Would Like Do Hear Your Thoughts On This. In Other Games, If You Have A Jedi Character, There Really Was No Reason For Other Characters. They Were An Uber class And The Rest Of The Party OS Kinda AlonG For The Ride. With The Exception Of A Mechanic They Can Heal, They Can Fight, They Can Talk And For The Most Part, Due To The Force, Better Than The Rest Of The Party. How Do You Guys Feel Ffg Has Done In This?

Secondly Is if You Are Not Playing A Jedi.Revised D20 Had One class For All Other Non Jedi Force Traditions. Saga, None! This One, With Exile And Emergent, And Now All The New SpecializationS I Don't penalized For Wanting To Play A fallAnissi. But Again, Id Like To Hear Your Thoughts On How WelL This System Does On That.

In this system the "Jedi" are force users so can be any order they want to be, also I am not as scared of my force user as I am the beast rider or other non-force sensitives.So in my opinion they are a lot more balanced and more reminiscent of Luke in the original trilogy than say Qui-Gon, Obi-Wan and other true Jedi, in my opinion they do not mechanically need to be balanced against since non-force users can be just as cool.

My experience has been pretty positive as well. While a lot of people gripped about the 3-core system with the "Jedi book" last on the list, the result was the devs had enough time and experience with the system that by the time they sat down to write FaD, they had a good idea how to balance it.

At the end of the day, a powerful Jedi is just a character that spent more XP getting to those FR+1s and All those Force powers and upgrades instead of on Talents, Signature Abilities, and Specs. Even the lightsaber isn't so extreme. With the updated statblock the saber, while it can breach, after all is said and done really only does damage comparable to a blaster, and requires a melee attack to do it...

Your mileage will vary depending on the exact character and build, but in general while the Jedi will be able to use all those fancy powers, the ARC Trooper will shoot straighter, lob grenades farther, be tougher, and generally be more proficient at doing commando things.

This has been my experience as well. The Jedi is good at melee and force powers are nice but are controlled by FD, and getting beyond 2 FD is quite the XP sink. At 2 FD the Jedi in my group will use the force sparingly since he's likely to roll dark side pips more than light side pips. He has no need to go dark side but even sparingly used he can't seem to raise his Morality beyond 60. Meanwhile the Pilot Droid can't be touched in space in their well-kitted ship and the mechanic has become our resident droid wrangler/hacker. No one role out shines the others in general and all get a chance to be experts in their respective roles showing this is truly a well balance game.

2 characters of the same XP level with be comparable in power level. Even force users. They just can do different things. A force user tends to be either broad but not powerful or powerful at a couple things. A non force user can be more focused at a couple things.

There are no full Jedi implemented on F&D. Are just Force users that, in some cases, practice some of the Jedi arts and styles, but not full Jedi.

About balance, we use the rules from ALL material at same time with no problems. Force users don't seem to surpass the others so much. Of course the Force has tons of Advantages, and also we use a moderate Force ,like in movies, where Jedi's just don't grip or destroy every enemy with the Force. It's a cinematic thing.

Every character, class or specialization has it's own value, but uses to be up to GM responsability to balance the scenes, not the classes or the stats.

Let's put a small stract from Episode I. The Theed Assault. "Jedi" chars face the "bad Force guy". Pilots pick up the Naboo fighters, droids assists them. Soldiers and Infiltrators go for the ground assault or are fighting on the battlefield with gungans. Leaders inspire in combat, bluff and also fight.

To this you can add that also may need Slicers to unlock doors or Scholars that aid the rest (because they want to steal something valuable from the palace and pay a debt to a Hutt XD)

So, yeah, Force have some advantages, but not enough to let useless other options that are more specialized on other fields. A Force use must spend XP on both sides, Force and non-Force. And also remember that Force users have an awesome social disavantage that means Insta-kill or capture by all means by Imperial Forces or Inquisition.

Also I want to add that it's more possible to achieve DS pips than LS (58% vs 42%) so... make your numbers and value it.

Hope I helped mate

Like the others, I've not seen any major discrepancy between a FaD character of the same XP total as an AoR or EotE character... provided that the characters are built along similar lines.

A Knight Level EotE Bounty Hunter/Gadgeteer is going to be a lot more combat effective than a Knight Level FaD Sentinel/Shadow, simply because the first is a combat career/spec combo while the second one isn't. But a FaD Warrior/Starfighter Ace isn't going to completely outshine a Smuggler/Pilot or Ace/Pilot so long as all three characters are flying similar starships, such as X-Wings or the like.

The only serious discrepancy you might see is with the Lightsaber Form specs, as those are built around taking advantage of the lightsaber, which even with the reduced combat values in FaD is still a pretty potent weapon. But it's also not available as a starting weapon unless the group starts off at Knight Level, at which point the other PCs get a truck load of credits to buy all sorts of goodies to compensate.

Force powers look really good on paper, but for the first couple hundred XP of most FaD PCs adventures, they're only going to be rolling one Force die, and unless they're very lucky the player is more prone to roll a dark side pip than a light side one, which means either the power doesn't work or they have to spend strain, a destiny point, and earn Conflict to get the power to work. Things shift a bit with Force Rating 2, but the non-Force crowd is spending that same XP the Force users did on powers to purchase additional skill ranks and even more talents and specializations.

Overall, FFG looks to have accomplished what WEG and WotC weren't really able to do, and that's make Force user PCs, including the Jedi types, be pretty well balanced with the muggle PCs.

I'll echo what everyone else says. They're pretty balanced. We just wrapped up my SW FFG game and now putting it on hold. In that game we had three force users and a heavy. The Heavy was the beast. Though the heavy is meant to be a monster in combat so that's no surprise.

Yep, this is probably the only Star Wars game I've ever played that doesn't eventually degenerate into 'Glowstick Guy And His Mundane Sidekicks' after a decent amount of sessions.

Force users are pretty **** potent at higher levels - you can do stuff that far outstrips anything we see in the movies - but it takes a lot of XP to get there.

From what we've seen during our games, Force-users have more long-term potential at the high levels, but this is balanced out by the XP required to get there, making the other characters superior in Skills and Talents (and the all-important Dedication characteristic increases that come with them).

I think it validates FFG's decision to leave the Force until last so it neatly fits in to their existing games without rendering everything else an inferior option.

So got the opportunity last night to play in a very fun adventure run by GM Chris (as a backer reward from their most recent O66 Kickstarter), this one using a blend of EotE, AoR, and FaD characters, all built at Knight Level.

And you know what, there wasn't any serious cases of imbalance between the characters, as they all excelled in what they were built to do. We did have one player that tried a few times to have their gun-monkey (AoR) be a social character which said character was not built to be, so naturally that character sucked at making social skill checks when compared to the dedicated social character (EotE) or even the back-up face (FaD).

Even though there was a "Jedi" in the party with a lightsaber, he wasn't leaps and bounds more capable than the other combat-focused characters, with one being a veritable tank and the gun-monkey being flat-out nasty with their tricked-out rifle.

Currently running a game with. Jedi and 2 EotE characters ( maruarder and a smugglar) . So far the Jedi has lost an arm and needed the other 2 characters to save his arse a few times as he has gone down in several fights! So in my experience so far, not over powered

Of course the Jedi's player has a long history of creating characters that would struggle to tie their own shoe laces, I admit that might have something to do with it.

You can get them to the quigon or mace windu good. It just takes a lot of XP. And rather like the fight between Jango and Obi-Wan A non force using character with the same amount of XP will give them a run for their money.

I find that my Marauder is VASTLY more a pain in the ass to deal with than my Jedi, at least as fights go.

I'd disagree with the others on one point: You can make a full fledged "official" Jedi character with F&D.

Yes, the fluff in the beta book says you are not a Jedi. But the Specializations say otherwise. They have 6 specs that embody specific styles of lightsaber combat. There is a Career called Consular - yes, the fluff says it's not a Jedi from the Old Republic but the mechanics and the specs fully support creating a Consular Jedi in any area. The fluff statements about "not real Jedi" are an artifact of supporting the era the book is set it and not the mechanics.

Sam Stewart even stated on the Order 66 podcast that the species included in F&D were heavily influenced by the species present in the Jedi High Council in the prequel era.

I would agree that the mechanics seemed balance.

And you can make a Jedi or force user who is focuses on combat or one that focuses on social interaction or other things but like any other character that comes at the expense of other aspects of the character.

Getting to FR 3 is expensive but once you get there you can be very powerful and unlike other game systems you can keep using force powers turn after turn without worrying about depleting your vitality or suite of force powers etc.

And there are some very potent force powers available relatively easily - Sense in particular only requires FR1 or FR2 to be very potent.

Move can be used to do lots of damage or even disarm enemies.

So, you can do really powerful things with Jedi characters but other characters with the same XP will be doing powerful things as well.

Not sure, but, seems that F&D let build something pretty close to a Jedi, but not a refined version as a Jedi itself.

But close enough for me

Not sure, but, seems that F&D let build something pretty close to a Jedi, but not a refined version as a Jedi itself.

But close enough for me

I remember the days of yore - before GenCon 2014 - when people were wondering to what extent F&D would support Jedi. Some said they may get a Career, others a universal specialization or two, other said a spec each along the lines of Guardian/Sentinel/Consular, and some that they would get zero or minimal support, etc. I don't think I saw anyone guess we'd get 6 specs devoted to ligthsaber forms alone and a Consular Career, a Sentinel Career and a Guardian Career.

There's still room for the F&D supplemental books but there's plenty there in the F&D core to create any of the canon Jedi characters from any of the movies.

What's missing that needs to be there?

To harken back to old discussions from the EotE Beta...

The question of whether you can or cannot build a true Jedi with a Knight Level character depends on how you define the term Jedi.

If by Jedi, you mean a PC that is proficient with a lightsaber, has at least a few talents that focus on lightsaber usage (such as Parry and/or Reflect), and a basic proficiency with at least the Sense and Move powers... then yes, you can build a Jedi. Said PC may not be fantastic at all those things, since they're going to be stuck with Force Rating 1 until they take a second specialization (unless they started with Niman Disciple) and they're generally not going to be able to do the really fantastic stuff with Move as it'll not only require additional XP but more Force Points than your Jedi can generate, as they'd only be able to trigger a single upgrade in addition to the base power. So truthfully you're more like an apprentice Jedi than a Jedi Knight.

Now, if by the term Jedi you mean folks like Anakin and Obi-Wan as well as many other named Jedi Knights that we see on the screen and media, then the answer is not really, or at least not without a whole lot of XP invested in the character, particularly as a Jedi Knight under the Jedi Order needed a fairly broad range of skills and aptitudes both mundane and Force-related.

Of course, if you fall back to the old WEG definition of Jedi simply being "anyone that's capable of using the Force," the yes, because under that definition every FaD PC counts as a "Jedi" by virtue of having a Force Rating of 1.

To harken back to old discussions from the EotE Beta...

The question of whether you can or cannot build a true Jedi with a Knight Level character depends on how you define the term Jedi.

If by Jedi, you mean a PC that is proficient with a lightsaber, has at least a few talents that focus on lightsaber usage (such as Parry and/or Reflect), and a basic proficiency with at least the Sense and Move powers... then yes, you can build a Jedi. Said PC may not be fantastic at all those things, since they're going to be stuck with Force Rating 1 until they take a second specialization (unless they started with Niman Disciple) and they're generally not going to be able to do the really fantastic stuff with Move as it'll not only require additional XP but more Force Points than your Jedi can generate, as they'd only be able to trigger a single upgrade in addition to the base power. So truthfully you're more like an apprentice Jedi than a Jedi Knight.

Now, if by the term Jedi you mean folks like Anakin and Obi-Wan as well as many other named Jedi Knights that we see on the screen and media, then the answer is not really, or at least not without a whole lot of XP invested in the character, particularly as a Jedi Knight under the Jedi Order needed a fairly broad range of skills and aptitudes both mundane and Force-related.

Of course, if you fall back to the old WEG definition of Jedi simply being "anyone that's capable of using the Force," the yes, because under that definition every FaD PC counts as a "Jedi" by virtue of having a Force Rating of 1.

I agree that to create a Jedi Knight character is tough using Knight-level play rules and that these rules produce more of an advanced Padawan. It's more doable if you use - as you mention - the Niman Disciple spec.

Jedi Knights are fairly "balanced" characters in that they need force powers, talents and skills so it's attainable in a campaign that runs for a while but Knight-level play doesn't quite get you there (and a game that goes for a while and starts at Knight-level play puts these characters into a good position to become Knights fairly quickly).

Also, I think you can consider the more advanced force powers (requiring FR2+) as abilities developed by Jedi Masters or Knights with a strong focus (sacrificing other aspects).

The fluff for the Force Sensitive Exile mentions:

"The Force Sensitive Exile is not just any Force-sensitive being; he is one who survived the purges, Me may have been a young Padawan or even a minor Jedi who managed to flee the Empire and hide."

But not a full Jedi

Maybe the Signature Ability will bring something extra there, but again, not sure. The main idea is that Jedi of legends will remain in the past. Players seems that can achieve something like Luke and maybe something more powerful.

Even if Luke has become a "Jedi Knight" he needs tons of training before comparing him with Jedi's from the Republic. O at least this is my impression.

But not a full Jedi

Maybe the Signature Ability will bring something extra there, but again, not sure. The main idea is that Jedi of legends will remain in the past. Players seems that can achieve something like Luke and maybe something more powerful.

Even if Luke has become a "Jedi Knight" he needs tons of training before comparing him with Jedi's from the Republic. O at least this is my impression.

What do you mean by full Jedi?

You can create Anakin with F&D. And Obi-wan.

Yoda too. If one wanted to quibble you could say you can't make Mace Windu because there's no Juyo or Vapaad but that'd be nitpicking.

I don't see what's missing mechanically to create full Jedi Knights from any era.

Yep, I understand that concept. I mean, Mystic is Yoda or Palpatine. Also Dooku. Obi would be Guardian. Anakin Warrior. Ashoka Sentinel probably.

But its the general tone. I don't know how to describe it sorry, but it's just a sensation.

Inquisitor has some special NPC rules that make him just awesome. No Strain to Parry/Reflect and a few uses too. Also the few samples of Force or almost "Jedi" NPC's had some special features that will less pips you can activate Force Powers. Thats the essence of a "refinated Force User" or Jedi if do you prefer it, to me.

Maybe I'm wrong and that just are "NPC rules to confront various players" but, again, just a sensation.

Fair enough.

Sounds like we're both pleased with it

I admit, so am I. im glad im not the only one whose seen this, and I just wanted to call out how awesome it is to have balances parties, even with force users.

I think that I understand the developers point of view with this.

Introduce a full Jedi would create some unbalance to the game (a thing that I personally don't care because I like unbalanced things as GM and as a player XD) so they introduced those "pseudo Jedi" arguing that is the universe actual situation to balance game parties.

A really good choice