SO here is my question i should have added in my prior thread for Agility based talents or Specs.

I have a PC who started as a FSexile. IN EOE and AOR a player may use Agility and or Brawn for the attribute to use with a lightsaber.

Now i see in FnD(Beta) that the lightsaber skill is implicitly Brawn.

SO The PC who has dumped all his points into agility now takes a FnD spec, is he forced into using the new Lightsaber Rule using brawn as the Base Attribute?

How is this handled??

Well, strictly speaking, if you're the GM, you can make it so that they still use Agility instead of Brawn.

If you're the PC and not the GM, I would guess your GM would be happy to accommodate you.

I would also guess that revisions of EotE and AoR will deal with the contradiction.

Having said that , (without having read F&D) I would prefer that there be two lightsaber skills, one Brawn, one Agility, and which one you get is dependent on your spec - with FS-Ex and FS-Em getting to pick one or the other.

As a GM I might rule that you could take the Ataru Striker lightsaber spec (the one that has the talent to replace Brawn with Agility) and say your choice of Agility as the characteristic means you treat that talent as already bought.

I'd allow the continued use of Agility/Brawn. The catch is that the player can't gain any Lightsaber skill ranks until he buys a Lightsaber specialization first, and he can't actually apply those skill ranks to Agility/Lightsaber checks until he gets Ataru Technique. So if the player bought Ataru Seeker, for instance, then bought skill ranks, he wouldn't be able to use them at first unless he used Brawn for the characteristic instead.

This basically represents the player going from somebody just swinging it around (Agility/Brawn only) into learning the core principles of Lightsaber forms (Brawn + Lightsaber ranks) and then into learning a specialized form (Ataru Technique/Agility + Lightsaber ranks) and getting more in-depth knowledge and expertise.

You could alternatively just let him start buying Lightsaber ranks prior to getting a Lightsaber specialization, and still do the whole Lightsaber ranks only applying to Brawn checks. It still runs off the same idea of going from untrained to trained, you'd just be giving earlier access to skill ranks (that end up costing more since they won't be career skills anyways).

SO The PC who has dumped all his points into agility now takes a FnD spec, is he forced into using the new Lightsaber Rule using brawn as the Base Attribute?

How is this handled??

The next time you would give XP rewards, just deduct 10XP from this character's reward and grant the "Ataru Technique" talent instead. Problem solved.

I'd go with allowing the PC to use either Brawn or Agility, so long as they don't have any ranks in the Lightsaber skill. Once they buy a single rank, then they are locked into using Brawn until they acquire one of the Form Technique talents that let them use a different characteristic.

Given how ridiculously powerful the EotE/AoR lightsabers are, if the PC is using one of those instead of the FaD lightsabers, then having to choose between "no ranks but can use Agility" or "buy ranks but have to use Brawn" is a reasonable trade-off.

How is a PC in F&D supposed to be learning the ways of the Force?

I ask as it seems to me that the Jedi Order is very go-with-the-flow (at least with regards to natural strengths and weaknesses): If you've self-taught yourself to use a lightsaber with agility - something you likely did because it felt natural, because your body naturally supports such use - your Master is probably going to decide that attempting to change that is a violation of the will of the Force (otherwise you wouldn't have made it so far with your lightsaber skills thus).

If you're being taught by an interactive holocron, I could see it deciding that you're doing it wrong, but that's because of the limits of the holocron's programming and not because it genuinely reflects the views of any given Jedi Master or Jedi Knight (to include the Jedi who originally made the holocron).

But again, I've not read F&D, so my view is rather limited.

How is a PC in F&D supposed to be learning the ways of the Force?

It's up to a player's own narrative fluff (or the GM's if that's how the table is being run). If they want to say they've had visions that equate to instructions, if they want to say it just feels natural, or if it's the Force working through them, or if they found old holocrons or books or whatever, it's all up to them. It's pretty much the same as the rest of the product line in handling how skills, talent trees, and talents, are picked up. Nothing holding you back rule-wise from hoarding up XP and just suddenly dropping it on something you've never really used. Just individual table rules on how it should be handled.

How is a PC in F&D supposed to be learning the ways of the Force?

Well, the Beta itself didn't spell it out in exacting terms either, and since the final corebook isn't on shelves, nobody here knows if more detail is given (though I suspect it would be in the GM chapter if nothing else).

While the Jedi Order was the largest and best-known collection of Force users and lore about the Force, they were hardly the only ones. In the EU/Legends, there were a staggering number of Force traditions that had little to no direct connection to the Jedi, many of which developed out of the native traditions of a given world, such as the Baran Do Sages of the Kel Dor or the Findsman of the Gand or even the Witches of Dathomir.

The Jedi Order had also been around for "a thousand generations" to quote Ben Kenobi, so there's going to be a number of lost temples/archives/records/holocrons scattered throughout the galaxy. The Empire might have clamped down on a bunch of them, but the galaxy is a large place so there are bound to be places the Jedi Order had long forgotten about or that were simply overlooked due to being out of usage for centuries, such as the Lothal Temple we saw in Star Wars Rebels.

Also, Order 66 wasn't a "clean sweep" of the Jedi Order, as again the EU/Legends had a surprising number of surviving Knights and Masters beyond Kenobi and Yoda that could still be around serving as a collective mentor to a party of Force users. Or said mentor might be a Padawan not unlike Kanan or Ahsoka that never became a Knight but still know plenty enough about the Force to train others. Or the mentor might not even have been a Jedi, and could be a shaman/mystic from some other Force tradition, or maybe just a "crazy old wizard" that's learned what they know through experience and having done their own "pilgrimage" for knowledge.

Ultimately, it'd be up to the PCs to determine if prior to the campaign starting how their characters learned about the Force. In the WEG system, not all the Jedi templates were properly trained. The Young Jeid and Quixotic Jedi were largely self-taught, the Failed Jedi had long since parted company with their teacher, and the Minor Jedi only got a tiny bit of training before their master was killed by the Empire, so it can run the gamut as how they obtained their fledgling Force abilities in the first place.

Part of me wants to say "slap them across the wrist, and make them switch to Brawn." The most recent book/beta "updated" the rules for lightsabers, and their skill, so I'd say you have to use that, mostly because, through the use of various forms, you can gain use of ANY Attribute for lightsabers, be you a charismatic Makashi-wielder, an agile Ataru-practitioner, or what ever have you. While I can see the advantage, back then, of letting you pick between Brawn and Agility, there seems little excuse now to argue that Agility came easily to you, with regards to using your lightsaber, though you don't need to pay for Ataru, already, but I can't say the same for myself, and Charisma, without paying for Makashi; one form is as valid, and steeped in training, as another.

Otherwise, if I was going to be more lenient, I'd say if they chose Agility at the start, they'll still have to pay for Ataru Striker, someday, if they want to further excel in it, and pay for the Ataru talent, gaining no additional benefit, to proceed in the tree. For just the combat, it's no biggie, I guess, but no freebies, along the way.

How is a PC in F&D supposed to be learning the ways of the Force?

Well, the Beta itself didn't spell it out in exacting terms either, and since the final corebook isn't on shelves, nobody here knows if more detail is given (though I suspect it would be in the GM chapter if nothing else).

While the Jedi Order was the largest and best-known collection of Force users and lore about the Force, they were hardly the only ones. In the EU/Legends, there were a staggering number of Force traditions that had little to no direct connection to the Jedi, many of which developed out of the native traditions of a given world, such as the Baran Do Sages of the Kel Dor or the Findsman of the Gand or even the Witches of Dathomir.

The Jedi Order had also been around for "a thousand generations" to quote Ben Kenobi, so there's going to be a number of lost temples/archives/records/holocrons scattered throughout the galaxy. The Empire might have clamped down on a bunch of them, but the galaxy is a large place so there are bound to be places the Jedi Order had long forgotten about or that were simply overlooked due to being out of usage for centuries, such as the Lothal Temple we saw in Star Wars Rebels.

Also, Order 66 wasn't a "clean sweep" of the Jedi Order, as again the EU/Legends had a surprising number of surviving Knights and Masters beyond Kenobi and Yoda that could still be around serving as a collective mentor to a party of Force users. Or said mentor might be a Padawan not unlike Kanan or Ahsoka that never became a Knight but still know plenty enough about the Force to train others. Or the mentor might not even have been a Jedi, and could be a shaman/mystic from some other Force tradition, or maybe just a "crazy old wizard" that's learned what they know through experience and having done their own "pilgrimage" for knowledge.

Ultimately, it'd be up to the PCs to determine if prior to the campaign starting how their characters learned about the Force. In the WEG system, not all the Jedi templates were properly trained. The Young Jeid and Quixotic Jedi were largely self-taught, the Failed Jedi had long since parted company with their teacher, and the Minor Jedi only got a tiny bit of training before their master was killed by the Empire, so it can run the gamut as how they obtained their fledgling Force abilities in the first place.

I am aware that there are other Force traditions in the Galaxy and that Order 66 was not as... thorough as perhaps it might have been (although it gutted the fighting corps of the Jedi and the Jedi's ability to recruit and train new Jedi). (Assuming that the Jedi Order had 10,000 Jedi Knights and Masters at the beginning of the Clone Wars, even if the Order loses 99% of its members - KIA/WIA/MIA fighting the wars, to expulsions and the Dark Side, to Jedi leaving the Order in disgust over the prosecution of the war, and to Order 66 - that still leaves 100 Jedi Knights and Masters. To say nothing of the Initiates that failed to be picked up as Padawans and the Padawans that failed their trials to become Knights - all of whom possess at least a modicum of Jedi training - who might have packed their things and run for the far flung edges of the galaxy as soon as they got Obi-Wan's run-and-hide communiqué.)

However, the careers are all Jedi this or Jedi that. In fact, one of the things that makes the Jedi (and the Sith) unique is that they alone use lightsabers, and all the careers appear to have access to a specialization that gives free skill(s) in the use of a lightsaber. So it seems unlikely that the PCs will be receiving significant levels of training in any Force discipline outside of that of the Jedi (and/or the Sith - especially if their mentor turns out to belong to a splinter order of the Sith that has also survived the last thousand years in hiding but is not allied with the Emperor or they're learning from holocrons and stumble across a Sith holocron).

And, as a point of contention, Ahsoka was no longer a Jedi Padawan when she left the Order. Though she never underwent the ceremony making her a Jedi Knight, she passed her trial to become one and is, for all intents and purposes, a Jedi Knight (albeit a grey Jedi Knight - although with Obi-Wan and Yoda likely being the sole members of the Jedi Council-in-Exile, she might have come back into the Order and been officially ordained a Knight - but I doubt Obi-Wan or Yoda had or have the time necessary to administer the rites).

However, the careers are all Jedi this or Jedi that. In fact, one of the things that makes the Jedi (and the Sith) unique is that they alone use lightsabers, and all the careers appear to have access to a specialization that gives free skill(s) in the use of a lightsaber. So it seems unlikely that the PCs will be receiving significant levels of training in any Force discipline outside of that of the Jedi (and/or the Sith - especially if their mentor turns out to belong to a splinter order of the Sith that has also survived the last thousand years in hiding but is not allied with the Emperor or they're learning from holocrons and stumble across a Sith holocron).

Heh heh. I find this funny as before the F&D beta dropped many, including myself, thought that we would see Jedi careers. I was pleasantly surprised otherwise. While the careers and specs are informed or inspired by some Jedi mythology, the designers presented them in a way the they can be used to create Jedi or anything else pretty much. I'm sure they have held back some things for the future career books, but for now we can have Jedi, Sith, Dathomir witches, and various other character types. It is a little short-sighted to consider them just Jedi or Sith.

I'd go with allowing the PC to use either Brawn or Agility, so long as they don't have any ranks in the Lightsaber skill. Once they buy a single rank, then they are locked into using Brawn until they acquire one of the Form Technique talents that let them use a different characteristic.

Given how ridiculously powerful the EotE/AoR lightsabers are, if the PC is using one of those instead of the FaD lightsabers, then having to choose between "no ranks but can use Agility" or "buy ranks but have to use Brawn" is a reasonable trade-off.

This this this.

The thing to notice in both AoR and EotE is there is no "Lightsaber skiil" none. You have to use the base characteristic to just wave the saber around like a kid trying to smash a pinata and hope for the best. So it really doesn't matter which one you use.

Once you start getting into ranks, and saber trees you need to define it, and Brawn is how it's defined.

This is also how the AoR/EtoE sabers balance against their lower powered (to start) FaD counterparts. In FaD you can get ranks, roll triumphs naturally, make use of talents, and generally roll better, so the weapon doesn't need to be that powerful to be quite impressive.

In AoR/EotE you're just blindly waving it, you can't have a shot at rolling a triumph without a Dpoint or bonus from another roll, and you're generally going to roll worse. So if the saber's beefy that's ok because you'll miss often enough to balance it out a bit...

Mouthymerc's right in that a lot of us (self included) had egg on our face in terms of "Jedi" and Force and Destiny. Personally, I was surprised that there wasn't a basic Jedi career at the least.

If anything, the Force and Destiny Beta made it pretty clear that the intent is that the PCs are not Jedi in the traditional sense, in that they've not had the proper training that we saw in the Prequel Era, and instead are much like Luke in that the PCs have picked up bits and pieces of lore regarding the Force. Even the specializations that focus on being a badass with a lightsaber aren't the "entire picture" in regards to using a lightsaber, as only two of the six (one for each career) offers the chance to reflect blaster fire at an enemy, and two of them don't even offer the talents to deflect blaster fire in the first place, which is a fairly iconic Jedi trait.

The way my group worked it out was that any character using agility prior to the change could continue doing so, since it made no sense changing it suddenly for no reason. However any coming after that would have to use brawn and once a style was obtained,they had to use that or brawn regardless of Previous orientation.

Most the rulings make sense.

Honestly I go by the "Rule of now" when I come across situations like this.

If "at this moment" I am creating a character I go by whatever are the accepted rules NOW. If later they change it doesn't make sense to force a redesign, you are working in the equivalent of a parallel universe at that point.

So move forward as if you never saw the new rule until the game reaches a point that new people come in.

New people still utilizing the rule of now create using the NEW rules because that is what is accepted now.

Hopefully that helps.

How is this handled??

Let him respec the character if he wants. There - sorted!

A thing to consider is that in F&D you can use other Attributes besides Agility as your base Lightsabre Skill as well so things can get complex pretty fast. Another thing to consider is that the balancing of the use of alternate base Attributes is built into the Spec Tree as you have to spend EXP to be able to use an Attribute other than Brawn.

I'd go with this:
If you are planning to use any of the material from F&D you should use the LS RAW as well, it's only fair to future players that may build a F&D PC.
So I'd allow the PC to continue to use the alternate Attribute (Agility in this case) but they must spend any new EXP on getting the appropriate Talent before spending it on anything else (I'm AFB but I think it's only a total of 25 EXP). This way the Player gets to continue but pays what they normally would have if they built the PC in F&D.
If, however, you aren't going to use F&D just keep it the same.

I make people go with the most recent ruling, just as with errata.

A thing to consider is that in F&D you can use other Attributes besides Agility as your base Lightsabre Skill as well so things can get complex pretty fast. Another thing to consider is that the balancing of the use of alternate base Attributes is built into the Spec Tree as you have to spend EXP to be able to use an Attribute other than Brawn.

this pretty much sums it up

all but one of the lightsaber spacs have a technique talent in the 10xp row that allow a different characteristic to be used

ataru- agility

soresu- intellect

niman- willpower

shien- cunning

and makashi- presence

I would allow a player to have it, but charge them 20xp if they want the Ataru Technique without going into the specialization. This isn't a game breaker.

Allow them to continue but on a gentleman's agreement that they are working to purchase the necessary talent at a reasonable opportunity so they become legal. That shouldn't be too great a hardship as there are good things that go with it.

Quite recently, I started playing bowling. We were just a bunch of friends wanting to have fun, so we didn't have a clue and just thrown the ball as we could. I slowly improved my skills, but then I decided to watch some tutorials on how to properly throw. Of course, it had nothing to do with how I was doing it.

So I had to choose. Keep improving with my own,personal way of throwing OR resetting all of my stances and moves to learn the proper way. Choosing the second option would mean most of my precious experience would be wasted, but in the end my technique would be better (probably).

I find the case of lighsabers here mostly similar. Someone finds a lightsaber and doesn't know how to use it, so the guy does what he can - test/error, intuition, etc. But then we find out there are actual techniques and skills involved in wielding a lighsaber - you only need to get your hands on them and learn (sadly, there are no Youtube tutorials in SW Universe). So now, the choice: keep using my intuitive style (Agility/Brawn with no skill) OR learning the proper way (Brawn+skill).

These are my thoughts; if you don't like them, I have more

PD: I chose to try to learn the proper way at bowling. I still suck at it, but learned that the best of it all is meeting my friends every Thursday

As weak an argument as this is going to be, and I am certainly in agreement that it is WEAK, if you are playing the game from a character who had a lightsaber in Edge or Age, and now you are trying to bump up to Destiny, if you can't keep the awesome stick you had an awesome stick, since F&D lightsabers are like lightsabers in Saga, compared to AoR/EotE lightsabers being like Revised d20 lightsabers, you should also have to switch to Brawn, and eat the pain. You can say "until I get the skill, I don't have to care", and I'll counter that "the skill is your aptitude, and experience, with the weapon, regardless of how you wield it. You'll have it, be you self-taught, or trained by another." I'm not a shoddy artist if I work on a computer, where my hands need not be as steady, I don't need to perfectly blend colors, and any mistakes can be undone, or erased, without leaving smears, streaks, or a chunk of my sculpture I had to change, because that one segment broke off; I don't have to start over from scratch because of one error, nor learn how DiVinci, Michaelangelo, or Picasso did it, to be considered a "real artist". Using your lightsaber should get you to skill, no matter how you do it; it has nothing to do with then learning how a "real Jedi" did it, of which he might be doing it the same way you are; he just paid XP for Ataru. There wasa time when Jedi had no lightsabers, and their vibroswords are radically different, as having a different skill will demonstrate. Divine knowledge didn't pour into them from beyond; they had to learn how their new lightsabers, still hooked to their belt-batteries, worked, and some even went on to make the Forms, they were so uniquely skilled. Since the skill has little bearing, in that case, I'd say update the character, like anyone else updating to the new system has to. Your GM is very unlikely to let you keep the super-saber, so they aren't as likely to let you keep "free Ataru", either.

Otherwise, easiest option: just say you paid for Ataru Striker, and the Ataru talent, and have the XP penalty; till it's paid off, you can't allocate any XP to other purchases. For a little while, you will have a slight ECL up, but your party will have ample opportunity to catch up to you.

I know that, on some level, I'm seeming stubbornly unreasonable, and as an ardent Jedi supporter, that's even sort of weird for me, but with every Attribute being tieable to Lightsaber, through the possession of one of the varied Lightsaber Forms, I just can't understand why people think they should get the Agility one free; this is an update to the system, and how they want it to work now, sort of like how lightsabers in Edge didn't keep Defensive, Deflect, or some other things, and how disruptors lost their kill button. Once you start playing F&D, you really should accept their changes, and just adapt. They give you the option you already had, so it's not a big hoop to jump through, just one with a small XP cost. My opinion, of course.

Actually Venkelos, the d20 OCR/RCR lightsabers weren't so great either on their own. It was the fact that the various Jedi classes and prestige classes added extra dice to the damage value that started making them really nasty, especially as getting to 6d8 or 7d8 worth of damage wasn't terribly difficult.

FaD lightsabers are still plenty powerful, as they have Breach 1, meaning that even a basic lightsaber is going to take out one minion per attack no problem, and can probably get two of them if they roll 2 uncancelled Advantage. It's just not the murderstick that the EotE/AoR version was, which in hindsight really seems to be more akin to +5 Holy Avenger than the typical long sword that most D&D paladins will be using, though FaD does allow the opportunity to modify that typical long sword into a +5 Holy Avenger with enough time, credits, and lucky dice rolls. However, even PCs with the slightly-less potent Athiss Cave Crystals from the FaD Beta adventure were still plenty capable in a fight; the only Adversaries that proved to be able to stand up to more than a couple of hits were Nemeses with at least 3 ranks of Parry to offset 5 points of the lightsaber's damage.