I heard a lot about "knight level play". What is it? How do I get there? How does it effect my PCs?

That's just giving the PCs extra XP after chargen. They go through the normal chargen process, then get to spend 150XP on whatever skills/talents/specs/powers they want.

That 150XP is an arbitrary number, you really can do whatever value is suitable for your campaign.

As Frog says, it's essentially just the term used to describe starting play with more advanced characters than is typical.

Officially, that is you get an additional 150XP (considered to be applied after character creation, so no boosting abilities with it, just skills and talents), they can bump up a rank higher in skills than starter, and they get either 9,000 credits or a lightsaber (in addition to normal starting currency/gear). See Core page 104 for details. Generally it works pretty well as you can start off doing the sort of things you'd normally not see until about halfway through a starter campaign, or after completion.

The point of argument comes from the "Knight" label. Namely that some feel +150XP isn't enough to feel like a "Jedi Knight." This opinion is kinda user specific though as, depending on your Certain Point of View, what a Jedi is, should be able to do, and how it's addressed by the game mechanics is going to differ wildly from person to person. Though, again as Frog said, +150 is just what the book recommends, there's nothing preventing you from granting more at start, or giving bigger XP rewards during the game or what have you. It's also worth mentioning that "Knight Level" is just a term used for advanced play, you don't become a Jedi Knight at +150XP, you become a Jedi Knight when the Jedi Order says you do.

My personal opinion on the matter:

+150 is a good mix of starting and advancement, as you'll still be weak enough that XP rewards are important, but have enough XP to ensure you'll have a good suite of powers talents and skills from day one. It may be difficult for less experienced players though as to get a "Jedi" out of +150XP you have to make a very economically built character, which a newer player may not grasp the system well enough to do.

+300XP is decent for those wanting to really kick things off high. XP is less important, but you'll still usually have a direction to go, and there's enough XP to work with that even a less experienced player will be able to cover most of the bases they want even if their build isn't very efficient. More experienced players can do a lot with +300 too, but be careful about mixing them with less experienced players as it's probable the experienced player's character will appear noticeably more powerful due to efficient construction. Also at this XP level newer players may build characters they don't fully understand how to use.

+600XP is where a lot of people say you "start to get Jedi-ish." This is again up for debate, but at +600XP you can buy a lot, so even a fairly inefficient build will have a good stack of talents and power. A very efficient character will actually be able to start looking at wrapping the character up at this level making XP not that important, and new players will be easily overwhelmed with the character's abilities ... so mileage may vary.

Also remember to kick around details like if you have a mixed party (Mundanes and Forcees) or not. A mundane character will tend to be built a little more efficiently that a force user, so you may find a mundane to seem initially more powerful as they may be able to activate higher level powers and abilities, having not had to spend XP of force talents, ratings, powers, and upgrades.

My advice is to at least play a little while using normal starter mechanics so as to get a feel for how the system, advancement and powers work, then go back and look to advanced play. But again, that's just me, do what you will, we'll be here either way.

An idea that we are going to use is that any talent not on the career tree would cost 150 xp. It would be the same with fore power upgrades. Thoughts?

An idea that we are going to use is that any talent not on the career tree would cost 150 xp. It would be the same with fore power upgrades. Thoughts?

Just use the existing rules and I think you'll be happier. You do know that the players can buy additional specializations, right? It's pretty cost effective since you can then not only buy down the tree, but you also get the specialization skills as career skills too.

As for applying power upgrades to other powers... yeah no. Bad idea. There's some potential exploits there you might not be aware of yet (look up "activating multiple times"). The force is extremely powerful as-is, use the system as intended before you start to monkey with it. Otherwise, you may find a player is unbalanced and not be able to dial it back without hurting feelings.

Thanks.

I did know about specializations but don't have any yet. Might get some soon

I did know about specializations but don't have any yet. Might get some soon

Oh yes you do All PCs have at least one: that's your starting career and specialization. You can always buy other specializations, including those outside your career. You can be an Ambassador/Thief, a Guardian/Smuggler/Doctor, a Bounty Hunter/Archeologist/Commodore/Mystic, or ...

My guardian thinks her character is wimpy while another is the genie. How do I fix that?

We would need some more detailed outlines of the PC's to answer that, often it's the Force Powers and skill/Characteristic choices that can be an effect here.

For example a Characteristic of 4 feels vastly more powerful than a 3 does, simply because a Hard (3 difficulty) check will succeed more often than not. A character built with a lot of 3's (a Jack of all Trades) and no 4 will be deeply involved in the story more often, but is regularly playing sidekick to the specialist.

If that is the situation you're in then my advice is to encourage splitting the party up more often, the Jack of all Trades will suddenly be the best at a task because the specialist is off doing something else.

Actually the "genie" is considered a genie because he put some skills high

Yeah ok, so the genie looks great when doing their special thing, but fails spectacularly when out of their comfort zone.

The Guardian though just always looks ok, always gets the job done, but never doing extraordinary things?

Definitely splitting the party will help. The genie will have to face their weaknesses, while the guardian gets to do cool stuff without another character claiming all the glory.

Remember you can only start with 2 ranks in a skill (3 at Knight level, or I think with some species bonuses, but they specifically call it out) after that you gotta pay the XP.

Might help to simply advise the "wimpy" character to buy some skill ranks with her next XP rewards. Easy fix, and Skills aren't that expensive until you really get up there.

My players just got new toys. The guardian got a droid.( please not that the guardian is a mechanic) I created a career and that person got a bodyguard droid with a lightsaber. The sentinel got a lightsaber hilt that added 1 rank to reflection.

2 problems. First I need to have limits for their new toys. Plus, my sentinel feels like his toy is insignificant. Help!!

Yeah ok, so the genie looks great when doing their special thing, but fails spectacularly when out of their comfort zone.

The Guardian though just always looks ok, always gets the job done, but never doing extraordinary things?

Definitely splitting the party will help. The genie will have to face their weaknesses, while the guardian gets to do cool stuff without another character claiming all the glory.

Personally Jedi is more then a ideology then a power level. an awful lot of people died on geonosis after all or to clone troopers when they stormed the temple, they are not all the kind of badarses that can tank blaster fire for days. Old Obi largely avoided confrontation with a stealth score and a fair amount of usage of influence. I can see most PC's being able to do this with 200 or less. Jedi only graduate for spiritual reasoning, so I kind of suspect that 300-500 will be enough for most Knights/masters during peaceful time, and ramp it up if it's during a wartime campaign.

My players just got new toys. The guardian got a droid.( please not that the guardian is a mechanic) I created a career and that person got a bodyguard droid with a lightsaber. The sentinel got a lightsaber hilt that added 1 rank to reflection.

2 problems. First I need to have limits for their new toys. Plus, my sentinel feels like his toy is insignificant. Help!!

Ok first think: I'm not found of creating a career; espacially not when you are new to system.

for the Droid - use the droid creation rule in Special modifications - that would be a nemesis chasis with a Lightsaber(Brawn) Skill... but honestly ... don't do it... give him a Meele skill and add him a Vibrosword with an mod like mono-blade for more pierce and viciouse. I can totally understand your sentinel to get grumpy when he only gets some lousy hilt while the other gets an totaly autonom GMPC Lightsaberwielding Droid with own career trees and who knwos what else.

According to your former Questions I guess that you and your friends a fairly new to the system?!

I would highly recommend to stick to rules as writen for the beginning.

Don't invent the wheel anew, there are fairly enought hilts, droids, crystals, weapons in the corebook, as well as in the supplementbooks.

By inventint new things while not knowing how things are balanced... well you'll just start to shift the power balance totaly and your players or you will get grumpy very fast, because ether you will start complaining about your players killing everything with one shot. Or your players will start to complain about the other players having the better homebrewed equipment, or they'll whine about you when you are trying to fix former mistakes like "Oh I have to nerf that droid" or "Oh sorry, I realize that [selfinvented]power is far to powerfull... I'll have to nerf it now... yeah I know you put 25 XP in it, and what?"...

So return to square one: If you want the guardin having a droid than use "Special Modifikations", if you don't have it yet, just give Him a droid with the droid rival or nemesis stats out of the advassery chapter 2-4 talents and one weapon type to use. Don't make him another "PC" with own exp/ career and so on... Keep it simple!

If you handing out big rewards (like a fighting mininon droid) make sure your other players gain also something equal, a hilt for 900 credits is not realy comparebal to a droid (10-30k credits depending on typ) with an personal lightsaber (9-20 k credits depending on Hilt and crystal). Make sure the value fits the effort.

in your case you should have given the sentinal a complete second lightsaber with a supreme hilt upgrade and maybe the possibility to use the paired-Upgrade with his first lightsaber...

First of all, my PC just brought the character and said that he wanted to use it.

Second, he had a new force power and I said no. He only has powers based off the rulebook

I've heard about PbP adventures I want MTO do one but I don't know how. How do you do that?

I have a sentinel who wants to duel with two lightsabers. My thoughts were to let him use both lightsaber per action but the checks difficulty would be upgraded twice

I have a sentinel who wants to duel with two lightsabers. My thoughts were to let him use both lightsaber per action but the checks difficulty would be upgraded twice

You need to review Two Weapon Combat (p217). For someone with two lightsabers, the check would be increased in difficulty (PPP instead of PP).

I don't own the core book

I don't own the core book

How is your group playing the game without a rules book? Did you start at the beginner game? Once that's over its time to invest in the core to answer alot of the questions you are having.

I can't really afford that. Yes. I got the begginer game

Then you're missing out on a ton. You have no access to the Talent trees, which are what give the characters flavour. You can play for a while just by building up the skills, which cost 5 * rank per rank (skip the out of career charge for now), e.g.:

Rank 0 to 1 costs 5 XP

Rank 1 to 2 costs 10XP

Jumping from rank 0 to 2 costs 15XP

...but at some point if you and your friends want to continue you'll need the core. If they like playing, they should pitch in.