Hello, all. I'm new to the game, but I've been a fan of roleplaying and Star Wars all my life. So, somehow, my nearly 25 years worth of roleplaying experience has never delved into a Star Wars themed game. As such, I'm very excited to be playing in a FF Star Wars game, using all the books in collaboration, and of course, I'd like to start with a Jedi character. However, not knowing the game that well, I'd like to seek what help may be garnered from those of you with more experience in the game than I have. Let me give you my character concept, and tell you how I've built it, so far.

As for the background for my character, we're playing in a campaign based some time after the battle of Endor. My character is a force sensitive prodigy two generations removed from the last Jedi in his family. His father was force sensitive, but given the delicate state of affairs of the galaxy, he neither pursued Jedi training, nor advocated my own training. In fact, he remained secretive about our family's gifts, playing them off as tricks of the imagination, when something was noticed in relation to it. Before my character left his home planet for a distant mining colony, his father gave him a small box containing his grandfather's effects, feeling that, having lost the ability to watch over and control the boy's environment to some degree, he should be forthcoming with the history that may well endanger his life. This is how the boy comes to learn of his force heritage, and come to own one of his grandfather's old lightsabers.

While on the mining planet, my character developed a relationship with a woman he met there, and they became engaged. As such, he fashioned a token of his love out of a crystal that he had found while mining back home, which had seemed to call to him. Also, he had met a mentor figure who was secretly a Jedi in hiding, and who took him under his wing, wishing to guide his understanding of the force, lest it develop into a danger to himself, or others. The mentor eventually made arrangements to transport himself, my character, and his beloved off planet, to pursue Jedi training at Luke's new academy. While on the mining colony planet, the Empire had arrived, under the pretense of training able bodied miners and locals to protect the colony. As such, they were rounded up, and sequestered, while being "assessed" to determine their abilities. This was actually a ruse, and while everyone capable of defending the colony was under their thumb, Empire forces wiped out everyone else in the colony, including my character's beloved. After discovering this, the hatred of the Empire was set in stone for my character, as he retrieved the crystal (eventually to be a saber crystal, of course) from his betrothed's corpse. The mentor outed himself as a Jedi while covering for my character's escape, as he was smuggled offworld by the pirates that had previously been planned as the exit for the three, now only for my character. Having made his way to Skywalker's new Jedi Academy, he plead his case to be trained as a Jedi, but found Skywalker hesitant to train him, given the volatility of his feelings towards the Empire. Fearing he was too easy a loss to the dark side, his training was all but halted. During this time, a new master emerged, and offered to train my character, with promises that, while Master Skywalker's training seemed too slowly paced to give him a chance to cause any satisfying damage to the Empire, this new master offered a very real chance to strike at Imperial forces wherever they may be. Choosing this route, my character left the academy, and this is where we begin our game.

My GM started us off at step one, so I have a Human, with the Favor debt gaining 10xp. I built my character with 2 in each ability, except Cunning and Willpower, which are both 3. I have put the bulk of my xp into Sentinel: Shien Expert, planning to go down both sides of the specialization. My character has a volatile temper (Think Timothy Olyphant in pretty much any character he plays...Seth Bullock of Deadwood, Raylan Givens of Justified), which he regrets, and wishes to control. He's been working towards seeking peace with his study of the Jedi way. As such, this has tempered his combat style to be mostly defensive, with opportunistic offensive skills mixed in. I'm kind of going for a mix between the characters I mentioned, and Obi-wan, if that makes sense? Anyway, I've built the character as best I could to achieve this, but I fear I may have overlooked vital opportunities to make the character potent, within the build. We've gotten a few preliminary sessions, during "basic training", as the GM refers to it, and we've gained some XP during those sessions, so I have a bit extra to spend (About 180 xp, grand total). Also, with this being a brand new system for all involved, the GM has granted us leave to change the character builds to accomplish the characters we want, for the first few sessions. This will come to an end, as basic training does.

So, long winded, and overly verbose as it may be, here we come to my question to those of you willing to help: How would you build a character that you wished to be potent with a saber, and eventually quite strong with the force (I'd like to get to a force rating of 3 or 4, optimally), focusing mostly on defensive styles, with a bit of offense thrown in, and geared towards mastering his emotions. I had a concept of an end result Jedi who was very much like the weather, calm, but capable of extremely violent shows of force, at times. To this end, I envision a resulting character along the lines of Mace Windu.

Thanks in advance to those of you who toughed it out, and stuck with this post long enough to reach the crux of my query, and can offer some advice or guidance!

A good second spec would be either the niman disciple or the protector. The benefits of niman is that it will give you 3 ranks of both parry and reflect as well as 2 ranks of defensive training, the drawback is that you will have to pay 10xp for the niman technique which you will not be able to use. The protector on the other hand gives you the circle of shelter talent as well as some medical training but you only get 1 additional parry and reflect talent. Both of these specs would allow someone who is primarily a user of shien to increase their force rating as well as their light saber defensive abilities.

You should really consider spending more of your starting XP on Characteristics, lifting 1 more up to a 3, it is much harder after character creation, requiring the purchasing of dedication talents. there is also a lot to spend XP on for a Force User so having an innate ability in general skills can be very helpful.

As to which Characteristic to increase it depends on your view of the character, Agility or Brawn will help getting into, through and out of combat. Intellect will give you more ground to RP the character learning. Presence if you want to be more capable during social encounters.

If you did choose intellect then Soresu Defender is a super defensive Spec to go with your story.

To choose another 2-3 careers can really create unique characters, Shien and Soresu easily cover the defensive parts, what do you plan for the others. so it's sometimes hard unless you have a clear secondary focus. Do you want to be sneaky, friendly, coercive, an explorer, a knowledge guy, a pilot, a leader, the list goes on! Your not going to get everything from every tree either.

Yeah... potent with lightsaber, 3-4 Force Points... "You want the Force... well, the Force costs, and right here is where you start paying." Yeah, you're aiming for a lot of xp. But anyhoo...

First of all, I'd raise 3 Characteristics to 3. You could even raise 4, but this might be too tight. As stated above, raising Characteristics it's hell of difficult in game. I'd raise willpower and two others, which will depend on your plan of choices.

Now for the specs:

If you want to use a strong and solid defensive style, Soresu is your form: It has 4 Parries, 3 Reflects and both Improved versions. It lets you use Intelect, but if you don't plan on using the 2 special moves (Defensive Circle and Strategic Form), you don't need INT 3. They're solid talents, though (Defensive Circle was crap in the Beta but has received a nice boost).

Now is where you get to choose. You should aim for another 'saber form, or for a high FR.

If you plan on having a FR of about 4 or 5, I wouldn't recommend choosing another Form tree. Yes, Niman has a Force Rating increase, but getting there will cost you a minimum of 130 xp, and this is taking the shortest path and not counting the cost of the tree itself. I would instead recommend Sage or Seer. Sage is overall cheaper if you want both Force dice, though Seer has better talents IMHO (Natural Mystic FTW). With any of these two, you'll be having a potential 3 FR. For your 4th Force die, you could choose the one you didn't choose before if you want a potential 5 Fr, or any of the trees which has a cheap +FR talent, like Sensitive emergent, Protector (in career), Artisan (nice if you chose to raise your Intelect), if you're okay with FR 4.

If you prefer to be stronger in the saber ways and more average in the Force, then you should really go Niman. It would add 3 Parries and 3 Reflects to your arsenal, plus two nice special moves (Draw Closer and Force Assault), plus a potential (though expensive) +1 FR. Try to get a Dantari crystal and you'll be very good at recovering strain when you use Draw Closer (thus be able to use your Parries/Reflects more often). If in need of a third Force die, choose any tree you like (tip: Emergent is always in-career).

When you choose Force Powers, try to have in mind whether you're going to commit a lot of dice, or you need them uncommited (to use Draw Closer, e.g.). If you're going to have most of your dice commited, it's probably wise to not choose too many powers that need a lot of pips to be rolled, at least during combat. However, it's never bad to have some points spent in Enhance, Foresee, Sense, Influence, etc, since they're soooo useful in every situation.

These were my thoughts. Right now I'm playing a defensive fighter who is Soresu/Artisan/Shien. I have only FR 2, but is more or less enough for what I want. I'm not very good at recovering strain, but on the other hand everytime I don't attack (when I use Strategic Form, e.g.) it only costs me 1 strain to use Reflect/Parry. So mostly, I force enemies to attack me and prevent damage nice, with the occasional damage dealt out of turn, while the guy with the rifle and the Ataru do the job.

Great advice so far, guys. Thanks!

I plan to end up with around a 4 force rating. I may take the cheap force rating from Force Emergent, if it's always considered to be in any F&D career. So that means it only costs 20 xp to add the specialization, and does it automatically grant you a +1 force rating?. Do I understand that correctly? If so, that would help tremendously for how I've got planned for the character to develop.

I suppose I didn't mention it, but Niman Disciple was my second specialization choice. If not, second, at least included somewhere in the mix. I had considered Sage or something of the like. I've since revamped my character to have 3 Brawn, Cunning, and Willpower, and 2 in all other abilities, with Niman in mind to be used in the future.

That leaves a final specialization (I have always kinda had 4 specs in mind for the build...I just didn't know which ones, lol). Depending on whether or not my understanding of Force Sensitive Exile is correct, the final spec would really depend on what role I want my character to function best as on the team. As it's shaping up, Seer would work well, as well as Artisan or Shadow, and possibly Sage. That's a really tough decision. But first things first...do I understand the Force Emergent thing correctly? Keep in mind, I don't know where to look in all the books, yet. I have only bought Force and Destiny, so far. Where would I find the career and specialization for Force Emergent?

You have not got it quite correct. Force sensitive exile and force sensitive emergent grant force rating one when you purchase them. Therefore if you already have a force rating then they give you nothing when initially purchased. They do not give you plus one force rating. So to get force racing two or more you must go down a talent tree.

What Richardbuxton said. If I suggested being an emergent is because you can reach the FR talent fairly quick, but not for 20 xp. It will cost you 75xp plus what to pay to purchase the tree. That's about the cheapest you can get from an in-careere tree. Somepeople, though, prefer to pick a more expensive path to the FR in exchange for a tree that has cool or necessary talents. I myself prefer Exile over Emergent, due to this, but if you're starving for FR...

Also, I would suggest you ask your GM how long is he planning to keep the game running, and about how many xp would that be, more or less. I think you're aiming for something a bit costly - 4 careers, including 2 Saber Form ones, and 4 FR is quite a big amount of xp, and if you wait till your 4th career to pick the Spec fitting to your role, well... you might spend some time waiting.

Yep, Jereru. You can spend 300xp on just getting all the talents in a single tree, and that's not covering skill ranks and Force Powers. Some characters never leave their starting tree. When I'm looking to combine talent trees I don't look at getting the whole tree, just a part. Sometimes it's the top couple of rows, other times it's straight down one side to a particular talent. This way you can combine certain parts of different trees to create a new thing (it's actually something FFG do themselves when making talent trees for the splat books, just look at how the Politico tree from EotE got split in 2 then enhanced to create the Ambassador and Agitator from AoR)

Between all the contributions to this thread we have mentioned almost every Specialisation there is! And there are so many cool ideas from it. You probably need to decide what core competency you want to start with (pick 1 skill or talent and use it as a theme) then think about your short term goals, what's 100xp earned going to get you? Then have a broad idea of the final character that will be retiring to a nice quiet ranch on Corellia when all this is over.

Remember that the things you choose early you get to use the most, the later things hardly at all. Sometimes it's better to just pick 1 tree that's got your attention and enjoy playing that character, then later on build a different PC entirely differently.

I have this pipe dream character (that I'll probably use as an NPC just to get a chance to play it) that can not possibly do what I want until it's spent 600xp! It's a Pathfinder Beastrider who has a mental bond with his mount. Trouble is you can only ride Silhouette 2 or greater beasts, and to bond to a silhouette 2 you need FR 4, it's expensive!

So the moral is that this system is amazing for creating deep intricate PC's but it's not Pokemon, your never gona catch them all!

Well, the concept of the game is that we're been gathered as standout heroes...sort of a hand selected group, and then we're to be trained from there, before we ever actually START the storyline. So we've got a lot of XP coming our way, as well as a trial run for the players to learn how to use their abilities in what amounts to a play test, since none of us have played the game before. So I was planning on having a lot of XP to use before my character actually starts out in the "real world" of the system. Also, I have already chosen some talents that I don't need, and tried to cherry pick from the specs that I've mingled together, so far. According to the plan I have right now, I'll have a FR 2 by the end of the next session (we're getting about 20 to 25 xp per session, with the potential for 2 or 3 bonus XP here and there), and I can stand to have an FR 3 for most of the game. FR 4 was kind of an end game goal. I figured I'd focus on my role in the group and gain FR 3 to fulfill it, and then by the time we've gone for a while, I'll have learned where I need to put my points to help fill in the deficiencies in the group, and I'll focus on whatever is needed to make that happen, from there. And this thread has helped me tremendously. Thank you all for your contributions!

*Edit* For those interested, I've changed the character to what I BELIEVE will be the final incarnation. I started with Sentinel: Shien Expert, purchased the Force Sensitive Exile spec, and plan to purchase both the Shadow and Artisan specs, in that order. The character will have specially chosen talents from each of those trees, with the less useful and unnecessary ones left unpurchased, or to be purchased later, if enough spare xp allows. This will give me a character that is solid in combat, and helpful in stealth operations, as well as (eventually) mechanical and starship backup. And it will end up with a FR 4, once the price has been paid. I have another plan for a similar build, but with Niman Disciple as the second specialization, and may try that in a later game...although I'm hesitant to play such similar characters back to back.