Hey all. A couple of my players can't make my game tomorrow, so I'm running a one-shot adventure set a few years before the Battle of Naboo (Blockade of Naboo? Embargo? Guess it depends on the perspective). My players (three in all) are going to be a Jedi Knight, his Rodian Padawan, and a Corellian Noble. The Jedi are assigned by the Council to escort the Noble to another planet where he's going to give a speech to a group of dissident Corellians. My plan is that Palpatine has spurred the potential Corellian insurrection, in line with his whole plan to throw the Republic into disarray. It'll be like a test run for the Battle of Naboo.

In any event, when Palpatine realizes that there are Jedi messing with his plan, I'm having him send Darth Maul to take them out. It'll get a hoot out of my players, who haven't met any characters from the movies yet. So I've written up stats for Darth Maul when they ultimately confront him, but I'm curious what other people would do in my shoes.

How would you stat Darth Maul? No need to be gentle; this is a one-off game, and it doesn't matter if my PCs get slaughtered.

Going to treat the Lightsaber skill as Melee for the purposes of talents that only work with Melee attacks, where it makes sense (Feral Strength, for example, seems like it wouldn't apply, but Frenzied Attack should).

The real question, though, is how much XP do you want to spend on him? Presumably, he'd be less skilled at this stage than he was at the end of the Battle of Naboo, but not necessarily. Also, should he totally overpower your players, or be a challenge? How much XP will they have?

Zabrak

Brawn 3 (2 +1 Dedication)

Agility 5 (3+2 Dedication)

Intellect 2

Cunning 3

Willpower 2

Presence 2

Skills: Athletics 3, Coercion 2, Discipline 3, Perception 2, Resilience 4, Skullduggery 1, Stealth 3, Survival 3, Vigilance 1, Lightsaber 5 (5Y), Brawl 3

I'd probably have him pick up most of Maruader (Lethal Blows, Frenzied Attack, Knockdown, Toughened, Enduring, Defensive Stance, Dedication), and Assassin (Grit, Quick Strike, Dodge, Lethal Blows, Jump Up, Targeted Blow, Deadly Accuracy, Stalker), along with a bit of FSExile (for the defense rating and Force Rating), and if you don't mind using it, Jedi Initiate from the Ways of the Force supplement (pick up Deflect Blasters, Lightsaber Defense x2, Force Rating).

Force Powers: Sense (whole left side), Move (just 1 Range, 1 Strength and 1st Control to be able to attack), Enhance (everything down to Agility and Brawn on the left side).

That seems like it mimics what we see in Episode 1: an exceptional lightsaber combatant who is quick and agile, strong and wily enough to knock down his opponents, capable of performing a kip-up when he's down, hard to hit, mixes in some kicks, tosses a small object to break a control panel, Force Push, and is sneaky...but doesn't react well to surprising Jedi flips.

Keep in mind, he's going to be scary in combat, with a Defense of 3, a base Lightsaber skill of 5 yellow, and the ability to upgrade that at least 3 times to 6Y1G (maybe more), and the ability to upgrade the difficulty to hit him by up to 5 times (Sense x2, Dodge x2, Defensive Stance x1, though I might say the last could be left off) for up to 3 strain. He'd be committing 2 Force dice to Sense (offense and defense), and either rolling the 3rd with his skills, or committing it to Agility or Brawn. Soak 5 or 6.

Dual-bladed lightsaber: Linked 1, maybe Defensive 1, otherwise the standard lightsaber stats

What Adversary value do you suggest?

Not to be overly harsh, I think Adversary 4 would be appropriate. He is a major villain and a Sith lord. He's a cut above the Adversary 3 villains listed in the CRB.

Side note: the CRB explicitly says you don't design NPCs with XP and needing to progress down talent trees in the same manner as PCs (unlike many other systems).

You just give them what skills/talents they need to do their job, prereqs be damned. Personally I wouldn't give Darth Maul a Lightsaber 5 (which is the pinnacle of unaugmented skill). Obi-Wan defeated him before becoming a full Knight after all. I'd say 3-4 is sufficient, and still a very good dice pool.

As a side note, the foresaken jedi in the core book has lightsaber 5 (or 4)

As a side note, the foresaken jedi in the core book has lightsaber 5 (or 4)

That's fundamental to my issue with such a shallow curve (0-5) for skills. I get the point was to limit dice pool size from getting huge and absurd (thus skewing the success curve) but with a small range it's hard to say what each rank really "means" if 0 is "untrained but can still attempt to use," 1 is "basic formal training," and 5 is "among the best ever" (a level of skill that few characters should ever get to, PC or not).

Yep, thats one of the "minor" problems on Edge, that "Scale of Power" doesn't seem to have so many differences if you just compare Skill Ranks.

Talents is the way to "solve" that problem because someone with 3 Ranks and a few Talents can be more powerful than a 5 Ranked one.

I'd go with lightsaber 4 at most and am thinking maybe 3. 5 Yellow dice seems excessive.

To compliment that, give him a very high adversary rating. 4 seems good.

But without knowing the stats of your PCs its hard to tell what he'll do to them. Anything that isn't equal to his stats will likely get pasted. But then again, that does fit the continuity. Can't have Jedi seeing Maul and living to tell the tale.

Side note: the CRB explicitly says you don't design NPCs with XP and needing to progress down talent trees in the same manner as PCs (unlike many other systems).

You just give them what skills/talents they need to do their job, prereqs be damned. Personally I wouldn't give Darth Maul a Lightsaber 5 (which is the pinnacle of unaugmented skill). Obi-Wan defeated him before becoming a full Knight after all. I'd say 3-4 is sufficient, and still a very good dice pool.

Ah. I hadn't read the NPC-making guidelines, since I haven't GMed this system. Yeah, that would change some things, although I did only list the talents that I felt made sense for him, so you could just give him those and skip everything in between, and replace Sense, Dodge, and Defensive Stance with Adversary 4.

Um...Obi-Wan did not defeat Darth Maul with his lightsaber skill. He did put up quite a fight, but Maul got the better of him (remember him being disarmed and hanging precariously down a hole?). Obi-Wan succeeded in surprising Maul who had gotten cocky I guess. The fact is that Darth Maul managed to hold his own (a little better than that, even) against a Jedi Master and his Padawan who was nearly a Knight and, from what I've seen of Ben, one of the top Jedi swordsmen of the time. He also manages to kill a Jedi Master and then all but defeats the Padawan. 5 ranks may be excessive, but 3 seems too low. Keep in mind that he is also using a very dangerous weapon--I'd imagine that most people who attempt to learn how to wield a double-ended lightsaber end up severely injuring or maiming themselves in the process--and he does so with panache.

Good points. Though I will point out that I'm not sure you can claim Obi-Wan in TPM is on the same level of lightsaber-fighting as he would be in AotC/RotS, almost 20 years later. He was certainly one of the best lightsaber fighters by the end of the PT, but in its first episode, I wouldn't think so since he wasn't even a Knight yet.

And for Maul, sure he was good, but would you put him on par with Dooku? Yoda? Older-Obi-Wan? Again, the problem with ranked skills going only to 5: you lose a lot of the narrative nuance between, say, 6 and 8 on a 12 point scale, even if the mechanical difference is pretty small.

I'd probably give Maul a combination of committed Sense/Enhance AND Adversary tbh.

Good points. Though I will point out that I'm not sure you can claim Obi-Wan in TPM is on the same level of lightsaber-fighting as he would be in AotC/RotS, almost 20 years later. He was certainly one of the best lightsaber fighters by the end of the PT, but in its first episode, I wouldn't think so since he wasn't even a Knight yet.

And for Maul, sure he was good, but would you put him on par with Dooku? Yoda? Older-Obi-Wan? Again, the problem with ranked skills going only to 5: you lose a lot of the narrative nuance between, say, 6 and 8 on a 12 point scale, even if the mechanical difference is pretty small.

I'd probably give Maul a combination of committed Sense/Enhance AND Adversary tbh.

Good point. Hmm...I'd say maybe he should have 4 ranks (the others mentioned would have 5), but perhaps he doesn't have the Sense power's offense control upgrade, nor its strength upgrade, so he'd only get to upgrade the difficulty to hit him by 1 twice per round. Yoda, Dooku, older Obi-Wan, and Anakin would probably have 5 ranks and the full Sense suite. That would further separate them: Maul would have 4Y1G, while the others would have (assuming the same Agility or Brawn, which may not be the case), 5Y, which could be upgraded to 6Y with Sense. That seems a significant differentiation of skill, no?