Quick question regarding career skills; I'm not sure if I'm building my player's characters correctly.

I know any standard race other than droid gets to select one rank in four of the career skills offered, even though you mark all 8 as career skills on their character sheet (since you get discounts on upgrading career skills). Do you also mark the 4 on their character sheet as career skills for the tech tree they select?

Then that also raises my question, do they mark the skills they get from buying any other tech trees as career skills? Or specifically tech trees under their same career? Or is that set after character creation?

Any help would be great, thank you.

At character creation, you mark the eight career skills listed under Career as career skills and then take one free rank in four of them. No doubling up.

Then, you select your Specialization, and mark the four career skills listed under that as career skills, taking one free rank in two of them. You may add a second rank to one of your first-round career skills if they overlap.

The only exception to this is Force and Destiny, in which you get six skills per Career and choose one free rank in three of them. That's done to balance out the fact that you start with a Force rating of one.

If you take a new Specialization, regardless of the career, those four career skills associated with it are now career skills for your character. You can't take a free rank in any of them, however.

As an aside, why are you building your players' characters? I've found that the times I have done hat in games, based off of what they wanted to play even, they really never felt like the character was "theirs."

As an aside, why are you building your players' characters? I've found that the times I have done hat in games, based off of what they wanted to play even, they really never felt like the character was "theirs."

Some campaigns are easier with pregens.

Some campaigns require pregens.

One shots can be started faster with pregens.

Some players just don't like the actual build process. One of mine got hosed in 4e when her character concept didn't match what the devs thought her class should do. Now she just explains the concept as a whole to me and I build a functional version for her. Its not min/maxed, but it does what she wants and isn't a nerfball.

Some players just don't like the actual build process. One of mine got hosed in 4e when her character concept didn't match what the devs thought her class should do. Now she just explains the concept as a whole to me and I build a functional version for her. Its not min/maxed, but it does what she wants and isn't a nerfball.

This. I have a player that is still new to the RPG experience so he usually gives me an idea of what he wants and I build a character for him.

Some players just don't like the actual build process. One of mine got hosed in 4e when her character concept didn't match what the devs thought her class should do. Now she just explains the concept as a whole to me and I build a functional version for her. Its not min/maxed, but it does what she wants and isn't a nerfball.

This. I have a player that is still new to the RPG experience so he usually gives me an idea of what he wants and I build a character for him.

My players mostly prefer pregens, and view the character creation process variably as "hard work" or "confusing." I've only had a handful of "regular" players who have really wanted to get down with the actual character creation, and even then they involve me heavily in the process. As such, I've played way more games using pregens (including the Beginner Games) than not.

I don't mind, since I love building PCs And my players, in this system, have largely taken ownership of their pre-generated characters, even the ones they just picked up off the table and started playing with zero input on the creation side. It's actually been kinda cool.

So these types of players do exist. And if you can help them really nail a character concept, establishing clear motivations and juxtaposing them with their Obligation/Duty/Morality, they can be fantastic roleplayers.

When my group was first getting together on playing Edge, only two of us, myself included, truly built their own character. The other players had plenty of input into what they wanted. One wanted to be a Zabrak Bounty Hunter proficient with rifles, so an Assassin specialization was given to him. Another wanted to basically be Chewbacca, only without the life debt and more melee and brawl focused, so he got the Outlaw Tech specialization and a few EXP were spent giving him a rank in Melee since Wookies get a free rank in Brawl.

So far everyone has been pleased with what was created for them and have been Roleplaying excellently. We even found a Star Wars sound app that included Wookiee vocals and he only speaks (in English of course) to the one PC that can understand the Wookiee's language.

As an aside, why are you building your players' characters? I've found that the times I have done hat in games, based off of what they wanted to play even, they really never felt like the character was "theirs."

No I worded that wrong. I haven't built their characters, I was just helping them understand the mechanics of the game while they were building them. I just wanted to be clear on the career skills to make sure their characters Arent overpowered or vice versa.

I never prebuild characters, I always lets the players create their own and do whatever they want with them. I'm pretty open with them. But I can see how prebuilt characters can be an advantage as well.

I only ever built my wife's Ewok and my mother-in-law's Wookiee. Neither of them are RPGers and if you're not used to RPG gaming, and are basically just along for the ride and the social aspect of the game, then character creation can be a bit daunting. Everyone else in the group built their own characters, however. About all I did was try to curb the occasional min/max attempt, and help them with backgrounds, motivations, obligations, etc.

As an aside, why are you building your players' characters? I've found that the times I have done hat in games, based off of what they wanted to play even, they really never felt like the character was "theirs."

Some campaigns are easier with pregens.

Some campaigns require pregens.

One shots can be started faster with pregens.

Some players just don't like the actual build process. One of mine got hosed in 4e when her character concept didn't match what the devs thought her class should do. Now she just explains the concept as a whole to me and I build a functional version for her. Its not min/maxed, but it does what she wants and isn't a nerfball.

I get points one and three, though with one my question is "why does the campaign require a certain party?"

Point two - I don't see how a campaign can require a particular character/type unless the GM is completely unwilling to adjust anything for the party.

I don't remotely grok not wanting to build your own character. To me that's a red flag if the player can't get motivated enough about the game to even gen up a character. But I'll admit I've gotten badly burned before when I did this for players and they clearly did not care about the game, at least in part because they had no real interest in building their characters to begin with.

I'm kinda shocked by how prevalent pregens are based on this thread! Like, I could never play one. I'm not trying to pull out a One True Scotsman here, it's just hard for me to wrap my head around.

I don't remotely grok not wanting to build your own character. To me that's a red flag if the player can't get motivated enough about the game to even gen up a character. But I'll admit I've gotten badly burned before when I did this for players and they clearly did not care about the game, at least in part because they had no real interest in building their characters to begin with.

Some people are there more for other aspects like friends/camaraderie and just the game playing. My buddy likes the actual game-playing but doesn't have the time to invest in learning the ins and outs of character creation. The majority of my group are in their forties and we all have lives outside of the game. And while i dedicate time to my hobby not everyone has that luxury.

To me that's a red flag if the player can't get motivated enough about the game to even gen up a character. But I'll admit I've gotten badly burned before when I did this for players and they clearly did not care about the game, at least in part because they had no real interest in building their characters to begin with.

In my experience, I involve more prospective players in the game when I do pregens. Sure, it might mean a high attrition rate (about 75%), whereas if you can get a player invested from the beginning, then it's a low attrition rate (I estimate 20%). Still, 25% of 20 is better than 80% of 4, which are the respective numbers of players I've made pregens for, and players I've actually gotten to make characters.*

So if you can just get a high flow of new players, some will stick! And I just learned that one of my previous pick-up players requested (and received) Age of Rebellion for his 14th birthday, after just playing the game once with a pregen. So that's something!

*PbPs aside. Those, for me, have been about 50% even attrition, and I've always had players create their own characters.

I don't remotely grok not wanting to build your own character. To me that's a red flag if the player can't get motivated enough about the game to even gen up a character. But I'll admit I've gotten badly burned before when I did this for players and they clearly did not care about the game, at least in part because they had no real interest in building their characters to begin with.

The most important thing is that the rules aren't the character. With my "Team 50" players, we have a hoot and they each play "in character", they just don't want to have to dig into the rules in that way. Partly they're rules-averse, and partly they don't have enough experience with the system (nor, in all honesty, does it really stick) to decide what particular Talents mean or how useful they are. It's difficult enough with this crew for them to spend their experience.

It's been ages since I've played original D&D, AD&D, and Chivalry and Sorcery, but I think some of it is that the old systems we grew up with pre-defined most of the character progression. At most you'd pick your stats, and if you were a mage you'd pick spells, otherwise the system decided most of it for you. This game is wide open, there are a lot more choices, and until you get a handle on the mechanics in a wide variety of situations, it's hard to know how to proceed.

One of the players even said to me: "I just want to play something simple, like a fighter." That would have been the case with D&D...only people who embraced the complexity dared to take a wizard. But in this game, all character types can be equally complex.

For my campaign I basically gave them all decision tree based on archetypes and tried to find the best fit, giving them each a few different options of fully fleshed out character. Then we tweaked as necessary. Every post-session email exchange involves me asking how they want to develop their character, and offering two or three options to get there. Everybody has since juggled a few things around a time or two to more closely reflect the type of character they're going for. None of this means they aren't having fun, or aren't interested.

I'll pregen characters for one-shots or for new players, but in general if I'm running a long campaign I prefer my players make their own. It keeps them involved with their personal stories as they develop. The exception is, again, a new player, though I'll purposefully design the character to either a.) be discardable after the first major arc, so the new player can build their own character with the knowledge of a few sessions under their belt, or b.) change Obligations/Motivations to something tied to the new player, again after the first major arc or so.

Point two - I don't see how a campaign can require a particular character/type unless the GM is completely unwilling to adjust anything for the party.

I can give you a good example. I want to run a Rogue Squadron-style game, so to make sure everyone has the necessary skills, I'll say, "Aces only." Everyone can only start with the Ace career and one of the specializations. However, when I do that, I'll usually give them enough experience to buy another specialization from a different career, so they can broaden their skill sets a little.

I'd also do it for a clone commando game (Soldiers only), or a planetary romance kind of game (Colonist only, or at least a career/spec directly related to colony life).