How do you start with more that 1 FR?

You have to invest enough XP to purchase the Force Rating talent in one of the specialization talent trees. Doable, in most cases, but you won't be able to raise your characteristics.

How do you start with more that 1 FR?

There's no real point in doing so, unless you're getting a ton of extra XP at chargen. You'll have no Force powers, minimal Skills, few Talents, and your characteristics will suck.

The most useful Force powers at FR1 IMHO are Sense and Enhance. They aren't flashy, but don't under-estimate their value.

EDIT - never mind, my way was stupid and wouldn't work. I blame the lack of coffee.

(For those curious about the stupidity I was thinking "Pick a career, buy one of the universal force trees, buy a F&D tree for your +1". Wait, no - that wont work).

How do you start with more that 1 FR?

Generally speaking, you don't.

Unless the GM is starting you off with hundreds of bonus XP, trying to get to Force Rating 2 with starting XP (even at Knight Level) generally isn't worth it, since you won't have a lot of XP left to purchase Force powers.

That said, Force Rating 1 isn't useless. You just have to accept that you won't be doing a lot of flashy things with the Force powers you do have. Sense (especially the defensive Control Upgrade), Enhance, and Foresee (initiative boost Control Upgrade combined with defense boost Control Upgrade is pretty solid) are all handy things that can work just fine with FR 1, provided you don't mind taking the occasional point or two of Conflict for using those dark side pips when necessary.

Move at FR 1 is more of a utility effect, and generally not worth investing lots of XP in, but it can still be useful to have. I'm playing a Sentinel/Shien Expert in a friend's TFA-era game, and with only FR 1 was able to use Move to completely deprive a First Order riot trooper of his shock baton after another PC had spent Advantage from a failed combat check to disarm the guy, and that was done with just the basic Move power.

Remember that one of the core precepts of this system is that you're on the Luke Skywalker path to mastering the Force, and that it's going to take time (and a lot of XP) to begin approaching the degree of competency we saw with the Jedi Knights of the Clone Wars era; even Ahsoka Tano as a Padawan was more capable than your average Force and Destiny PC.

Pathfinder is probably about as cheap as you can do it for 65 xp. As mentioned though ignoring all else at CHARGEN to achieve means a character that will always be playing catch up. Plenty of good effects available with FR1.

so protect/unleash is just something to get at a later time i guess

There is no way to start with it, you have to have FR3 before you can even start buying it.

Is it that you cant buy it, or that you just cant use it when your a Force-tot?

Have to have the prereq FR to buy it.

so protect/unleash is just something to get at a later time i guess

Well, if your GM wants to start you all at 600 or 1000XP, then sure.

One of many things I'm grateful for about this game is that it (mostly) treats the difficulty of learning the Force with the seriousness and commitment it deserves. If every squib could toss lightning I'd never have bought the game.

How do you start with more that 1 FR?

Generally speaking, you don't.

Unless the GM is starting you off with hundreds of bonus XP, trying to get to Force Rating 2 with starting XP (even at Knight Level) generally isn't worth it, since you won't have a lot of XP left to purchase Force powers.

That said, Force Rating 1 isn't useless. You just have to accept that you won't be doing a lot of flashy things with the Force powers you do have. Sense (especially the defensive Control Upgrade), Enhance, and Foresee (initiative boost Control Upgrade combined with defense boost Control Upgrade is pretty solid) are all handy things that can work just fine with FR 1, provided you don't mind taking the occasional point or two of Conflict for using those dark side pips when necessary.

Move at FR 1 is more of a utility effect, and generally not worth investing lots of XP in, but it can still be useful to have. I'm playing a Sentinel/Shien Expert in a friend's TFA-era game, and with only FR 1 was able to use Move to completely deprive a First Order riot trooper of his shock baton after another PC had spent Advantage from a failed combat check to disarm the guy, and that was done with just the basic Move power.

Remember that one of the core precepts of this system is that you're on the Luke Skywalker path to mastering the Force, and that it's going to take time (and a lot of XP) to begin approaching the degree of competency we saw with the Jedi Knights of the Clone Wars era; even Ahsoka Tano as a Padawan was more capable than your average Force and Destiny PC.

Emphasis mine

Dono really nails it here. FFG seems to have really used the movies are the primary source of information about how things "are supposed to work." If you go back and watch the films again, especially early in a character set (like Ep 1, 4, and 7, Clone wars season 1, rebels season 1) the descriptions of what force powers you see used and to what magnitude are basically listed right there in his post. The Force is a bonus, not a crutch. It allows the Jedi to do a little extra with a lot less compared to a normal person, but that's about it.

It's not till you really get deep into a character set (Ep 3, 6, Clone wars season 5/6) that you really see the characters flipping out and going nuts. But of course by then they have some serious XP under their belts.

So.. going back to the game, while the Force Rating is important, it's just a facet of your character. Look around at talents, skills, and other things and you may see you don't have a huge force rating to be a Jedi, you just have to know how to handle it....

This is a game that still has a good balance with 2000 earned xp PC's, keep that in mind. A starting PC is really at the fledgling stages of their life, they are practically a normal person and yet to become the "Hero". To make the system still have growth potential beyond the 1000xp mark the developers have provided A LOT of ways to spend xp, and made advancing your core Characteristics and Force Rating an expensive endeavour.

So don't feel cheated, its an intentional design feature; it allows very long campaigns, low power campaigns, Knight Level campaigns and beyond. Its entirely possible for a group to make characters then the GM hand out 500xp before the game even begins and it will still be a functional game where every character will be able to be challenged and has not become demi-gods.

so protect/unleash is just something to get at a later time i guess

Protect/Unleash is more of a future investment, since you're going to need at least 300 XP just to get to Force Rating 2 in most cases; Seer (under Mystic), Sage (under Consular), and Hermit (under Seeker) are the only three specs (currently) that can get a PC to Force Rating 3 without having to buy an additional spec. I think the general average to get to a spec's Force Rating talent is around 100 XP; there are some that get there faster/cheaper, as well as a few that take a bit longer (Niman Disciple stands out on that front).

If you look at the films and recent media, the only individuals you see really using effects that would fall under Protect or Unleash are Jedi Masters and Sith Lords.

As much as I enjoyed playing WotC's Saga Edition (it's one of the few d20-based games that I'll willingly play at this point in time), one of the problems it had was that a starting PC could ostensibly have Force powers that were in Legends the general domain of master Force users. FFG has addressed this by using a PC's Force Rating as a "you must be this tall to ride" requirement, so that you don't have a PC who is a novice at using the Force able to pull off the sorts of things that you'd only see a seasoned Jedi Knight or a Jedi Master accomplish.

I had a player in a couple different FaD games that was put out that she couldn't get to Protect/Unleash right away, though her PC in my most recent campaign (on hiatus until a player gets back from his missionary trip) just reached Force Rating 3, and the group has access to a holocron (Val Isa's from the core rulebook adventure) so she can finally have a character learn that power.

The cheapest way (in the CRB) to start with Force rating 2 is with Mystic and spending 60 of your starting experience in the Seer tree.

Most of your starting experience should be spent on Characteristics though. You can spend leftover xp on your Specialization tree for a headstart towards Force Rating +1.

50xp in Navigator, but you actually need the Savage Spirits book for that, and want to play a Navigator.