I really liked most of what you're saying, Kshatriya (I really hope they don't go crazy with the Force Powers),

but this bit seems a bit off:

"True to the movies mechanically" is sort of an exercise in fanwank simply because it's trying to cram the square peg of cinematic moments into the round hole of game mechanics: the latter simply never influenced the former; the movie scenes were written and acted in ways that were necessary to plot, not to prove examples for a mechanical system.

If I buy the DC Heroes RPG, I'd expect it's designers to have been trying to create rules that encourage the feel of the comics it's based off. The Song of Ice and Fire RPG should feel like the Sean Bean is out there, somewhere. Same with Babylon 5, Buffy, Elric!, Middle Earth, Prime Directive, Serenity, or any other RPG based on a non-RPG fictional world.

Same with Star Wars. The designers did a pretty good job of simulating how the Star Wars universe works (as represented, primarily, in the films). I disagree that that's a fools errand - it's the basic task they should have set themselves.

"Let's make me a Star Wars RPG. Not a space-fantasy game with psionics and laserswords - a Star Wars RPG."

If that's the case, I think they largely succeeded. Not completely, sure - because you're right, that ain't possible - but they get it close enough.

The penguin is right. The game should emulate the films, which is something that EOTE and AOR does well; I expect that F&D will accomplish the same.

(Personally I prefer the rougher feel of EotE's take, though the d20 stuff did represent the feel prequel era films well.)

I'd like to be able to play a full-fledged Jedi Knight without it being some advanced high-XP character concept to realize.

To draw a parallel with Saga - you could create a Level 1 Jedi that felt like a Jedi - some force ability, lightsaber etc.

By level 7 you could build a Jedi with some depth and a good deal of ability at something.

Now, depending on your perspective SAGA had some balance issues at lower and mid levels (with Skill Focuse: Use the Force and how skills scaled against defenses) and I don't want Jedi to be unbalanced in F&D but I would like to start a Jedi character and feel like a Jedi and not need a year or two of game play to move into some more depth with Jedi abilities.

I don't have the expectation - or desire - to be able to create Force Unleashed type characters. I'll be happy if the rules put the Jedi of the original and prequel movies on the table. I don't want to overshadow other player characters at the table (I don't see why everyone can't be awesome).

Touching on the above post, Episode I-III Jedi are individuals who are taken as infants and trained every single day under a wealth of teachers - Yoda, the Council, their own Master, their pre-Master instructors, other students/Padawans, etc. - and whilst using a vast supply of resources - the Archives, holocrons, temples and other institutions, etc. - and are able to do so openly and without fear of the Empire. The above makes for inherently better warriors and scholars, by sheer virtue of circumstance.

Jedi in the Rebellion Era will not be so fortunate. They will begin their training much later on in years, at least by the norm, and since most of the equipment used by Jedi has been confiscated by the Empire they'll have little tools on hand to aid them; furthmore, as the number of teachers in the galaxy has dwindled to almost nothing, finding anyone who can pass their knowledge on would be extremely hard. Couple this with the fact that lessons and open action is inherently dangerous, and you've got a mixture that makes for Jedi who are weaker by circumstance.

This is not to say that Jedi can't become uber-powerful - this is true of any character with enough training/experience - but Jedi at this time should not be as skilled in their path as Jedi from the prequels.

On the other hand Luke was a Jedi Knight after a very short trip with Kenobi on a freighter and a couple of months in the jungle with Yoda.

Was Luke as awesome as prequel era Knights? I'd say so. He pretty much demonstrates all the basic abilities of Obi-wan in Ep I-III. He probably wasn't quite as good or refined in ability in RotJ as Kenobi was in Ep I but he was very close.

There's also a lot to be said for a F&D book which isn't totally locked to the original trilogy era.

The other book's material can be more generally applied to other eras and it makes sense for the Jedi material to be more generalizable as well.

The problem with using Jedi from the Prequel Films and especially those from The Clone Wars is that as Shakespearian_Soldier noted is those are individuals that were not only trained from infancy, but are are far from being "starting tier" characters. Even Ahsoka was far more capable than your average starting PC would be, even in Saga Edition terms (she was 'introduced' as a 3rd level Jedi in The Clone Wars Campaign Guide), and Obi-Wan was almost a Jedi Knight by the time we first met him in The Phantom Menace. So the closest we've seen in the films and TV series so far to an actual wet-behind-the-ears Jedi trainee is Luke Skywalker when he's introduced in A New Hope prior to Artoo running off in the middle of the night, and even that state of affairs doesn't last very long (he likely dumped all the XP he got from the Death Star rescue into boosting up his Sense power to get the offensive Control Upgrade).

But here's the other thing... what makes for a good movie or TV series doesn't always make for a good RPG, and this goes double for video games. Force Unleashed was a fun game to play, but I don't want Starkiller to be the default power level for Jedi PCs.

As far as "true power of the Force," that depends on where the particular author sets the bar. Timothy Zahn sets the bar a lot lower than a number of other EU authors. The Dark Empire series set the bar much higher with the Emperor's use of Force Storms, and other stories had Luke doing near-godlike feats such as flying the Falcon solo and operating every station with a better efficiency than Han with a full crew complement could ever hope to do, or Luke using TK to reconstruct Vader's citadel on Coruscant "just because." The 2D Clone Wars animated series treat Jedi like superhuman gods, especially Mace Windu during his fight on Dantooine. The two Force Unleashed games were pretty much "who cares about if it makes sense, just let the player do really cool stuff with the Force!"

So I'd say the real guideline to go by are the movies, as those are the sources with direct input from the creator of the franchise (his involvement in The Clone Wars seems to have been mostly "idea guy" rather than actually developing or even consulting on how the action took place). In the films, we never see anyone hurling capital ships around like toys; closest we get is Palpatine hurling multiple Senate Pods at Yoda during RotS, which themselves were probably Silhouette 2. Yoda lifts an X-Wing in ESB* and some pretty heavy-looking machinery in AotC, both of which are likely Silhouette 3. Force Lightning came out of left field when RotJ hit theaters, and it's only been in the EU where it's been relegated to "standard dark side attack power" rather than a demonstration of just how powerful a Force-user the Emperor was, that he could buck the laws of conservation of energy and create lightning out of thin air.

*As for Yoda looking exhausted/tired after doing so, I'd contend that he was only pretending it was a difficult feat for him so as to not leave Luke totally discouraged. Luke's at low point, having just disappointed his teacher, and if Yoda makes it look too easy, Luke could very well resign himself to "I'll never be that good." Seeing as how Yoda's a teacher by nature, he'd know this, and know to make it look it took even him some serious effort; it's a way for him to show Luke that it can be done, but not to beat himself up over it if a venerable master had put forth some significant effort.

I agree that the movies should be the template. But how many players want more than that?

I don't see a lot of outcry for rules to play Starkiller - I see more demand for "Hey, I'd like to play a Jedi character out of the gate without needing hundreds and hundreds of XP to realize the character concept". But you're more connected to the FFG community than I am and our gaming groups may be very different.

Well recall with Luke that in the EU there were a number of adventures occurring between ANH and TESB, and between TESB and ROTJ. If the "downtime" gaps aren't considered or counted (even if those books are removed from canon, the timeskips are still there), plausibility of Luke's skills really takes a hit.

I'd like to be able to play a full-fledged Jedi Knight without it being some advanced high-XP character concept to realize.

There's no problem with wanting this but the reality is that, mechanically, a character who has the skillset of a Jedi Knight is going to be above basic chargen in this system, and likely also above Force Rating 2 at the minimum.

Touching on the above post, Episode I-III Jedi are individuals who are taken as infants and trained every single day under a wealth of teachers - Yoda, the Council, their own Master, their pre-Master instructors, other students/Padawans, etc. - and whilst using a vast supply of resources - the Archives, holocrons, temples and other institutions, etc. - and are able to do so openly and without fear of the Empire. The above makes for inherently better warriors and scholars, by sheer virtue of circumstance.

Jedi in the Rebellion Era will not be so fortunate. They will begin their training much later on in years, at least by the norm, and since most of the equipment used by Jedi has been confiscated by the Empire they'll have little tools on hand to aid them; furthmore, as the number of teachers in the galaxy has dwindled to almost nothing, finding anyone who can pass their knowledge on would be extremely hard. Couple this with the fact that lessons and open action is inherently dangerous, and you've got a mixture that makes for Jedi who are weaker by circumstance.

This is not to say that Jedi can't become uber-powerful - this is true of any character with enough training/experience - but Jedi at this time should not be as skilled in their path as Jedi from the prequels.

On the other hand Luke was a Jedi Knight after a very short trip with Kenobi on a freighter and a couple of months in the jungle with Yoda.

Was Luke as awesome as prequel era Knights? I'd say so. He pretty much demonstrates all the basic abilities of Obi-wan in Ep I-III. He probably wasn't quite as good or refined in ability in RotJ as Kenobi was in Ep I but he was very close.

Well recall with Luke that in the EU there were a number of adventures occurring between ANH and TESB, and between TESB and ROTJ. If the "downtime" gaps aren't considered or counted (even if those books are removed from canon, the timeskips are still there), plausibility of Luke's skills really takes a hit.

My knowledge of the EU is pretty limited. I'm just taking the movies as my source. But even the movies have some gaps in there which are unspecified. But my point still stands. Luke didn't have a lifetime of training and he didn't have access to a Jedi Temple and all the perks associated with that.

During his short trip with Kenobi to Alderan he gained enough training to blow up the death star. A pretty amazing feat considering that all we really see Kenobi teach Luke is philosophy, help him to feel the force and how to block a blaster with a lightsaber (mostly as a means of teaching him to connect to the force it seems to me).

Between ANH and ESB he gained enough ability to pull his lightsaber to himself and fought off the wampa with his lightsaber.

After training with Yoda - for at most several months - Luke's abilities are greatly increased.

And in the time jump between ESB and RotJ Luke's abilities seem to take another jump forward.

All told he'd acquired a similar amount of ability as a Jedi as Obi-wan did by Ep I but in much less time.

As Donovan says, movies are different than games, and so you're going to have some difference in pacing but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that F&D will stay away from the attitude that being a real Jedi isn't feasible in the game because it takes a lifetime of training and that's not an option because the book is strictly era locked to a time where there are only several Jedi in existence. Luke didn't require a Jedi Temple and a lifetime of training. And it's also reasonable to expect to be able to play characters that did start out life as a Jedi.

I'd like to be able to play a full-fledged Jedi Knight without it being some advanced high-XP character concept to realize.

There's no problem with wanting this but the reality is that, mechanically, a character who has the skillset of a Jedi Knight is going to be above basic chargen in this system, and likely also above Force Rating 2 at the minimum.

I wasn't very clear with this so I'll try to be now =)

I see a big difference between a starting character and an advanced character.

I'd like to be able to use basic chargen to make a character that feels like a Jedi and has some of the starting capabilities of a Jedi. When I say I'd like to be able to move into "Jedi Knight" territory without it taking a year of game play what I'm trying to get at is that if my character concept is a Jedi Knight I'd like to be able to play my character at something close to that ability for most of the campaign.

I'd like to be able to play a full-fledged Jedi Knight without it being some advanced high-XP character concept to realize.

***********

I would like to start a Jedi character and feel like a Jedi and not need a year or two of game play to move into some more depth with Jedi abilities.

Well, the problem is that a fully trained Jedi Knight is a high-XP character concept. However, as to your second post, there's no reason that you need to play for years to get a Jedi Knight. If the GM is willing to run a higher-XP game from the start, you can build a character out of the gate with +500XP (added after starting XP is spent on Characteristics) or whatever you need right from the start. The days of "Start at the bottom - you have to earn your fun." are over. Just find (or build) the group that meets your needs.

I'd like to be able to play a full-fledged Jedi Knight without it being some advanced high-XP character concept to realize.

***********

I would like to start a Jedi character and feel like a Jedi and not need a year or two of game play to move into some more depth with Jedi abilities.

Well, the problem is that a fully trained Jedi Knight is a high-XP character concept. However, as to your second post, there's no reason that you need to play for years to get a Jedi Knight. If the GM is willing to run a higher-XP game from the start, you can build a character out of the gate with +500XP (added after starting XP is spent on Characteristics) or whatever you need right from the start. The days of "Start at the bottom - you have to earn your fun." are over. Just find (or build) the group that meets your needs.

Pretty much what I was thinking (except I'd have waffled for several paragraphs and said it half as clearly ).

I'd like to be able to play a full-fledged Jedi Knight without it being some advanced high-XP character concept to realize.

***********

I would like to start a Jedi character and feel like a Jedi and not need a year or two of game play to move into some more depth with Jedi abilities.

Well, the problem is that a fully trained Jedi Knight is a high-XP character concept. However, as to your second post, there's no reason that you need to play for years to get a Jedi Knight. If the GM is willing to run a higher-XP game from the start, you can build a character out of the gate with +500XP (added after starting XP is spent on Characteristics) or whatever you need right from the start. The days of "Start at the bottom - you have to earn your fun." are over. Just find (or build) the group that meets your needs.

Pretty much what I was thinking (except I'd have waffled for several paragraphs and said it half as clearly ).

And I'd say that a fully trained Jedi Knight is a mid-XP character concept. Jedi Master might be a high-XP concept. This partly depends on what is meant by "fully trained Jedi Knight" and what is meant by mid or high XP concept.

In Saga terms I think you could create a fully trained Jedi Knight somewhere in the range of level 5-7.

In terms of just feel and ability - outside of a system - to me a fully trained Jedi Knight is capable with a lightsaber, has some defensive abilities, can use the force to do a number of things - to move objects, push opponents, sense and influence life, and has some enhanced athletic ability (running, jumping). That's not to say you've mastered these areas but that you have some consistent ability in these areas. It's not to say you're the best or even close to the berst Jedi Knight in the Order. It doesn't seem overpowered to me. It seems like non-Jedi characters should be able to duplicate - even surpass - the Jedi in some of these areas generally (e.g., damage output, ability to influence others etc), while the Jedi also has some unique abilities that aren't over powered.

This seems like it *should* be a mid XP character concept to me. You've got all the pieces there but haven't mastered anything and you aren't dominating anything more so than any other character at the table (and I'm not implying the Jedi should eventually get to the point where they do overpower others characters with abilities in the same general area).

The current force specializations provide a fair amount of this stuff already and I don't have enough experience with it to say if you need a mid or high XP character to achieve it but what I've described above doesn't seem overpowered to me.

Take Boba Fett as an example. It seems like you should be able to approximate a bounty hunter like him at mid XP levels. Now you're not going to be as good/powerful as Fett at mid XP but you should be able to get all or most of the pieces in place. Same for Jedi - your fully trained Jedi Knight isn't going to be Yoda but like a young Kenobi in Ep I.

The penguin is wrong! (Sorry I wanted to say that) He is partially incorrect in the observation of movie pureism. Will someone point out to me weapon/vehicle/starship modifications as they were seen in any of the six movies please? Or what type of armor was Han, Leia or Luke are wearing on the Death Star or Endor? What about the troops that were with Han on Endor what was their armor? The only one that I can remember is the scopes (that no one seemed to use) on the blasters used by both Alliance and Empire. Other than that I didn't see anything to indicate the Gammoreans Vibroaxes had special treatment on their blades or the fact that they were vibro weapons at all. Or lets look at some of the vehicles and starships introduced in the Explorer and Hired Guns book please tell me where some of those appear in the movies.

Honestly if they stuck solely to the movies and what is explained in the movies you would probably have enough for a core rulebook and six supplementals for each movie. No, one would even get an explanation to say the buildings on Yavin and who or where they came from. They would just be listed as 'abandoned structures' probably on a page in the Episode IV supplement. That would be the reality of just sticking to the movies, you wouldn't have too much to honestly go on to have an interesting game except attempting to recreate said movies. Good luck with that my friends I would refer you to a few Dork Tower Comics where they tried to recreate LOTR and well, I will be honest I don't remember Gandalf being a battering ram.

The penguin is wrong! (Sorry I wanted to say that)

Slander!

In Saga terms I think you could create a fully trained Jedi Knight somewhere in the range of level 5-7.

Well in Saga, going into the Jedi Knight Prestige Class (which imo was sufficient but not strictly necessary to consider yourself a Jedi Knight story-wise) required level 7, because of BAB and a feat obtained at level 7 that gave you the ability to build your own lightsaber.

In Saga terms I think you could create a fully trained Jedi Knight somewhere in the range of level 5-7.

Well in Saga, going into the Jedi Knight Prestige Class (which imo was sufficient but not strictly necessary to consider yourself a Jedi Knight story-wise) required level 7, because of BAB and a feat obtained at level 7 that gave you the ability to build your own lightsaber.

Sure. But I'm talking more about the feel and functioning of the character rather than the mechanical labels.

A Jedi character in the level range of 5-7 in Saga will be skilled at using the force, could have a wide range of force powers and be good with a lightsaber (or merely ok with a lightsaber but well into the consular-type abilities). And you have the beginnings of specialization.

In Saga terms I think you could create a fully trained Jedi Knight somewhere in the range of level 5-7.

Well in Saga, going into the Jedi Knight Prestige Class (which imo was sufficient but not strictly necessary to consider yourself a Jedi Knight story-wise) required level 7, because of BAB and a feat obtained at level 7 that gave you the ability to build your own lightsaber.

Sure. But I'm talking more about the feel and functioning of the character rather than the mechanical labels.

A Jedi character in the level range of 5-7 in Saga will be skilled at using the force, could have a wide range of force powers and be good with a lightsaber (or merely ok with a lightsaber but well into the consular-type abilities). And you have the beginnings of specialization.

I don't think using the WoC d20 based systems (D&D, SAGA etc.) is a good comparison. I don't remember where I read it but my group has had the conversation before on levels and such and the consensus was that characters above 6-7th level were basically demi-gods and outside anything you'd generally find in books and movies. SAGA was a little better but it still suffered from the shrugging off a cannon to the chest syndrome.

In Saga terms I think you could create a fully trained Jedi Knight somewhere in the range of level 5-7.

Well in Saga, going into the Jedi Knight Prestige Class (which imo was sufficient but not strictly necessary to consider yourself a Jedi Knight story-wise) required level 7, because of BAB and a feat obtained at level 7 that gave you the ability to build your own lightsaber.

Sure. But I'm talking more about the feel and functioning of the character rather than the mechanical labels.

A Jedi character in the level range of 5-7 in Saga will be skilled at using the force, could have a wide range of force powers and be good with a lightsaber (or merely ok with a lightsaber but well into the consular-type abilities). And you have the beginnings of specialization.

I don't think using the WoC d20 based systems (D&D, SAGA etc.) is a good comparison. I don't remember where I read it but my group has had the conversation before on levels and such and the consensus was that characters above 6-7th level were basically demi-gods and outside anything you'd generally find in books and movies. SAGA was a little better but it still suffered from the shrugging off a cannon to the chest syndrome.

I don't want to get too much into the weeds here but as for SAGA it could be argued that the mid levels had a good power balance as that's when skill bonus vs defense reaches a more reasonable equilibrium (one potential issue with SAGA is Skill Focus: Use the Force in early levels where force users will have little problem hitting NPC defenses and some force powers can become too powerful as a result if abused).

But I still think this makes a good comparison. I'm not talking about some optimized super-force-wizard build of a level 5-7 SAGA character. I'm talking about vanilla Jedi builds.

How this relates to F&D is that in SAGA I can play a Jedi character and right out of the gate I have a character that feels like a Jedi and can fairly quickly grow into being a "full fledged" Jedi in terms of a range of abilities without it being overpowered (yes, you can create overpowered builds in SAGA but that's not what I'm using for my own baseline comparison).

I'm hoping F&D realizes this same experience.

What do you find to be missing from that experience already in Edge? I mean aside from the fact that the default time of the game is post-Order 66? Personally I think the Force Sensitive Exile/Emergent trees are useful ways to model Jedi-in-training, with the onus being on the player to provide the "feel" of being a Jedi - living the Code, for example.

Or is your comment mostly that it doesn't feel like you can play Jedi "right out of the gate" because they will always be diluted by the "base class" being Smuggler or Diplomat or whatever?

As far as making a staring PC that "feels like an actual Jedi" that's going to depend on how F&D approaches the creation of such characters.

I suspect that we're going to get at least one Jedi career, and that by not having to spend 20 XP to buy an additional specialization just to get Force Rating 1, that gives them points that can be spent instead on Force Powers (20 XP is enough to get two powers to start with). Having lightsaber as career skill means that all Jedi PCs would start with at least one rank in the Lightsaber skill, so there's the "decent combat prowess" aspect, particularly if the PC pushes their Agility or Brawn to 3 (presuming the Lightsaber skill follows the suggestions on page 167 of EotE) that gives them a base dice pool of 1 Proficiency and 2 Green, which is generally what most other characters tend to start with for their primary combat skill. On the assumption there's a single Jedi career and a Guardian specialization, being able to start with 2 ranks in the Lightsaber skill would be possible, and would reflect someone that's really good with using a lightsaber.

Defensive traits probably won't be all that hot to start with, much as they're not all that hot for most specializations starting out, though being Force users a Jedi PC would have the option of dropping 20 XP out of their starting XP budget into the Sense power to get the defensive Control Upgrade (which I can state from experience has proven to be pretty handy). Of course, we don't know if the Jedi specs are going to offer talents that add Deflection and/or Defensive traits (or just a flat increase to Defense) or when those talents would be offered; they might be on the first row and available for immediate purchase, or they could be buried deeper in the spec's talent tree. There's also the matter of actual blaster deflection and bouncing shots back, but the redirection part has typically been an "advanced character" thing throughout the Star Wars RPGs (WEG you could pick up the power right away, but your Force skills were typically too low to make it something you could reliably do, while the d20 systems had the PCs wait a few levels before gaining that ability).

I do agree with Jedi Ronin that Saga Edition did a pretty good job (barring the weirdness with Skill Focus: UtF, but Skill Focus was just a problem in general with low level PCs) of letting a 1st level Jedi feel like a Jedi, in that they were generally decent fighters and had a number of inherent Force abilities that were part of the Use the Force skill (telepathy, sensing Force and Force users, very minor telekinesis, hibernation trances, and breath holding) to use as well as at least a couple 'big effect' Force powers bought through the Force Training feat to allow for things like mind tricks, lifting bigger objects, moving at incredibly speeds, or being able to dish out big damage with an attack.

In FFG's system, having a Force Rating of 1 gets you zilch, and requires even more XP to be spent to make it mean something. Now I'm not advocating that FFG has to provide a bunch of "inherent powers" that come with simply having a Force Rating (I tried that myself at one point, and ultimately decided that it felt out of place). And while the XP costs are a means of cutting down on the inherent power of Force users in this system, a part of the problem is that it's a temporary measure. The D6 system did the same thing, having Force user PCs start with lower Attributes in order to begin play with Force skills and the XP costs being steeper than raising an ordinary skill (with ordinary skills benefiting from being liked to an Attribute while Force Skills weren't), but with enough XP, a Force user in D6 could become quite powerful, capable of using their multitude of powers to short-circuit adventures in the way at a Wizard in D&D can, simply by having a wide array of powers to call upon and the ability to use them both reliably and frequently.

Or is your comment mostly that it doesn't feel like you can play Jedi "right out of the gate" because they will always be diluted by the "base class" being Smuggler or Diplomat or whatever?

Right now, you can't play an actual Jedi in this system. The best you can do is be a Force user (most likely self-taught) that maybe gets their hands on a lightsaber if the GM permits it.

As I posted above, I think it is fully possible to have a PC that "feels like a Jedi right out the gate" without them automatically overshadowing the mundanes. Saga Edition certainly permitted this, so long as the Skill Focus feat was taken out of the equation, which I know several GMs did, adding a pre-req of "5th level" before anyone could take it (also cut down on the oddities of species that got Skill Focus in a specific skill either totally sucking at a skill or being really awesome with no middle ground).

Or is your comment mostly that it doesn't feel like you can play Jedi "right out of the gate" because they will always be diluted by the "base class" being Smuggler or Diplomat or whatever?

Right now, you can't play an actual Jedi in this system. The best you can do is be a Force user (most likely self-taught) that maybe gets their hands on a lightsaber if the GM permits it.

I disagree, unless you assume that playing a Jedi requires playing in a game system with specific Jedi-only mechanical bits. I don't think it does. You can play a Force user who follows the Jedi code, easy, and how hard is it really to make up a Lightsaber skill? Not very.

I agree with Donovan for the most part.

Most of the pieces are already there and a starting specialization would go a long way in getting the rest of the way there.

It reduces the cost of access, gives you a lightsaber and the ability to use it.

I think some default uses of the force would be cool but these are generally covered by the entry level force powers.

Not necesarelly. For example, I don't like so much Force Unleashed (not enough canonical for me) but in the case thath someone can throw a ISSD, my players and myself let it to a "cinematic thing".

Like in Saga, even if Vader can Force Grip/Crush you and disable from combat because the power was OP, I only used Grip as a scene introduction and after that Vader draw his lightsaber and begin the fight.

In Edge, even if you can disarm Vader with no resistance check, my players just don't do it. They use that powers on minor rivals or minions. We play a cinematic style.

I (and some other people) don't really like this method for resolving issues with the game, as it doesn't really make sense. Sure, you're emulating the cinematic way that things play out on film, but most of the time the way characters act in films is ludicrously stupid. Sure, it makes for a better movie if James Bond's current nemesis straps him to a table with a laser slowly inching toward him, then leaves the room with just one easily persuaded guard to watch over him than if the villain were to just shoot Bond in the head and have done with it, but that's not something I want in a game--a feeling that I should not utilize my full potential (or that the villain won't utilize theirs) simply to keep things rolling and entertaining.

Bond's nemeses don't *want* him dead. They want him kept busy. After all, if they killed Bond, the MI6 might send a *competent* spy to stop their next plan.

Think about it, Bond is a 'secret agent', yet he goes around introducing himself *by name* to everyone he meets.

I just want to come right out and kill this wishlisting before it gets much further. There is absolutely no basis to think that F&D is going to let brand new characters start with a 10 000+ credit ligtsaber and the skill to use it just because you are butt hurt about being able to play a Jedi in d20 or Saga.

The far more realistic option is that the lightsaber skill would show up in a later or very specific specialization, while the actual item still requires 10 grand to buy. Please, for the love of the Force, get it through your heads that this is not the Old Republic. Jedi are fugitives, their hokey religion forgotten, and their tools outlawed and destroyed. What handful of Jedi still exist who would even know of such things wouldn't be able to access the crystal cave on Ilum because they were destroyed. While Luke got his pappy's lightsaber, he didn't use it for an entire movie, and then not meaningfully until after he was trained by Yoda. Just because you have a Force rating of 1 doesn't mean you can duel wth a weapon you probably have never seen before, nor dies it give you access to materials that were explicitly destroyed by the Emperor in order to prevent this exact this from happening.