I've always felt there was a bit of a gap in the F&D careers for handling an Old Republic or TCW setting, basically: how do you account for all the training a Jedi youngling will have received by the time they're characters that are independent enough to play? The training is supposed to be rigorous...these aren't your average high school kids, they are the Rhodes Scholars or prodigies of their time.

Force Sensitive Exile and Emergent are good specs, but they contain things that aren't really applicable for Jedi younglings nurtured in the safety of the temple. Talents like Indistinguishable, Convincing Demeanor, and Overwhelm Emotions don't really have a place in a youngling's training regime. Meanwhile, other talents like Uncanny Reactions/Senses, or Intense Focus, feel like a perfect fit.

At the same time, the F&D specs still feel quite narrow to me, like specializations a character would take after they've done something else for a while, either starting off as an AoR or EotE character; or having a backstory where their initial training was interrupted, and they took the FSEx/Em specs first to help stay hidden. F&D specs feel to me what a character would take once they are officially "knighted".

This is a Universal spec, giving FR1 like the FSEx/Em specs. There are no bonus career skills. The left side focusses on the physical training a youngling would receive, while the right side focusses on the intellectual training. The way I'd see this being used is for Knight-level+ only games.

So is it overpowered? Underpowered? Boring?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/v8hbi8o33d51xuo/Padawan.png

Very interesting, I agree the FaD system doesn't cover Youngling-Padawan-Knight progression very well, with there being a lack of common skills & talents across the 6 careers.

I feel it probably does a better job of explaining different non-Jedi traditions though. Not that it's concrete, but Consular feels like the Jedi career, while Sentinel (or Warrior perhaps) is the Sith career. Nightsisters could be Mystic while Seeker covers a lot of the Gand Findsman traditions. Of course there is crossover, but that's explained by having multiple Specialisations.

After all of that though I do like your Padawan tree, it's an interesting balance. I would probably restrict it further by preventing Signature Abilitys from being attached to it, but it does create a way of everyone having a different Cereer without having to be identical. Although any character taking it as a starting career will have a reduced number of skill ranks, which seems counter intuitive to me. Perhaps it should provide a single rank in Discipline and Knowledge Lore if taken as a starting spec.

I would say giving it the restriction one must take an F&D career which gives a force rating one and padawan specialization grants the following skills: Discipline, Lightsaber, Knowledge Lore, and Vigilence

Suggestions

*Swap Parry with Dodge

*Swap Intense Focus with Reflect.
*Well Read --> do you mean Well Rounded?
*Bridge between Rapid Reaction and Researcher

Just a few thoughts

*Given you're not getting any new career skills, the talents need to be rock solid performers to make it worth taking. I mean the Exile tree has +1 Ranged/Melee defence in addition to FR +1 and Dedication, Intense Focus, Overwhelm Emotions and Balance. It's a beast of a tree.

*Researcher and Knowledge Spec might be a little weak. Perhaps Rapid Recovery (they're young and fit) and/or Resolve would be better choices?

*The inclusion of Parry/Reflect is nice.

Overall a nice starting point!

Well read gives 2 Knowledge Skills as Career skills. I can't for the life of me remember where it comes from though.

I feel it probably does a better job of explaining different non-Jedi traditions though. Not that it's concrete, but Consular feels like the Jedi career, while Sentinel (or Warrior perhaps) is the Sith career. Nightsisters could be Mystic while Seeker covers a lot of the Gand Findsman traditions. Of course there is crossover, but that's explained by having multiple Specialisations.

I've had similar thoughts. Warrior is definitely Sith. I see both Mystic and Seeker as non-Jedi Force traditions, including Nightsisters. I do see the Sentinel as a Jedi spec, but I could be biased because of some of the legacy stuff I've read...their stories turn dark more easily because they're often closer to the action, in the shadows and dark places of society. I had thought of restricting this spec to only Guardian/Consular/Sentinel, but that's probably too restrictive. It could make a good tale for someone trained as a youngling, while secretly harbouring the darkness that a Warrior spec plays to.

Although any character taking it as a starting career will have a reduced number of skill ranks, which seems counter intuitive to me. Perhaps it should provide a single rank in Discipline and Knowledge Lore if taken as a starting spec.

I'm still wrestling with this. The challenge is to not step on the toes of existing careers. Most of the other specs have some grouping of Discipline & Knowledge. Instead this tree has Well Read and Insight that the PC can take if they feel something is missing.

In any case, the way I'd see this used in Session 0 is the player still picks their main career and spec from the books. They then buy this universal spec, and with their Knight-level XP can only spend in this tree. This reflects their early training. Really it's a way to buff a Jedi character so they're playable as a Padawan/almost Knight.

I would say giving it the restriction one must take an F&D career which gives a force rating one and padawan specialization grants the following skills: Discipline, Lightsaber, Knowledge Lore, and Vigilence

I excluded them on purpose. Insight covers two of them. But the PC can still buy ranks in Lightsaber, I just felt that other existing specs are much better suited to specializing in combat. I think there's a reason they only put one Lightsaber-using spec per career, it's to reflect the relative difficulty of learning it.

*Well Read --> do you mean Well Rounded?

Nope, Well Read gives you a choice of three Knowledge skills to take as career skills. It's from the AoR Commander:Strategist tree (Lead By Example). I thought this might fit because when you choose your career+spec from the book, you might already get a couple of Knowledge skills, and I was hoping to not step on those careers.

Good points otherwise, I'll have to consider them. I agree it feels a bit weak, but then again, I wasn't viewing it as something one would take without at least 150XP, if not more. Grabbing most of the tree in Session 0 would be the campaign's starting point...at that point the Jedi Order might consider you capable of doing missions on your own without your master's constant oversight.

It looks like you're trying to make a F-S version of Recruit, but this is even less focused than that.

There is one more option, that doesn't require a full tree. Figure out what exactly it is that Younglings learn in their years of training that makes them suitable to become

Something like:

1 rank of Parry or Reflect

1 rank of Discipline or Resilience

1 rank of Cool or Vigilance

1 rank of Education or Lore

1 rank of Grit or Toughened

1 rank of Dodge or Knowledge Specialisation

So then you insert a new step into character creation, between choose Specialisation and spend XP. Each PC must take 1 option from each line above. Then after character creation they get Knight Level as normal, perhaps with 120xp instead.

Honestly, if you want the typical "Padawan Learner" as produced by the Jedi Order, then you're probably looking at Consular/Niman Disciple as your character's starting point, since that career/spec combo is pretty much "Being a Jedi 101" in terms of skills and talents. If a Jedi PC wants to adapt a Lightsaber Form other than Niman, then they can always pick up the appropriate spec with XP.

That and there's just the simple fact that while the FaD careers and specs can work to replicate Jedi and Sith in other eras, they were designed and intended more for usage in eras where the PCs weren't trained as a Jedi for the majority of their young lives.

It might almost be best to just create a Jedi career wholecloth, and then with it specs associated with the major paths of the Jedi (Consular, Guardian, Sentinel), much as DarthGM did way back in the day.

Honestly, if you want the typical "Padawan Learner" as produced by the Jedi Order, then you're probably looking at Consular/Niman Disciple as your character's starting point, since that career/spec combo is pretty much "Being a Jedi 101" in terms of skills and talents. If a Jedi PC wants to adapt a Lightsaber Form other than Niman, then they can always pick up the appropriate spec with XP.

Yeah, Jedi 101 is what I'm going for, and I agree that is the closest. However, it doesn't have the breadth I'd expect narratively, and I'm not sure Lightsaber should be a career skill until close to "Knighthood". I know, that sounds weird because the lightsaber is *the* iconic weapon, but it's also supposed to be hard to master.

Doubtless I'll be the only one who ends up using it, and I would be granting it basically free to the players, so with that in mind I'd like to know if it's balanced.

*Given you're not getting any new career skills, the talents need to be rock solid performers to make it worth taking. I mean the Exile tree has +1 Ranged/Melee defence in addition to FR +1 and Dedication, Intense Focus, Overwhelm Emotions and Balance. It's a beast of a tree.

Been thinking more about this and it would be interesting to have a custom "Jedi-specific" talent. If the setting is the Old Republic, then for the most part the Jedi are respected for their role in society, and that might have an impact on social skills. Something along the lines of "Respected Researcher", lowering (or downgrading) difficulties when interacting socially.

I think the core problem is that a Jedi (especially a Knight) is meant to have a very broad capacity in a lot of different fields, especially if you look at the Jedi of the films. Frankly, that's something that PC in this system can only accomplish with a lot of invested XP.

Or perhaps the way to resolve this dilemma is to approach it from a different angle. Perhaps instead of having a wide range of skills and talents, the a Jedi Padawan simply has multiple characteristics at a 3 (Brawn or Agility 3, Cunning or Presence 3, Intellect 3, Willpower 3) and is able to "get by" on tasks that cap out at Average difficulty with few (if any) setback dice applied. To the viewer, said Jedi Padawan looks to be quite capable, even if they're only rolling 3 green dice (or maybe 1 yellow and 2 green if they've bought a skill rank or flipped a destiny point).

I think one of the big problems that WotC's Saga Edition had (much as I enjoyed that system) was that it did try to encapsulate Jedi PCs as being "broadly capable" by allowing them to take talents that let them use their Use the Force skill bonus for a wide number of skills. Thus far, FFG's approach of making expensive in terms of XP to be what might be construed as a "proper" Jedi Knight has kept the game fairly balanced in that one character archetype doesn't automatically outshine all the others.

Though I do wonder if your spec attempt is putting too much focus on "Jedi as scholars," especially as we've seen that Jedi are trained to handle a lightsaber from a fairly young age, at least according to the prequels, such as the training class in AotC when Kenobi and Yoda chat about Kamino being missing from the archives, as well as the group of Initiates (all in their very early teens at best) being taken to build their own lightsabers in TCW. But then I don't think every Jedi would be of the scholarly-type by default, and that a scholarly mindset is something that a Jedi would grow into. Obi-Wan in TPM certainly wasn't very wise or knowledgeable, yet when we meet him again in AotC, he's grown and matured. Similar deal with Ahsoka, who really only became a "wise leader" type when she showed up in Rebels.

I feel we absolutely need to have a Sensitive version of Recruit, to give us the basics as a Jedi (or any other Force tradition).

I'm always baffled at why the game doesn't make more use of Universal specs.

I've always felt that things like 'Fringer' should be Universal too.

The F&D specs in particular have always felt overly specialised for me.

I've always felt that things like 'Fringer' should be Universal too.

I was thinking this as well. But, if you, as a house rule, make Fringer the EoE universal spec, what do you replace it with in the Explorer career?

Looks nice, whafrog. I was also toying around with an FnD universal spec idea. Yours is good.

I feel we absolutely need to have a Sensitive version of Recruit, to give us the basics as a Jedi (or any other Force tradition).

In terms of the setting the books are placed in, I can see the designers feeling that a "Jedi 101" universal spec really doesn't have a place. For the most part, the old Jedi training methods are lost to history, and it's probably more a person's choices and mentality that makes for a true Jedi than what specializations they have access to.

When I was working on the updated version of Jedi Initiate for v2 of my old Ways of the Force fan supplement, I struggled for a very long time with "what should I include?" and "is this really necessary?" As for that last one, such things as a universal "Jedi 101" specialization probably really aren't necessary, and to be honest I probably won't make use of my own Jedi Initiate for any games I run or even play in.

In respect to too much focus as Jedi as scholars with whafrogs Padawan tree: there are two different paths one can go down, you don't need to necessarily take the entire tree. It's entirely possible to use this tree and avoid most of the scholarly talents. It's really up to the player. My initial reaction was that it needed at least one more rank of parry and reflect, but then I remembered it's a universal spec meant to be used in conjunction with an actual f&d career spec; if you want that Jedi Knight feel. With that in mind, it's not bad. I'd probably tweak it a bit here and there but overall, I like it.

I feel we absolutely need to have a Sensitive version of Recruit, to give us the basics as a Jedi (or any other Force tradition).

In terms of the setting the books are placed in, I can see the designers feeling that a "Jedi 101" universal spec really doesn't have a place.

I agree, for the setting outlined in the core book it doesn't make sense, and I do think if one wanted to have a character with a stronger "Jedi 101" background, but still playing in the core setting, the FSEx/Em trees are a better idea because they include some very valuable talents for staying under the Imperial radar.

Though I do wonder if your spec attempt is putting too much focus on "Jedi as scholars," especially as we've seen that Jedi are trained to handle a lightsaber from a fairly young age, at least according to the prequels, such as the training class in AotC when Kenobi and Yoda chat about Kamino being missing from the archives, as well as the group of Initiates (all in their very early teens at best) being taken to build their own lightsabers in TCW.

True, I'm just trying to protect the existing specs and the difficulty of the lightsaber skill. Perhaps granting one free rank in Lightsaber (without it as a career skill) would satisfy that. If someone took, say Niman, at the same time, they could easily bring it to a second rank at chargen.

As far as Jedi as scholars, the existence of the libraries and the few offhand comments in the movies imply a strong focus on learning, even if we never really see them studying. By most accounts the younglings live at the temple, and their days are filled with study and physical training. They would learn some history and politics (Well Read), learn how to learn (Researcher), and probably pick an area of expertise like a college kid picking a major (Knowledge Spec). And as they learn those things, they gain Confidence. They probably wouldn't see real action or "aggressive negotiations" until they were well on their way in terms of intellectual and academic maturity.

That's the rationale behind the choices. I could be wrong.

I've always felt that things like 'Fringer' should be Universal too.

I was thinking this as well. But, if you, as a house rule, make Fringer the EoE universal spec, what do you replace it with in the Explorer career?

Something ship-based maybe? A proper co-pilot spec? I'm sure they could have done better than 'generic fringe guy'.

I HATE Core Book Explorer so maybe I'm biased.

In terms of the setting the books are placed in, I can see the designers feeling that a "Jedi 101" universal spec really doesn't have a place. For the most part, the old Jedi training methods are lost to history, and it's probably more a person's choices and mentality that makes for a true Jedi than what specializations they have access to.

I respect that, but I still think Universal Specs are an untapped avenue that FFG haven't utilised much.

Recruit does such a great job on 'basic military training 101' as a dip-spec, I'd like to see something generic for EoE and F&D too.

'Generic guy who knows his way around the fringe' would be good for EoE without tying it into any particular spec, freeing up those specs for more focused stuff. Maybe a generic 'scavenger' like Rey before her Ultimate Snowflake Signature Ability kicked in? Someone who can generally survive and prosper on the fringes of society. Heck, the Force Awakens Ba\sic Box would have been a great place to put that.

And I'm sure other people play in different eras or whatever, especially with the new movies (and the aforementioned FA Basic Set!), and that a generic Trainee Force Adept spec would suit many concepts.

I've always felt that things like 'Fringer' should be Universal too.

I was thinking this as well. But, if you, as a house rule, make Fringer the EoE universal spec, what do you replace it with in the Explorer career?

Looks nice, whafrog. I was also toying around with an FnD universal spec idea. Yours is good.

For me it would be putting Pilot into Explorer (to replace Fringer) while removing it from Smuggler. Now add Hotshot to Smuggler (to replace Pilot) and you're set to start rebuilding Fringer as a Universal spec.

Studios Plotting would have fit into Explorer very nicely. A spec that's a blend of Pilot and Navigator to make an Intellect based Explorer Pilot, searching for resources for the company/government they are employed by. I know Archaeologist is intellectual as well, but in a different way.

I've always felt that things like 'Fringer' should be Universal too.

I was thinking this as well. But, if you, as a house rule, make Fringer the EoE universal spec, what do you replace it with in the Explorer career?

Looks nice, whafrog. I was also toying around with an FnD universal spec idea. Yours is good.

For me it would be putting Pilot into Explorer (to replace Fringer) while removing it from Smuggler. Now add Hotshot to Smuggler (to replace Pilot) and you're set to start rebuilding Fringer as a Universal spec.

Very interesting.... It is very likable.

I'm sure part of their choices is based on the books being sort of "movie-locked"; they expect you to play during the time of the Rebellion, or just prior to it. In this time, there is no Padawan progression, because there are no Padawans, or Order to teach them. The Empire has snuffed out most of it, and even those survivors who found someone, like Ben found Luke, usually didn't find six-year olds, but young adults, with their own prior thoughts, experiences, and such. Hell, Luke might've had a month, two tops, of "real" Jedi training, under an existing master, before he had to make it up, as he went, and he only had what they told him, and a few Holocrons, to fill it out. That's why his praxeum was different, and why things like Jaina, Jacen, and Anakin, or Mara jade, and Ben, happened (we'll see how deviant Luke might've been, in the newer material, eventually, but I'll stick with these, for now).

Also, when they give you a "Jedi" career, you might feel boxed in to take it, if you want to BE a Jedi, instead of reaching into other paths, and taking some things you could use, for the better. Focusing on the two, or three, things Jedi are known to be good at, means they don't have to be good at anything else, along the way, which can make them very bland characters, holding very flashy weapons. When they, eventually, make another book/line that covers other time periods, whether the re-making of KOTOR kicks them into capitalizing on its popularity, again, and they make that book, or they do one for the Clone Wars, or that covers Luke's now brief stint as a Master, since they won't use older material, as much, they'll probably come out with a Specialization like yours, even if that can be limiting, but if you aren't almost 30, in game, during the Rebellion, and survived the eradication of the Order, you probably didn't receive the type of focused training your spec suggests, if you received any training, at all.

True. But until FFG comes up with a pro one, we can use this

Certainly.

Though without the core rulebook I can't use it

I'm sure part of their choices is based on the books being sort of "movie-locked";

I expect that is true, I'm not finding fault with FFG for this at all. I would pay top dollar for an "Old Republic" sourcebook with "Padawan" and "Sith Apprentice" specs, along with guidance on how much XP to grant at chargen, and how to build a campaign starting with Padawans (who, by definition, are not independent operatives) up to Master level. The Jedi kept the peace for "1000 generations". How they did this must be fascinating to explore. And I would expect FFG to come up with better specs than my offering.

But in the meantime...