Curious if anyone has began a group in a more advanced point in their life, and if so, what CharGen modifications did you implement? In other words, created characters with more XPs, credits, equipment, and/or skills and talents.

My thought process here is based on a spectrum. Using Episode IV, Luke Skywalker is at one end of the spectrum. He's late teens, maybe twenty, and little more than a dirt farmer. His life has given him some great skills - technician (tinkers/fixes droids and farm equipment), pilot/driver, and some other decent but mundane skills - but he is a serious "First Level" PC.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are characters like Darth Vader, Yoda, Boba Fett, and Emperor Palpatine. In other words, veterans of a thousand wars.

Finally, folks like Han Solo, Chewbaca, and Princess Leia fall somewhere in the middle. By no means "First Level" characters, but also not Jedi Masters or rulers of the galaxy or other "superhero" level people.

It is this latter category I'd like to start a campaign with. Build more backstory into the characters, "advance" them as part of CharGen, and generally skip the whole "my two hit point first level wizard can't even fend off three kobolds" yawnfest.

But how? And how much? It is kind of hard to consider what's too much in a system without levels. So I'm hoping some of you veteran players who have advanced PCs nearly to exhaustion can give some ideas of at what point you felt your characters were out of the kiddie pool, but still not ready to take the plunge in the shark cage amongst floating chum.

[bTW, back in the day, we always started new D&D campaigns with third level characters]

I've started a game with +300XP. I only allowed Skills up to rank 3 and Talents that cost 15XP or less to be purchased. I gave 3000 credits to start as well.

I haven't started with advanced PCs but I do give out XP like candy.

We're about to finish up this current adventure and I was thinking about there being a time jump of about a year, before the next campaign. We'd then spend a little time, before the first session, to talk about where the characters have been and awarding some XP, gear and money. I may skip XP and give ranks in skills depending on the PC's story.

Yep. Without considering conversion (with more than 2.000 XP XD) I used to intoduce charaters with 150, 180 or above 300 XP just to fit our game story prequisites.

In general therms I use to give credits and equipment based on, again, story needs. If one of my players is an advanced herbalist (Colonist - Doctor or else) I give to him/her a few more personal tools or even some specialized workstation for the group's ship. Sometimes they start with "Rank" or prestige in their organizations (Rebelion, local governoment, corporation).

So, I think that there isn't a reason to limitate those numbers, the main goal is adapt them to your party game idea and "power level", but in general therms, up 600, 700, 800 XP could be a nice "cap".

Take care!

I gave out 30xp to start last time because one guy pleaded............I pitied them. Didn't seem like a big deal. I could certainly see handing out xp to match a story idea. Sometimes you just have inspiration for a great setting campaign and just need the players to be better.

For gear I honestly just don't' sweat gear and they have access early on to pretty much what they like minus everyone having a complimentary Lightsaber. I design my own weapons to give them and I enforce reality in regards to weapons, such as you wouldn't stroll into the corner pub with a support machine gun. I restrict the weapons with story as opposed to just arbitrarily denying them stuff. The squad rule makes it easy to keep my bosses on their feet while still letting players rock and roll with big guns.

Yes, in fact, I've done this with both the groups. Starting characters are weak, unfortunately, and the players just didn't want to be Jar-Jar or Greedo. They wanted to get straight in to the 'epic'. The EoE group are experienced smugglers, and the AoR group are all Special Forces veterans.

To balance this out, there' s NO multi-classing allowed for any reason, ever. You'll be good at what you do, but only at what you do. So no cheesy Doctor/Maurauder shenanigans. No Force use unless you begin with it.

I deliberately wanted the PCs to be the stars of their universe, so moved most of the movie characters into mentor roles (Han Solo is retired, running a bar and raising kids, Lucas Lars is still extremely powerful but he's very subtle and likes to work behind the scenes) or killing off the villains so the players can have their own rogue's gallery.

So starting them off as the equivalent of Han Solo or Wedge Antilles has worked fine. I've put in a few balancing factors; there's no armour allowed and Restricted weapons are heavily restricted (can't carry them in public). So the characters are awesome because of who they are, not because of their gear. Other restrictions are in force because of the fluff (the Alliance hate the Jedi and would never use lightsabers).

It doesn't give you the fun element of building up a character from nothing, but it does allow you to emulate action movies right from the start. My players are also careful not to min-max, and went for a wide spread of skills rather than maxing out a few. Skills levels of 5 are still very rare for us.

My advice to those wanting a more epic feel - give it a go, but be very sure you trust your players to play in the spirit of the action movie genre.

I've done quite a few adventures with varying degrees of "experienced" PCs.

For most one-shots, I tend to give them 25 adventure XP, as it really helps "flesh out" a PC a bit more in terms of skills and/or talents. I've considered boosting it up to 50 XP, but haven't taken that particular plunge just yet.

I've also done a series of one-shot "stress tests" of various bits of the system (Force users, starfighter crews, social encounters), and tend to give the PCs 350 to 500 adventure XP. And let me tell you, a PC with even that 350 extra XP goes a long way towards making a PC that is either broadly capable or really freaking good in their area of expertise. A combat-centric PC is going to steam roll the majority of the general adversaries provided in the core rulebook, especially if they've got gear to match.

Interestingly, for their GenCon sessions, FFG allows players to bring a pre-gen character of their own, providing said character an additional 100 XP and 1500 credits' worth of gear, but no increased Obligation (EotE) or decreased Duty (AoR). So that's something to consider.

Edit: Checked the GenCon entries for FFG's various sessions, and the guidelines were to add 1500 credits, not 1000.

Or take a leaf out of the new D&D game. You start at first level, but you fly through the early levels VERY quickly. You start out quite weak, but you swiftly gain your 'core powers' and 'signature abilities' that make you what you are.

So maybe run the first adventure or two in flashback, so PCs can get the feel of what it's like to be starting characters. Make these adventures really iconic to them, heavily involving their back-stories. Then give out significant XP during these sessions, 5 or 10 times what you usually would, along with their cool toys. By the end, they have heroic characters with decent gear and a few hundred XP, and continue the campaign normally from that point. They'll still have plenty of room to grow, but can feel suitably epic more or less from the start.

All great advice. Much appreciated.

Interestingly, for their GenCon sessions, FFG allows players to bring a pre-gen character of their own, providing said character an additional 100 XP and 1000 credits' worth of gear, but no increased Obligation (EotE) or decreased Duty (AoR). So that's something to consider.

Interestingly, this was basically my initial gut hunch. In fact, my thought was +100 xp, +1,000 credits, and one 'free' "heirloom" possession that had to fit the character and/or his backstory. I would also put some limit(s) on the heirloom item like nothing of Rarity 7 (or maybe 8) or higher, cap of 7-8k credits. But most importantly, they have to come up with a story that truly justifies it and 'win' my approval to get it.

Thanks for the responses. Keep them coming so I have lots to digest.

And Maelora, your last post just hit while I was typing this. Excellent suggestion!

For my Republic Commando game I'll be giving all the players +200 XP to represent ten years of training, but that'll also be separate from the starting XP.

I'll probably ape HappyDaze's limits, too.

Or take a leaf out of the new D&D game. You start at first level, but you fly through the early levels VERY quickly. You start out quite weak, but you swiftly gain your 'core powers' and 'signature abilities' that make you what you are.

So maybe run the first adventure or two in flashback, so PCs can get the feel of what it's like to be starting characters. Make these adventures really iconic to them, heavily involving their back-stories. Then give out significant XP during these sessions, 5 or 10 times what you usually would, along with their cool toys. By the end, they have heroic characters with decent gear and a few hundred XP, and continue the campaign normally from that point. They'll still have plenty of room to grow, but can feel suitably epic more or less from the start.

Yes. New D&D. Good.

Or take a leaf out of the new D&D game. You start at first level, but you fly through the early levels VERY quickly. You start out quite weak, but you swiftly gain your 'core powers' and 'signature abilities' that make you what you are.

So maybe run the first adventure or two in flashback, so PCs can get the feel of what it's like to be starting characters. Make these adventures really iconic to them, heavily involving their back-stories. Then give out significant XP during these sessions, 5 or 10 times what you usually would, along with their cool toys. By the end, they have heroic characters with decent gear and a few hundred XP, and continue the campaign normally from that point. They'll still have plenty of room to grow, but can feel suitably epic more or less from the start.

Yeah, the new D&D is interesting in that the system ramps PCs up through the lower levels (1 thru 3) pretty quickly, but then slows down quite a bit for 4th and 5th levels, as if to say "okay, you're ready to take off the training wheels, so take some time and enjoy what you've earned." Prior editions had the problem of not really letting players hang out in the "sweet spots" for very long, which on the surface they seem to have addressed, but time will tell if it works or if the varying XP progression creates its own set of problems.

That being said, the notion of applying an accelerated XP progression to a bunch of new characters does have merit, and even could be said to have a basis in the movies in the form of Luke Skywalker. After all, he was pretty much akin to a "new PC" hanging out with experienced characters such as Han, Chewie, and Obi-Wan, so the GM likely awarded Luke extra XP to help him "catch up" which itself would warrant how he went from a pretty good bush pilot with no clue about the Force to ace starfighter pilot and emerging Jedi over the course of A New Hope.

That was my thinking Donovan. Make their first adventure very personal and iconic, like the first movie. This is where they all meet up and decide to hang out, after all. And give accelerated XP so they can reach a desired level of competence for the rest of the campaign.

I did this with modified versions of the adventures in the Beginner boxes and it worked out well.

(Interestingly, 4E D&D started characters out much tougher, even at first level, while 5th edition, or whatever we're calling it, has weak starting PCs but very quick advancement though the early levels.)

Interestingly, 4E D&D started characters out much tougher, even at first level, while 5th edition, or whatever we're calling it, has weak starting PCs but very quick advancement though the early levels.

That's almost interesting enough to make me try D&D again.

But I could see that philosophy making sense for EotE. I've been known to give boosts in XP for finishing out an arc, so maybe I'd give my PCs a bigger than normal pot at the end of "Episode I" and then normalize it from there.