less experienced-or more curious-player, this Introduction discusses the basics.

Game Master (GM): As your ship exits hyperspace above the moon of Nar Shaddaa, you see a series of snubfighters move to approach your freighter in an offensive formation. Several other craft go about their business in the vicinity, paying no attention to your potential predicament.

Rickey (playing Vinto): I want to hail them and see what their intentions are.

Drew (playing Dash): I'm going to go man the dorsal gun, just in case.

Erik (playing Kodo): ...

Unlike a game of make-believe, D&D gives structure to the stories, a way of determining the consequences of the adventurers' actions. Players roll dice to resolve whether their attacks hit or miss or whether their starship can scale a skim the surface of a star destroyer, break the lock on a concussion missile, or pull off some other dangerous task. Anything is possible, but the dice make some outcomes more probable than others.

Game Master (GM): OK, one at a time. Rickey, you're hailing the newcomers?

Rickey: Yeah. Do they respond?

GM: Make a Charisma check.

Rickey: Does my Persuasion skill apply?

GM: Sure!

Rickey (rolling a d20): ... Four.

GM: You can hear the click of static, but no voice responds to you. And Drew, Dash is manning the dorsal gun?

Drew: Yup!

GM: Okay. Eric, what's Kodo doing?

Eric: ...

In the Star Wars Dungeons and Dragons game, each player creates an adventurer (also called a character) and teams up with other adventurers (played by friends). Working together, the group might obtain a freighter and take to the stars, expanding the scope and potential of their game. They might become pirates, the scourge of the Outer Rim, or they may accept missions from a leading faction. They may become smugglers, taking jobs as they see fit, or become bounty hunters in the employee of a powerful hutt.

One player, however, takes on the role of the Game Master (GM), the game's lead storyteller and referee. The GM creates adventures for the characters, who navigate its hazards and decide which paths to explore. The GM might describe an ongoing naval battle, and the players decide what they want their adventurers to do. Will they choose a side and join in the combat? Will they attempt to mediate a truce? Or will they simply choose a new destination?

Then the GM determines the results of the adventurers' actions and narrates what they experience. Because the GM can improvise to react to anything the players attempt, D&D is infinitely flexible, and each adventure can be exciting and unexpected.

The game has no real end; when one story or quest wraps up, another one can begin, creating an ongoing story called a campaign. Many people who play the game keep their campaigns going for months or years, meeting with their friends every week or so to pick up the story where they left off. The adventurers grow in might as the campaign continues. Each force defeated, each adventure completed, and each relic recovered not only adds to the continuing story, but also earns the adventurers new capabilities. This increase in power is reflected by an adventurer's level and deployment rank, as well as their starship's tier.

There's no winning and losing in the Star Wars Dungeons and Dragons game—at least, not the way those terms are usually understood. Together, the GM and the players create an exciting story of bold adventurers who confront deadly perils. Sometimes an adventurer might come to a grisly end, dispatched by a Sith lord. The party itself might meet its demise should it bite off more than it can chew in a starship encounter. Even so, the other adventurers can beseech a powerful Jedi to revive their fallen comrade, or the players might choose (or be forced) to create new characters to carry on. The group might fail to complete an adventure successfully, but if everyone had a good time and created a memorable story, they all win.

Take to the Stars#

One of the premier components of Star Wars 5th Edition, versus a traditional Dungeons and Dragons campaign, is the wide variety of planets a character can visit and explore. To facilitate and encourage that experience, adventurers need a means to travel.

Public transportation exists, and players can simply pay someone else to transport them if they so desire. Alternatively, you can elect to keep the scope of a campaign small, and limit it to one or two planets. It would be easy to run a game on Coruscant, with its myriad cultures and territories, without the players having to venture offworld.

But if your players want to journey among the stars, this book is designed to those ends.

Using This Book#

Starships of the Galaxy is divided into ten chapters.

Chapters 1-6 are about taking your SW5e character, adopting a deployment, and designing a ship. It includes information on the six main deployments, the six ship size classifications, ship upgrades, ship equipment, and the customization options that you can choose from. Many of the rules in these chapters rely on material found later in the book. If you come across a game concept that you don't understand, consult the book's table of contents.

For initial encounters, you can generally skip these chapters by running characters without a deployment and by utilizing a pre-generated stock ship.

Chapters 7-9 detail the rules of how to run the space portion of the game, beyond the basics described in this introduction. These chapters covers where the rules deviate from the ground game, and where they remain the same.

Chapter 10 is for GMs, and covers the rules for generating encounters and ships, as well as the stats for stock ships off which players can build.

How to Play#

Generally, the space game runs almost identical to the ground. The GM still describes the environment, and the players describe what they want to do. The GM then narrates the results of of the adventurers' actions.

Space Versus Ground

The most important distinction here is the scaling down of the dice. An X-wing's laser cannon deals 1d6 to an enemy X-wing. The perspective for damage here is space. If you need to scale ships to the perspective of players, you want to scale the damage, hit/hull points, shield points, damage reduction, and shield regeneration rate of ships by 10, and vice versa. For Instance, an X-wing's primary weapon may deal 1d6 to ships, but would deal (1d6)x10 to a player, while a player's explosion power would instead deal (8d6)/10 damage (round down) to the X-wing. Because of their size and durability, some GMs may rule that Large and larger ships are simply immune to damage from small arms fire. Additionally, a Tiny starship is Tiny on the space scale, but Huge on the ground scale. Consequently, a Small ship is Gargantuan on the ground scale. Medium and larger ships would be considered colossal. Because starships are not primarily designed to fight individual creatures, Tiny-Large Starships have disadvantage on attacks versus Large and smaller creatures (and such creatures have advantage on saves caused by these ships' weapons).

Game Dice#

The game uses the same polyhedral dice with different numbers of sides, referenced in the same fashion; the different dice are referred to by the letter d followed by the number of sides: d2, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, and d20.

The D20#

The same d20 that a Jedi uses to swing his lightsaber is used for firing a ship's weapons. The biggest deviation here is that when a player fires a ship weapon, they use the player's proficiency bonus, but the ship's Wisdom bonus. The reason for this is two-fold:

1. In the ground game, some Ability scores are stronger than others. Since this ruleset is designed to enhance the way the game is played, one character should not be penalized for being slightly different from another character.

2. How accurate a ship's weapons are is modified by the ship's targeting system. A ship with a higher Wisdom is more capable of accurate targeting than a ship with a low Wisdom, consequently yielding a greater likelihood of accuracy.

This and other deviations will be discussed at greater length in Chapter 7: Using Ability Scores.

Advantage and Disadvantage#

Advantage and Disadvantage function identical to the ground game; with advantage, you roll two dice and take the higher value, while with the disadvantage you roll two dice and take the lesser.

Specific Beats General#

In the same vein, while latter chapters contain broad strokes for the game's rules, certain deployment or ship features override those rules, creating an exception to how the rest of the game works. Remember this: if a specific rule contradicts a general rule, the specific rule wins.

ROUND APPROPRIATELY#

Follow standard rules for rounding; if a number ends in one-half or greater, round up, while if a number ends in less than one-half, round down.

What It Brings#

Starships of the Galaxy is designed to be an in addition to rather than instead of. The rules here, predominantly, function identically, or analogously, to the ground game, but the features and boons achieved here are designed to be kept separate. While features of the ground game, such as your characters' species, classes, backgrounds, and customization options impact your character's prowess in the space game, the space game should not affect your characters in the ground game.

As always, there might be some exceptions to this rule; for instance, many of the suite options offer bonuses that affect the ground game, and players can use their ship to assault a stronghold that their characters might not be able to conquer on their own. Ultimately, the cross over is up to the GM to adjudicate.