So... I've been in plenty of games in which we all started with the 5 Obligation, usually 4-5 people teams, but I'm going to be part of a small team as a side game.

The question I have is, do you get the XP for it, counting from 0 Obligation up to the starting level that's recommended?

It's a question that's been bothering me (and my crew) since I started a couple years ago.

And if this is the wrong forum, can someone can move it to the right spot?

You only get bonus xp if you take on additional Obligation to whatever you start with. Not sure if that answers your question.

That does. It's what I thought, but I needed personal confirmation. Thank you.

So what we're planning (Giving the XP/Credit Bonus counting up from 0. Because we're just 2 people.) is a house rule.

I'm not sure why you need a house rule. If you have 2 people the suggestion is 20 Obligation. You could take on up to 20 more each and add +15 xp and a +1000 credits, or +5 xp and +3500 credits to start with.

Because as a Human, I've spent about 90 XP increasing stats, which according to the book (and I haven't found any Errata stating otherwise) because I won't be able to get any more. Compared to some of the impossibly achieved stats that some of the Nemesis (NPC's that have a lot of experience and ability behind them) the Master Hunter for example has 4 in Brawn and Agility, 3 in everything else, that's impossible to achieve even if you go down all three Bounty Hunter Paths in terms of XP.

That also means that no character, assuming they want to be more than just a mediocre member of their species will ever get more than their Career and Specialization skills at 2. Which unless you're a Droid and Human, means a total of 6 skills (Humans get 8) and we all know by watching the various films even the less experienced types have a wide range of skill. And some are even experts at what they have learned.

Secondly, the amount of Credits you get to start off with is piddling. My PC is a Bounty Hunter/Assassin (which he's not, it's just that as a former prison guard, his skills are all weapon based. He doesn't build stuff, and he's no wilderness guy) and that means I get 500cr to get a suit of armour (Like a padded, or maybe a Flak Vest (from one of the other books, it's not much better than a suit of Padded), ONE blaster (preferably a Rifle, as that's the only ranged skill he could choose), some Binders, a Datapad (To hold the bounties) and maybe a Utility Belt.

We're getting as 'free' ship as per the suggestion.

The issue is that we either won't have the skills to pilot the ship or we won't have any of the tools to do our jobs, And as two characters in the big bad universe, we need a leg up. We're not asking for everything, we need a tiny bit.

There is Dedication in every tree that gives a stat boost. The Nemesis bounty hunter is not a starting PC.

In regards to gear, you could add 20 Obligation and take +5 xp and +3500 credits, giving you 4000 credits to begin with, which is hardly a piddling amount of gear.

There's always going for xp and having +15 xp, which gives you 125 xp to begin with as a human, and still +1000 credits, which gives you 1500 credits to spend, which is still a significant amount of gear.

The fact remains that if we take the entire three Specialist parts of the career for our Career, the most we'd ever get is 3 Stat boosts (the other player is a Smuggler/Thief) out of everything.

5xp will get one point in Piloting, which means no Gunnery skill for either of us.

And every other skill we have will be at just 1 point, Not very Cinematic hero. A single minion is a threat to us, and assuming we run up against a bunch of goons (like say 2 to 3) in the street, we're done. Make new characters.

And we know that Nemesis aren't PCs. They're not even EXPERIENCED PC's, they're IMPOSSIBLE to get to. Ever. If it was say Darth Vader, sure, we could let it slide, but a nameless Master Hunter, (again, just an example) that is supposed to be an attainable 'rank' of renown is impossible to achieve in terms of capability via the built in experience system.

You know you can buy Gunnery skill even though it's not in your tree correct? That there are career books that give 6 total specs for each career? That you can buy into any other spec you want to for xp?

For 10XP. Which we won't have unless we forgo the credit boost.

We have to pick one, because if split the middle, it won't be enough for either. Hence the house rule.

You also know that if you have say a 4 in Agility to begin with you're going to be pretty solid at piloting and gunnery even without any skill ranks correct? That you don't need skill ranks to roll a check?

NPCs/enemies are designed for that role. They aren't built using PC rules and aren't expected to function the way that PCs do. In any case, PCs will (beyond the very beginning) generally have a pile of talents that the opposition doesn't, and talents are what make the specialist in this system.

You don't need skill ranks to use skills, and the effect - upgrading ability dice to proficiency dice - is useful (mainly because of the chance of triumphs), but by no means necessary.

If you're used to systems like D&D, you need to discard everything you know about how those systems work because odds are good that this system doesn't work that way.

NPCs/enemies are designed for that role. They aren't built using PC rules and aren't expected to function the way that PCs do. In any case, PCs will (beyond the very beginning) generally have a pile of talents that the opposition doesn't, and talents are what make the specialist in this system. You don't need skill ranks to use skills, and the effect - upgrading ability dice to proficiency dice - is useful (mainly because of the chance of triumphs), but by no means necessary. If you're used to systems like D&D, you need to discard everything you know about how those systems work because odds are good that this system doesn't work that way.

The problem with this argument is that it's a fallacy. Nemesis' have a Talent that bypasses most of the PC level talents by giving out a blanket difficulty that helps counter.

The issue remains that the way the stat progression prevents players from reaching a status where they could be Nemesis level, no matter how much XP you give them, they simply won't have the dice possible Unless you house rule that you can spend Post Character creation XP, in the same way (10x the new score you want to a cap of 5), which doesn't actually harm the Dedicated Talent, simply because of 1) the cost, it's still 25 XP no matter the level. 2) It's the only way to boost a stat to 6.

Which after discussing it with my friends, we'll also implement.

And knowing D&D has absolutely nothing to do with this. I've been gaming for 31 years, I've played various editions of D&D, HERO system, a stint in GURPS, some FASERIP Marvel, some FATE, WEG Star Wars, Last Unicorn Star Trek (Which I'm playing in a short campaign now, well, Sunday EST), White Wolf's pre-Gehenna/End Times line, Exalted 1e, Cyberpunk/Metkon 2-Zeta and a few more I can't remember at the moment...

The real problem is that by not allowing players to be able to get the same level of stats, you're (the designers, not y'all personally) telling your players that they'll never be as good as Jango/Boba Fett, Asohka Tano, Captain Rex, despite the game telling them that they are the 'stars of the show'. This, to me and my friends, is bad design.

But seeing as this is our favourite Star Wars game system to date, and frankly, it's easy to house rule for us to 'fix' these problems away, we will.

The issue remains that the way the stat progression prevents players from reaching a status where they could be Nemesis level, no matter how much XP you give them, they simply won't have the dice possible Unless you house rule that you can spend Post Character creation XP, in the same way (10x the new score you want to a cap of 5), which doesn't actually harm the Dedicated Talent, simply because of 1) the cost, it's still 25 XP no matter the level. 2) It's the only way to boost a stat to 6.

Which after discussing it with my friends, we'll also implement.

Pretty much anyone who has ever played this game agrees that allowing this breaks the game and is ludicrously overpowered.

It's your table and you can play a ludicrously overpowered game if you wish, just don't expect many people to agree here.

You will need to ramp up the difficulty, because your characters are going to break any concept of game balance.

The real problem is that by not allowing players to be able to get the same level of stats, you're (the designers, not y'all personally) telling your players that they'll never be as good as Jango/Boba Fett, Asohka Tano, Captain Rex, despite the game telling them that they are the 'stars of the show'. This, to me and my friends, is bad design.

That's nonsense. We pretty much have stats for Boba Fett in EOE (Master Bounty Hunter, add a jetpack and you're good to go) and he's the equivalent of a 4 Specialisation character. We actually have stats for Lando, which only omit his Pilot skills. He's the equivalent of a 3 spec character, which feels about right for the movie heroes. And he has a couple of 2's in his stats and skills between 1 and 4.

NPCs in this system have whatever they need to do what you need them to do. And they certainly wouldn't have maximum in everything. Go back and watch the movies; all these characters have flaws.

So yeah, around 1000-1500 XP, you characters will be on the level of movie heroes. We have a character around 2500 XP who would hand Vader his ass in single combat.

And in any case, even if you made ludicrous versions of movie characters with max stats in everything, a well-equipped mid-level PC party would take them down in 2-3 rounds. Trust me, I've tried it.

(But really, your main villains shouldn't be putting themselves in a position where the PCs can dogpile them, and they should stay well away from single combats with dangerous melee PCs).

FFG have made it clear they don't intend to 'stat out' many movie characters, partly because everyone would have their own ideas over the 'official' stats, and partly because if a GM needs them, they can stat them according to their needs.

You can easily extrapolate the power levels of NPCs using the ones presented in the book. You can made someone like Vader easily by using the Inquisitor rules in F&D. And they are all eminently killable by mid-level PCs if that's what your narrative wants.

This game asks you to throw away a lot of RPG conventions, like a binary pass/fail, and embrace a 'Rule of Cool' concept. One aspect of that is getting out of a fanboy mentality and accepting that movie NPCs are human, flawed, most of them die or are hurt in the movies anyway, and will have some stats of 2 or 3.

Can you have PCs with 6's right out of the gate? Hell no. Can you have them over time? Yes, very much so. We have three PCs with Intellect 6, two with Presence 6, one with Brawn 6. If you don't want your starting PCs to be rookies, just give them 500-1000 XP after character creation, and they can be like movie heroes right out of the gate. There's nothing wrong with 'starting at higher level' if your game concept needs them to do that.

But hey, a playtester like 2P51 has already told you this. But do you realise how it makes you look when you come in with your 30 posts and talk about the

bad design.

I'm honestly not trying to be a jerk. When I first came here, I was confused by the dice, nonplussed by the fact that one of the pregenerated NPCs was a female twi'lek who looked plain and wore full armour. I didn't like the fixed damage. I thought that a Star Wars game that didn't have Jedi in it was basically against the Trades Descriptions Act.

But I didn't come in shooting; I asked questions and learned about how this all works, and realised this game does need you to accept some paradigm shifts, to throw away everything that Pathfinder taught you about RPGs. This isn't the WEG version. This isn't SAGA. And it definitely isn't D&D.

And I found that it wasn't perfect, but it was really very, very good. I changed minor things, made adjustments only after I played it by RAW and found things weren't working. (We changed the hell out of the lore, but that's a very different story when we're talking about mechanics...)

It might be best that you don't just assume. People will be far more helpful if you're inquiring and open-minded.

NPCs/enemies are designed for that role. They aren't built using PC rules and aren't expected to function the way that PCs do. In any case, PCs will (beyond the very beginning) generally have a pile of talents that the opposition doesn't, and talents are what make the specialist in this system. You don't need skill ranks to use skills, and the effect - upgrading ability dice to proficiency dice - is useful (mainly because of the chance of triumphs), but by no means necessary. If you're used to systems like D&D, you need to discard everything you know about how those systems work because odds are good that this system doesn't work that way.

The problem with this argument is that it's a fallacy. Nemesis' have a Talent that bypasses most of the PC level talents by giving out a blanket difficulty that helps counter.

The issue remains that the way the stat progression prevents players from reaching a status where they could be Nemesis level, no matter how much XP you give them, they simply won't have the dice possible Unless you house rule that you can spend Post Character creation XP, in the same way (10x the new score you want to a cap of 5), which doesn't actually harm the Dedicated Talent, simply because of 1) the cost, it's still 25 XP no matter the level. 2) It's the only way to boost a stat to 6.

Which after discussing it with my friends, we'll also implement.

And knowing D&D has absolutely nothing to do with this. I've been gaming for 31 years, I've played various editions of D&D, HERO system, a stint in GURPS, some FASERIP Marvel, some FATE, WEG Star Wars, Last Unicorn Star Trek (Which I'm playing in a short campaign now, well, Sunday EST), White Wolf's pre-Gehenna/End Times line, Exalted 1e, Cyberpunk/Metkon 2-Zeta and a few more I can't remember at the moment...

The real problem is that by not allowing players to be able to get the same level of stats, you're (the designers, not y'all personally) telling your players that they'll never be as good as Jango/Boba Fett, Asohka Tano, Captain Rex, despite the game telling them that they are the 'stars of the show'. This, to me and my friends, is bad design.

But seeing as this is our favourite Star Wars game system to date, and frankly, it's easy to house rule for us to 'fix' these problems away, we will.

I don't understand this statement of you can't get to the same level of stats. There will be a total of 100+ specs in the game, most with a Dedication bonus in each. If someone was just focused on wanting a 6 in every stat you'd need to buy like 20ish specs to accomplish it. I don't know as that would be achievable as far as campaign longevity goes, but the statement that it's not possible no matter the amount of xp awarded is factually incorrect. Of course you can't do it at CHARGEN, but you shouldn't be able to in any game.

If being maxed out in a combat dice pool is the goal, with a human bounty hunter you could do that with about 130 xp awarded in the Assassin tree alone using a human PC and Ranged Heavy, and 130 xp isn't a lot of sessions.