While characteristics can be important, they are not the be all and end all. The fact that after character creation is done and you are playing you can purchase skills up to their max more than makes up for this since your dice pool is always created using the larger of either your attribute or skill level. What is optimal will vary from player to player. Some people want a 4 in their most important attribute, others want couple of 3s, some don't care at all and dive right into talents. At the end of the day all that tells me is that you won't learn squat looking at some numbers. This is not a numbers game.

And it is no more "house-ruling" to allow for more XP or credits at character creation than it would be in any other game, like D&D, where you wanted to start with characters of higher level. F&D beta actually has a suggestion for "knight level" play where the characters start with an additional 150 XP and credits. Starting out with more XP has always been an option if you so choose.

And how heroic your players' characters are comes down to the role-play, not the numbers. Players can see themselves as the big **** heroes no matter what part of the scale they are on.

And it is no more "house-ruling" to allow for more XP or credits at character creation than it would be in any other game, like D&D, where you wanted to start with characters of higher level. F&D beta actually has a suggestion for "knight level" play where the characters start with an additional 150 XP and credits. Starting out with more XP has always been an option if you so choose.

And how heroic your players' characters are comes down to the role-play, not the numbers. Players can see themselves as the big **** heroes no matter what part of the scale they are on.

@mouthymerc: As to your first point, there's a pretty enormous difference in that D&D has published rules for that kind of thing, whereas EotE just doesn't, notwithstanding the F&D beta (which I don't own, had no knowledge of until I read your post, and shouldn't be necessary to play an EotE game anyway). So while starting out with more XP may always have been an option, it's certainly not a supported option. Hence, "house-ruling." If you're comfortable with that, power to you, but I'm really not.

As to your second point, I completely disagree. I've been playing tabletop RPGs for north of thirty years, and I have yet to meet a player capable of remaining convinced he was playing a big **** hero in the face of immersion-busting game mechanics. Dice eventually get thrown, and if the results fail to support the narrative then players call BS ("I thought I was playing a skilled pilot; why am I having such a hard time with a middling-difficulty piloting test?"), and the narrative breaks down, pretty fast.

People have been telling you over and over again that this system is pretty different in play then it is when you are reading it. However you seem to not want to let go of the (mis)conceptions you have had about how it is in play no matter what...

Also, is "here is 100xp more" houseruling??? It sure doesn't look like it to me and I cannot fathom you really being uncomfortable with it, especially not of you have been "playing tabletop RPGs for north of thirty years"...

@mouthymerc: As to your first point, there's a pretty enormous difference in that D&D has published rules for that kind of thing, whereas EotE just doesn't, notwithstanding the F&D beta (which I don't own, had no knowledge of until I read your post, and shouldn't be necessary to play an EotE game anyway). So while starting out with more XP may always have been an option, it's certainly not a supported option. Hence, "house-ruling." If you're comfortable with that, power to you, but I'm really not.

As to your second point, I completely disagree. I've been playing tabletop RPGs for north of thirty years, and I have yet to meet a player capable of remaining convinced he was playing a big **** hero in the face of immersion-busting game mechanics. Dice eventually get thrown, and if the results fail to support the narrative then players call BS ("I thought I was playing a skilled pilot; why am I having such a hard time with a middling-difficulty piloting test?"), and the narrative breaks down, pretty fast.

Apparently with all that vaunted experience you still need your hand held then? Is this where I say I've been playing role-playing games for over 35 years just push my credentials? Starting with more XP or creation points or whatever the system uses has always been an option for any game, whether implied or not. You sound more like you're creating issues so you don't have to play.

And please feel free to disagree. You haven't actually played yet so you have no idea how playing the game feels. You've done nothing but look at some numbers. This game is about more than the simple pass/fail you are, in all likelihood, used to with systems like d20 and such. You keep telling people to shut up about playing, but you having not even played really have no clue because you have not played. I'd suggest trying to get into a game at a con or flgs if you can. Otherwise you sound like so many armchair game designers that have no actual practical experience.

Ok everyone take a deep breath and.........release. This thread is becoming very antagonistic and while I disagree with the OP's opinion there is no reason we can't discuss this in a reasonable fashion.

I have both run and played Edge of the Empire and have run and played every version of Star Wars I know of with the exception of the WEG second edition. Of all the systems I have run and played in I find this system to be one of the better ones.

One thing I have found is that the more experienced gamer's tend to have more problems wrapping their head around this system than newer gamer's. I have run this at con's since the Beta and after the first ten minutes or so most players are rolling the dice like they have been using the system for years.

As to the power level, even the earlier systems did not allow beginning characters to be more powerful than starting characters. Characteristics are nice to have higher than 2 but having average stats will not hurt a character. My Slicer character, generated using the Beta rules, was quite competent and managed to not only succeed in his slicing more often than not but also managed to help out in combat alongside the combat characters. I wasn't doing as much damage to begin with because I started with a holdout blaster but that was my decision.

You have to remember that an average difficulty is two purple, this covers; melee combat, ranged combat at medium range, picking a typical lock etc. So assuming a combat character who has two agility and two Ranged (Light) skill, who aims with his maneuver and takes two strain to aim a second time shooting at someone in cover at medium range, the character will be rolling two yellow and two blue boost dice alongside two purple and one black.I just built the dice pool and got the following results: one success, and two advantage which allows me to hit the enemy doing seven damage if using a standard blaster pistol as well as being able to recover both the strain I spent getting the additional aim maneuver or give another character (myself included) another boost dice in their next action.

As you can see in this example my character has just successfully killed a Mynock in one shot, almost killed a Battle Droid in one shot (one wound left), I could have even done five damage to a Swoop Ganger (Rival) leaving them with seven wounds. And a character can get 10-20 xp every session, assuming 15xp they can increase a career skill from two to three or buy three of the talents from the top line of their specialisation. And that is after one session.

A starting mercenary could spend one hundred xp at character generation and have +1 attribute from dedication and have five other talents. This would give them +1 strain threshold, the ability to heal strain once per encounter, a bonus versus fear checks, a leadership boost, and the ability to do true aim once per round which gives you a boost dice as if aiming as well as upgrading your combat check.

There are so many different ways to have a good character with this game, and that is not including mouthymerc's quite sensible suggestion of giving higher starting xp which is something GM's have been doing with games for years, even before Dnd mentioned starting at highers levels. It is an established and accepted option when starting a game, if you don't feel comfortable with that then that is between you and your group, but as shown above I don't believe that even starting characters at a basic power level stops them from being perfectly good characters.

Remember, using A New Hope as example, the first Pc combat was versus a single Tusken Raider (which Luke lost), followed by Han shooting Greedo (an Apprentice Bounty Hunter at best) at point black range from surprise. The characters grew and were able to do more and more impressive things by the third film. But they did start as fairly weak individuals.

E

I think people got antagonistic because the OP is constantly repeating the same remarks while sidestepping, ignoring or downright tossing tips and/or advice out of the window for no apparent reason, is calling genuine advise "special pleading" and is stating that he is a veteran of 30 years plus but is uncomfortable to give a bit more experience or credits to his players in order to get the game to the level he invisions it (even though he hasn't even played the game yet).

It is tiresome and frustrating to try to be helpful and be met with contempt from someone who has zero experience at the game and I sincerely doubt the OP's intent.

I can completely understand your frustration but unfortunately it doesn't help. The best thing I can say is if he is unwilling to allow people to try to explain how the system shines then let it be. Lets face it, if the OP decides not to play the game, it won't cause you any sleepless nights will it lol.

E

You are right. I guess I'm easily antogonised....

I don't do this to be antagonistic, even if it comes across as such. I don't want other newbies to the game reading such things and thinking that the game is faulty, especially when it comes from someone with zero or negligible experience with the actual game. The game has its faults, depending on who you talk to, as nothing is perfect. But treating this game as a numbers game does it a great diservice. Ignoring or brushing aside advice like you know better is also rather foolish to me when people are just trying to be helpful.

All RPGs differ in how powerful starting PCs can be. Even games like D&D differ greatly between editions. Early editions had PCs that were very weak, and like sea turtles, they died in their dozens, until one finally made it. 4E PCs started out mighty, ended up mighty, and never really hunted rats in the sewers or wielded mind-bending power. The new edition starts PCs very weak, but they level up quickly, minimizing the 'hundreds of sea turtles trying to make it to the ocean' stage that Gary Gygax intended.

For whatever reason, EoE characters begin as really weak. It will take you a bit of time to attain Greedo or Jar-Jar levels of competency. I'm guessing this was done for balance reasons, which I understand.

But for casual fans at least, Star Wars is BIG, and EPIC, and it feels initially odd that the game is asking you to 'think small'.

My players flat-out didn't want to play new recruits or rookie smugglers. They wanted to be the Hans and Lukes, so I rewrote the entire game world and gave them out more XP, while placing permanent restrictions on how they could develop (no multiclassing and no Force-use unless you begin with it).

I think it's okay, because those who want to play starting characters can do so, and those who want to play Alliance veterans or 'Prime Runners' can do so with the GMs permission. It's always easier to balance upwards than try to balance downwards.

Arguably, depending on how often you play, you can get pretty powerful very quickly. Some of the Force powers outstrip what is seen in the movies (want to play dominoes with ATAT walkers? Or fling around Millennium Falcon sized ships?). The combat powers are very easy to min-max and you can build a combat monster easily when you know what to go for. So arguably, it's possible to achieve movie-hero levels of power eventually, maybe even a year or so in. I would say roughly , going from Lando's stats (the only movie hero to have them) that the movie heroes are meant to be like PCs after three careers have been completed.

However, 'power' isn't everything, and the game plays fine just as it is. It's one of my favourite games ever, the narrative dice are pretty much perfect for me. But hey, this is 'Star Wars', and I understand the players will want to be the Big **** Heroes rather than play it downbeat and gritty.

I would like to know, how is Han an advanced character in the minds of people here? He seems a mid-level scoundrel at best in A New Hope...

There are also live-play examples on YouTube and in podcasts that can be listened to, to experience what it's like when someone else plays the game.

It's just fun. Characters don't start out super-powerful, but you get XP and over time you improve. It stays fun.

@progressions: No, not yet. I'm still in the process of digesting the rules.

As an experiment, I sat down and created a human Bounty Hunter/Gadgeteer character. Here's what I came up with:

Br 3, Ag 3, Int 2, Cu 3, Wi 2, Pre 2

Skills: Brawl 1, Mechanics 1, Negotiation 1, Perception 1, Piloting (Space) 1, Ranged (Light) 2, Ranged (Heavy) 1, Stealth 1, Streetwise 1, Vigilance 1

Obligation: +5 (for 1000 extra credits)

Gear: Armored Clothing, Blaster Pistol, Comlink, Binders, Utility Belt, Extra Reloads

That character feels pretty sorry to me. About the only thing he's truly competent at is shooting his blaster pistol; everything else he's just meh at, and he had to increase his Obligation -- and give the GM greater license to screw with him -- just to buy some middling armor. Whether he'd be able to take the "Journeyman Hunter" Rival (EotE, p. 400) in a straight fight is debatable: he has a few more skills and unlike the Rival can take strain, but the Rival has significantly better equipment.

Am I missing something?

I think you're getting hung up on names, honestly. A "Journeyman Hunter" (or most Rivals) are going to be a good way into their career. Pit your guy against an Apprentice Hunter (Minion, 3's in Agility and Cunning and no actual skills), which is what a starting character really is. You will destroy them without breaking a sweat.

A Rival is designed to be able to stand up against the party a little longer than Minions, although a single Rival will generally die in the first round if you pit them against even a starting party solo. They are NOT meant to be examples of what a starting character should look like. There's nothing even saying that GM's should follow the character creation rules when creating adversaries. The Minion/Rival/Nemesis title is just a tag that indicates which ruleset for adversaries this particular one follows.

If anything, I'm concerned that characters start out reasonably powerful (I'm running a solo campaign where a bounty hunter much like yours was ambushed by four stormtroopers and still took them out), and ramp up quickly. Even at base, a standard Human will roll 2 greens on any test, even if they haven't advanced that stat or taken a skill. That's sufficient to pass everyday tasks, and gives you a decent chance at even more difficult tests.

Hi all.

I actually just created an account so I could reply here. I'm a longtime player/GM and have experience with D&D, GURPS, Pathfinder, and (an oldie but a goodie) Twilight 2000. I've never played or run a SW game before, but I'm in the process of setting one up to begin soon.

Reading the core book the rules are certainly different from anything I've played before. I've got a min/max player that I know will hate the game and a few roleplayers that will love it.

What I wanted to comment on is the OP's assertion that additional Obligation is nothing more than a license for the GM to "mess with" the characters. In my also 30+ years of gaming, many, many of my most memorable encounters came when the GM broke from the story a bit to play off a PC's backstory. These are the stories we recall when we get together, share cold adult drinks and reminisce about the good old days. Obligation is nothing more than a way to give GMs an option to bring these kinds of items into play. An encounter with a jilted lover, a visit from a little brother, or a call for help from a mentor can all go a long way towards making the game world feel very real.

I've never considered the relationship between the PCs and GM to be adversarial. Players and GM alike are working together to have fun and enjoy an exciting participatory story. This Fantasy Flight system is designed just for that. It changes everything we think we know about how RPGs work and places the story front and center. It's a system where you can have successes AND failures in the SAME CHALLENGE! How cool is that?!

Just my $.02.

Here's an alternative for the PC. Rather than just "starting the characters out with more XP", sit down and build the characters with the players. Look at the movies and see how characters advance. For instance, Han Solo hardly levels during the original trilogy. Rather, his arc is more about personal development and change. Leia gains a little more XP, but still has a pretty huge personal development story arc. Of the big three, only Luke sees significant skill development, going from moisture farm boy to Jedi Knight.

Maybe one player wants to make someone who starts with low on the totem poll and climbs to some high point - like Luke. Let him! Start him out with a normal character and let him advance normally.

Maybe one of your players wants to make a Han Solo-type character. Let him make a Han Solo-type character! Don't just start him out with extra XP, but actually award the character XP based on the player's history for the character. Then... let XP dribble in for him. At the end of a session, when other characters get 10XP, he gets 2XP (since he's already got a huge advance on his XP right at character creation). When others earn 5XP for playing to their motivations, he earns 1XP. The point of the character isn't to advance, but to develop personally. He's probably going to have more ebb and flow in his Obligation rather than his XP. Then, once other characters - like the one listed above - catch up with him in total XP, either slow everyone down to a crawl or speed this guy up so he's moving forward at the same pace as others.

Remember, we're not talking about house-ruling this guy an extra 100XP. We're talking about the character having a backstory and awarding extra XP based on his history, as if the character had already earned it.

@mouthymerc: As to your first point, there's a pretty enormous difference in that D&D has published rules for that kind of thing, whereas EotE just doesn't, notwithstanding the F&D beta (which I don't own, had no knowledge of until I read your post, and shouldn't be necessary to play an EotE game anyway). So while starting out with more XP may always have been an option, it's certainly not a supported option. Hence, "house-ruling." If you're comfortable with that, power to you, but I'm really not.

I too have an aversion to house ruling, but the above I'm just not seeing. Firstly you don't "need" F&D to tell you it's okay to start at 150XP. Mouthymerc was just citing that as an example. I also don't see the difference at all between saying your PCs start at Level 7 and in EotE saying your PCs start at 200XP. It's all just the same principle of free XP to start off playing at the level you want.

Everyone has been trying to help and I'm not sure I can add anything to what they say but I'm going to take a stab at it because when I picked up the book for the first time I also didn't quite get what the numbers meant. I'd come from Shadowrun. I looked at a character with 2's across the board and thought that was a weak character. It's only when I started getting into the system I got a feel for how it worked. I look at that Bounty Hunter you posted earlier which you called a barely competent thug and I see someone who is both stronger and faster than the average human being and more cunning too. I see that they have some hand to hand training, are a fair shot and even have a bit of mechanical aptitude. That's how they would seem "in universe" to the typical person.

EotE chronogically and thematically takes place in Ep IV. Luke is a naïve but decent pilot. Han doesn't go and fight lots of Storm Troopers (nor does Chewie who is huge, btw). Instead he shelters behind bulkheads firing hopefully and not infrequently runs for his life. Destiny Points also help you pull off some of the more optimistic stunts. It fits pretty well with the OT. As to benchmarking against minions, rivals and nemeses in the book, minions should be your baseline for comparing against mooks. Rivals are more serious and Nemeses definitely so.

But all this is really just a tangent. You DON'T need the book to tell you it's okay to throw in an extra 100XP at Chargen if you want to begin at a higher level. Tweaking actual rules I can understand a reluctance. But that I just don't get.

Well after reading all of these responses I have the following comments for the OP and anyone who is casually interested.

1.) It seems that the OP is reading obligation as tool the GM will use to "screw players." To this I would say that if you feel you have a GM who is out to screw players then it is probably time to find a new GM. I would also say that the GM has far more powerful tools at his disposal to screw players than the obligation penalty of -2 starting strain during an adventure. The GM could drop a Rancor in the middle of any given activity for instance, or have a Star Destroy just jump into system and start dropping a full detachment of AT-ATs on the players location. Obligation is meant to be a narrative tool that fleshes out the PCs background at the start. I've found it to be an effective way to say "You all owe this crime boss a favor, so that is why you are being lumped together on this mission." That is how I interpret it as working. If the OP or the OPs GM are having trouble making it work then perhaps they would be better served with a different RGP.

2.) The starting credits are a bit stingey, but with the 500 plus the extra 2,500 for additional obligation most PCs will have more than enough to buy the basic equipment they need to start their quest. You're not going to start with the best guns, but you can have a gun. You won't have the best armor, but you can at least afford heavy clothing for +1 soak. When Luke Skywalker started he had a lightsaber, the clothes on his back, and an "obligation" to pay Han Solo the balance of his debt for transport off of Alderaan.

3.) It seems the OP is concerned that starting PCs won't be able to kill mid level thugs right out of the gate and that this will make the experience boring for the PCs. To this I would say that this RPG, like most RPGs, is designed to have players have to work their way up. Starting PCs shouldn't be able to slap the Emperor around. If that is the expectation of the group, that is fine. But the group should accept that they will need to start the characters with additional XP, sort of an "in media res" type situation. In this case you'd imagine you've skipped what I used to call "butt quests" back in my teen years, the short simple quests you might do for XP. Like what my friend used to do on the Wizards of the Coast d20 version when we wanted to jump straight to being Jedi Knights. This really is a fairly common house rule groups do all of the time whether RPGs have it written in the rules or not. I wouldn't classify it as a failure on FFGs part that they don't come right out and say "you can start with an additional 150 XP and pretend your character already has several years of experience under their belt." I've seen RPGs that do come out and say this, and some that do not.

At the end of the day it sounds like the FFG system is probably not for the OP, and that is fine. It's sort of like computer operating systems. Windows Vista wasn't for everyone so some people stayed with XP. If the OP would prefer to use a different RPG system that's cool. Whatever system they use I wish them countless hours of enjoyable RPGing and fun!

(Though I do encourage you to give the starter set quick adventure a try, I do think the system works better than the WEG and WotC versions)

Hi all.

I actually just created an account so I could reply here. I'm a longtime player/GM and have experience with D&D, GURPS, Pathfinder, and (an oldie but a goodie) Twilight 2000. I've never played or run a SW game before, but I'm in the process of setting one up to begin soon.

Reading the core book the rules are certainly different from anything I've played before. I've got a min/max player that I know will hate the game and a few roleplayers that will love it.

What I wanted to comment on is the OP's assertion that additional Obligation is nothing more than a license for the GM to "mess with" the characters. In my also 30+ years of gaming, many, many of my most memorable encounters came when the GM broke from the story a bit to play off a PC's backstory. These are the stories we recall when we get together, share cold adult drinks and reminisce about the good old days. Obligation is nothing more than a way to give GMs an option to bring these kinds of items into play. An encounter with a jilted lover, a visit from a little brother, or a call for help from a mentor can all go a long way towards making the game world feel very real.

I've never considered the relationship between the PCs and GM to be adversarial. Players and GM alike are working together to have fun and enjoy an exciting participatory story. This Fantasy Flight system is designed just for that. It changes everything we think we know about how RPGs work and places the story front and center. It's a system where you can have successes AND failures in the SAME CHALLENGE! How cool is that?!

Just my $.02.

Thank you!

They raise their skills. is how.

When you build a dice pool you start with whichever is highest. Skill or stat. and select that many green dice. Then you look at the lower number. And you switch that many green dice to yellow. then you add a number of purple dice based on the difficulty set by the GM.

So a starting character may have a 2 in intelligence. But over time he raises a knowledge skill from 0 meaning they role 2 green dice to rolling 1 green 1 yellow the 2 yellow. then 2 yellow 1 green and so on.


How to modify the nemesis character is in the GM Screen for Edge.

I really can't recommend the Order 66 podcast enough. It covers a lot of your questions far better than I can.

@mlbrogueone: Following your points:

(1) Actually, no, that's not a concern of mine, and if you've understood me to be worried that Obligation is just a tool for GMs to be capricious jerks, I apologize for not having made myself clearer (and for using loaded words and phrases that contributed to the misunderstanding). As I said to CrazyDaddy above, I really like the idea of Obligation, and I completely agree with you that if a GM is going to use it to arbitrarily and maliciously, that's a problem with the GM, not the system. That being said...

(2) By increasing his character's Obligation a player is effectively telling the GM, "Feel free to make my character's life more difficult than it would otherwise be." You don't have to harbor a seething mistrust of your GM to prefer the regular degree of difficulty over the advanced degree of difficulty, and as I also said to CrazyDaddy I think it's kind of crazy that you have to accept the advanced degree of difficulty in order to be able to afford much more than a blaster and a set of heavy clothes.

(3) Eeeeennnnnnh, kind of. I have no expectation that PCs will ever be able to slap the Emperor around. My concern is more that players will feel like starting characters are Greedos or Jar-Jars rather than raw but aspiring Han Solos, and that they'll feel like even reaching the level of a supporting-cast character like Lando is an impossible goal. But, yeah, I'm gradually coming around to the conclusion that this game is not to my individual taste. I guess we'll see.

Well yeah. That is exactly what they are doin

@mlbrogueone: Following your points:

(1) Actually, no, that's not a concern of mine, and if you've understood me to be worried that Obligation is just a tool for GMs to be capricious jerks, I apologize for not having made myself clearer (and for using loaded words and phrases that contributed to the misunderstanding). As I said to CrazyDaddy above, I really like the idea of Obligation, and I completely agree with you that if a GM is going to use it to arbitrarily and maliciously, that's a problem with the GM, not the system. That being said...

(2) By increasing his character's Obligation a player is effectively telling the GM, "Feel free to make my character's life more difficult than it would otherwise be." You don't have to harbor a seething mistrust of your GM to prefer the regular degree of difficulty over the advanced degree of difficulty, and as I also said to CrazyDaddy I think it's kind of crazy that you have to accept the advanced degree of difficulty in order to be able to afford much more than a blaster and a set of heavy clothes.

(3) Eeeeennnnnnh, kind of. I have no expectation that PCs will ever be able to slap the Emperor around. My concern is more that players will feel like starting characters are Greedos or Jar-Jars rather than raw but aspiring Han Solos, and that they'll feel like even reaching the level of a supporting-cast character like Lando is an impossible goal. But, yeah, I'm gradually coming around to the conclusion that this game is not to my individual taste. I guess we'll see.

(2) Well yeah that is exactly what they are saying. It is a choice. Yes you get a benefit. But it is not without cost. And it won't take the characters that many missions to get better gear.

As to 3 I have played the game and no you do not feel like a greedo. In fact in most encounters you do pretty well. Assuming the GM is not a douchebag and throwing stuff that is too difficult at the players.

@Daeglan: It looks like there are 36 episodes of the Order 66 podcast, and each one of them seems to be about two and a half hours long. Could you narrow things down at all, and perhaps suggest an episode or two I should focus on? 'Cause, if I'm looking at having to give up four days of my life to go through all of them, that's probably not going to happen. :-)

Also:

(2) Well yeah that is exactly what they are saying. It is a choice. Yes you get a benefit. But it is not without cost. And it won't take the characters that many missions to get better gear.

We're talking past each other, I'm afraid. I understand what you're saying. What I'm saying is that it's ridiculous there's a cost to starting the game with an adequate supply of gear.

the game is about choices. You don't have to make those choices.

http://www.d20radio.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=166&t=13448
That is an index.
Episode one on Dice pools would probably help you.

All of the skill monkey bits would be useful to you and you can skip ahead to those. They really help you understand how to interpret results.

Episode 14

@Daeglan: I also don't have to play games that force stupid choices on players. So there's that. But thank you for the episode suggestions.