Hello there, I am pretty new to F&D so I am posting here to get some advices.

Basically, we started a campaign using D6 rules and then moved soon to the ones used here, mostly Edge of the Empire since everyone but me wasn’t force sensitive. Below is a bit of a background from my character (please forgive my English, I am not a native speaker).

Fra’ye was a human padawan before the rise of the empire. During the order 66, he was fighting with his master. Luckily for Fra’ye he was a bit away from the clones when the order 66 was sent while his master was with them. Thus, the master was killed and Fra’ye hidden instead of trying to help. Then the clones looked for him, most of them. Indeed, one seemed to have some defect and did not follow the order. Instead, he went helping Fra’ye and killed his comrades (this clone is another player). The game starts when both are stuck on another planet with the others players and Fra’ye is pretty much an alcoholic. Now, he is starting to get out of the booze thing and will tend toward trying to protect others, which he couldn’t do for his master.

In the D6 rules, he was more a scholar than a warrior and was good with perception Force powers and a little thing for tactics. Thus, when we went for the new rules, since I did not have any books yet, my GM tried to convert it while trying to keep the concept. He made a Colon/Scholar with Force Sensitive Exile as out of career specialization to get Force rating 1 which would let me deep into the Jedi specializations from F&D. Now that I own some of the books and have a better understanding, he allowed me a rebuild and to directly go to a Jedi career from F&D.

For a scholar, the Jedi specialization fitting the most seems to be the Sage from the Consular career. It is missing some Knowledge skills, mostly Core worlds and Outer Rim but I would assume that the talents Knowledge specialization can make up for it. I am correct?
So that would be the starting point. But for later, I have few ideas for the concept but I am not sure that there are viable.

As written before, he is leaning toward helping/protecting. Thus, as next possible specializations, there would be Healer and Soresu defender. The choice for Soresu defender comes from the fact that I think that I need a lightsabre specialization and that one seems to fit better than Niman disciple for holding his ground to keep protecting others. Furthermore, Sage and Healer strongly emphasize the Intellect characteristic while Niman disciple focusses on Willpower. However, I might be very wrong there. While I prefer Soresu defender for the concept, I still find the Niman disciple nice. If the campaign goes long enough, do you think Niman disciple fits well with Soresu defender or not at all?

Lastly, as mentioned earlier, the GM built the first version with Colon/Scholar/Force Sensitive Exile. Do you think it could bring me something to stick with that instead of taking pure Jedi career as a start? I don’t see any reason for it but again, I might be wrong.

For the character creation, I was thinking on using all the XPs (Obligation and Morality ones too) on improving characteristics.
- 3 Int (Character main characteristic but I feel it is better to increase it more later with Dedication)
- 3 Presence OR Cunning, I am not so sure there.
- I would crank up Will to 4. I think it makes sense to do it at the creation to get more strain but I might be very wrong there and maybe it is better to leave it to 3 and to improve both Presence and Cunning to 3.

Few question about skills:
-Perception: while I feel this skill fits very well a Jedi good with perception/sensing Force power, few Jedi careers/specializations have it as career skill and the Sense force power tree doesn’t cover it from what I understand. That is part of the reason I liked the Colon/Scholar/Force Sensitive Exile path and that I could imagine taking Scholar as an out of career specialization later (and also because the Scholar Talent tree fits very well the concept).
-Is it useful for this concept to have a Range weapon skill? I think it is not but any advice is welcome.

Thanks a lot for reading all of it and for your help !

First of all what kind of xp budget are you working on? from what you have said I feel it is more than starting XP.

Second I feel with that background you should be in a F&D career, being an ex padawan that make the most sense to me.

Unless you have a lot of XP I think you may be spreading your concept too thin. I would choose the Consular path or the lightsaber path, not both.

Do not worry about everything being a class skill green dice can do a lot. Also yellow dice represent specific training in that area, so unless you have had hours of training to be observant the perception skill does not matter. If it does then it's only 25 extra xp in out of career penalties (rather than 30xp to get scholor).

If sense does not suit then there is another force power that works kinda like force binoculars called farsighted in Savage Spirits.

A few notes:

Knowledge Specialization runs off of Triumphs, which are only rolled on Proficiency dice, so it is not necessarily a big help on non-career skills. That said, as Vixen Icaza notes, a good characteristic can get you very far, and the non-career tax isn't a huge deal as long as you aren't trying to get tons of ranks. In a pinch, the Recruit tree from Age of Rebellion can get you Knowledge (Core Worlds) and (Outer Rim) relatively cheaply, along with a bunch of other skills (though sadly not Perception) and some decent combat talents.

You don't necessarily need a lightsaber specialization. If you decide to go for one in the long run, however, Niman is good for personal defense and incorporating Force Powers, while Soresu is better at defending allies. Both will do a fine job of keeping you safe, it's what you want to do in addition that will determine which better fits your needs.

Characteristics look good to me. High Willpower is a good idea, because Jedi tend to be strain hungry and Willpower affects Discipline, which is your primary force use skill and defense against fear (which leads to anger, hate, suffering, etc.). Good Int makes sense for your focus on knowledge skills. Between Cunning and Presence, it depends on whether you want to be better at Charming and Negotiating or lying and spying (i.e. Deception and Perception).

The thing about starting in a non-F&D Career and becoming a force user via a universal specialization is that it's expensive and inefficient XP-wise, since you have to spend a lot of XP to be able to use the F&D spec effectively later, and all of the F&D specs end up being out-of-career (So if you want to have Sage+Niman or Sage+Healer, those will all cost extra). I think it's an interesting roleplaying path, and one that can have viable applications for specific concepts, but I agree with Vixen Icaza that starting Sage would suit you better.

ETA: One more thing, don't neglect the Valuable Facts talent in Sage. It's a great party support talent that can really swing things in your group's favor.

You might want to take a look at this thread. I too have been working on rebuilding a D6/D20 character over to the FFG system, and came up with a pretty decent conversion system I think works pretty well for converting D6 characters over. You might want to take a look at it. The basic conversion system I've come up with is below:

For Attributes,

Step One: round each result of Step One down to whole dice. For new base Attribute.

Step Two: Convert results from step one to FFG equivalent:

Strength = Brawn,

Dexterity = Agility

Knowledge = Intellect

Perception = Presence

Knowledge + Perception/2 = Willpower

Technical = Cunning

Skills.

Step One subtract pips from each original D6 attribute’s dice

Step Two: add pips from each Attribute to each related skill and round up to next whole die.

Step Three: Subtract result of Step One from Step Two.

Step Four: Divide result from Step Three by three and round up to get new skill value.

Example. A Dexterity of 3D+2 and Lightsaber of 9D+1, add the +2 to the 9D+1 giving you 10D (no further rounding necessary) 10-3=7. 7/3=2.33333 rounded to 3.

Example two: A Strength of 2D+2 and a Stamina of 6D+2, add the +2 pips to the 6D+2 to get 7D+1 rounded to 8D. 8-2=6. 6/3=2.

Example three: A Mechanical of 2D and a Space Transports of 2D+1. 2D+1 rounds up to 3D. 3-2=1. 1/3=.3333 rounded up to 1.

Example four: a Perception of 3D+1 and Command of 6D. 3D+1 rounds to 3D. Add +1 pip to 6D= 6D+1, rounded to 7D. 7-2=5. 5/3=1.666667, rounded to 2.

Force Skills and Force Powers:

Step One: add base dice (not including pips) from all three Force Skills together

Step Two Multiply the result from Step One by three

Step Three: Add all +1s and +2s from all three Force Skills.

Step Four: Add the result from Step Three to the result from Step Two: This is how many total upgrades to divide up among all Force powers.

Step Five Convert D6 Force Powers to their FFG equivalent Force powers or Force talents.

Step Six: divide up upgrades among new Force powers.

For example: Ulic Qel-Droma has Control of 3D+1, Sense of 2D+2 and Alter of 3D and eleven Force Powers in his Force Power list., some of which don’t have FFG equivalents, others convert to Force Talents.

Adding 3D=2D=3D= 8D 8x3=24. 1+2=3, 24+3= 27 giving him 27 total upgrades divided among his various Force Powers.

Welcome to the FFG community!

Do I understand your ideas correctly?

Perceptive,

Academic/Scholar,

Human,

Healer, and

Lightsaber Defender,

with only starting (110) XP?

Only Characteristics cost more than Career dips, so we want to minimize those expenses. We can find ways to heal without being a Healer or having a specialization with access to Medicine, as well as ways to replicate scholarly insights and pursuits without needing to be a Sage. However, using a lightsaber in defensive ways immediately pushes us towards one of the six talent trees. Since you already profess interest in Knowledge and Medicine skills, Soresu Defender uses Intellect for its base skill (costing 15 XP to unlock it).

I suggest this build option, to allow you to do a lot of the specific things you wanted to do:

Raise Intellect from 2 to 3 to 4 for 70 XP

Buy-into the Soresu Defender specialization. Spend 5 XP on Parry, and drop in Soresu Technique for another 10 XP.

You've spent 85 XP of your 110 allotment. 25 XP remain.

Buy the Heal Force Power for 15 XP, leaving 10 remaining.

As a Human, select Medicine and Perception as your non-career skills. Select Lightsaber, Knowledge (Lore), Cool, Discipline, and Vigilance.

With the last 10 XP, buy another rank in Parry (5 XP) and Defensive Stance (5 XP).

Now, you can buy a lot of gear (including training lightsaber?) without needing to worry about extra XP (at this time).

If you want more Discipline or another social skills Characteristic, drop the last suggested two talents (+10), Heal (+15) and limit yourself to only 1000 credits with +5 XP. With that 30 XP, buy up another Characteristic from 2 to 3.

I hope this helps you create a fun and enjoyable beginning specialist character!

Thanks for your help. Here is some more information. My XP budget is the character creation one + 25 XP from play so really a starting character. With that amount to spend, I agree that if I tried to do all the things mentioned earlier, that would be a bad idea. So that was more some ideas in the long run. Furthermore, after reading your replies, I realize that it will be better to directly go into a Jedi career. Indeed, going through a universal specialization would cost a lot of XPs and I think that I would then be a bit useless in the group.

Thus, I would first only take the free starting specialization which would be Sage. In my mind, adding Healer and Soresu Defender (or Niman disciple) would have been something to add much later when the character is already effective in is first role: knowledge/sensing. So I guess a good option is to try to fill out the Sage talents tree to also get those two nice Force rating boosts and maybe the Sense force power tree. This is already a bunch of XPs and it might be better that spreading too thin.

But before that, I will also see where the game is going and if I feel that I need to be more knowledgeable, I guess a dip into the Scholar specialization could also be a possibility later on. But maybe we will realize that we quickly need a decent Healer and I might have to change a bit half way.

Also, something that I forgot to mention is that Fra’ye has a kind of nemesis. She was his secret lover when they were padawans. She was supposed to be dead but showed up as an inquisitor (yeah, both the GM and I know that this has been seen over and over but well, it always works!). So at one point, he will have to fight her and try to bring her back to the light side or kill her. So the character will need some mean to defend against her.

Then, I bit of a rule question. The Healer talents tree has quite a few talents involving Medecine check. Do they work when making a Medicine check when using the Force power Heal tree?

Also, I noticed that in the character creation phase in F&D, you can only set 3 career skills to ranks 1 while it is 4 in Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion. Is it something that got change with an errata or something or is it just how it is in F&D?

Edit: I think that now, my main struggle is still:

- Willpower 4 or 3 (with an increase to 4 much later with talent tree)

-If I leave it to 3, I put both Cunning and Presence to 3, easy.

-If I bring it up to 4 then I still can't decide between Presence and Cunning, both being interesting...

sounds like you are now on the right path.

With characteristics people are split but I prefer 3 characteristics @ 3 as you are a more rounded PC, others prefer to specialise.

Yes Talents that benefit a medicine check work whenever you roll one unless GM says otherwise, this does include the Healing power.

Starting XP is usually good to spend 90% on characteristics but that 25 post starting would be good to pick up a force power.

One thing you may not have considered which would require a bit of a rewrite would be changing your race to Cerean. they treat all knowledges as class skills.

Then, I bit of a rule question. The Healer talents tree has quite a few talents involving Medecine check. Do they work when making a Medicine check when using the Force power Heal tree?

Also, I noticed that in the character creation phase in F&D, you can only set 3 career skills to ranks 1 while it is 4 in Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion. Is it something that got change with an errata or something or is it just how it is in F&D?

Edit: I think that now, my main struggle is still:

- Willpower 4 or 3 (with an increase to 4 much later with talent tree)

-If I leave it to 3, I put both Cunning and Presence to 3, easy.

-If I bring it up to 4 then I still can't decide between Presence and Cunning, both being interesting...

Most applications of the Heal Force Power do not actually involve a Medicine check, so they do not interact with most of the talents in the Healer tree. They actually work on different resource tracks. You can think of healing in this game as being of three types: Natural Healing, which takes a long time and requires rest, First Aid, which can be done once per encounter and requires a Medicine check, and Stimpack, which can be done anytime but is only usable a certain number of times per day. The Heal Force Power is Stimpack healing: It takes effect immediately, doesn't require a Medicine check, and can be done multiple times in one encounter if necessary. Healer talents boost First Aid healing, allowing you to help your allies recover Wounds and Strain after each combat.

F&D Careers having fewer Career skills and fewer bonus ranks is by design. They get to start with a Force Rating, so they have to give something up relative to non-F&D careers.

I often like to have a starting 4 Characteristic, but that only makes sense when there is a particular focus area you really need to push. It doesn't really sound like your character has that compelling of a reason to want high Willpower, so I'd go with the spread of 3's to give you more flexibility.

Regarding the Cerean re-skin backstory: You lose 20 XP only to get all Knowledge skills as career skills. Unless you plan on investing (fewer) ranks in these skills, skip.

Regarding a Healer specialization: I'd skip it, unless you are a Healer through and through. With the death of your Jedi Master, methinks you aren't as good at healing as you'd like to have been, at least. Adding the Heal/Harm Force Power is expensive (15 XP), but may fulfill what you need; a quick band-aid to many problems. Does anyone else inn the party have access to healing, at least with Stimpacks and the like? If not, you may want to re-consider how you invest in any form of healing. Career? Force Power? Skill ranks in Medicine? Equipment? How do you look at 'healing?'

Regarding the use of Lightsabers: This is the most critical option, in my opinion. Unless you have a decent score in Brawn, you may want to look at another lightsaber specialization whereby you replace the Lightsaber (Brawn) skill with another, high rated Characteristic, like Intellect or Presence.

Additionally, do you start with a lightsaber? Your backstory explicitly states that you were a Jedi Padawn, so having at least a training lightsaber AND ranks in it make sense. I submit that failing to recognize your past skill use may as well restart the character as you'd like. At a minimum, ONE rank in Lightsaber is a given (which can be had as a Human, so we can end that discussion). Whether or not you actually still HAVE a lightsaber, as a drunken failure, is up to you. Pawning the training lightsaber for more rotgut drinnks make sense, if you need an out, but what is your combat skill? Is this important? Do you have to BUY a (training) lightsaber? If so, you know you'll need the option of +credits (maybe 1k?) at character creation.

So, with 110+25+(additional Morality choice of credits/XP/Morality) = 135 XP as a Human.

For us to best assist your character development, will you please answer:

#1 How important is it for you to use a lightsaber in combat? This answer guides our selection of specializations or other ways to show your skills with it.

#2 Do you start with a training lightsaber, and if so, do you have to buy it? What're your chances of getting a REAL lightsaber, former padawan?

#3 How often will you meet to play? How much XP does your GM expect to grant after each session? If this is a sporadic campaign, or a weekly delve, we can better define your character as broadly skilled or highly specialized.

#4 What general roles are other players taking in the game? For example, if you have 4 other players who all are doctors, maybe we needn't buff the healing opportunities as much.

Finally, I strongly suggest looking at the Seeker: Hermit specialization from Savage Spirits. This specialization would seem to fit your exiled status, and offers a bonded animal companion, +2 Force Ratings within the talent tree, and lots of stuff based on Survival skills (which are further detailed in same book). With the Survival of the Fittest talent, I submit how you could have a bonded animal at least of Sil 1 (or 0), which is nice for a beginning character. Given some of the bonded animal 'tricks' you can teach it with more talents, this is another unique combat opportunity, but you'd still need something with which to fight. Maybe it just IS your weapon of choice: your trained bonded animal.

Hermits also know a lot about Xenology, so your academic pursuits could be more like biology.

With a Human, I believe you'll have two main choices:

Option A: 3 scores with 3, 3 scores at 2, 20 XP remaining + 25

Option B: 1 score with 4, 1 score with 3, 4 scores at 2, with 10 XP remaining + 25

As a human, you can get two different, non-career skills at at least a Yellow and Green dice pool. This may be a place to assign Lightsaber (Brawn), showing better-than-average yet still not dominating use of the lightsaber. I think that reflects a padawan well, too. Perhaps Medicine is also another assignment.

Regarding the choice of socially-influential Characteristics (i.e.: Presence, Willpower, Cunning), I offer a radical move:

Buy the Influence Force Power (10 XP), either the Range or (preferably) Magnitude Upgrade (5 XP) and the Control: Skills upgrade (15XP). This is 30 XP spent, but with other XP options, you can add a Force Die to all of your Coercion, Charm, Deception, Leadership and Negotiation skill checks.

Now, if you did not select Cunning to be higher than 2, you still are rolling three dice to Deception checks. In a lot of ways, this expensive Force Power will act like more investments in your social Characteristics, just cut at a different angle. Your Survival and Perception, checks, however, still are unaffected (unless raised Cunning).

How did your meager padawan avoid Order 66? You bullied, charmed, bluffed, etc. your way out of the action.

Also, I'm not sure how best to represent your love of scholarly pursuits AND healing AND lightsaber use beyond what I tried, but this information offers more options and requires feedback from you.

Lastly, when do you expect to play? If you played last night, for example, everything else I write is likely to be pointless.

Hello there and thanks again for your answers.

About the Cerean rewrite, this is not something that can be done unless I start a new character. We already started playing with the other payers etc. so that would be very odd.

To avoid Order 66, I was helped by one of the clone who was with us and defended me against his brothers. This clone is one of the players. Then, it was mostly there my padawan related gears to walk unnoticed.

It is true that for the character concept, 4 Will would be only for more strain and better Discipline checks. I guess there is also a bit of a flavor there since I see the Jedi as strong will being or at least as being needing strong will to resist temptations from the dark side. However, I agree that mechanical wise, that might be not so… wise to put 4 Will.

For cimmerianthief:

#1 I am still old school and see light saber as the Jedi weapon. However, playing at a time when Jedi are hunted down, the character understands that keeping low profile is important. Nevertheless, when needed, I want him to be decent with a lightsaber. This doesn’t have to be at character creation but more on a medium term. He doesn’t really have a lightsaber anymore anyways. Thus, I don’t worry about it right now but I still have to think about which lightsaber specialization I want take later in order to plan ahead a bit.
#2 From a previous encounter, I could stole the lightsaber of his former love inquisitor at the beginning of the story so he has a lightsaber but doesn’t use it and will probably prefer to build his own later.
#3 We do a PbF but each of us post a few times a days so we move quite fast. And it should be a long term campaign. Also, to answer to another of your question, we keep playing while I am still thinking about the character. We are just still using the one the GM built for me.
#4 Three of the others are more combat focused and one is more mecanician/pilot and could also be a decent medic but it doesn’t seems that he is going this way.

On the Healing side:

Thanks for your explanation regarding how healing works and the three types. For the Healer spec, again, it wouldn’t be something I would take now. In my mind, it is more something like “is it a spec that I would be interested in later?” and “Would the Force power Healing tree be enough for me?”. The reason for that is the following. I like the Sage specialization and that would likely be my first spec. However, if I don’t plan to take neither the Niman disciple nor the Healer later, does it makes sense to start as a Consular or would it be better to start with another Career that has more interesting specializations and directly buy the Sage spec for 30XP?

Thanks for the “trick” with influence, I guess that if I leave Will 4, I would then increase Cunning to 3 an leave Presence to 2. The only skill of interest linked to Presence that is not affected by influence is Cool but I will have it as a Career skill anyway so that is fine and I would get more dice in Perception. Of course, again that is not something to get right now but I should be able to get those 30XP (or 25 with a master) fairly quickly.

The first thing I would like to pursuit is the scholar side. Lightsaber and maybe healing use would come in later. I don’t want to be able to do a bit of scholar, a bit of lightsaber and a bit of healing but be bad/average at all of them. Right now, it is just character creation + 25XP from play so a scholar specialist is good enough. The rest will come later after some playing time, or writing time for PbF.

It looks like you're pointed in the right direction. In future posts to help, you've helped remind me to ask players what their XP earning rates are likely to be; it'll save time if we get a longitudinal-like, panoramic range of XP to be earned.

While healing may take time, I think you could explain away any deficient lightsaber training due to drunkenness and time away - he 'forgot' what skills he had, especially since he wouldn't be using or polishing those padawan-level skills.

I think you're done with the character, now, right? Is there anything else with which you may need help? Did you buy everything you needed as a new character? Consider posting the finished creation at SWSheets.com and share the link when done (it gives us some satisfaction to see contributions take life).

Yes, thanks. Mostly, my last uncertainty is about where (specialization) I want to go later.

"Is one of the others Consular specializations interesting for me?" If yes, then I shall stick with a Consular/Sage start. If not, the question is then: "Is there a Career where there are at least two specializations that are interesting to me?" If yes, maybe I should start with stat Career and directly buy the Sage specialization.

Yes, thanks. Mostly, my last uncertainty is about where (specialization) I want to go later.

"Is one of the others Consular specializations interesting for me?" If yes, then I shall stick with a Consular/Sage start. If not, the question is then: "Is there a Career where there are at least two specializations that are interesting to me?" If yes, maybe I should start with stat Career and directly buy the Sage specialization.

While planning is good, remember how other players may make suggestions based on situational encounters and a history of doing good with X, but needing to fill a gap in Y. Keep these things in mind as you play, and maybe say aloud how you are flirting with ABC specialization in the future. If everyone wants to take a healing dip, either in Force powers, Doctors, Scouts, Healers, etc., you can base your plans accordingly.

Remember, no perfect plan ever survives first contact with the enemy. If you're happy with this character, go get 'em!