Slightly Confused About Character Creation

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

My new Smuggler: Corellian Pilot character

Brawn 2 Agility 4 Intellect 3 All the rest 2

Standard skills for new character, with extra two skills from Human used as per Corellian Human,

Talent Tree: Pilot - Galaxy Mapper and Full Thrust

Is this all or am I missing something?

Can't really say exactly but it looks like maybe 100 xp on your attributes and 10 for your 2 Talents, so it's probably correct.

I assume you left the obligation alone, that it's just off the standard 110? Getting your Agility from 2 to 4 should be 70 points and the INT from 2 to 3 should be 30. That leaves enough for a couple of bottom tier talents.

Looks good to me!

Humans and Correllian Humans are slightly different stat wise. Suns of Fortune pages 93 and 94 have the Correllian Humans as beginning with one rank in Piloting (Planetary) or Piloting (Space). And because they are born with rocket fuel for blood and are natural pilots, they can train their Piloting skills up to three ranks at character creation instead of two. This replaces the two ranks in non-career skills that typical Humans receive.

Another example of an entire species or culture being defined by the first one we see on screen.

Remember, kids, Rhodians have a culture that reveres the hunt, because the first Rhodian we see on screen in a bounty hunter...

Humans and Correllian Humans are slightly different stat wise. Suns of Fortune pages 93 and 94 have the Correllian Humans as beginning with one rank in Piloting (Planetary) or Piloting (Space). And because they are born with rocket fuel for blood and are natural pilots, they can train their Piloting skills up to three ranks at character creation instead of two. This replaces the two ranks in non-career skills that typical Humans receive.

This would also assume that Suns of Fortune is being used in this game. It is just as possible they are sticking to the core book and making a human who happens to be from Corellia.

It very much seems like Suns of Fortune is in use when the OP states:

Standard skills for new character, with extra two skills from Human used as per Corellian Human,

That "Corellian" descriptor for "Human" wouldn't be necessary. They would of said "two skills from Human used as per Human."

Another example of an entire species or culture being defined by the first one we see on screen.

Remember, kids, Rhodians have a culture that reveres the hunt, because the first Rhodian we see on screen in a bounty hunter...

..and they never shoot first :D Two species in one scene!

Found out last night I did screw something up, apparently one is supposed to choose 4 skills from the first specialty list and 2 from the second. Who knew?

My new Smuggler: Corellian Pilot character

Brawn 2 Agility 4 Intellect 3 All the rest 2

Standard skills for new character, with extra two skills from Human used as per Corellian Human,

Talent Tree: Pilot - Galaxy Mapper and Full Thrust

Is this all or am I missing something?

Missing:

Starting gear...

Oh, and the psychological elements of the character: motivation and obligation.

Found out last night I did screw something up, apparently one is supposed to choose 4 skills from the first specialty list and 2 from the second. Who knew?

Not quite; the first four are from your Career (in this case Smuggler) and the two are from your free Specialisation (in this case, Pilot).

It's usually considered optimal for a human to take +10xp for extra obligation and spend all points on Attributes, because these can't be raised later (without an expensive Talent called Dedication). That gives a stat line of 3,3,3,3,2,2, a total of 16.

But the system is pretty robust and not the end of the world if you want to start with a 4 in something at the expense of other attributes.

And hey aramis... haven't seen you around here much recently. We haven't butted heads for a while :) .

Another example of an entire species or culture being defined by the first one we see on screen.

Remember, kids, Rhodians have a culture that reveres the hunt, because the first Rhodian we see on screen in a bounty hunter...

Star Wars really does take the 'Planet of Hats' trope to a crazy degree, eh? The entire species defined by the first one we meet.

So because Jabba is a sleazy crime lord, every Hutt is a sleazy crime boss. And all twi'lek women are exotic dancers. And because Greedo was a crummy bounty hunter, every Rodian is also a low-rent bounty killer. Not to mention the Corellians and Mandolorians, an entire race of people cosplaying Han Solo and Boba Fett respectively.

We play around with the trope though. Our Chiss has great fun messing with people's minds because they expect her to be like Thrawn, the only Chiss they've ever heard of. And the group's infochant is a well-spoken Trandoshan doctor who was struck off in murky circumstances and turned to the underworld information business.

Edited by Maelora

Racist RPG tropes serve a purpose in story telling. Rodians are no different than Dwarves or Orcs in that respect. I just think Corellian Humans are fanwank.

Orcs and Dwarves -- "stereotypes" based on ages of mythology and legend, dating back through multiple cultures, with roots in the deepest human dreams.

Rodians -- based on a single inept bounty hunter in a dirty dive bar on a sandpit planet.

On the "storytelling purpose" front... sorry, but to me that's just an excuse for poor worldbuilding.

Edited by MaxKilljoy

Oh, I get why they did it... As I understand, most of the species we now know and love were developed in the early 90's by WEG (I'm not sure if George Lucas knows what a 'rodian' or a 'twi'lek'; is...) for their then-groundbreaking RPG.

So they pretty much had nothing to go on, choosing to expand on the tiny bit of information we see in the movies. So because Ponda Baba was a bar-room bully, every Aqualish is now a cantina thug.

Inventing stuff for an array of weird species is hard, so I get why they went there. As role-players, of course, it's up to us to overcome stereotypes, by playing things like a Jawa who hates junk and gets irate every time some Big thinks it's hilarious to scream 'Utinni!' at the little guy...

Anyway... sorry to derail...

Edited by Maelora

Inventing stuff for an array of weird species is hard, so I get why they went there. As role-players, of course, it's up to us to overcome stereotypes, by playing things like a Jawa who hates junk and gets irate every time some Big thinks it's hilarious to scream 'Utinni!' at the little guy...

Played a Jawa once that found the ideal solution to "big folk" that thought doing so was "hilarious."

Shock prods to highly sensitive areas that are at just the right height tends to be a very effective behavior modification method. Seeing them crumple to their knees with tears in their eyes afterwards is just an added perk :lol:

The front of my WEG base book says 1987.

As I recall, they had access to a lot in the way of notes and art from the studio, including little notes like species name on the alien characters.

Ah, you might be right about the late 80's. We played it around 1990 so I might be getting confused.

These were the wild, untamed days before there was much in the way of 'canon' and all that official crap. WEG had a freedom to develop new things that seems unthinkable now. I understand that Timothy Zahn was sent a bunch of WEG supplements when he asked for background details about the SW galaxy beyond the movies.

And I may be wrong, but I understood that Lucas and the film-makers called them 'martians' and it was WEG that actually named and developed rodians and twi'leks and the like...? That's why they were 'officially' called things like 'Snaggletooth', 'Walrus Man' and 'Hammerhead' and the names by which we know them now only came later...?

Ah, you might be right about the late 80's. We played it around 1990 so I might be getting confused.

These were the wild, untamed days before there was much in the way of 'canon' and all that official crap. WEG had a freedom to develop new things that seems unthinkable now. I understand that Timothy Zahn was sent a bunch of WEG supplements when he asked for background details about the SW galaxy beyond the movies.

And I may be wrong, but I understood that Lucas and the film-makers called them 'martians' and it was WEG that actually named and developed rodians and twi'leks and the like...? That's why they were 'officially' called things like 'Snaggletooth', 'Walrus Man' and 'Hammerhead' and the names by which we know them now only came later...?

You know, that might be true in at least some cases... either that, or the maker of the early toys thought kids would be more interested in buying "Hammerhead" than "the cantina Ithorian".

I'm no expert - someone knowledgeable like Donovan or 2P51 would likely know for sure.

If Chortles was still around, he'd know. That guy's knowledge was encyclopedic.

My understanding was that George Lucas wasn't especially interested in 'world building' in the manner of someone like Tolkien, and tended to forget about things as soon as the scene moved on to something else. In the same way that HP Lovecraft never considered his stories a 'Mythos' and just wrote about whatever he thought was cool at the time, and others actually developed his original concepts into something more cohesive.

Edited by Maelora

My new Smuggler: Corellian Pilot character

Brawn 2 Agility 4 Intellect 3 All the rest 2

Standard skills for new character, with extra two skills from Human used as per Corellian Human,

Talent Tree: Pilot - Galaxy Mapper and Full Thrust

Is this all or am I missing something?

Missing:

Starting gear...

Oh, and the psychological elements of the character: motivation and obligation.

This is one game that I am terrible at coming up with a good background story. I know it is stupid, because I wax down-right poetic when developing backgrounds for my Star Trek characters, or for Pathfinder toons. I got lost in all the blizzard of printed "canon" material for Star Wars and although I always wanted to play SW in its previous WEG incarnation; I never got the chance. I have been a Star Trek fan since TOS, so that milieu flows better from my devious little mind. I am resolved to keep up with the new published material for Star Wars, however!

Apologies for the split post: I have the Corellian source book so chose to go with that since I have that much background. Admittedly, the campaign I am playing in is designed to be a beginner group, and the GM has elected to "forgo" the Obligation check at the start of the game. I think that is a mistake, but I am a purist at heart.

This is one game that I am terrible at coming up with a good background story. I know it is stupid, because I wax down-right poetic when developing backgrounds for my Star Trek characters, or for Pathfinder toons. I got lost in all the blizzard of printed "canon" material for Star Wars and although I always wanted to play SW in its previous WEG incarnation; I never got the chance. I have been a Star Trek fan since TOS, so that milieu flows better from my devious little mind. I am resolved to keep up with the new published material for Star Wars, however!

I know relatively little about the wider SW mythos and pretty much play straight from the FFG books. It can be a plus, as you're not necessarily weighed down with preconceptions about what everything should be like according to 'canon'. We play like it's 1987 and there is no 'canon' :)

But if you want help with background for a Smuggler, buy the splatbook 'Fly Casual', which has loads of great ideas as well as new specs, items, ships etc.

TL, DR; buy more FFG stuff. You know you want to!

Edited by Maelora

This is one game that I am terrible at coming up with a good background story. I know it is stupid, because I wax down-right poetic when developing backgrounds for my Star Trek characters, or for Pathfinder toons. I got lost in all the blizzard of printed "canon" material for Star Wars and although I always wanted to play SW in its previous WEG incarnation; I never got the chance. I have been a Star Trek fan since TOS, so that milieu flows better from my devious little mind. I am resolved to keep up with the new published material for Star Wars, however!

I know relatively little about the wider SW mythos and pretty much play straight from the FFG books. It can be a plus, as you're not necessarily weighed down with preconceptions about what everything should be like according to 'canon'. We play like it's 1987 and there is no 'canon' :)

But if you want help with background for a Smuggler, buy the splatbook 'Fly Casual', which has loads of great ideas as well as new specs, items, ships etc.

TL, DR; buy more FFG stuff. You know you want to!

LOL-Compeled by the Force, He goes to his FLGS and seeks the ancient tome of knowledge...........