As I'm starting a new campaign utilizing some Clone-war era characters and I've been unable to locate any threads discussing this before, I wanted some advice on a starting species template for a player that wanted to play a clone.

My thoughts were: 3 Brawn, 3 Agility, 2 Intellect, 2 Cunning, 1 Willpower, 1 Presence, 11+Brawn Wounds, 9+Willpower Strain, Ranged - Heavy 1, Knowledge - Warfare 1, 70 XP, Starts with Recruit Tree, Can Train Ranged - Heavy to 3 at creation, 1 Boost to all Leadership checks to Influence other Clones.

How (un)reasonable does that sound for a Shiny?

It's called a human, and your template is way OP.

I'm with 2P51. You've given your species two of the most useful characteristics at 3, and two of the least-used characteristics at 1, allowed him to train a skill directly connected to one of those raised characteristics to 3 at character creation (and given him a free point in it), and given the character a clear path toward making all other weapon skills trainable.

Let's call Humans baseline for creating a species, then see where yours goes from there.

• Increase Brawn and Agility to 3: 60XP
• Decrease Willpower and Presence to 1: -40XP
• Ranged - Heavy and Knowledge - Warfare: 20XP.
• Remove the two free non-career skills humans get: -20XP.
• Allow Ranged - Heavy to be trained to 3 at creation: 20XP (estimated value)
• Add 1 Wound: 10XP
• Subtract 1 Strain: -5XP
• Add Boost Die to Leadership Checks: 10XP
• Add Recruit tree: 20XP
• Complete synergy between species abilities and features: 30XP

All that and you've started with an effective starting XP of 175. Compare that to a Human's effective starting XP of 130, and you can see you've given your new species a significant boost - over 25% over the baseline. And I was being conservative about the value of certain aspects of your build.

Yeah, just go with baseline human and let your players decide how to spend XP as normal. You might want to start at Knight level, though, with the extra XP explained as the decade of training.

This is how I've done Kaminoan born and raised Fett clones:

Jango himself, whatever his background, training, and experience, is physiologically just a physically fit human. We've seen in The Clone Wars that the clones were used in a great variety of roles, not just front line troopers. The difference is in the modifications done to their base genomes and the variety of training programs the clones go through.

Start with base 2s in all six characteristics. Add 1 to one characteristic of your choice, and subtract 1 from another of your choice. Pick one skill and get a free rank in it; it can be trained to 3 during character creation. Pick one: 10 Wounds/10 Strain, 11 Wounds/9 Strain, or 9 Wounds/10 Strain. Republic Clone: Your Career must be chosen from the six in Age of Rebellion. You may only have one Spec to start with. You age twice as fast. 75 XP.

I'm with 2P51. You've given your species two of the most useful characteristics at 3, and two of the least-used characteristics at 1, allowed him to train a skill directly connected to one of those raised characteristics to 3 at character creation (and given him a free point in it), and given the character a clear path toward making all other weapon skills trainable.

Let's call Humans baseline for creating a species, then see where yours goes from there.

• Increase Brawn and Agility to 3: 60XP
• Decrease Willpower and Presence to 1: -40XP
• Ranged - Heavy and Knowledge - Warfare: 20XP.
• Remove the two free non-career skills humans get: -20XP.
• Allow Ranged - Heavy to be trained to 3 at creation: 20XP (estimated value)
• Add 1 Wound: 10XP
• Subtract 1 Strain: -5XP
• Add Boost Die to Leadership Checks: 10XP
• Add Recruit tree: 20XP
• Complete synergy between species abilities and features: 30XP

All that and you've started with an effective starting XP of 175. Compare that to a Human's effective starting XP of 130, and you can see you've given your new species a significant boost - over 25% over the baseline. And I was being conservative about the value of certain aspects of your build.

Is willpower not used for discipline checks? What good are clones with that template when they run back to their ugly moms when combat starts? Fight for their life with tears in their eyes?

Is willpower not used for discipline checks? What good are clones with that template when they run back to their ugly moms when combat starts? Fight for their life with tears in their eyes?

... which only brings up another point. Aren't the Clones supposed to be pretty much fearless? It's in their biological programming, right? So having Willpower start low doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

(SEApocalypse: I was just providing a breakdown of the XP cost of his clone species idea.)

Is willpower not used for discipline checks? What good are clones with that template when they run back to their ugly moms when combat starts? Fight for their life with tears in their eyes?

... which only brings up another point. Aren't the Clones supposed to be pretty much fearless? It's in their biological programming, right? So having Willpower start low doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

(SEApocalypse: I was just providing a breakdown of the XP cost of his clone species idea.)

Ayup. As important as shooting and fighting are, I'm pretty sure the most important quality of a soldier is the ability to stand fast in the face of danger, keep his cool, and coordinate with his fellow soldiers while the world explodes into chaos around him. I think Leadership and Discipline would be extremely important, but the GM would need to call for a lot of those checks.

To be honest, clones shouldbe a bit overpowered. Realistically, someone who it bred to kill should be effective at doing that.

Just saying. They are clones of the legendary Jango Fett, are they not?

To be honest, clones shouldbe a bit overpowered. Realistically, someone who it bred to kill should be effective at doing that.

Just saying. They are clones of the legendary Jango Fett, are they not?

That's what starting XP (and learned XP later) is for, to define your character for what he does.

Jango Fett is legendary for what he achieved, not for how he started.

You could consider a rank in Confidence for the clones to show resistance to fear, but I'd likely give them B2, A2, I2, C2, W2, P1 to start with. Let them use their starting XP to up scores to 3 (or 4). For starting skills, I treat them like droids with 6 career and three specialization skills (they're focused on whatever they initially train to do), go with B+10 Wounds, W+10 Strain, 100 XP to start.

You could consider a rank in Confidence for the clones to show resistance to fear, but I'd likely give them B2, A2, I2, C2, W2, P1 to start with. Let them use their starting XP to up scores to 3 (or 4). For starting skills, I treat them like droids with 6 career and three specialization skills (they're focused on whatever they initially train to do), go with B+10 Wounds, W+10 Strain, 100 XP to start.

Which sounds like the right way to do. For all practical purpose they are biological droids, build with a purpose, a programming and mind-controlling implants. All characteristics 1, starting XP 175, and instead of the not-breathing and enduring talent you give them a rank in confidence and make them not mechanical. And naturally ranks in 6 out of 8 career skills and 3 out of 4 specialisation skills. They are highly focused on what they have been build and trained for.

You could consider a rank in Confidence for the clones to show resistance to fear, but I'd likely give them B2, A2, I2, C2, W2, P1 to start with. Let them use their starting XP to up scores to 3 (or 4). For starting skills, I treat them like droids with 6 career and three specialization skills (they're focused on whatever they initially train to do), go with B+10 Wounds, W+10 Strain, 100 XP to start.

While I"m of the "Fett clones are just Human" camp, I have to say that's one of the better balanced approaches I've seen.

I'd almost consider just adding the rank of Confidence for free, since as "meat droids" they're already losing a lot of the extra perks that droids have (increased cap on cybernetics and immunity to a variety of environmental factors), plus the fact that Fear checks don't come up all that often, or at least not on a regular enough basis where that free rank of Confidence is going to be a major factor.

I hear everything you guys have been saying. Maybe I should explain my reasoning -- then you'll at least understand my intention, if not agree with me.

Clones are born and bread to be soldiers. They stared with Fetts genotype and tweaked it to be better, stronger, faster, etc. They also worked on conditioning their minds to make them easier to manipulate into following orders and making them more conformist.

Starting with the human template, 3 brawn and 3 agility seem gimmies, to me. They're bred for battle and basing those two stats at 3 seems the best way to go about doing that. Then, rerouting the human cross-career skills to those solely focused on battle also seemed to make sense: R. Hvy 1, K. Warfare 1 instead. Now, to represent their mental conditioning, I tweaked Willpower and Presence down to 1 (to balance the two 3s, as every other species that provides two 3s in their template does). After this discussion, I can see rerouting the 1 from Willpower into Cunning. I also added the leadership boost to represent their conformity and ability to direct one another.

Finally, I really like the idea that they just have a level of combat training that's just built-in, hence the Recruit tree.

All that's left, at this point, is to balance their starting XP. I wanted to ensure that they couldn't buy two 4s, so it had to be less than 80, but I wanted them to be able to buy at least one, so more than 40. I chose 70 because it's the lowest I've seen for other species. However, after this discussion, I'm thinking I should drop it down to 50 as Simon did a pretty good breakdown of it earlier.

Are there any other tweaks (aside from making it the standard human template) that would make it more balanced?

Let me address making them "standard humans," briefly. They're not. They've been engineered to be better at fighting and following orders than humans. Conversely, they're not very good at independence or interacting with anyone non-clone. (Perhaps a setback to all social checks targeting non-clones?) To my mind, this means spending at least some of the starting human XP in certain, constrained ways. i.e. Creating a new species template. They lose their diversity, but gain a combat focus....

Let me address making them "standard humans," briefly. They're not. They've been engineered to be better at fighting and following orders than humans. Conversely, they're not very good at independence or interacting with anyone non-clone. (Perhaps a setback to all social checks targeting non-clones?) To my mind, this means spending at least some of the starting human XP in certain, constrained ways. i.e. Creating a new species template. They lose their diversity, but gain a combat focus....

And let me reiterate: That's what starting XP is for, to round out what training they received before character creation. Yes, they are better than the average human, but so are some humans - half of them, to be precise. To make them better than all starting humans is to say that they a human couldn't go through the same training during his life and achieve the same things, which is silly because the clones are really just human copies.

Soldiers in general aren't standard either. It varies from service branch to branch, but they're essentily vetted from the natural population to be among those physically and mentally capable enough to make it through the training. They then receive the training. Cloning skips the recruitment process and lowers the washout rate. That's all imo. The rest is just how starting xp is spent.

My thoughts were: 3 Brawn, 3 Agility, 2 Intellect, 2 Cunning, 1 Willpower, 1 Presence, 11+Brawn Wounds, 9+Willpower Strain, Ranged - Heavy 1, Knowledge - Warfare 1, 70 XP, Starts with Recruit Tree, Can Train Ranged - Heavy to 3 at creation, 1 Boost to all Leadership checks to Influence other Clones.

Dear god, does the Special Abilities come with a "I Win" ability? That's ridiculously overpowered.

Clones are born and bread to be soldiers. They stared with Fetts genotype and tweaked it to be better, stronger, faster, etc. They also worked on conditioning their minds to make them easier to manipulate into following orders and making them more conformist.

With every game system EVER, thre is a disconnect between what a character should be and what you can achieve with starting character-ness.

I have a character who grew up in the outback of Tatooine. She should have at least a couple ranks in survival - simple, basic logic. You know what I didn't have when I started playing the character? Ranks in survival. So yes, sometimes the concept in your head of the ultra smooth, fast taking superspy gunslinger diplomat just wont jibe with your 100 xp (plus Obligation) starting character. Suck it up buttercup, just like the rest of us.

Right. Let me come at this another way...

There's an alien species that has a 3 brawn, a 3 agility, and starts with the Recruit tree. How would you fill out the balance of the species description in such a fashion as you'd think it would be balanced?

Right. Let me come at this another way...

There's an alien species that has a 3 brawn, a 3 agility, and starts with the Recruit tree. How would you fill out the balance of the species description in such a fashion as you'd think it would be balanced?

Balanced? Drop Intellect and Presence to 1. No free skills (two five-point talents in the Recruit tree take care of that). Species treats Knowledge - Warfare as a career skill. Wound Threshold = 10+Brawn. Strain Threshold = 8+Brawn. Starting XP: 75. That's about as close as you're going to get to balanced.

Doing the math:

Human starting XP: 110.

Human starting XP value: 130.

• Base human has a starting XP value of 130 (that's 110 starting XP plus 20 from the extra non-career skills). Total is 130.
• Add 60 points for raising Brawn and Agility to 3. Total is 190.
• Subtract 40 points for reducing Intellect and Presence to 1. Total is 150.
• Add 20 for the free Recruit tree. Total is 170.
• Add 25 for treating Knowledge - Warfare as a career skill (which reduces the cost of each rank by 5XP). Total is 195.
• Subtract 10 for reducing the strain threshold by 2. Total is 185.
• Subtract 20 for not getting the two free non-career skills Humans normally get. Total is 165.

Now find the difference between the starting XP value for Humans and the final total. In this case, it's 35. Subtract that number from the starting XP (not starting XP value) of humans (110), and you'll get the starting XP for your race. In this case, that's 75.

That's about as close to balanced as you're going to get.

No race has base attributes of Brawn 3 and Agility 3...

I'm having fun here...

Imperial naval trooper (Minion) : 2-2-2-2-2-2

Imperial naval officer (rival) : 2-3-2-3-2-2

Imperial stormtrooper (minion) : 3-3-2-2-3-1

Imperial stormtrooper sergeant (rival) : 3-3-2-2-3-1

Military Starfighter pilot (minion) : 2-3-2-2-2-2

What would be the level of awesomeness for a Green Clone Trooper ? Would he have starting stats of a Stormtrooper minion ? or a Stormtrooper sergeant ? I guess they are both the same... so it kinda settles the debate. Can you increase your characteristices to those levels with starting XP ? Using a basic human, it would cost 90xp to get 3 characteristics at 3, with 20xp left for other goodness.

Now, you could argue that Jango Fett was a Master Hunter (nemesis) with characteristics at 4-4-3-3-3-3. But no one in his right mind would allow such starting stats for a newbie character. Like CaptainRasberry said, just start a Knight Level game and give your players 300 bonus XP.

My vote goes for Baseline Human with Knight level play.

Now to play fair...

Brawn 3 (-30xp) , Agility 3 (-30xp) , Intellect 2, Cuning 2, Willpower 2, Presence 1 (+20xp) ; 5 free ranks in starting career skills (-5xp) , 3 free ranks in specialization skills (-10xp) , 1 free rank in confidence (-5xp) ; Wound 10+Brawn ; Strain 10+Wil ; 70 starting XP

(Starting XP could be less because of Brawn 3 usually costs more the 30xp because you also get a boost in Soak and Wounds... probably worth 10 more XP, for a total of only 60 starting XP)

(Don't pigeon hole your player into the Recruit Tree, it's not that good and he might never use it, so forcing him to get it for 20xp at chargen is probably not worth it...)

Hope this helps

Kudos

Edit : I corrected the starting XP because I forgot to refund the 2 free ranks in non-career skills from Basic Human...

Clones are born and bread to be soldiers. They stared with Fetts genotype and tweaked it to be better, stronger, faster, etc. They also worked on conditioning their minds to make them easier to manipulate into following orders and making them more conformist.

With every game system EVER, thre is a disconnect between what a character should be and what you can achieve with starting character-ness.

I have a character who grew up in the outback of Tatooine. She should have at least a couple ranks in survival - simple, basic logic. You know what I didn't have when I started playing the character? Ranks in survival. So yes, sometimes the concept in your head of the ultra smooth, fast taking superspy gunslinger diplomat just wont jibe with your 100 xp (plus Obligation) starting character. Suck it up buttercup, just like the rest of us.

On top of that starting characters for clone troopers are rookie recruits in the kamino training facilities, getting extended year long training, combat simulations and battle experience against droids. The whole recruite tree is something to give a colonist who joins the alliance some solider talents and career skills, not to make a soldier more solider. And speaking of careers, having low int is very impractical for navy clones, who were bred to man all those star destroyers and Y-Wings. Brawn 3 is not really helpful for that and surely not enhanced for those clones.

Right. Let me come at this another way...

There's an alien species that has a 3 brawn, a 3 agility, and starts with the Recruit tree. How would you fill out the balance of the species description in such a fashion as you'd think it would be balanced?

There isn't. That's why the devs haven't released a race with a 3 in both combat stats and access to an entire universal spec for a racial. It's completely out of step with every other race in the game.

Perhaps the problem is merely that we're trying too hard to make it a new species, and not making it the tailor built human clones are?

So... human's start at all 2s, 110XP and 2 non-career skills....

Lets ditch the non-career skills and turn them into say... 15XP (using the Correllian Human skill option as a price point), giving us a raw XP budget of 125.

We want an ability set of 3-3-2-2-3-1 to match stormtroopers, for consistency...so we'll get one of those 3's from Presence. but we still need 2 more... so lets just pull that right from the XP budget -60 giving us 65.

Now we've got 3-3-2-2-3-1.

Next we need to push for combat right? So instead of auto-giving them Recruit (which is pretty redundant if I wanted to play certain careers/specs) Lets take another 10XP off the budget and just allow Clones to purchase recruit at a 10XP Discount.

Remaining 55XP

If we want to go further, perhaps something like taking another 10XP and allow Clones the option to spend a D-point and reroll Fear checks caused by ordinary combat conditions?

So....

3-3-2-2-3-1

May purchase recruit for 10XP less

Reroll some Fear Checks

45XP

maybe?

Thanks guys. This is the kind of feedback I'd been hoping for.