My friends and I have been porting over characters from Saga Edition to Edge of the Empire recently, and we've run into a couple of hiccups. My primary character is a Squib - we were able to adhoc something decent for him, though, so that one is secondary. What we really need help with though?

The Gen'Dai. To quote Wookieepedia:

The Gen'Dai were a seemingly immortal, formless species which originated on an unidentified planet in the galaxy . Devoid of any bones , the Gen'Dai typically wore heavy armor to give themselves a humanoid structure.

Lacking the vulnerable vital organs of most species, including hearts , and lungs , Gen'Dai could take extreme injuries and even complete dismemberment , and survive which gave them the reputation of being immortal. In fact, they could regrow lost limbs or other body parts in only a few minutes. ^[2] Unlike most species, Gen'Dai had a nervous system which was distributed throughout the body in the form of millions of nerve clusters. This fact gave the species near instantaneous reflexes as well as the ability to sustain a high volume of injuries without any overall damage. So high was their sensory acuity, that the Gen'Dai were able to feel a Human 's heartbeat from ranges of up to 200 meters .

Basically, they're arguably the toughest, most durable sentient race in Star Wars. Extremely fast regeneration of even mortal wounds, decentralized nervous and cardiovascular systems, incredible strength - the major flaw they have is that, as they age, they tend to get a little, well... crazy .

Honestly, my friends and I are at a complete and utter loss at this time. How would you, the EotE Community, personally stat out a Gen'dai player character?

Don't? :V

They seem pretty far beyond mechanically broken unless you seriously nerf their capabilities. To that end I'd give them slightly faster wound regeneration, natural soak, or some kind of ability that reduces the result of critical hits by -10 to represent their resilience. Speaking of which, that's a good skill for them to start with a free rank in. As for characteristics, Brawn 4/Presence 1/Intellect 1 seems like a logical choice.

I don't know the math for starting experience but I imagine it would be fairly low for all of that.

Don't? :V

They seem pretty far beyond mechanically broken unless you seriously nerf their capabilities. To that end I'd give them slightly faster wound regeneration, natural soak, or some kind of ability that reduces the result of critical hits by -10 to represent their resilience. Speaking of which, that's a good skill for them to start with a free rank in. As for characteristics, Brawn 4/Presence 1/Intellect 1 seems like a logical choice.

I don't know the math for starting experience but I imagine it would be fairly low for all of that.

As Jace9111 said, these kind of characters are kind of beyond what this system is capable of for balancing reasons. Characters like Durge can't really accurately replicated here without falling short of expectations.

Literally write: "Cannot Die" on the sheet and have him succeed at everything without rolling. That's the reason people play Gen'dai.

That's the most absurd species ever.

Would not allow it as PC. Its a rival/nemesis level npc...

Quite simple really.

3 brawn, 1 Dex, 2 Inti, 2 cunning, 1 will, 2 presence.

80 exp.

10 hp, 7/8 strain.

May chose survival or athletics as racial talent.

Rapid Regeneration: Their endurance is legendary e.c.t. Once per encounter, the character may spend a move to remove wounds equal to brawn/use one stimpack without expenditure of pack. Whenever they recover a wound, count as recovering one more wound. They can typically regenerate a limb within a day/a week.

Season to liking. I think it's perfectly acceptable to do something this, a debuff to another stat for a really strong racial buff. It also makes limbs being lobbed off fairly inconvenient, but not crippling. I mean, how many times have people actually used trandosian characters, and relied on limb regen?

The real problem with Gen'dai is one OP isn't even addressing. If they had a trandoshan culture, I'd actually allow them, because an e-web will cut them down to size plenty fast. The problem is that they're isolationist nomads who stay together in their family group and are diehard pacifists...until they get old and start going psychotic. Only THEN do they leave for the stars. Given the galaxy only knows them as murderous monsters, meeting a Gen'dai is akin to meeting a free-roaming rancor: Run away or kill it.

But every single Gen'dai concept I've seen so far in my tenure has completely ignored their fluff and only been interested in a quasi-immortal PC.

It is already difficult to kill a character outright. Not sure if it would be terribly unbalanced to make it even more so.

Peraonally I would probably do something like give a rank in the skill Resilience and the talent Durable. Their regeneration I would make a special ability where they can gain the benefits of stim pack without one but with the same reduced effectiveness. Any uses of stim packs count towards this. And they are always considered in a bacta tank for healing outside of combat.

Or some such nonsense. I will revisit when not at work.

Unlike most species, Gen'Dai had a nervous system which was distributed throughout the body in the form of millions of nerve clusters. This fact gave the species near instantaneous reflexes as well as the ability to sustain a high volume of injuries without any overall damage.

I completely and utterly disagree with this statement. I makes absolutely no sense. If our bodies had even double the amount of nerve clusters in our bodies we would have a whole new definition of pain. As EVERYTHING would hurt or cause you to be in a constant state of excessity. Just because you can "feel" someone breathing in the next room, DOES NOT mean that you can shrugg off a blaster bolt to the face like it is nothing. Dog owners and Vets will tell you that one of the reasons dogs (animals in general) do not whimper when getting they medical shots, is because they have LESS nerves spread throughout their bodies than humans do. e.g. they do not actually feel it.

All of this comes from authors who want to create a unstoppable killing machine and have little knowledge on to do so. So they create crap like this.

Honestly, I don't think you can balance one for a player, even if Durge is considered an extreme example with high XP.

If I wanted to sick a Gen'Dai on my players however, perhaps as a major solo boss, I'd just say that he doesn't pass out upon exceeding his Wound Threshold, and let him try one Resilience check per round to remove a single critical injury, including The End Is Nigh, but not Death. Any damage that he sustains above and beyond his threshold still translates into another critical, so it's an epic climax as the players get a major critical fest, trying to land a 151+ to genuinely finish him. Give him high soak and a natural -30 modifier to any critical rolls he takes, and you've got a heck of a combat tank that will give the party a lot of grief.

The players start inflicting 2 or 3 new critical injuries per round once they've got enough wounds on him, and he makes Resilience checks to deal with the worst. Narratively, he's regenerating almost as fast as they can blast / slice him apart.

On 1/16/2016 at 7:40 PM, MuttonchopMac said:

Honestly, I don't think you can balance one for a player, even if Durge is considered an extreme example with high XP.

If I wanted to sick a Gen'Dai on my players however, perhaps as a major solo boss, I'd just say that he doesn't pass out upon exceeding his Wound Threshold, and let him try one Resilience check per round to remove a single critical injury, including The End Is Nigh, but not Death. Any damage that he sustains above and beyond his threshold still translates into another critical, so it's an epic climax as the players get a major critical fest, trying to land a 151+ to genuinely finish him. Give him high soak and a natural -30 modifier to any critical rolls he takes, and you've got a heck of a combat tank that will give the party a lot of grief.

The players start inflicting 2 or 3 new critical injuries per round once they've got enough wounds on him, and he makes Resilience checks to deal with the worst. Narratively, he's regenerating almost as fast as they can blast / slice him apart.

I like it, it makes him tough as ****, but neither raising soak to absurd levels or making him a bullet sponge.

And I can imagine the first time he just removes a Crit will make some jaws drop (my Players afaik do not know the Gen'dai Species, although the brain the group might know the species in character if she rolls well enough 😉 )

(And yes I noticed just now that I necromanced a very very dead thread xD )

That's not really a PC race. It would be like one of your D&D players wanting to play as a Tarrasque.

5 minutes ago, arnoldrew said:

That's not really a PC race. It would be like one of your D&D players wanting to play as a Tarrasque.

Dan Telfer's got you covered.

On 1/16/2016 at 9:40 AM, MuttonchopMac said:

If I wanted to sick a Gen'Dai on my players however, perhaps as a major solo boss, I'd just say that he doesn't pass out upon exceeding his Wound Threshold, and let him try one Resilience check per round to remove a single critical injury, including The End Is Nigh, but not Death. Any damage that he sustains above and beyond his threshold still translates into another critical, so it's an epic climax as the players get a major critical fest, trying to land a 151+ to genuinely finish him. Give him high soak and a natural -30 modifier to any critical rolls he takes, and you've got a heck of a combat tank that will give the party a lot of grief.

On 5/28/2020 at 2:08 AM, Fl1nt said:

I like it, it makes him tough as ****, but neither raising soak to absurd levels or making him a bullet sponge

Let me tell you all a story as a forever GM for this system.

In my first campaign, I had a Gen'Dai bounty hunter NPC named Visage, very much inspired by the 2003 Clone Wars Durge. While I have since lost his original stats I came up with, what I remember is very much out of range of most PCs. He had a higher soak of 8-10, Wound threshold somewhere in the mid 30s, and a strain threshold somewhere in the low 20s/high teens.

His regeneration ability for my table was linked to Destiny Points, preventing a full on spam of it, with an appropriate difficulty Resilience remove Criticals.

To this day, his is still regarded as a favorite reoccurring enemy, as well as one of the scariest.

The party defeated him several times, once by crushing him, another by blasting hisS helmet to the point it fused with his head in a warped mess, another with a starship laser cannon, another with setting his remains on fire, etc. Over the course of 3 years, the appearance of this bounty hunter made mundane encounters turn into a fight (or flight) of their lives. They figured out what he was after a few encounters, along with his regeneration, but nothing they tried would ever truly put him down, or simply didn't have time to try.

They finally put him down for good at the final session, the Wookiee Marauder of the party getting into a full on brawl with Visage while party blasted him in the back. Sadly, the Wookiee gave his life for this achievement, and the bounty hunter was tossed into a molecular furnace to be torn apart, atom by atom.

Morale of the story: GMs have the power to make anything, but not everything should be made for players, because its simply not always possible for them to achieve what an enemy can do and have it still be balanced.

If you do have a Gen'Dai villain, turn them into an enemy from Resident Evil. Make them a terrifying force of nature, one that can be delayed, but near impossible to kill.. unless, your players make a specific plan that narratively makes sense to kill something so strong.

I have, of course, made PC stats for the Gen'Dai. A combat-oriented Gen'Dai PC is going to be super OP unless the GM has a very specific way of challenging the party, but I genuinely believe that a Gen'Dai PC who is a Scholar or a Pilot for example could make a genuinely interesting character if done correctly. You could play as a strict pacifist who refuses to fight, where invincibility becomes useful every once in a while but doesn't let kill anyone you want. A harder option that could be really amazing if done well would be an older Gen'Dai developing psychosis, so they display irrational violence every once in a while: The challenge is then to protect others from your own potential bursts of insanity, and your invincibility becomes just as much of a burden as it is a help.

99% of the time though you'll just get a min-maxed combat PC that can survive anything thrown at them.

I would probably never allow a Gen'dai PC, or only after some very detailed conversations with the player.

But as a Big Bad (in my Case I'm statting a Gen'dai that works as a Executioner for the Black Sun) it's a fun way to make a boss-fight / confront my players with an enemy that functions differently than they're used to.

I'm using a mix of what MuttonchopMac proposed and the Durge Profile from http://swa.stoogoff.com/ .

Won't come up in the next few sessions, but I'm curious how my players will try to tackle this Gen'dai when they're given the mission to take him out, only to find him in the midst of a hit and run execution of their hutt boss that had given them the mission. (or something like that, our campaign is pretty much in flux at any given time, so who knows where they'll encounter him).