Why do FaD careers only get three skill ranks for free at character creation instead of four? I understand that they get a Force rating for free, however unless you spend more experience invested in either trees with talents that let you use force dice or in actual force powers there's really not much you can do with it in the beginning. Thus I'm not sure I understand why FaD careers start with less when they have even more things to spend on...

Why do FaD careers only get three skill ranks for free at character creation instead of four? I understand that they get a Force rating for free, however unless you spend more experience invested in either trees with talents that let you use force dice or in actual force powers there's really not much you can do with it in the beginning. Thus I'm not sure I understand why FaD careers start with less when they have even more things to spend on...

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head in regards to the main reason why.

Simply put, each FaD Career gives the character Force Rating 1, something that an EotE or AoR character has to spend at least 20 XP to obtain (via buying into the Force Emergent or Force Exile specializations).

And unlike prior Star Wars RPGs, FFG is making a concentrated effort to keep Force users from utterly ruling the roost in terms of what a PC can do, and having less starting skill ranks and less career skills is part of that effort. The other part is indeed having the players be forced to choose how to spend their XP. Force powers can get pretty potent, even those available with just Force Rating 1.

Go through the archives of the internet, and you'll have little trouble finding complaints of how Jedi PCs dominated the games they showed up in, with Saga Edition and D6 leading the pack in terms of "horror stories." Again, FFG is actively trying to avoid having those kinds of stories surface in regards to their game system. It's also part of why they held Force and Destiny as the last of the three core rulebook, so that they could make sure the one character type with a long history of breaking prior Star Wars RPGs (i.e. Force users) didn't pull a repeat performance and break this system. Thus far, early signs are that FFG did good, and that by the time a Force user PC becomes "properly powerful," the mundane PCs are equally powerful in their chosen areas of focus.

Except...what ends up actually happening is, the Jedi needs about 600 XP or so to be Knighted. In my opinion.

Ya know. Figure 5 force powers with 30 points of improvements on each

Half a saber tree.

Enough in the other two career paths to make a beeline for force rating

4 3 3 2 2 2 Characteristics

1 in each career skill and 3 pro dice in lightsaber...

...will run you about 600 XP.

And that's about what it'd take for the TOR era, Clone Wars era...or even the JA/NJO...to Knight you.

It's well known that you need a fair amount of XP to reach some people's ideal of what a Jedi is. That was intentional. The careers in F&D are balanced against all the careers so that all the game books can be used interchangeably.

Well, I'm just saying I wouldn't call 150 XP 'Knight Level.'

It's 'Padawan chosen by his master yesterday.'

And even then, I'd impose some restrictions on how the player could build his padawan. To be Chosen as a Padawan in my vision of Star Wars, you need to have FR 2 and a saber tree unlocked, with at least one parry and one reflect if the tree has 'em. Cause the temple/academy/whatever's not going to let you out of the house till you have that.

I'm running a F&D game where every pc is some kind of force pc with a specialization or two from EoE or AoR. Since they are all force users I am giving them bonus skills, bonus xp since my plan is to make them feel like the last jedi of old. It really depends on your campaign and players in regards to balance. If a player of mine was not a Force user I would give them a free transport ship and/or other equipment that is significantly cooler than the other players. I would also give them same bonus xp. I limit the max skill ranks to 4 and characteristics can'tho above 5 even with cyber ware. Looking for diverse characters not over powered.

Sure. The 600 XP character I had in mind...

Here's an example of what that might look like:

Brawn 3, Agility 2, Intellect 2, Cunning 4, Willpower 3, Presence 2

(Finally had enough to spend on an extra characteristic at 3)

Shien Expert Characteristics:

Defensive Training, Conditioning, Street Smarts, Shien Technique Reflect, Toughened, Parry, Counterstrike, Parry (2), Djem So Deflection, Defensive Stance, Falling Avalanche

Total cost of Shien Expert: (Rank 1, 20. Rank 2, 30, Rank 3, 30, Rank 4, 40 Rank 5, 25=20+40+30+40+25=145

(Basically a Djem So user who has learned to be Cunning)

Shadow Characteristics:

Street Smarts, Mental Fortress, Dodge, Code Breaker, Anatomy Lessons, Force Rating.

5+10+15+20+25+25=100 (Nothing extraneous on the way to Force Rating. Straight shot there.)

Artisan Characteristics:

Solid Repairs, Grit, Inventor, Solid Repairs (2), Force Rating

5+10+15+20+20=70 (Nothing extraneous on the way to Force Rating. Straight shot there)

Skills:

I bought one rank in every career skill (just 1! and an extra 2 of Lightsaber)

I got 7 ranks for free... (Discipline and Vigilance from Human)

Rank 1 skills bought (at 5 XP a shot)
Astrogation, Athletics, Computer, Deception, Education, Mechanics, Skulduggery, Streetwise, Underworld (45) + 25 Lightsaber (+2 proficiency die)=70 on skills

(I actually think more should've been spent on skills...my personal philosophy for skills is that you should have one proficiency dice for every time a career skill or specialization 'repeats' from your list. You're supposed to be really good at those repeated things. But I declined to do that here.

If I followed through with that...
Career skills included Computer, Core Worlds, Deception, Perception, Skulduggery, Stealth
Shien Expert skills included Athletics, Lightsaber, Resilience, Skulduggery
Artisan skills included Astrogation, Computer, Education, Mechanics
Shadow skills included Skulduggery, Stealth, Streetwise, Underworld

(total proficiency dice should add up to Athletics 1, Astrogation 1, Computer 2, Core Worlds 1, Deception 1, Education 1, Perception 1, Resilience 1, Skulduggery 3, Stealth 2, Streetwise 1, Underworld 1. This costs an extra 40 xp to get the advanced skills in the overlapping areas (I would redesign my initial skills to set it up properly))

Now I spent some points on Force Powers. I spent 30 on most of them, with one at 25 and one at 20.

On Enhance

Control: Coordination, Control: Resilience, Force Leap (Horizontal) and Force Leap (Vertical) were added for 30 points

On Foresee
Control: Initiative, Strength, Magnitude, and Control: Defense were purchased. Total of 25.

On Influence
Control: Emotion/Belief, Range, Control: Skills purchased, Total of 30

On Move
Range, Control Hurl, Control Pull purchased. Total of 20

On Sense
Control: Upgrade Difficulty, Control, Sense Thoughts, and Duration purchased. Total of 30.

Total Earned XP for all that?

...600. And he's hardly what I'd call overpowered for having that much! He just has a variety of stuff he can do.

And that's a 'just passed his trials and knighted yesterday' character.

You may be reading a little too much into the "Knight level"-thing. I don't believe FFG ever meant that +150 xp would turn a character into a full-fledged Jedi knight; more likely it was just a designation they used to differenciate between a completely green character and a slightly more seasoned one. And "Knight level" sounds cooler than "slightly more seasoned".

Ooooh, post number 1,000. Go me.

I started my players with

+2 to one stat

+1 to three stats after all starting XP was spent. Then gave all pcs 200 bonus xp towards F&D and a bonus 100xp that could only be spent on a non F&D specialization and non force related skills. But I have always enjoyed running epic games regardless of genre and game system.

Except...what ends up actually happening is, the Jedi needs about 600 XP or so to be Knighted. In my opinion.

Ya know. Figure 5 force powers with 30 points of improvements on each

Half a saber tree.

Enough in the other two career paths to make a beeline for force rating

4 3 3 2 2 2 Characteristics

1 in each career skill and 3 pro dice in lightsaber...

...will run you about 600 XP.

And that's about what it'd take for the TOR era, Clone Wars era...or even the JA/NJO...to Knight you.

Hmmm, that's over what I would consider to be a Jedi Knight. Keep in mind in TCW, Obi-Wan was a Master on the Jedi Council and Anakin was not exactly an ordinary Jedi.

Try Ahsoka (though even she was something of a prodigy). Five powers is overkill. She has Move, Enhance and Sense. We never see her doing anything that extraordinary with Move that I recall. She's far from advanced with it at least. Her Sense investment is also fairly low - the most dramatic thing she gets is visions of the assassination attempt on Padmé which is less of active Sense and more GM plot twist as described in the side-bar in the power. Primarily she seems to have dumped a tonne of experience into Enhance and have a good investment in the Lightsabre talents. And she can reasonably do everything we see her do with FR2. And Obi Wan in TPM is a Padawan and can be reasonably built with just FR1 and only minor investment in powers.

I'd also add regarding your sample build, that you don't need a point in a Skill to be able to do that. A character can perfectly well fly a ship or try to con someone with no points invested in those skills whatsoever. You need Skill points for things you are notably good at, not just things you sometimes do. There are plenty of starting characters who are professional mechanics or soldiers and they don't have more than two points in the relevant skills. I think you are getting into the mindset of a Jedi being a super-person who is naturally good at everything.

I know you said, in your opinion and I respect that. The above is in mine.

Yeah, there was already the whole pissing match about how "Knight Level" didn't reflect a PC being a Jedi Knight during the Beta test period, and that it should have been called "Advanced Level" or "Padawan Level" or some other title that the detractors claimed wouldn't be as 'misleading.'

In short, "Knight Level" is simply short-hand for "experienced PCs with better gear" and is nothing more than a codified method to allow GMs to start their groups off more capable/competent than is typical for this game.

As others have noted, I honestly do think the perception is skewed on what a Jedi Knight should be due to the prequels and TCW focusing heavily on the "superstars" of the Jedi Order, not unlike how a lot of televised professional wrestling focuses heavily on the big-name talent when there are hundreds of guys busting their butts and taking a literal beating for what amounts to gas money. Anakin was potentially one of the most powerful Force users in the history of the galaxy, Obi-Wan and Ahsoka benefited from a life spent training to be a Jedi from when they were tiny children (something your typical FaD PC does not have the benefit of), and then you've got Yoda and Sidious who are the top dogs of their respective orders, with Mace Windu and Count Dooku being vastly experienced individuals to account for their high degree of competence. If anything, Kanan Jarrus is probably a better reflection of what your "average" Jedi Knight is capable of; only reason Kanan's not considered a Jedi Knight is that he's not gone through the proper trials.

Luke himself is a prodigy in terms of Jedi training, not really getting much more than an extended crash course in terms of training and learning the rest through "on the job training," and he's certainly no powerhouse when it comes to what we see him do on-screen in the original trilogy. At best he's got Sense, Enhance for Force Leap with the first two Control Upgrades, and then a bit of Move with a Range Upgrade, a Strength Upgrade, and maybe a Magnitude Upgrade; his vision of his friends in danger was probably more of a narrative thing to give Luke's player a hook to get back into the action than him actually having the Foresee power. And yet, by the end of RotJ, he's a Jedi Knight, with Yoda noting the last test for Luke was to once again confront Vader, this time with the full knowledge of who was behind the mask and thus ready for the burden of his destiny. I'd peg Luke at around 450 awarded XP by the time he fights Vader in RotJ, figuring that he started with Warrior/Starfighter Ace, moved into Shii-Cho Knight for some basic lightsaber training and perhaps later snagged Shien Expert for the Reflect talents, plus another rank in Parry and a second Defensive Training to help him survive against Vader with the assumption that if he can't avoid getting hit, then he might as well try to tank as much of those hits via Parry as he possibly could, as well as having Shien Technique so that if he took a critical injury that made Brawn checks harder, he could switch over to using his Cunning instead. Skillwise, he probably focused heavily on Lightsaber, followed by Discipline for those fear checks that Vader generated simply by virtue of being Vader, and then settling for one skill rank in the majority of the other skills he needed, such as Piloting, Gunnery, Athletics and Coordination, with Enhance to boost up those last two and maybe even his Piloting checks.

Over in the Beta sub-forums, there were Knight Level builds of Obi-Wan Kenobi circa Episode 1 and Kanan Jarrus circa Spark of Rebellion that covered the bulk of what you saw those characters due in the course of those movies, though with Obi-Wan a caveat was given the he most likely earned & spent XP in between scenes of TPM. and Kanan that abilities he demonstrated later in Rebels were added the same way; he didn't him using Move in Spark of Rebellion, so he didn't need to have it in his stat block at that point.

But then I think another part of the issue for some folks is that if they're playing a 'saber monkey, they don't want to have to dive into other specializations that don't offer Parry or Reflect in order to increase their Force Rating. Currently, I'm playing a Warrior/Shii-Cho Knight that's at 350 awarded XP, having just recently delved into Niman Disciple since the character's big focus is being really capable with a lightsaber and the spec does (eventually) offer an increase to Force Rating, which will put my guy at FR 2 after another 150 or so XP (already planning for detours in the spec), but I could just as easily have picked up Force Emergent and then made straight for that Force Rating talent at far less XP than it'd cost to go through Niman Disciple.

I find it interesting how in D&D a starting wizard has almost nothing, and can only cast a few spells from a limited list, and cant do anything really amazing, and no on asks any questions

But even suggest it's OK that a "Knight" character star with only FR1,a lightsaber, ajd a few basic force powers and talents, and everyone loses their frelling minds...

Unfortunately people do have certain preconceived ideas of what constitutes a "Jedi" due to various media, as Dono mentioned. The nice thing about this game is that it allows people to adjust it for their expectations. 150, 300, 600, 1000 XP. Choose what you want and build accordingly. So long as everyone playing starts with the same XP it's all good.

If I run D&d I start ayers at 5th and they are Gestault characters with two classes. I give a bonus 2 feats every level up to 7th and then 1 every level after. Stats start at 18,17,16,14,13,12 and at 4th,8th,14th and 18th get +1 to two stats and at level 10 amd 20 plus 1 to all stats

Vampire dark ages I start elder characters at 8th generation.

I think it's all what the FM/DM/Storyteller and players want the campaign to be. This system is so much better than d20 for that

Running my group now at 650xp roughly and one of the players said it felt very jedi like so getting that from my players means it's all good.

Ah. In my opinion, you're not a master of anything till you've capped the talent tree.

A Master might have double that much XP, with an FR of at least 5, and several talent trees full on capped.

Obi Wan, by my way of thinking, has an FR of about 5 (he's a Master, after all), and 3 Saber talent trees...Capped Soresu, and half of the Ataru and Shii Cho trees.

Ah. In my opinion, you're not a master of anything till you've capped the talent tree.

A Master might have double that much XP, with an FR of at least 5, and several talent trees full on capped.

Obi Wan, by my way of thinking, has an FR of about 5 (he's a Master, after all), and 3 Saber talent trees...Capped Soresu, and half of the Ataru and Shii Cho trees.

Well, it's obviously subjective but I think you might want to double-check exactly what a character with that level of investment would be capable of. They would be pretty horrifyingly powerful. I see no evidence in the canon sources that Obi-Wan is so powerful, not at any stage.

Horrifyingly powerful is also subjective.

See, to my way of thinking, FR 5 is the minimum to qalify to be on the council at all. So all the council members have that. At least. Some, Like Dooku, Mace, Anakin, will have more. Yoda and Sidious will have 7s. By Dark Empire, Sidious will have 8. Grandmaster Luke will someday get all the way to 9.

Does anyone have 10 or better? As a matter of fact, yes. The ones of Mortis. Son and Daughter have 10, Aboleth and Father have 11.

And then there's the 'One with the force' ability, which gives you an extra force die (or 2?) for a while.

Those force ratings are pretty ridiculous. I think of a knight as typically have FR3, which is itself really powerful. If you've invested a lot of xp into Move you can be pulling a Star Destroyer from orbit with a really good FR3 roll

Horrifyingly powerful is also subjective.

See, to my way of thinking, FR 5 is the minimum to qalify to be on the council at all. So all the council members have that. At least. Some, Like Dooku, Mace, Anakin, will have more. Yoda and Sidious will have 7s. By Dark Empire, Sidious will have 8. Grandmaster Luke will someday get all the way to 9.

Does anyone have 10 or better? As a matter of fact, yes. The ones of Mortis. Son and Daughter have 10, Aboleth and Father have 11.

And then there's the 'One with the force' ability, which gives you an extra force die (or 2?) for a while.

Wow! Luckily for me FFG disagrees. You are far and away on the other end of the scale from myself. The only way you are going to get Force ratings at such levels is through exorbitant amounts of XP (RAW) or by just handing it out (such as in the case of NPCs).

Yes. But GM Luke can pull Star Destroyers out of the sky reliably...and do several other things too. Like turn off Black Holes. (yes, that happened...) Kyp turned one off too, but he's about FR 6, so he just got really lucky that roll.

And yeah, sure. Yoda and Sidious are packing 6, maybe 7k XP. GM Luke is packing something like 10K. I haven't actually mathed out what GM Luke looks like with his FR 9 and all saber trees capped and all force trees capped and and and. And his piloting and everything else. I'm sure it'll turn out fairly ridiculous.

But that's also how you explain things to players that say 'why aren't I like GM Luke?' "Well, son, he's a 10000 XP character. You have...600. So yeah, you're not gonna be him for a LOOOONG time."

I start all force users at force rating two and they can max out at 3 until they get to 750 XP and then they can get force rating 4. When they reach 1500pxp and master level then they can get 5 and that is the most a player can achieve. If they get access to more trees with force rating talent after reaching 5 then those become dedication instead

Horrifyingly powerful is also subjective.

See, to my way of thinking, FR 5 is the minimum to qalify to be on the council at all. So all the council members have that. At least. Some, Like Dooku, Mace, Anakin, will have more. Yoda and Sidious will have 7s. By Dark Empire, Sidious will have 8. Grandmaster Luke will someday get all the way to 9.

Does anyone have 10 or better? As a matter of fact, yes. The ones of Mortis. Son and Daughter have 10, Aboleth and Father have 11.

And then there's the 'One with the force' ability, which gives you an extra force die (or 2?) for a while.

The "horrifying" bit is subjective, yes. One person might like something another think it's awful. But my suggestion to check what your stats actually mean is not. Assuming that your investment in Force Powers is remotely comparable to your investment in other talents (and it would be a very odd build that was so lop-sided that you didn't have similar investment in powers), the FR5 would let you do things like reliably throw a YT-1300 at people. With that level of power, you stand a good chance of being able to throw several! I mean you might not hit anything with them because you have to make a pretty difficult ranged attack so it's not necessarily any more dangerous than someone with equivalent investment and good quality weapons but still, you have what you call your "minimum to qualify for the council" as being able to do more than we ever saw anyone do in the movies, I think. The system allows you to create things like the Force-wielders in the Mortis arc from TCW, but the chances of a player getting up there are remote and there's no reason to stat a Jedi Master as that powerful just because you think FR5 should equal "master" or Yoda should have FR7.

I don't see why you would start with arbitrary numbers and say knight / master must equal this, rather than start from what we see on screen and build backwards to find what numbers they should have. The latter approach will give you things that reflect the Star Wars setting as portrayed. The former will not.

Yes. But GM Luke can pull Star Destroyers out of the sky reliably...and do several other things too. Like turn off Black Holes. (yes, that happened...) Kyp turned one off too, but he's about FR 6, so he just got really lucky that roll.

And yeah, sure. Yoda and Sidious are packing 6, maybe 7k XP. GM Luke is packing something like 10K. I haven't actually mathed out what GM Luke looks like with his FR 9 and all saber trees capped and all force trees capped and and and. And his piloting and everything else. I'm sure it'll turn out fairly ridiculous.

But that's also how you explain things to players that say 'why aren't I like GM Luke?' "Well, son, he's a 10000 XP character. You have...600. So yeah, you're not gonna be him for a LOOOONG time."

Okay, well wherever you're getting this stuff about "Grand Master Luke" and reliably pulling down Star Destroyers, I'm guessing it's some non-canon EU stuff that I'm not familiar with. Definitely not how I would play things but I guess that's a matter of taste. The nice thing is that the rules system is robust enough that whilst most of us would find ourselves playing within the bounds of what we see in the movies and TCW, you as GM can actually do the stuff you're talking about if you really want to run your game that way. Which is a pretty remarkable testament to how good this system is, I suppose - that it can be so well balanced in the normal range of play but still open-ended enough that it can handle the excesses of the EU for those that want it.

This whole "Knight level" thing is a touchy subject.

My advice? Stop trying to calculate what it would take to be on the same level as what a Jedi is capable of doing in the films or The Clone Wars . That way lies madness. And why would an FaD PC be on the same level as Kenobi, Wendu and so on? Your PCs aren't Jedi, they're Force-sensitive adults who don't have the benefit of an order to grow up under, striving to learn and understand their amazing powers while not drawing the attention of the Empire. Starting off below the skill level of a Padawan during the Clone Wars (i.e. Ahsoka) makes plenty of sense.

If you're playing in the Dark Times or Age of Rebellion yes.

What if you're setting it in the Clone Wars? What if you're trying to account for Galen Marek's Shenanigans? Or what if you're accounting for the TOR MMO? Vitiate on Ziost? Youtube that one. That's about FR 8, I'd say. Or maybe you'd like to set it during the Vong Wars. Or even Fate of the Jedi against the Lost Tribe. Maybe you wanna go Legacy Era.

Power levels of Force users are going to vary broadly between those eras and the absolute worst time ever to be a Force Sensitive.

Remember that this FR9 GM Luke Skywalker is Luke Skywalker around 43-44 ABY. You keep harping on Luke in 0 ABY. Things have changed. Drastically.