New vs old

[crimhead]

I've been considering buying the role playing game, but a friend has recently dug up an older copy (I believe he said third edition).  So I'm wondering what the advantages are to the newest system.  If the new rules are a lot better, I'll go for the upgrade. If the new system is almost identical, or less well liked, I might prefer to spend the money instead on extra rules and figs for the hex game.  I'm a newbie - played the board game twice and never played the RPG.

Thanks a lot!

[Liam's Ghost]

The newer system is a lot cleaner and more streamlined. I highly recommend it over Third Edition.

[crimhead]

That's all I needed to hear; clean and streamlined is a major plus!  Thanks for the speedy reply. :)

[Liam's Ghost]

No problem.

[Liam's Ghost]

Also fair warning if you're used to third edition's method of character creation, A Time of War's standard module based creation heavily emphasizes balance, in that new character has the same total number of XP to expend at character creation. That can mean that, for example, a noble character won't necessarily have the same level of combat skills than a blue collar guy who stumbled into being a mech jock, because a greater portion of his points went to stuff like wealth, connections, and the like.

It's something to keep in mind if your games focus heavily on combat and downplay other roleplaying elements.

[Carbon Elasmobranch]

Also, Life Module construction tends to get rather weird with point optimization.  You'll probably lose a bunch of the skills that were supposed to "organically round out" a character in the process, lots of positive traits*, and potentially knock down an Attribute that was this close to qualifying for the next level, only to experience a huge swell in negative Traits.  Then you total up all the XP that got shaved off and... spend it how you like.  It's point buy with pre-determined expenditures that often have to be expended twice.

You don't technically have to engage in point optimization, but it's required if you're going to take any additional negative Traits for more XP, and it still leaves the feeling of not using an actual life path.  In fact, if you repeat Stage 4 modules**, you'll lose points due to not getting the Attributes and Traits, and the module cost not decreasing to reflect this.  It was workable to not get these bonuses in MW3, since it didn't rely on points, but in ATOW, you arguably end up doing better just using point buy.

*Making ProtoMech pilots is a royal pain because none of the modules just cut to the chase and buy off Glass Jaw, even though it's required to be a PM pilot.  Leaves you feeling like you've gone through a bunch of extraneous extra steps to very little effect.
**Other than Civilian Job or a tiny few others that only give Skills and Free XP.