First time doing EotE, and I'm trying to make a new race spec for one of my players. He wants to be a force sensitive addicted to death sticks, and I figured Balosar would be perfect for him. Here's what I created so far, wondering if everyone thinks this is balanced:

Characteristics: -1 Brawn, +1 Cunning

Wound Threshold: 9+Brawn

Strain Threshold: 11+Will

Abilities: 1 starting rank in perception (still cannot train over 2)

Immune to most toxins/poisons

Starting XP: 90

The cunning and perception are thematically tied to their head antennae's ability to sense things, and their immunity to poisons is established canon. Do the wound/strain and starting XP seem alright considering these bonuses? I can't tell how strong/weak the immunity to toxins is, I feel I could justify starting him with 90 or 95 XP.

Thanks for any feedback!

Seems fine to me, nothing unbalancing at all. In fact I'm not sure toxin immunity is really worth 10 xp, might be ok to kick their starting xp up to 100.

Rather than immunity, I'd go with a free rank of Blooded and have 100 XP.

IMO if it's your first time playing it, why not stick to the dozen or so races that exist already?

Rise it to 100 Xp

Thanks for the feedback everyone, I'll raise the XP to 100. HappyDaze, what is blooded? Is this an Age of Rebellion thing? I only have the books for EotE right now, I haven't looked at AoR at all.

progressions, I've always been of the mind that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing right. I'd like my players to be as unrestricted as possible within reason, and him wanting to play a drug addict who uses death sticks to suppress his feelings of the Force (which he is scared of) fits perfectly with the Balosar and sounds like a really interesting character. It's not too hard to figure out how they balanced the species, so I took a crack at it.

Blooded is a Talent. I think it is in EoE as well in the Survivalist tree.

Just checked, it is in EoE listed in the Talents.

Blooded is a Talent. I think it is in EoE as well in the Survivalist tree.

Just checked, it is in EoE listed in the Talents.

Ah, I see it now. There seems to be some ambiguity about whether they are immune or just resistant to poisons, but in any case it looks like they are at least quite resistant. Just giving a boost die for anything seems not quite right. Since the balosar are naturally weaker brawn-wise, his resilience is bound to not be high and I don't want that to turn into him also not being too terribly strong against poisons. For instance, it would seem a bit out of place for him to have to roll and possibly succumb to a mildly poisonous and common knockout gas or a simple paralytic poison.

Perhaps something like this: Immune to all poisons/toxins requiring less than a daunting(<><><><>) resilience check. Such checks have difficulty reduced by one and receive a boost die.

I'm on the fence as to whether this would even come up enough for that fiddly of a rule to be worth it. I'm between that and straight out immunity. Thoughts?

There has to be a certain amount of mechanics applied to fictional absolute words like "immune" in RPGs. I personally don't see a blanket immunity to toxins as particularly game breaking. If you wanted to stick with immunity that would be fine I would think, droids are, so it's no big deal.

That was my point of comparison for the immunity initially, and since there is no droid in the party it isn't like lots of party members will be able to just romp around on a poisonous planet or anything. I think I'll stick with pure immunity, but may keep that in my back pocket in case the story ever brings us to a point where he's hit with something truly ridiculous.