Hello!

Has anyone run/checked The Jewel of Yavin yet? How is it?

Thanks!

MTFBWY

L

Reading through it now. So far, it's pretty awesome.

I'll be running it for my group in a couple of weeks. My greatest concern is that it's too much for my players to handle, and I don't want to scale the difficulty down because I like it so much.

I'll be running it for my group in a couple of weeks. My greatest concern is that it's too much for my players to handle, and I don't want to scale the difficulty down because I like it so much.

Hiyas!

Why would that be - couldya elaborate, please?

Thanks!

MTFBWY

...Always

L

The Jewel of Yavin is intended for more experienced parties, with higher level opponents and tasks. In some cases, the players will need to roll against 3 red dice as base difficulty for certain tasks. Remember 3 Yellow vs 3 red has about a 45% chance for success... And certainly lots of opportunities for despair (and triumph).

If I decide to run this one with my group, I'll be taking them through beyond the rim and a few other adventures before running with it. I'd want my group to have at least a few abilities on the bottom tiers of their specializations.

Is it really just one big heist?

Is it really just one big heist?

Lot of scurrilous, underhanded activity and the chance to steal something valuable.

I'd like to run it as is, but I reckon parts of it would eat my players for breakfast so I might keep it on the backburner, or rip it up and plunder parts of it for ideas in the meantime.

Yeah, mostly what Agatheron said. The NPC's you go up against are really experienced, and I feel like my team has to really work well together (which they currently don't do) in order to pull it off. Aside from the NPC's, there are just a number of difficult checks to be made to gather information or accomplish other goals.

It's funny, each of my players will have something to do and specialize in, but I don't know that they're skilled enough in their respective professions to make it work. For example, we have a Pilot, but is he a good enough Pilot? Same for the Slicer and others. The scenario really makes it seem like it's for a team of professionals, and right now my group is still half the players trying to talk the other half out of carelessly killing random NPC's to rob them and take their ship.

Hmmm. I was wondering if I should pick this one up or Beyond the Rim. I was favoring this one because they have previous business on Bespin that I could draw in, but if it's all just about getting the gem, then I don't know if it will fit into the bigger picture.

Anyone have a suggestion on which is better overall (based on what you have seen)?

The Jewel of Yavin is intended for more experienced parties, with higher level opponents and tasks. In some cases, the players will need to roll against 3 red dice as base difficulty for certain tasks.

I don't want any details, as I'm hoping to be a player for this one, but what XP level would you suggest?

I'm just finishing up a jailbreak at an imperial naval facility, where my group has successfully freed all the prisoners and sent them off on a lambda shuttle they hijacked - all without sounding any alarms (they pulled off some great deception/computer checks to get access to the server and they've managed to reset all the base systems for 20 minutes). They now have their eyes on some equipment (shield generators and laser emplacements) that are in storage and plan on stealing it all before they leave.

They've shocked me with their skill level and how they've worked together, it's been really great to see. I'm going to run Beyond the Rim for them for fun next, and then maybe another side-quest, but after that it sounds like they might be ready for the Jewel of Yavin...though 3 red dice is still pretty rough for them.

The Jewel of Yavin is intended for more experienced parties, with higher level opponents and tasks. In some cases, the players will need to roll against 3 red dice as base difficulty for certain tasks.

I don't want any details, as I'm hoping to be a player for this one, but what XP level would you suggest?

Total XP (including Starting XP) should probably be around 200-215. Minimum.

I agree with what others are saying. It's a very awesome adventure, but it's potentially very deadly and I would say requires a team that is capable of thinking outside the box.

If your group takes a "smash and bash" style approach, you're not gonna last very long.

As far as the reward being only the Jewel...no, just as in Beyond the Rim , there's opportunities for quite a few other "rewards."

Skimmed through, definitely not very friendly towards lesser experienced players, but there are numerous suggestions on what to do if players fail at key parts - but I'd imagine that ideally, you don't want to push your players into something that they're constantly stumbling through and failing so. In general, most skill checks are Hard difficulty.

On the plus side, there's a number of ways to decrease difficulties or outright avoid obstacles if players get creative and think carefully. If they look for help, they can find some very skilled NPCs to help them out as well, but it requires negotiating and letting them cut into the various possible profits. I'd say a group with more specialized characters that stick to those specializations, could probably do well while still having a solid challenge at around 200 earned experience; more generalized characters might need at least 350 earned experience depending on the group.

Here's a handful of various things throughout the adventure to get an idea of the difficulty in bigger parts; SPOILERS, obviously:

Racing - Rival Racers pilots all roll 3 yellow and 1 green, and each has a fairly powerful Piloting talent; 2 of the co-pilots/gunners roll 3 yellow and again, have fairly powerful talents for Gunnery.

Slicing - Not being careful and not planning ahead (or being successful at executing that plan) can force you to roll opposed computers checks against 2 reds and 3 purples.

Force user - Weaker than the Forsaken Jedi - but definitely something that can be a huge amount of trouble for PCs if they were clumsy in the jewel heist and went and got themselves beat up immediately beforehand, and then proceed to initiate this fight (can be avoided in a few ways).

Yeah, mostly what Agatheron said. The NPC's you go up against are really experienced, and I feel like my team has to really work well together (which they currently don't do) in order to pull it off. Aside from the NPC's, there are just a number of difficult checks to be made to gather information or accomplish other goals.

It's funny, each of my players will have something to do and specialize in, but I don't know that they're skilled enough in their respective professions to make it work. For example, we have a Pilot, but is he a good enough Pilot? Same for the Slicer and others. The scenario really makes it seem like it's for a team of professionals, and right now my group is still half the players trying to talk the other half out of carelessly killing random NPC's to rob them and take their ship.

Hiyas!

Does the module include scale down/up suggestions for less/more XP parties?

Thanks!

L

Nothing in-detail, just general stuff:

Decrease wound and defense, lower minion group sizes, and knock down NPC skills and characteristics.

If you didn't want to scale difficulty, players should be able to get by with hired NPCs if they have at least some experience. Otherwise just keep an eye on what difficulties you alter by reading ahead; it'd be weird if you knocked down one of the more challenging tasks to the equivalent of a not so hard check that you left alone.