Hi,

i think your earlier stats where pretty to the point but didn't feel perfect. But in the ffg setting you have an other advantage building a npc like Vader.

There are special skills to enhance dice rolls against an npc like adversary. I think there is somethink like that for the charm part and others... i think i've seen some of those in the jewel of yavin adventure book with lando and his little cyborg friend.

with those additionals the feel of Vader should become the right one.

On the otherhand: Anakin was the choosen one, in my thoughts he had an forcerating of 8 or so... BUT that was reduced to 5-6 cause to the implants and cybernetix (which reduce the force power,as said in the corebooks)

I don't agree that Vade would have a high Cool. This guy doesn't handle his emotions too well at all.

However, he always seems to know how to respond in the most effective and devastating way. I'd say his Cool would be at least a 4.

I don't agree that Vade would have a high Cool. This guy doesn't handle his emotions too well at all.

However, he always seems to know how to respond in the most effective and devastating way. I'd say his Cool would be at least a 4.

I don't really see that as being the Cool skill, but I don't disagree that he's no dummy.

<snip>

On the otherhand: Anakin was the choosen one, in my thoughts he had an forcerating of 8 or so... BUT that was reduced to 5-6 cause to the implants and cybernetix (which reduce the force power,as said in the corebooks)

My argument against that would be that being the chosen one doesn't have to equal to being powerful. Being the chosen one just means that you are destined to do something. In his case bring balance to the force. Characters in a story have plot armor so they don't have to OMGWTFBBQ powerful to fulfill their destiny. However Vader was very experience. He's what, 60-ish and has been commanding troops and fighting wars since his late teens.

That said, whatever floats your boat.

Yep, I like that concept. Someone is called Hero for its action or attitude not because runs faster than another one XD

But, considering that the measure of power in a Force Sensitive are Midichlorians, Vader had more of them than Yoda, that was the most wise and powerful Jedi, so (and probably) Vader would have a higher FR than Yoda, but he can still be beaten in a duel or on a starship combat. Force is REALLY powerful, but not unbeatable.

Does a midichlorian count equal power or potential power though? Anakin the boy could barely subconsciously tap some sense and enhance even though he had a higher count than Yoda. Yoda however has 900 something years of training to put what he has to good use. In FFG terms Vader has a high base stat (5), high skill (3) for a made up dice pool of YYYGG while Yoda had a lower but still high base state (4) with a really high skill (5) for a made up dice pool of YYYYG.

However Vader was very experience. He's what, 60-ish and has been commanding troops and fighting wars since his late teens.

During the OT, Vader was only in his early 40s.

huh. Even his force ghost looked high 50ish.

Hayden didn't look that old to me.

I have taken a stab at this using the character generator, but I'm kind of stymied on doing the conversion to NPC Nemesis until I have the FaD CRB. Once I have that, I will take what I have and turn it into a proper NPC, rather than a hard to manage full character.

Like others, I have never got the idea that just because someone is in the movies they have to be the best of the best. One poster who argued with me on this stated that they should be "gods amongst men" and had a downright emotional reaction to people who felt otherwise. However, given what we see Anakin capable of in TCW and some basic extrapolation into Vader, I have made him pretty horrifying. If there is one character who probably should be terrifying, it's him.

As soon as I can get hold of the FaD rules, I will post my version here.

Stating out movie/EU characters is really a matter of preference. You can probably find something in some official source to justify what you come up with. I am re-reading the Thrwn trilogy after twenty years and I had forgot how powerful c'baoth was. Instantly taking control over an entire Star Destroyer crew is pretty dang powerful.

A good and enjoyable analysis. I agree with everything except for this...

Brawn 7

[...]

Vader is strong. That much is obvious. I'm just not sure his brawn is a 7. Chewbacca could easily heft a man and I would think they would have comparable strength. Brawn 5 sounds much more reasonable, especially with cybernetics.

As for Force rating. A 4 or 5 sounds pretty reasonable. His powers would likely be Enhance, Move, Sense, and Bind. Anakin may have been proficient with influence, but Vader probably cares little about such an ability.

As for his skills? You don't need him to make mechanics checks or leadership checks. He has people for the first part and who in the Empire would disobey him?

I would focus on his lightsaber, coercion and athletics skills if he's supposed to be a ground based threat and piloting and gunnery if he's supposed to be a space born threat.

In either case his vigilance and perception should be high, with a middling cool skill.

After SW Rebels i would say that Darth Vader is equivalent at least to a 3k xp character.

Vader really needs to be built with Force and Destiny.

Built as a PC, for example, Vader has the Form 5 tree maxed out (and had form 5 capped as Anakin besides). He blends elements of 2, 3, and 4 into his style thereafter, so he has about half of the Makashi, Soresu, and Ataru trees as well.

Given the classical chart, of 1 for Padawan to 7 for Grandmaster, Vader rates about 6. (How'd Luke win? Vader was holding back out of love for his son. He was not at all going all out in either encounter.) Yoda and Sidious, by contrast, rate 7s. Obi Wan rated 5 (but he had a maxed out Soresu tree, you can be sure, with half the shii cho and ataru trees too) In Dark Empire, Sidious hits 8 force dice. Grandmaster Luke Skywalker also hits 8, maybe even 9 force dice by fate of the jedi, cause he's a fully realized Chosen One...what his dear old dad was supposed to be and never quite got to.

This is my own personal opinion , but while I agree with you guys about his personal characteristics and skills I think the Force Ratings for the masters should be about 3-5 points higher in general.

I'm talking about Jedi Masters, Vader, Palpatine, and others who are supposed to be highly powerful force users.

My reasons for this are:

First of all, you can create a character (or very nearly - I'm not looking at the talent trees atm) with a Force Rating of 3 during character creation using available XP if you use the Seer or Sage trees. Maybe not quite, but more on this in a moment...

Second of all, while I do agree that these characters are NOT gods or uber powerful supreme lords of the universe, people like Palpatine or Yoda should NEVER have an issue with pulling enough pips on their Force Dice. I'm sure someone has done the math on this already, but it should quite literally, be a non-issue. Their Force Rating should be more than high enough to do what they want without ever even possibly botching a force roll. Because while they're not gods, they ARE that powerful. Limitations for these characters are more about their life choices - reflected in mechanics as what Force Power Trees, Skills and Characteristics they've mastered and such, not wether or not they can pull off a power...

Thirdly, in that downloadable adventure for the F&D beginners game, there is a "powerful Dark Side Jedi Master..." with a Force Rating of 3... 3?!? For a Jedi Master who fought countless battles in the clone wars!?! Granted, this is a published adventure that is designed to be beatable by starting characters, but come on... How many people think 3-5 padawan level characters should be able to take out a Jedi Master, even a crappy one? This battle would be more like the Jedi trying to arrest Palpatine in Ep 3. They could have made him a lower level Jedi Knight or even a padawan in the fluff text and everything would have been just fine, but nooo, they had to call him a Jedi Master and General in the clone wars... This - to me - is insane! And it's now a bench mark for the game... A lot of this is mechanics arguing with the narrative, but to graduate to Jedi Knight an individual needs to show a certain aptitude (Power Level) with the force. Yes, there are Jedi Knights and Masters that aren't that great with certain force powers and abilities, but they wouldn't have gained Knight Status without being strong in the force. And hey, I can even believe that an NPC didn't spend much time mastering the Force after attaining knighthood, but a Jedi Master and seasoned Commander with a 3? What's the requirements to be a Jedi Master... To be moderately powerful in the force? Or is it to be able to show some mastery in the force? In my opinion, it's the latter.

Now back to those starting characters... How can you expect to run a campaign of any length when the players can become as powerful as the most powerful characters in the known universe in a pretty short amount of time. Figure an Average XP award of 20. That's likely a bit low based on what I've seen from the published adventures. After ten(ish) game sessions/adventures, that factors to 200 earned XP. If you run a game weekly at that rate, you could pull Jedi Master in about 1-2 Months no problem, and slap down Palpatine after maybe 6 months. Granted that this assumes a bit of Min/Maxing on the part of a player. That is one of the Major issues I had with the old RPG from Wizards. They capped Palpatine and Yoda at level 20, then made it easy for players to hit level 20. So much for how awesome the bad guys power levels were...

Now players are supposed to get XP. They're supposed to gain power fairly quickly, but not THAT quickly... I'm of the opinion that if you've got powerful (NPC) people in your gaming universe, don't be afraid to make them POWERFUL. I haven't seen a game yet where player characters are supposed to become the gods of the universe able to slap down the biggest bad after a few game sessions. With an extended campaign of a couple of years that is very possible with the super powerful villains of the universe sitting on Force Ratings of 6-8.

The best adventures are the ones where the players are totally outclassed by the bad guy and have to get creative to figure out how to win. That's what Luke did. He played on Vader's emotions getting VADER to back off and not kill Luke AND finally coercing him into beating the big bad Palpatine. Luke didn't defeat crap. Vader didn't want to kill Luke and held back during that final lightsaber sequence. Luke was not suddenly some super bad ass swordsman, Vader just wasn't using his full abilities. Then Luke got the two main bad guys to take each other out. That's Narrative Roleplaying. Don't be afraid of making an occasional villain mechanically impossible to beat in specific ways.

If you are worried you're players have a burning need to feel powerful, let them slaughter some Inquisitors after they've gained some ability... At least the narrative around them makes a Force Rating of 3 understandable...

This has turned into a rant... sorry about that. That published adventure really irked me... My personal opinion is that Vader should be around 8-12 Force Rating and that Palpatine should be around 12-15. I haven't done the math or play tested this, so I don't have hard numbers, but these two guys wiped out the Jedi. Give them the power to make people say "Oh S**t, we're in trouble..."

built a character that could double as Vader all it takes is 300xp and approx. 15,000-20,000 credits to gear him out.

I really would like to know why FFG hasn't stated out the main chracters for SW in the first place except for Lando? AoR should have at least contained Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, C3PO, R2D2, Lando, Yoda, Darth & the Emperor not to mention Boba Fett. Any good Star Wars game must have these, especially in the Rebellion era setting books, or it just falls short imo.

I suspect it's mostly because once they, as the game developers, print stats for a character then those become the "canon" stats for that character and thus give people something to compare to. Which will inevitably lead to "I'll build a character that could take Darth Vader"-type scenarios with players in various campaigns.

I really would like to know why FFG hasn't stated out the main chracters for SW in the first place except for Lando?

Because this game is more about your own PCs and what they do.

Unless you're fighting these people, you don't need their stats.

And if you are fighting them, you can make it up according to what you need at the time.

AoR should have at least contained Luke, Leia, Han, Chewbacca, C3PO, R2D2, Lando, Yoda, Darth & the Emperor not to mention Boba Fett. Any good Star Wars game must have these, especially in the Rebellion era setting books, or it just falls short imo.

None of the people you mention even exist in our game and it doesn't fall short in any way.

Actually, it was Palpatine that deliberately used sub-standard materials in the reconstruction of Vader, up to and including his cybernetic limbs. Though it's no longer canon, the novel Rise of the Dark Lord (takes place very soon after RotS) indicates the number of hassles that Vader had to deal with in his new form, things that Palps could have very easily avoided but didn't as a means of asserting his control/dominance over Vader in the wake of his transformation. Being a Sith and (at the time at least) an adherent to the Rule of Two, Palps didn't want Vader to have too many inherent advantages from becoming a cyborg, and instead saw those limitations as a way for his new apprentice to prove his worth as a Sith Lord. Sadly, Vader was too broken psychologically to ever truly be able to overthrow his master for most of his remaining life.

Good point...Here's the thing though--according to Wookieepedia, the right glove was a Mandalorian crushgaunt fitted around a Sith Amulet, which was apparently done to increase Vader's grip strength. Wookieepedia also states in the "Limbs" section that "His mechanical appendages provided him with more strength than that of an ordinary man. He could adjust the servodrivers and pistons in his forearms to provide his hands with enough strength to crush nearly anything they could grasp. With the power of his arms alone, he had the ability to lift an adult being off the ground. When put to use, his mechanical legs would allow him to leap a considerable distance." http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Darth_Vader%27s_armor?action=edit&section=4&editintro=Template%3ALegends_editintro

Granted, all this is in the Legends section, but it's what we've got to go on.

Having said that, Dono, you do bring up some good points--how do you express this in game terms? Using Enhance is definitely a valid way to play this out, but I'd have to go with the cybernetic enhancements for simplicity's sake. Using Enhance could mean that a statted-out Vader might not be able to use the ability if he needed to--unlikely, but still possible.

As far as the substandard materials Palpatine used, I think I might fit those into an Obligation, something like 10 or 15 points of Maintenance. When they come up, Vader needs to get his cybernetics serviced. It doesn't quite cover how Vader's cybernetics affect him, but I think it gets the job done.

I wouldn't even go to a 7 strength. 6 is plenty high. Chewie throws stormtroopers one handed in the comics... which takes more than simply dead-lifting does. (Mind, I'd rate either of them at 6.)

I also am in the Cunning 5 Will 5.

Vader shouldn't be invincible. He is the OT nemesis for the Luke-Han-Leia power trio. But, overall, they themselves aren't all that powerful. Luke is, by the end of the series, a full-fledged Jedi Knight - and he beats Vader saber-vs-saber. I would build him using the standard inquisitor rules and give him a few buffs, but I wouldn't carry it farther than that. Brawn-5, Lightsaber-5, Parry-5, Reflect-5, Drive Back, Force Rating-4, decent buy ins in several force power trees, specialized armor. He can be beaten. It shouldn't be easy, but it should be - with luck and effort - possible.

I don't feel that they should be made stat-gods or essentially be designed as unbeatable. Vader doesn't keep minions around in dangerous situations just so they can be cinematically shot up by the good guys - he keeps them around because, even though he's capable, being outnumbered and/or in a situation where he hasn't set the terms of the meeting could and probably would end badly for him. You only see him doing his I-am-unbeatable routine when he's dealing one-on-one with someone less capable than he is or when he HAS set the terms of the meeting to his advantage (or both).

For that matter, the various Imperial officers that he's always threatening could probably put a blaster shot into him in an unguarded moment if they really wanted to. They don't simply because they know there'd be very unpleasant consequences for plugging the Emperor's right hand man.

Personally, I would probably go with Brawn 6 (1 from cybernetics), Agility 3, Intelect 2, Cunning 4, Willpower 5, Presence 2. I'd actually go as high as Force Rating 5 so that he's a step above the majority of Inquisitors in raw power.

Including armour, his soak would probably be 8. Enough that he can shrug off damage from pistols but heavier weapons would give him cause for concern.

In terms of Force powers, I'd give him Move, Bind and Protect/Unleash. He'd have some upgrades in each, but Bind would probably be the one he's most proficient at.

Skills: 4/5 in Lightsabers, 4 in Piloting, 3 in Coercion and 4 in Discipline.

Talent wise Parry and Reflect seem like auto-includes (although he'd have more Parry than Reflect). Adversary rank 3. I'd actually consider giving him Hawk Bat Swoop so he can rapidly get into range of foes and strike.

I'm thinking of how I'd want Vader to function in my game though - a tanky killing machine that makes the PCs want to run whilst still being beatable with clever planning, creative thinking and use of environment, etc.

Hi, new here

just a thought

It keeps coming up that Vader should have a high brawn just because he picked up a full grown man. I was always under the impression that he did that with help from the Force. And with his bionics they didn't incorperate his shoulders and bicepts which would be neccessary to pick someone up the way he did in ANH.

Alright I've been giving this a lot of thought and if I were to create a Vader character it would look something like this:

Brawn 6

Agility 3

Intellect 3

Cunning 4

Willpower 5

Presence 3

For Specializations he'd have talents from Shien Expert, Aggressor, Shii-Cho Knight, and Tactician (as just his presence in the battlefield would be enough to rally the troops). Force Rating would be 5, Force Powers would be Move, Enhance, Bind, and Sense. I would allow the cap of 6 to be broken if a Force Die is committed for the increase of Brawn in Enhance.