Jedi Trials/ Lightaber contruction

By jimjams79, in Star Wars: Force and Destiny RPG

I will be running an event for my padawans wher ethey travel to the planet Dantooine and take the jedi trials to become "knight" level jedi.

Somethings I wish to include are:

  • A trial for each padawan to see if they are ready to be "knighted", Would this be a pass/fail type thing or purly better as an rp?
  • Search for their own lightsaber cyrstal, how would this be done other than through skill checks?
  • The contruction of the lightsaber it's self.

Any help and guidence would be greatly appreciated.

Do you have F&D? I think the included adventure there is all about finding lightsaber crystals. You can use that for inspiration. Lightsaber construction rules are covered in the F&D GM screen, and the most recent episode of the Order 66 Podcast (Sabersmithing 101) went into it in great detail - not that I ever listen to that podcast of course :D

The Jedi trials themselves are something I with would be more fleshed out in canon. There is almost no information out there on what those are, so that's all up to you.

There's an episode of clone wars dedicated to a group of younglings travelling to Ilum to find their crystals.

Each of them gets split from the others rather quickly, and the nature of the trails is meant to test their moral shortcomings.

If you're not tied the a specific place, you could build different sessions around individual PCs. With common sources of Kaiber crystals watched carefully by the Empire, the Force might guide PCs to odd planets, with different possible crystals.

As a pointer, I'd recommend looking at "Suns of Fortune". There are at least two entries detailing significant crystal formations. My guess is that's not just idle fluff. The devs are dropping a wink that Jedi might want to stop there. In each case, the crystals are not necessarily easy to acquire.

I would suggest designing different sessions for each PC. Maybe your advisor receives a treasured crown jewel for successfully negotiating a peace treaty between warring factions. Maybe the Warrior carves a Krayat Dragon Pearl, after carving his way out from the belly of the beast. Maybe the Pathfinder discovers his crystal after helping to protect the natural beauty of a planet. The Starfighter Ace might find his crystal in the depths of an asteroid field.

The challenges should not be strictly physical, or skill based though. Each adventure should test the featured character's resolve and fortitude. Make fear checks a vital part of the adventure. Isolate them. Make them sweat. Put them in a lonely place where they confront their past, either literally or in the form of visions.

Perhaps the Starfighter Ace gets knocked loose into the void of space when he gets out of the cockpit to look for his crystal, and he has to confront the terror of being outside the comfort of his ship. Surviving without his most important tool.. Maybe the gastric juices of a Krayat Dragon induce hallucinations that haunt the character as they try to cut their way free. Maybe the Pathfinder goes on a Vision Quest, guided by the Force to some lonely mountain peak, where he must go for long periods without food, and tame the wilderness. Maybe the Advisor must make peace with an old enemy, someone who wronged her. Brokering the treaty means putting the past behind her.

The other PCs should have stuff to keep them occupied, but the spotlight is on the PC for that session.

I've had this idea for a while, and I think the best way to decide who "goes first" is via a force power check. Every time the PCs are between adventures, have them make a force power check. If someone rolls two white pips, they have a vision guiding them to their crystal. If more than one person has two white pips, make a competitive discipline check. The winner has the next vision.

Of course you don't have to do this. I've just spent a lot of time thinking about this very idea, and this is how I plan to do it.

The adventure packed with the F&D GM kit has an interesting take: each PC faces a trial based on their morality weakness. I don't remember every detail for each option, but I thought it was a pretty interesting concept. Let the player's get through with a little roleplaying, or allow them a skill check if they (the players, not the characters) start to get frustrated.

The Clone Wars does show the harvesting crystals and lightsaber construction, but that's to progress from initiate to padawan, not padawan to knight. Take that as you want.

There is an episode of Rebels where Ezra and Kanan go through a trial on Lothal which gets Ezra a light saber crystal, Both characters face personal demons that lead to learning and growth.

Yeah, constructing one's own lightsaber has moved away from being something done to prove one is ready to become a Jedi Knight (which itself was taken from Vader's line in RotJ about Luke having built his own lightsaber), and as Blackbird888 said it's now a step taken to move from initiate to padawan.

As for the Jedi Trials themselves, I suspect such things would be far more fluid in the Rebellion Era what with the complete lack of a Jedi Order. Plus the Trials were fairly general anyway, and in Legends were tailored to the aspiring Knight on a case by case basis. Obi-Wan's Trials were highly unorthodox given he faced and defeated a Sith Lord, and during the Clone Wars a lot of padawans got promoted to Knight status without as much ceremony as there had been prior to the war simply due to the Order's need for fresh Jedi Knights to replace those killed in action.

To be honest, I think Sam Stewart's advice on the O66 podcast discussing the Force and Destiny core rulebook is probably the best, in that there's no mechanical guideline as to when a character is ready to be a Jedi Knight, and that when the character is ready to take that step, you'll know from how they act, not simply from what they can do.