High "level" games...

By GoblynByte, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

The PCs in my campaign are beginning to reach total XP values greater than 500. I haven't run into any issues. I mean, they still succeed and fail at various tasks with pleasing and exciting regularity. But I'm beginning to wonder: has anyone run into a situation where it just gets less exciting? The wonderful die mechanic seems to buffer against some of that, but to what degree? Have any of you reached levels at which things just become too easy without increasing the difficulties to gonzo levels to keep pace?

My group is at 800. Still going strong.

My players are at an XP level similar to yours, but they spend it very oddly. One evenly distributes amongst skills and talents, one is purposefully spending it to be (and I quote) "the most useless character, ever", and one has focused extensively on piloting-related skills and talents. None of them are " beardy min max".

Just yesterday they failed two social skill checks. Very important checks that would have revealed the return of a very powerful and vengeful nemesis to the characters. Of course the players have it figured, but that doesn't help their PCs, and these guys are vet RPers that know how to handle the difference between IC and OOC.

This game facilitates the GM, too. Even uber-focused Wookiee Marauder combat wombats can be useless.

Edited by Alekzanter

My group is about 725-ish or thereabouts, and while everyone in the group is going "Yeah, we can see the end of the line coming up", the consensus is that nobody is anywhere near done with their characters yet.

I don't know when we're going to retire these characters, but even at almost a 1000 xp, things are still a challenge, and it doesn't need the GM to tweak things to keep it that way.

It seems that usually the group want to try a different style of campaign before the game "breaks". Heck some character concepts may not have a Force Rating of 3 until they have 5-600xp, and finally be able to get protect/unleash.

Or if a character wants both Signature Abilities for their character then need to buy at least half the bottom row of 2 talent trees in their career. That's probably a 5-600 xp investment, and I'm sure the player wants to have time to enjoy that character afterwards.

There is also such a wide variety of Specialisations that it's easy to think of 3-4 that have parts you want your character to have, then add skill ranks or force powers on top and there is just so much to spend XP on.

Or if a character wants both Signature Abilities for their character...

I think you can only pick one...?

Or if a character wants both Signature Abilities for their character...

I think you can only pick one...?

I don't believe so, but I could be wrong.

Or if a character wants both Signature Abilities for their character...

I think you can only pick one...?

I don't believe so, but I could be wrong.

Hmm, the wording is a bit confusing, but you could be right. Looks like you can only attach one signature ability to a tree, but if you had two trees you could take both signature abilities. So two appears to be the max, because "A character can only acquire a signature ability from his career." (Fly Casual p36)

Or if a character wants both Signature Abilities for their character...

I think you can only pick one...?

I don't believe so, but I could be wrong.

Nothing prevents it that I know of. The text states that you can only acquire signature abilities from your own career (so that's de facto two maximum unless they publish more); that you can only attach one signature ability to the bottom of any given talent tree; that the ability cannot be removed or attached to a different tree.

That's about it. So long as you have more than one Specialization with the right bottom-row talents purchased, you can have more than one Signature ability.

My group is about 725-ish or thereabouts, and while everyone in the group is going "Yeah, we can see the end of the line coming up", the consensus is that nobody is anywhere near done with their characters yet.

I'm part of this group, and for the most part it works fine. Our characters mostly diversified, so nobody is so good at one thing that it breaks things. The only exception that's starting to cause me a bit of trouble is one player who's concentrated on combat quite a bit and has a soak up to like 9 now, when everybody else is floating around 3 or 4.

I could see how if the characters in a high point group specialize it could screw things up. If everybody spreads out and diversifies then things flow along really well.

I am curious to see how the dynamics change in upcoming games as our sage/healer just got the force healing ability up to the point where they can reliably heal at least 6 (soon to be 7) a pop, and usually more. With a force rating of 3 they have reasonable chance of being able to heal multiple people at once or at range. That could be a game changer.

I'm at 1135... the campaign that I was in effectively died for a bunch of reasons but none of them involved us feeling like we finished our characters. My GM sorta revived the campaign with me being the only player. I was really not happy about doing that and kept putting it off until he did that Dad Guilt Thing that he must have majored in... and then I made the mistake of having fun and admitting it... And so my character has begun to embark on the second part of her story where she is coming to terms with the awakening Force within her after spending her life believing that the Jedi had let the galaxy down.

Re Signature abilities: You can only attach one signature ability to any given talent tree from a given career. If you have 2 talent trees from your career you can attach a signature ability to each (once you've got the appropriate 25 xp talents.

On topic: the edge group i played with had no less than 600 earned xp and we didn't feel overpowered. One of the posters here has a 2600 xp game and for a while i doubted it would be interesting at that level. When I had some free time i boosted my longtime character to that level and sure enough I thought she still looked fun to play. I even found myself wanting a few more specializations before i'd consider her complete (i ended up w/ bodyguard, merc soldier, politico, squadron leader, marauder, and sharpshooter). Don't get me wrong, it looks stupid powerful and probably is, but she can't do everything. She retains her core focus of combat, but can't fly as well as a pilot, can't talk as well as a charmer, can't really fix or computer at all, still only has a 2 willpower, has zero ranks in more than 1/2 the skills on the skill list, etc. Doing this experiment changed my mind about how high one can go in the system and makes me think that if you don't have players who are trying to "win" then you could go 3000+ xp and still have fun.

I'm at 1135... the campaign that I was in effectively died for a bunch of reasons but none of them involved us feeling like we finished our characters. My GM sorta revived the campaign with me being the only player. I was really not happy about doing that and kept putting it off until he did that Dad Guilt Thing that he must have majored in... and then I made the mistake of having fun and admitting it... And so my character has begun to embark on the second part of her story where she is coming to terms with the awakening Force within her after spending her life believing that the Jedi had let the galaxy down.

Hmmmm, well - if you're resentful of Jedi and have burgeoning Force powers, there is another path... Just sayin' ;)

My character is almost at 600xp and I still haven't got him to the end of the four careers, nor the three force powers and the skills are not that great either.

Plus i still want to pick up either advisor or seer depending on if he becomes part of the establishment or an independant

That's going to get over 1k xp and at the end of it he will be a Kevin J Anderson level Mary Sue.

About a third of my group of 15 is over 1K xp and the majority of the rest are 500+. The campaign started back in September of last year and we're still going strong with 2 main sessions most weekends and a midweek alt session. It hasn’t been too bad at all. The most significant challenge to balancing encounters is the fact that every session can have a wildly different composition. Despite that, we’re having an absolute blast! One thing I've done to keep things challenging is to increase the power of recurring villains right along with the PCs.


This system’s narrative dice and emphasis on cinematic action and RP has allowed parties with wildly different XP levels to still function amazingly well together. Every session, we reserve one spot for guests for every 5 members, so we almost always have lower level characters (created with 150 earned xp) along for the ride. Quite often, these newer characters are voted MVP or MIRP (most interesting roleplayer) at the end of a session, which really highlights how much people can contribute despite vast differences in XP. This is one of the main reasons FFG’s SWRPG is my absolute favorite RPG game.

Edited by verdantsf

I'm at 1135... the campaign that I was in effectively died for a bunch of reasons but none of them involved us feeling like we finished our characters. My GM sorta revived the campaign with me being the only player. I was really not happy about doing that and kept putting it off until he did that Dad Guilt Thing that he must have majored in... and then I made the mistake of having fun and admitting it... And so my character has begun to embark on the second part of her story where she is coming to terms with the awakening Force within her after spending her life believing that the Jedi had let the galaxy down.

Hmmmm, well - if you're resentful of Jedi and have burgeoning Force powers, there is another path... Just sayin' ;)

I know that but she doesn't. She knows what most people know. She believes that they're still out there and that's why the Empire is so paranoid.

She'd be a terrible sith, anyway. She doesn't have and has no interest in ever having a light saber and her roots as a doctor have her being very much a do no harm kind of person.

I'm at 1135... the campaign that I was in effectively died for a bunch of reasons but none of them involved us feeling like we finished our characters. My GM sorta revived the campaign with me being the only player. I was really not happy about doing that and kept putting it off until he did that Dad Guilt Thing that he must have majored in... and then I made the mistake of having fun and admitting it... And so my character has begun to embark on the second part of her story where she is coming to terms with the awakening Force within her after spending her life believing that the Jedi had let the galaxy down.

Hmmmm, well - if you're resentful of Jedi and have burgeoning Force powers, there is another path... Just sayin' ;)

I know that but she doesn't. She knows what most people know. She believes that they're still out there and that's why the Empire is so paranoid.

She'd be a terrible sith, anyway. She doesn't have and has no interest in ever having a light saber and her roots as a doctor have her being very much a do no harm kind of person.

Hey, the darkest characters are the ones doing evil for Good Reasons.

I'm at 1135... the campaign that I was in effectively died for a bunch of reasons but none of them involved us feeling like we finished our characters. My GM sorta revived the campaign with me being the only player. I was really not happy about doing that and kept putting it off until he did that Dad Guilt Thing that he must have majored in... and then I made the mistake of having fun and admitting it... And so my character has begun to embark on the second part of her story where she is coming to terms with the awakening Force within her after spending her life believing that the Jedi had let the galaxy down.

Hmmmm, well - if you're resentful of Jedi and have burgeoning Force powers, there is another path... Just sayin' ;)

I know that but she doesn't. She knows what most people know. She believes that they're still out there and that's why the Empire is so paranoid.

She'd be a terrible sith, anyway. She doesn't have and has no interest in ever having a light saber and her roots as a doctor have her being very much a do no harm kind of person.

Hey, the darkest characters are the ones doing evil for Good Reasons.

Dooku, Anakin, Caedus

My games routinely get to 700 xp without too much challenge, and I've run one-shots where the characters were north of 2000 xp (2015 xp to be precise, as it was a New Year's game). Even the specialists were forced to diversify, and the enemies were suitably world-shaking...as were the PC actions. I'm surprised at how organic the game feels at high levels, and how lethal it remains.

Or if a character wants both Signature Abilities for their character...

I think you can only pick one...?

You can get both. You just have to have 2 specs in the same career. Thin you can attatch the second one to the second spec.

I'm at 1135... the campaign that I was in effectively died for a bunch of reasons but none of them involved us feeling like we finished our characters. My GM sorta revived the campaign with me being the only player. I was really not happy about doing that and kept putting it off until he did that Dad Guilt Thing that he must have majored in... and then I made the mistake of having fun and admitting it... And so my character has begun to embark on the second part of her story where she is coming to terms with the awakening Force within her after spending her life believing that the Jedi had let the galaxy down.

Hmmmm, well - if you're resentful of Jedi and have burgeoning Force powers, there is another path... Just sayin' ;)

I know that but she doesn't. She knows what most people know. She believes that they're still out there and that's why the Empire is so paranoid.

She'd be a terrible sith, anyway. She doesn't have and has no interest in ever having a light saber and her roots as a doctor have her being very much a do no harm kind of person.

Hey, the darkest characters are the ones doing evil for Good Reasons.

It might be interesting and, with the right nudging, I suppose anything is possible.

It probably is metagaming to think thus way but seeing as that's some pretty dark territory and the GM is my dad. It falls into this vast territory of story ideas that i'm pretty sure we'Re not exploring. No dark side, no romance... eww..

It probably is metagaming to think thus way but seeing as that's some pretty dark territory and the GM is my dad. It falls into this vast territory of story ideas that i'm pretty sure we'Re not exploring. No dark side, no romance... eww..

Primary rule of GMing - know your audience!

I'm at 1135... the campaign that I was in effectively died for a bunch of reasons but none of them involved us feeling like we finished our characters. My GM sorta revived the campaign with me being the only player. I was really not happy about doing that and kept putting it off until he did that Dad Guilt Thing that he must have majored in... and then I made the mistake of having fun and admitting it... And so my character has begun to embark on the second part of her story where she is coming to terms with the awakening Force within her after spending her life believing that the Jedi had let the galaxy down.

Hmmmm, well - if you're resentful of Jedi and have burgeoning Force powers, there is another path... Just sayin' ;)

I know that but she doesn't. She knows what most people know. She believes that they're still out there and that's why the Empire is so paranoid.

She'd be a terrible sith, anyway. She doesn't have and has no interest in ever having a light saber and her roots as a doctor have her being very much a do no harm kind of person.

Hey, the darkest characters are the ones doing evil for Good Reasons.

Dooku, Anakin, Caedus

No clue to Dooku's motivations, so can't comment there.

Anakin actually thought he was doing the right thing at that the Order had put on the black hats.

Caedus...the less said about that mess the better.

It probably is metagaming to think thus way but seeing as that's some pretty dark territory and the GM is my dad. It falls into this vast territory of story ideas that i'm pretty sure we'Re not exploring. No dark side, no romance... eww..

Primary rule of GMing - know your audience!

Given the context, it would probably be better if they didn't know their audience. A dark descent into rage and passion - probably not something fun to play with a parent! :D

I'm at 1135... the campaign that I was in effectively died for a bunch of reasons but none of them involved us feeling like we finished our characters. My GM sorta revived the campaign with me being the only player. I was really not happy about doing that and kept putting it off until he did that Dad Guilt Thing that he must have majored in... and then I made the mistake of having fun and admitting it... And so my character has begun to embark on the second part of her story where she is coming to terms with the awakening Force within her after spending her life believing that the Jedi had let the galaxy down.

Hmmmm, well - if you're resentful of Jedi and have burgeoning Force powers, there is another path... Just sayin' ;)

I know that but she doesn't. She knows what most people know. She believes that they're still out there and that's why the Empire is so paranoid.

She'd be a terrible sith, anyway. She doesn't have and has no interest in ever having a light saber and her roots as a doctor have her being very much a do no harm kind of person.

Hey, the darkest characters are the ones doing evil for Good Reasons.
Dooku, Anakin, Caedus
No clue to Dooku's motivations, so can't comment there.

Anakin actually thought he was doing the right thing at that the Order had put on the black hats.

Caedus...the less said about that mess the better.

Not fully sure about Dooku but in a Season 5 TCW episode, Anakin remarks that "Dooku began as a political idealist" in response to Ahsoka expressing some mild sympathy for the anti-war position. You can hear the venom for the term in Anakin's voice when he says it - he's all about winning the war. Anyway, I get the impression that Dooku is someone who started off by seeing the corruption and inequality in the Republic and agitating for change, eventually becoming the leader or founder of a Seperatist faction. I suspect association with Palpatine and succumbing to the Dark Side came much later on.

Anakin kind of proves the argument really - about villains believing they're doing the right thing. No idea who Caedus is, I suspect Legends.