http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4698

A look and discussion about the starting PCs for the upcoming Beginner Box. Including confirmation that two additional PCs will be made available for download,.

One of the issues with the EotE pregens is that recreating them as legal starting PCs was pretty much impossible (especially the humans, who had an extra 10 XP each and a lot of extra credits), but it looks like more care was taken with the AoR PCs to make them more compatible with the full rules, or at least make it simpler to convert them over to the full rules.

Well, reading through it, it looks as tho' it's "So long as you don't advance them, they're legal"...

Yet another "WTF are y'all thinking???" moment.

Well, reading through it, it looks as tho' it's "So long as you don't advance them, they're legal"...

Yet another "WTF are y'all thinking???" moment.

Eh, probably 'check out this game and how cool it is, then buy the core book for the real rules.' The beginner game isn't aimed at the experienced gamer.

I liked the article, though I wonder why they're holding back one of the character reveals. To drum up interest, or because approvals haven't been finalized? Whatever the case, I'll be picking up the box and probably running it for some friends who are interested in EOTE/AOR.

It's probably to drum up interest and keep the prospective customer intrigued enough to want to come back to the web site once they do have the box.

As for advancing the PCs, that depends on if FFG stuck to the "simplified careers" model that they used for the EotE Beginner Box. Personally, I'd think they'd be better off to sticking to the actual specs, but only listing the first three rows. So for the Mon Cal Engineer, if he's meant to be a Scientist under the full rules (best guess based on what skills he's got ranks in according to the portfolio preview), then have the character folio list his career as "Engineer" and the use the career skill listing and talent tree set-up of the Scientist spec. Although, with the Knowledge skills being lumped into a single skill, that might get tricky, as half the Scientist's bonus career skills in the AoR Beta are Knowledge skills, with Education being listed twice.

I did a quick number crunch, and the XP count is legit for a regular starting PC (100 XP, all spent on Characteristics). Gear looks a bit off (has about 2175 credits' worth, with the assumption that "Datapad & Gear" equates to "Datapad & Slicer Gear"), but a large part of that could simply be covered under the assumption of the group using "Base of Operations" for their starting Rebellion Resource, which does provide a whole lot of extra credits for a group. Could be that the final version of the rules don't provide quite as much starting credits as the Beta did for Base of Operations.

It's probably to drum up interest and keep the prospective customer intrigued enough to want to come back to the web site once they do have the box.

As for advancing the PCs, that depends on if FFG stuck to the "simplified careers" model that they used for the EotE Beginner Box. Personally, I'd think they'd be better off to sticking to the actual specs, but only listing the first three rows. So for the Mon Cal Engineer, if he's meant to be a Scientist under the full rules (best guess based on what skills he's got ranks in according to the portfolio preview), then have the character folio list his career as "Engineer" and the use the career skill listing and talent tree set-up of the Scientist spec. Although, with the Knowledge skills being lumped into a single skill, that might get tricky, as half the Scientist's bonus career skills in the AoR Beta are Knowledge skills, with Education being listed twice.

They explicitly state that they moved a 25 pointer to the 15 point line.

Aramis,

With the EotE Beginner Box, it became an issue of converting those PCs to the standard rules due to the huge lead time between when the release dates of the box (December 2012) and the core rulebook (July 2013).

I get the feeling the release window will be a lot shorter this time around, particularly if the AoR Beginner Box is an April release and the AoR core rulebook is a May or early June release.

For most folks, it probably won't be a huge deal to do the conversion in the first place. If the EotE starter adventure is anything to go by, the AoR starter adventure won't be handing out huge piles of XP (about 20 if the same structure is used as "Escape from Mos Shutta"). At worst, a PC might lose access to a talent or two or need to choose which Knowledge skills they have ranks in.

But again, folks like you and me were never the target audience in the first place. We've got the AoR Beta rulebook, so we don't need an introduction to AoR as we've already got all the tools we need to play and run AoR games.

One of the issues with the EotE pregens is that recreating them as legal starting PCs was pretty much impossible (especially the humans, who had an extra 10 XP each and a lot of extra credits)...

Or Pash, who had like 100 XP more than everyone else.

I blame this on what I've seen with the Free RPG Day quickstarts. Basically, EoE was still being written when the Beginner game came out, and anyone who looks at the Beta Update knows that the rules were massively overhauled. The same thing happened consistently with the 40k lines, all of which were being overhauled and tweaked when the quickstart was printed. I imagine that the characters were made with a much earlier set of rules, much like how the early screenshots of many video games look nothing like the finished product.

This time around, AoR didn't seem to have many updates. The rules were very much there already, so i expect the AoR Beginner characters to be better made and more balanced.

One of the issues with the EotE pregens is that recreating them as legal starting PCs was pretty much impossible (especially the humans, who had an extra 10 XP each and a lot of extra credits)...

Or Pash, who had like 100 XP more than everyone else.

I blame this on what I've seen with the Free RPG Day quickstarts. Basically, EoE was still being written when the Beginner game came out, and anyone who looks at the Beta Update knows that the rules were massively overhauled. The same thing happened consistently with the 40k lines, all of which were being overhauled and tweaked when the quickstart was printed. I imagine that the characters were made with a much earlier set of rules, much like how the early screenshots of many video games look nothing like the finished product.

This time around, AoR didn't seem to have many updates. The rules were very much there already, so i expect the AoR Beginner characters to be better made and more balanced.

The article says they intentionally changed the 25 pointer to a 15 (with saying it's normally a 25 pointer) in order to show off the high point value.

Thus, it's only when you have experienced Beginner Game characters that they disconnect. But that disconnect is huge - far more than the 15 point overage Pash has. (but also, Pash was missing one skill rank.)

I've done the math on the Edge BG characters before. http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/76551-pre-gens-obligation/#entry741555

I love this picture here. Will definitely be using it for Shaeyl, since it's pretty much how I imagine her when she reaches her late teens/early twenties (about 3 years time, in-game).