The DM of our table has a fondness for indestructible canonical characters. Weigh in. Should any guy who shows up in the movie be unkillable?

Yes, and no. Depends IMO on the situation that you meet him in, and whether the GM wants to stick to the canon timeline or not. I don't mind canonical characters, as long as they are few and far between. I use them in my games like good punctuation; they can provide a memorable encounter, or convey the seriousness of a setting.

If they aren't absolutely necessary to the canon storyline, I may allow the PCs to kill them off if that's the turn the story takes. Major characters like Vader, No. Any regular PC at my table who thinks that he can take on Vader hand-to-hand and walk away will find himself rolling up a new character pronto.

There have been other threads on here about this subject, and from what I recall, it tends to depend on your gaming style.

I know Marcy re-wrote her own canon and if I'm not wrong, she does allow her PCs to kill off canon characters. So I think it really just depends on what kind of game you want to play.

So far canon characters have not really come up a lot in our games as I try to let the PCs be the stars of the show.

Didn't the guidance for WEG state something like 'It's a big universe, it doesn't revolve around a single family bloodline'?

TBH years ago I fell into that trap with my Vampire campaign,,,, i got... 'attached'...(best way to put it) to certain NPCs and so did the players. To prevent the campaign getting stale I killed off loads of NPCs in a single night- the Primogen (the city council), the Prince, Clan leaders and Clan elders... it really shocked the players tbh... BUT the players were the main characters.

I'm in two minds on this.... yeah, they're canon. If you're so attached to them as NPCs just don't have them in your campaign.

I question why the players want to kill such NPCs. Is it because they'll get bragging rights, or was the NPC asking for it?

Yes, and no. Depends IMO on the situation that you meet him in, and whether the GM wants to stick to the canon timeline or not. I don't mind canonical characters, as long as they are few and far between. I use them in my games like good punctuation; they can provide a memorable encounter, or convey the seriousness of a setting.

If they aren't absolutely necessary to the canon storyline, I may allow the PCs to kill them off if that's the turn the story takes. Major characters like Vader, No. Any regular PC at my table who thinks that he can take on Vader hand-to-hand and walk away will find himself rolling up a new character pronto.

There have been other threads on here about this subject, and from what I recall, it tends to depend on your gaming style.

I know Marcy re-wrote her own canon and if I'm not wrong, she does allow her PCs to kill off canon characters. So I think it really just depends on what kind of game you want to play.

So far canon characters have not really come up a lot in our games as I try to let the PCs be the stars of the show.

Yeah, I saw on you other thread that you used Ordo & Mereel

Yes, and no. Depends IMO on the situation that you meet him in, and whether the GM wants to stick to the canon timeline or not. I don't mind canonical characters, as long as they are few and far between. I use them in my games like good punctuation; they can provide a memorable encounter, or convey the seriousness of a setting.

If they aren't absolutely necessary to the canon storyline, I may allow the PCs to kill them off if that's the turn the story takes. Major characters like Vader, No. Any regular PC at my table who thinks that he can take on Vader hand-to-hand and walk away will find himself rolling up a new character pronto.

There have been other threads on here about this subject, and from what I recall, it tends to depend on your gaming style.

I know Marcy re-wrote her own canon and if I'm not wrong, she does allow her PCs to kill off canon characters. So I think it really just depends on what kind of game you want to play.

So far canon characters have not really come up a lot in our games as I try to let the PCs be the stars of the show.

Yeah and Boba Fett too...

Yes, and no. Depends IMO on the situation that you meet him in, and whether the GM wants to stick to the canon timeline or not. I don't mind canonical characters, as long as they are few and far between. I use them in my games like good punctuation; they can provide a memorable encounter, or convey the seriousness of a setting.

If they aren't absolutely necessary to the canon storyline, I may allow the PCs to kill them off if that's the turn the story takes. Major characters like Vader, No. Any regular PC at my table who thinks that he can take on Vader hand-to-hand and walk away will find himself rolling up a new character pronto.

There have been other threads on here about this subject, and from what I recall, it tends to depend on your gaming style.

I know Marcy re-wrote her own canon and if I'm not wrong, she does allow her PCs to kill off canon characters. So I think it really just depends on what kind of game you want to play.

So far canon characters have not really come up a lot in our games as I try to let the PCs be the stars of the show.

Yeah and Boba Fett too...

Clan Skirata had a very brief cameo too

Boba Fett? He's one of those characters that I would be scared to put in my game because I prefer to keep the enigma as part of my in-game canon. Has your party come up against him?

If you don't want your PC's to kill a particular NPC, then don't put that NPC anywhere that the PC's can kill them.

Pretty much this ^^^

If you don't want your PC's to kill a particular NPC, then don't put that NPC anywhere that the PC's can kill them.

I came by this rule from experience.

I would ask your game master about why canonical characters are even showing up. Do they serve the plot of the story or are they there to show how weak and ineffective your group of PCs are? I take no issue with using a canonical character like Jabba the Hutt, Mon Mothma or Admiral Ackbar, if they serve as a mission point-person. But if Vader and Boba Fett are being used as antagonists but no fair way is provided to harm them, the controlling GM is simply showing off his own cleverness. And being a jerk.

On the flip side, players shouldn't metagame. If Mon Mothma hands you a mission briefing, a player shouting "LOL I kill her!" is being disruptive.

When I ran the Jewel of Yavin adventure I had the timeline line up with the Imperial invasion of Cloud City. The PCs never saw the characters from the cannon but the weight of the event played a significant factor on how they wrapped up their dealings.

Having Lando come over the PA system and tell everyone to leave made it pretty clear that staying was not an option, and when the thief who was going in to steal the Jewel found himself face to face with Stormtroopers instead of regular security personnel, the PCs knew poodoo just got real...

I've had canonical characters show up in my games, but they've almost always been in a context where combat wasn't possible. My players are usually psyched to run into them, even when it's Vader showing up while they're being interrogated.

Since I tend to subscribe to the theory "if it has stats, it can be killed," I just don't give canonical characters stats. Even if I were generally okay with the PCs killing canon characters (and I am, it's just very, very difficult) there are some exceptions. Darth Vader, for example, can't be killed by anyone other than Luke or Leia.

There is a historical presidence for this in the old lucas arts video games. if you ever play jedi outcast there is a npc lightsaber fight between luke skywalker and the villain desan. luke and desan can not lose the fight so they will keep on fighting even if one of them is hit by a lightsaber which is a one hit kill in the game they keep going on. i think there is still a video of an arm less luke skywalker battling the villain in the game after he lost his arms to lightsaber strikes. so if you take this into account then movie characters are indistructable, but then again that was just a funny bug in an old video game.

The DM of our table has a fondness for indestructible canonical characters. Weigh in. Should any guy who shows up in the movie be unkillable?

I'll toss gasoline on this fire and suggest that bringing in canon characters demonstrates a total lack of imagination

The DM of our table has a fondness for indestructible canonical characters. Weigh in. Should any guy who shows up in the movie be unkillable?

Sprinkle to taste. I don't think my group would be in the mood to rewrite star wars right now, but it would be not the first time that we rewrite a complete world or build our own.

It's really a question of personal taste and how much work the GM would like to have. ;-)

I'll toss gasoline on this fire and suggest that bringing in canon characters demonstrates a total lack of imagination

We've butchered every sacred cow imaginable.

We had a LOT of pre-game chats, in person and via email, about what - if any - canon character we used. And who got to die - we had a player poll on that, and I ran a competition, the prize being that the player got to choose how that NPC dies. A lot of them are Game of Thrones or Tarantino fans (I'm not!) so it got pretty gory. The top three wasn't a surprise; Anakin, Palpatine and Monobrow Boy from FU, some of the worst Mary Sue characters in any medium. Ashoka was fourth (she's widely hated at my table) but she was kinda pretty, so I vetoed that on the understanding she wouldn't turn up in game. Fourth was some guy I'd never heard of (Savage Opress) who died a humiliating and amusing demise (it involved the infamous scene from Casino, only with baby space-seals...)

Conversely, there was quite a lot of love for certain characters, some of whom I'd intended to bump off, but I honoured the players choices and reworked these into mentor roles, changing them to suit our concepts. So we got:

Han Solo: in his fifties, having faked his death, married his mistress Breha Organa, and lives quietly as mayor of a Fringer settlement called 'Scoundrel's Luck' raising his twins. Our version is less of a tough guy, more of a charmer and ladies man. He's kind of the 'den father' to the nicer EoE group and fun to play. He secretly wishes he could have one last big adventure without telling his wife.

Ben Kenobi: Yeah, 'Ben'. 'Obi Wan' was a nickname bestowed on him by his mentor, meaning something like 'Wise Master', a nod to his serious nature and a gentle admonishment that the young shouldn't take themselves overly seriously. Far too nice a guy for the Jedi Order, he left after Anakin's horrible death to join the fledgeling Systems Alliance and today trains their Emergent Project, wistfully dreaming of all he has lost and mildly bitter over how amoral everyone else is. He envisages the coming battle against his former Order, and secretly hopes he doesn't survive it this time. He's a contemporary of Han's, in his early fifties.

Lucas Lars: The son of a moisture farmer, the One Sane Man in the galaxy. Shaman, teacher, wandering preacher and generally awesome, he's the leader of the Followers of the Temple, a kind of New Age version of the New Jedi Order of the EU. He's in his forties, very measured, calm, compassionate, surprisingly down to earth and has friends and sympathisers spread across the galaxy. He's trying to stop the insane Galactic War, and help every being ascend to Force Sensitivity. He's kind of a cross between Bruce Lee, Jesus Christ, and Timothy Leary. Lars rejects leadership, seeing himself as a teacher and guide for the galaxy. If the Jedi understood what a threat he was to their ambitions, they'd move heaven and earth to try and kill him. I have to use him sparingly but everyone thinks he's awesome.

There's a bunch of others repurposed for the MarcyVerse, including Fett (genre-savvy, leaves the PCs well alone), Yoda (sick, dying, exiled by the Order), and my personal favourite, Bail Organa, 'the Godfather' who brokered the alliance between the AIS and the Shadow Collective and still burns for revenge against the Empire. And lots of little changes like it was Oola who got to strangle Jabba with her slave chain. A relatively minor NPC from Shadows of the Empire is pretty much the main shaker and mover across several groups.

So yeah, you can do canon characters if you're prepared to put in a little imagination

I think the best way to avoid the players killing such characters is to make them so the players don't want to kill them. Fett treats them with professional courtesy, even Thrawn deals with them as a worthy adversaries and fellow players of the Great Game rather than 'enemies'.

I think if you go unkillable NPC, the way they handled Darth Vader in Rescue at Glare Peak is a good way to do it.
He is not handled like a Person, more like a forest fire or some other environmental hazard. If the Group does not
manage to escape, they suffer the consequences...But I wouldn´t use more than one such character at any given time.
If the group only meets the Jabbas, Landos, Bossks, Tarkins and Madines of the Star Wars Galaxy and they all try to
f*ck them over and they are all unkillable, then you should expect your group to become frustrated.....

So yeah, you can do canon characters if you're prepared to put in a little imagination

Oh, I'm sure in the right hands it can be done well. I could be jaded from exposure to a few other groups who seem to live on a diet of cheese and corn. The galaxy is so big, I have no desire to go anywhere near existing characters.

When I ran the Jewel of Yavin adventure I had the timeline line up with the Imperial invasion of Cloud City. The PCs never saw the characters from the cannon but the weight of the event played a significant factor on how they wrapped up their dealings.

Having Lando come over the PA system and tell everyone to leave made it pretty clear that staying was not an option, and when the thief who was going in to steal the Jewel found himself face to face with Stormtroopers instead of regular security personnel, the PCs knew poodoo just got real...

I just stole this......

I've had canonical characters show up in my games, but they've almost always been in a context where combat wasn't possible. My players are usually psyched to run into them, even when it's Vader showing up while they're being interrogated.

Since I tend to subscribe to the theory "if it has stats, it can be killed," I just don't give canonical characters stats. Even if I were generally okay with the PCs killing canon characters (and I am, it's just very, very difficult) there are some exceptions. Darth Vader, for example, can't be killed by anyone other than Luke or Leia.

This tends to be my philosophy as well. For all the reasons you just said.

I've had canonical characters show up in my games, but they've almost always been in a context where combat wasn't possible. My players are usually psyched to run into them, even when it's Vader showing up while they're being interrogated.

Since I tend to subscribe to the theory "if it has stats, it can be killed," I just don't give canonical characters stats. Even if I were generally okay with the PCs killing canon characters (and I am, it's just very, very difficult) there are some exceptions. Darth Vader, for example, can't be killed by anyone other than Luke or Leia.

This tends to be my philosophy as well. For all the reasons you just said.

Agreed. Last week my group encountered Leia. But she was debriefing the players after a mission when they encountered a very large Imperial secret. But after that encounter she is gone and I have no idea if they will ever encounter her again.

The DM of our table has a fondness for indestructible canonical characters. Weigh in. Should any guy who shows up in the movie be unkillable?

Everyone has a different reason why they like to play. Some RPers put canonical characters on a pedestal. If they're not there, then they're not interested in playing against Abu the Hutt and Rim Reinquist (The npc's you replace Jabba and Vader with). The game loses it's interest to them without the canonical background. I am one of these players, more or less. Some players just want to defeat all of the canonical characters as if they are on some sort of hit list. They "want" to face them. It's like a video game where the object is to build the most powerful character in the universe and then defeat Skywalker and Vader.

The happy medium is probably to play a role in killing off characters as they were killed in the movie. Players just have to understand what a player determines as entertaining to them. That canonical-NPC GM would probably like it best where the players respected the NPC's with awe and fear and befriended them.

The twisted part is if you have to FACE those indestructible canonical NPC's. We had a Gm who did that in PF. Needless to say the campaign crashed when the archmage used an Empowered-Fireball on a 3rd level character. If you're going to face them, then there has to be a way to win. Who wants to play, otherwise?

My philosophy with canonical characters is that they should be characters the players run into now and again, or hear the exploits of, but not fight and kill. I hold to canon as much as possible.

Using canonical characters, like making jokes at the game table, is cheap and easy. There are other fictional character archtypes that can be explored other than the ones that have been presented in the films. Might I suggest pulling from the ancient Greeks ?