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neither. until you understand the rules the unintended consequences will be far reaching. try it as is first. it already is very cinematic. to start, do a one shot . Trust me it already very cinematic.

You misunderstand. I wasn't asking if I should, I was asking which rule would be better.

I've played this game for about 2 years now (albeit Beta), and am aware of how it plays and know the rules by heart. I just have to relearn some Talent Trees and have pre-gen ships now that I get to play with.

And I am telling you don't you will break the game. THe game system breaks beyond 6 dice. Doing this will run into that problem. Don't. And at least try the game as designed before you go mucking with these mechanics. And the beta is not the same. It changed quite a bit between beta and release

You misunderstand. I wasn't asking if I should, I was asking which rule would be better.

I've played this game for about 2 years now (albeit Beta), and am aware of how it plays and know the rules by heart. I just have to relearn some Talent Trees and have pre-gen ships now that I get to play with.

They're both equally terrible ideas. Daeglan has it right.

In particular, trying to treat Force Dice as a characteristic is outrageously game breaking.

I tinker quite a bit, with things like Obligation and game lore, but I'd never tamper with the character generation. My game is very cinematic, without having to change the character rules in the slightest.

This is actually the ONE reason it might be a nice idea to see the stats for movie characters. This isn't the kind of system where the likes of Han and Luke have max stats in everything. 2 is reasonable in this game, 3 is good, and 4 or higher is movie hero levels of ability.

What you are suggesting would make it feel like some wacky anime game to be honest; over-the-top superheroes don't suit Star Wars. And with such extremely overpowered PCs, the GM will have to resort to silliness like Inquisitor Dark Troopers riding Giant Cybernetic Rancors to challenge them, because nothing in the EoE book is going to come close to PCs built with these rules.

Before anyone tells me how the game is "supposed" to be played, please understand that we play a bit more cinematic than, what I'm under the assumption that, other people play. I realize that Force is suppose to be super-rare, and weak in Ex-'s. And it is... just not necessarily in the company of these particular protagonists.

So back to point... which of the 2 possibilities would be recommended? Or is there a 3rd one that is more generally accepted amongst the forum-ites here?

You can not ask for people's opinions and tell them you do not want to hear "how the game is supposed to be played" or other negative feedback. Most people who have played the game, though, know that allowing for easier access to characteristics, especially Force rating, can quickly unbalance things.

You already sound like you've made your decision, just go with it. It is your game. With its dice system and narrative play, I already find the game to be fairly cinematic so I don't see the point.

I like this form of question asking, though!!! Gonna use it for other things..

Me - "Mom, Can I either stay out past curfew on Friday night or have an increase in my allowance?"

Mom - "Neither."

Me - "You misunderstand. You have to approve one or the other!!!"

But, I have a feeling it will go like this thread... only worse.

Mom - "You misunderstand. You'll get neither and if you are having trouble grasping that, perhaps some extra math homework will improve your logic skills."

<sigh> Sometimes an idea sounds great... but then you find out you're alone in thinking so. Take solace! Like me, you can storm off condemning everyone for their lack of vision (which is probably more ironic when I do it considering I'm blind).

First off, who is going over 6 dice? OR did they change that part of the system too and I missed it? My reading says you take the highest of Characteristics/Ability, and that's your dice pool, then you take the lower, and that's your proficiency dice in that pool.

The difference between my "favored" idea and the "core" way of doing things is taking:

* 3,3,3,2,2,2 in Characteristics, with 10xp to 30xp spent on Talents and Skills.

and turning it into either:

4,3,3,3,3,3 in Characteristics with 80xp to spend on Talents and Skills

or maybe:

4,4,3,3,2,2

or maybe:

5,3,3,2,2,2

As for Force, this is, at best, +2 Force dice. Yes, it makes it a "bit" more Force interesting, but even on 4 dice (after spending 95xp to climb the Talent Tree at optimal advancement) you're looking at an 88% chance of getting a light-side roll result, and a 60% chance of 2 light-side dice on a roll (which is needed for most any interesting use of the Force),

Meanwhile, until they get the 95xp (which since I average 10 to 15 per session, is awhile), that's closer to 65% for a single, and 55% for a double. And that's assuming they even opt to spend 6 of the 8 ChP on Force instead of the more interesting Characteristics.

Admittedly, I can now see the 2nd version allowing an easier and more prone access to Force, reaching Force 6 on the spending of 200xp, which is far too low (and Characteristics as well at 100xp) meaning that 6 could be potential and on a lot of characteristics. So obviously it seems my "favored" (1st) option is the better of the 2. At least there the Force cap is a calculated 4 (2 is just too low for the story I'm envisioning), and an unlikeliness to see more than a single 6 in Characteristics with a higher probability of nothing being above 5.

@mouthymerc: Yes I can (though I could careless if there's negative feedback). It is perfectly reasonable to ask a question and tell them I don't want opinions on other topics. Whether or not I should houserule Characteristics is a completely different topic than how to do so. If someone would have just stated that the 2nd option would be insane-stupid crazy because (as I've now realized) there is no cap to what they can raise, and they'll be rolling 6 dice for nearly everything... a purely negative but accurate comment, I would have accepted and thanked the reply.

Thing is, I never really thought about what their characters would look like 1000xp from now (after all, 2 years into the game, they're nowhere near 1k XP, and I'm use to seeing most XP spent on Talents). I'm just looking at a chargen boost (to compensate a bit in switching to the new system and starting over), and at the same time avoid the expected 90 (or 100)xp all spent on Chars at Char-Gen. I realized the 8ChP would be high (since it equates to a LOT of initial XP), and wouldn't suggest 8ChP for most starting games, but currently, after 2 years of playing, some players have 4's in a couple characteristics, but mostly it's all 2's and 3's compensated by level 3 and 4 skill rankings. I was hoping to "superhero" them a wee bit to make the transition more interesting. I think the ChP idea does that nicely, letting them start with characteristics better than what they have after 2 years of playing but without all the skill levels.

That's fine. As I said, do what you want as it is your game. General consensus, though, is that easy access to characreristics and Force Rating tends to unbalance things. Personally I would just hand out more xp if you want more ability.

Gryphynx, I don't think you're going to find much support for any of your choices.

I would recommend "Knight Level Play" for you (introduced in the Force and Destiny beta).

• Have your PC spend their starting XP on buying up Characteristics.
• Then give them 150 XP to buy up skills and talents.
• It's up to you if you want to also use the third component; 9,000 credits worth of gear or a basic lightsaber (base 6 damage, crit 2, Sunder, Breach 1)

Otherwise, I'll echo what everyone else is saying here; PC characteristics with the spread you have is broken, excessively high powered, and going to result in needing to roll fist-fulls of dice just to challenge the PCs. Having 2s in characteristics is fine. Heck having a 1 in a characteristic is fine!

If you're looking for Super-heroes, this isn't the system for it.

That's not a bad idea Darth, instead of a ChP system, just basically double their starting XP with a requisite that half (and only half) be spent on Characteristics

And I'm not looking for super-heroes, it was a response to someone who suggested I was trying to allow for super-heroes.

Your table, your rules, as MM said. If you want to play in 'cheat mode', nobody at FFG (or on the forum) will kick your door down and confiscate your dice.

But if you go to a D&D forum and say you're going to start everyone off at 20th level with godlike statistics, you shouldn't be too surprised if the regular gamers suggest that's not a great idea.

I'm with phil.

The thing I think you misunderstand is from your perspective were coming to you from the far future.

You've been playing on the info from the very first beta. We're responding from that, plus gold, plus Age of Rebellion beta and gold, and Force and Destiny beta. So while we get that what you've been doing has worked with just the beta, when you take the game out further and add the new material, its gonna start causing problems.

That's not a bad idea Darth, instead of a ChP system, just basically double their starting XP with a requisite that half (and only half) be spent on Characteristics

That isn't what he said. That just gives you overpowered characters by a different means.

What he's saying is a) have them create normal characters using the rules. b) give them some starting XP, which they can spend normally (i.e. not on Attributes) c) maybe offer more XP for the first few games so the characters hit their core competencies earlier. The players can then play their movie heroes without breaking the system.

Trust me, if you have PCs with attributes in excess of 14 to begin with, it will seriously skew the entire dice system, which operates on the basis that some characters will be good at some things and average at others.

And this goes double for Force-users - the main thing in this system that keeps them balanced is the huge amounts of XP required (that won't be spent on other skills or talents) AND the rarity of Force dice from the Specs.

I understand that Maelora, I'm not trying to make them more powerful than they already are. The 8ChP is 'roughly' the same as where they are now (maybe a couple more characteristics but so few of the talents or skills). The double-xp with half-n-half (which is kinda what he said with 100ish+150) is still much weaker than their current states which is not nearly as powerful as some of you are suggesting. Yeah, they get lots of successes, but their challenges (the climatic ones at least) have similar dice levels. Obviously they're not that threatened by a small squad of Storm Troopers, or a mag-locked door... but it's not like there aren't challenges.

The D&D comment made previously is a good (though poor) way of explaining my objectives here. My players being 8th level characters, advancing to a new system and trying to convert them to 8th level (not someone just starting the game and wanting to play 20th level).

As for Force users, I have 3 (of 6) Ex-Force Exiles in my group. None of them user Powers (or try to) any more. Losing Destiny points to make things work, and never having enough "Force" to do things makes that branch almost useless (The Talent Tree is useful, but nobody uses the powers). While I understand this is likely the intent, that intent relies on the setting sticking to "no force" because being caught using the force is call for a witch hunt. That's not my setting...

However, this Force and Destiny release that I was unaware of has answered that problem as well, since at least now players can, if they want, branch out to get higher Force ratings through talent trees. 3 Force die is really the minimum to not feel like all your power usages are either pointless, or dark-sided. And even then, there are times (about a third of the times) that you still fail or go Dark. At 4 dice, you can lift a person (for example, with the 1 extra force required for a Silhoutte 1) with a highish probability (66% of the times you try), but you really need 6 to 7 to go trying to do the Yoda tossing 1-ton items at something.... Getting to 4 (the maximum I've been aiming for) won't let you get near that. And it's very important for my storyline that I have at least 1 force-interested player).

However, this Force and Destiny release that I was unaware of has answered that problem as well, since at least now players can, if they want, branch out to get higher Force ratings through talent trees. 3 Force die is really the minimum to not feel like all your power usages are either pointless, or dark-sided. And even then, there are times (about a third of the times) that you still fail or go Dark. At 4 dice, you can lift a person (for example, with the 1 extra force required for a Silhoutte 1) with a highish probability (66% of the times you try), but you really need 6 to 7 to go trying to do the Yoda tossing 1-ton items at something.... Getting to 4 (the maximum I've been aiming for) won't let you get near that. And it's very important for my storyline that I have at least 1 force-interested player).

Yeah you're really behind.

"Calling on the dark side" to activate powers isn't horribly punished like in previous systems. In fact the devs have said on the O66 podcast that a player that refuses to do so is shooting himself in the foot.

Also theres a lot of other things you're behind on. For example the force rating power example chart is gone. Completely. They ditched it because it didn't work with all the other changes.

I think the real issue here is you just need to catch up. So much has changed between the Edge beta an now that your points, while valid to you, just plan don't match the game in its finished form.

Yeah you're really behind.

"Calling on the dark side" to activate powers isn't horribly punished like in previous systems. In fact the devs have said on the O66 podcast that a player that refuses to do so is shooting himself in the foot.

Also theres a lot of other things you're behind on. For example the force rating power example chart is gone. Completely. They ditched it because it didn't work with all the other changes.

I think the real issue here is you just need to catch up. So much has changed between the Edge beta an now that your points, while valid to you, just plan don't match the game in its finished form.

I understand this, that using the Dark Side isn't as harsh as it should be, canonically. In my world it is though... while there are no mechanics for it, it is pretty clearly stated that if you use the dark force, you pick up the traits it relies on... becoming angrier, more spiteful and easily frightened. Roleplaying mechanics that I enforce in my game.

That being said, nothing that has come out has made using Force Powers on 2 Force dice any easier. No matter how experienced/skilled you are, if all you can muster are the 2 die, you simply won't be able to depend on the Force (unless you go losing Destiny points regularly or draw on the dark side, which with GMs like me, is a bad idea).

While I understand that I could resolve some issues simply by letting them use Dark Force without a measure (save Destiny which you don't want to mess with every time you use your Force Power), it breaks the most important aspect of an RPG for me, theme. And these aren't new, they were in Beta as well... nothing in that regards has changed. All that's changed is now the Force Powers are more expensive to use, oft requiring at least 2 force points or more.

I understand that Maelora, I'm not trying to make them more powerful than they already are.

But unfortunately, that's precisely what you're doing, even if that isn't your intention.

You're essentially making the best talents like Force Rating and Dedication much weaker, because your PCs will have good stats already. And as Ghost says:

"Calling on the dark side" to activate powers isn't horribly punished like in previous systems. In fact the devs have said on the O66 podcast that a player that refuses to do so is shooting himself in the foot.

It's a very minor penalty for tapping DS points - with 2 or 3 Force Dice, you'll be doing this all the time. Our Exile can hurl around multiple ATATs on a good roll. But thankfully, she can't do that all the time with two Force dice. There are little checks and balances in this system, things like Rarity and Encumbrance that aren't immediately apparent.

>>>but you really need 6 to 7 to go trying to do the Yoda tossing 1-ton items at something.

Nope. You can do that with one Force dice. Maxing out the Strength upgrade allows you to Move Silhouette 4 items, which includes an ATAT or YT1300 with a single extra pip. Eat your heart out, Yoda.

(That is, you need one pip to use the power; you're always guaranteed at least one. To activate your Strength upgrade, you need one more pip, and that Moves an item up to whatever your Strength upgrades are. Another pip gets you any Range or Magnitude upgrades).

With 2 FD, you can expand your powers to Move multiple items and at longer ranges. Though that will require a better roll and probably use of DS pips for a nominal fee.

I understand this, that using the Dark Side isn't as harsh as it should be, canonically. In my world it is though... while there are no mechanics for it, it is pretty clearly stated that if you use the dark force, you pick up the traits it relies on... becoming angrier, more spiteful and easily frightened. Roleplaying mechanics that I enforce in my game.

I am the last person to criticize someone else for changing the lore... but understand by doing this, you are ruining the Force-pip economy, especially if you don't use F&D Specs. You are intended to tap DS pips, which is why the drawback is a fairly small slap on the wrist.

And even in F&D, 'dark side' isn't a big deal in this game. There's no rules for 'temptation'. No rules for becoming an NPC if your Morality gets low. It's perfectly permitted to play a full-on Dark-sider, even in a Light-side group. It is recommended that you don't even bother with Morality unless you are using F&D careers. Exiles and Emergents don't really warrant it.

So while you can set your campaign up so it plays like previous editions - 'use the Dark side and instantly become an NPC' - that's not how FFG intended this game to play.

Trust me, I tinker a lot. But I try to look seriously at the repercussions of the changes I make, and I don't change the rules lightly for that reason. I take a vibroaxe to the fluff, yes, but change very few of the rules.

My advice, Gryphynx? Get the EOE and AOR core books, and the F&D Beta. See how these work first before changing anything. You will likely discover you don't need to change things as much as you think.

I'm not exactly sure why you want to mod the Character creation rules, other than you are playing Beta. I'm not sure what you really gain from making a house rule on it either. It seems you are wanting to make starting characters more powerful for the sake of just being more powerful. I am not a huge fan of house rules in about any form. In almost every game I have ever played in with house rules, it did no real service to the game other than make the GM/DM feel like they were smarter than people who do this for a living. (And they were the only one who felt that way.)

I skimmed through the OP, but most of it really didn't interest me much, but I can give you a little advice Gryphynx. I just a had new player join my group last weekend. Now my group is going strong, with about 5 months of game time, at 2-3 times a month under our belts. The PCs are sitting at about 600 XP total right now. So what I did for the new guy coming in was give him the starting XP for a Human 110 XP, and he took on 20 Obligation for the extra 10 XP. 120 XP to do char gen with, per the ECRB. We dumped about all the XP into the Characteristics. With a little left over for a talent or two. I then gave him 400 XP to build up the character as he sees fit, again, in line with the ECRB. He built up a characteristic or two through the Dedication Talent, but now he has a good character comparable to that of the my Party, but nothing super heroish. I too run my games very cinematic like you do, and the rules as written have never gotten in the way of my story or our fun. Good luck to you, and hope you get main rule book.

As a side note. The last time I was a player, the GM was running a hodgepodge Star Wars RCR/Pathfinder hybrid that also used the Saga book for some of the Starships. He had about a three page Word document typed up with a lot of his house rules. That game goes in my history of playing as the worst game ever.

And I'm not looking for super-heroes, it was a response to someone who suggested I was trying to allow for super-heroes.

A starting character with 4,3,3,3,3,3 is a superhero.

I understand that Maelora, I'm not trying to make them more powerful than they already are. The 8ChP is 'roughly' the same as where they are now (maybe a couple more characteristics but so few of the talents or skills). The double-xp with half-n-half (which is kinda what he said with 100ish+150) is still much weaker than their current states which is not nearly as powerful as some of you are suggesting. Yeah, they get lots of successes, but their challenges (the climatic ones at least) have similar dice levels. Obviously they're not that threatened by a small squad of Storm Troopers, or a mag-locked door... but it's not like there aren't challenges.

The D&D comment made previously is a good (though poor) way of explaining my objectives here. My players being 8th level characters, advancing to a new system and trying to convert them to 8th level (not someone just starting the game and wanting to play 20th level).

As for Force users, I have 3 (of 6) Ex-Force Exiles in my group. None of them user Powers (or try to) any more. Losing Destiny points to make things work, and never having enough "Force" to do things makes that branch almost useless (The Talent Tree is useful, but nobody uses the powers). While I understand this is likely the intent, that intent relies on the setting sticking to "no force" because being caught using the force is call for a witch hunt. That's not my setting...

However, this Force and Destiny release that I was unaware of has answered that problem as well, since at least now players can, if they want, branch out to get higher Force ratings through talent trees. 3 Force die is really the minimum to not feel like all your power usages are either pointless, or dark-sided. And even then, there are times (about a third of the times) that you still fail or go Dark. At 4 dice, you can lift a person (for example, with the 1 extra force required for a Silhoutte 1) with a highish probability (66% of the times you try), but you really need 6 to 7 to go trying to do the Yoda tossing 1-ton items at something.... Getting to 4 (the maximum I've been aiming for) won't let you get near that. And it's very important for my storyline that I have at least 1 force-interested player).

I now highly advise you go pick up the F&D Beta. Last I saw you could get it from places like Miniatures Market for $17 or so. The basic, core rules are firmed up and reprinted in the book. These are the core rules that now have 2 years of published play under their belts. You get Force-User Careers, 6 more races, and a dozen or so Force Powers (from all the books and new ones).

You also have access to the Morality rules, which is a huge component of using Dark Side points for powering Force Powers.

3 Force Rating is not "minimum" now, it's actually now the base-line average for "Expert Force User". Forsaken Jedi, Jedi In Hiding, even Imperial Inquisitors all have FR 3. Having a Force Rating of 4 is very powerful as long as you're using and understand the Morality system and the utilization of DSPs for Force Powers and the Conflict you earn by doing so. You can have a character use DSPs to power Force powers and could still become a Light Side Paragon (albeit at a slower rate).

Never using DSPs; yeah, Force Rating 3 is minimum. Accepting a couple Conflict to use the occasional DSP or two to power Move, or Battle Meditation, or even Heal; FR 2 is ideal and 3 is perfect.

I speak from experience; I wrote my own Jedi Career and Spec trees and converted an 11th level party from Saga to Edge back in 2013. I didn't have Conflict or Morality rules at this time, so they almost never used DSPs to power Force powers but the Jedi still got by with FRs between 2-4. They ended up having 400xp after conversion, and got to about 600 xp at the game's end. They were POWERFUL. Most non-Force Users had one characteristic stat at 5 or 6, some had a stat at 1, and the rest at 2-3. They were FINE. they were balanced. They did super-hero things with normal hero stats, and they felt like they accomplished something at the end of the game.

However, this Force and Destiny release that I was unaware of has answered that problem as well, since at least now players can, if they want, branch out to get higher Force ratings through talent trees. 3 Force die is really the minimum to not feel like all your power usages are either pointless, or dark-sided. And even then, there are times (about a third of the times) that you still fail or go Dark. At 4 dice, you can lift a person (for example, with the 1 extra force required for a Silhoutte 1) with a highish probability (66% of the times you try), but you really need 6 to 7 to go trying to do the Yoda tossing 1-ton items at something.... Getting to 4 (the maximum I've been aiming for) won't let you get near that. And it's very important for my storyline that I have at least 1 force-interested player).

After reading that, I'm totally convinced You're Doing It Wrong.

Let's take an example, and I know this one, because it comes up every single EoE session, without fail.

Smokin' Jo has 2 Force dice. Let's say she's at Hoth and sees 5 ATAT walkers plodding towards her. Let's say she's not bothered about using them as weapons, so we don't need Control right now, just the Basic power. She aims to Move all of the ATATs she can see. Can she do it? Let's roll and find out.

She gets lucky, and rolls two LS points and 2 DS points. She flips a Destiny and pays the strain cost, so she has four pips to play with. One activates the main power. She spends another to activate her Strength upgrade, which is 4, so for one pip, she can Move Silhouette 4 objects. Note that she doesn't need four pips, just the one gives you your full compliment of Strength upgrades. Default range is Short, but spending a third pip gives her all the Range upgrades she has, which is three. That allows her to lob the walkers from Extreme range, which is just as well, as with 2 Brawn she doesn't want to have to get any closer to them. Finally, the fourth pip is spent on Magnitude upgrades; she has four, so that gives her 1+4 = 5 targets to Move. At which point the Empire has five less ATATs than it had a round ago.

So, we just did something totally badass, and we did it with a mere 2 Force dice. Cinematic enough for you?

We could do better; she has Control so on a Discipline roll, she could, say, launch those ATATs into more ATATs for good measure. But that's another story.

Well if he's been running off only the EotE beta and suppositions based off of it without an advice or up to date experience it is not surprising that he viewpoints would be off. Biggest thing here is upgrading and understanding the system better. Something that many people around here can help with if you are willing to listen. There is a lot of experience on this board in many aspects of the game.

Thanks to all who have inputted. I have learned a lot but will continue with separating characteristics from other XP at char-gen. I do agree that the 8ChP is too much now, and the 2nd option was insane (but only due to no caps, I think it could work if limited to a single time per characteristic). My decision is to allow 320xp at chargen with a max of 160xp for characteristics.

As for Force, I have decided to allow purchase of it at double the characteristic costs (40, 60) from the 160xp for characteristics. I've also decided to work up a more painful Dark Force mechanic for using Dark Force. Though, if I'm reading the new Morality Code right in the Force and Destiny Beta, it might already be taken cared of for me.

However, I've also decided that I won't allow Force Specialization (except for Ex-Force Exiles). This will limit the maximum force dice pool to 5 (if anyone takes Seer, otherwise 4 is the max and only if they spend 100 of their 160 Characteristic XP on Force at char-gen).

I realize nobody agrees with me, but it should be noted that I did take everyone's comments into consideration (save those that told me not to house-rule anything). I just feel that I know the game/mechanics well enough to not worry about balance issues, and it works with my need to punish use of Dark Force.