Help with character design

By TheShard, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

So I'm looking to port a character from d6 into ffg star wars.

So the character is an omwati, so I'd there a good homebrew omwati character stat write up?

He's a failure in Tarkin's engineer training program on omwati. He escaped but not without being half blown up. Saved by a good hearted smuggler, who got him to a hurt medical facility and now owes tons to repay.

He is a slicer and tricks out ships with a side interest in explosives.

He has a head full of cybernetics, and a droid arm.

If that's all too expensive to start I might just do a basic head rig and leave him needing an arm replacement.

Now what primary and secondary talents? Mechanic, rigger, slicer, outlaw tech, demolitionist, cybertech, engineer... What makes sense?

I had never heard of the Omwati before, so I don’t know that anyone has done any stats for them.

If anyone would know, it would probably be the forum member known as “LibrariaNPC”.

As for the expense of building a character, it depends on how you’re trying to do the conversion. If you’re trying to do it as a starting PC, then I think you’re going to have a challenge to get the cybernetics you have mentioned. If it’s a “knight-level” character, then you have a better shot, because that would give you more XP and more money to work with.

If you’re trying to build it as an NPC, then just throw in whatever you think he should have, and then you’re done — NPCs are not built with the same rules as PCs, so you just give them whatever you feel is appropriate.

Let's try to get close with a starting player. Even if he doesn't have all the cybernetics that's fine he'll just have to steal credits from someone eventually.

Could a cybertech craft his own cybernetics?

One thing you might look into is from Lords of Nal Hutta. They have a species called The Gank and Ganks get certain bonuses to buying cybernetics and their schtick is that they are all cyborgs to a certain extent. Maybe your character could be one of those?

Let's try to get close with a starting player. Even if he doesn't have all the cybernetics that's fine he'll just have to steal credits from someone eventually.

Could a cybertech craft his own cybernetics?

I believe a cybertech could do that, yes. However, if you want to do crafting, that is something that would normally be resolved during regular game play. So, you’d want to talk to your GM about that.

From what I’ve seen, the closest this game gets to what you’re looking for is the Gank species. They’re covered in the book “Lords of Nal Hutta”, on page 95. You might be able to talk to your GM about the possibility of adapting some of those rules for your Omwati character.

So what's a best combination of talents?

The Omwati were known to be exceedingly intelligent but, due to their physical build, were rather frail. I'd say take the Sathari from Chronicles of the Gatekeeper and change the traits to 1 Brawn, 3 Intellect, and then grant them a perk based on their intelligence.

Sorry for being vague; all of my books are still boxed so I'm going from memory.

In order to get the flavor I want, what do you suggest as far as careers go?

I don't have all the books yet, so I'm trying to figure it all out cause there seems a lot of overlaps. Engineer, mechanic, rigger, modder, slicer, cyber tech etc. And because he's a street kid I can see all sorts of secondary things. Any suggestions on the right combo?

I personally like to keep my characters simple. Based on what you've described so far i think a mix of the Cyber Tech, Slicer and maybe modder. From what I've seen if this character so far i think Cyber Tech would be a good foundation, start by solving all of your problems with cybernetic enhancements. Then move to augmenting those biological enhancements with modded equipment and/or skills from Slicer.

Technician seems like an obvious career to start with the above suggestions being your specializations in that career.

Edited by Noahjam325

Edited to avoid asking the same question twice

Edited by TheShard

So I'm trying to learn how careers work, do you pick a main career and then just keeping adding secondary skills or...?

first off talk with your GM about the cyber tech. I know if it was purely cosmetic I would allow it.

Carriers: you pick 1 Carrier (Mechanic) with 1 Specialization (Cybertech) at character generation. This gives you 6 free skill levels and let's you buy all the listed skills as carrier skills. then @ any time you can spend xp (including character gen) you can pay 10 x Specializations xp (+10 for non carrier) to add an additional spec. This let's you add the skills of the spec NOT carrier as class skills and the ability to buy talents frome the specs tree.

example: start with Mechanic:cybertech and take the 4 (of 8) class skills and 2 (of 4) spec skills to get free ranks (all 8 class and 4 spec skills are now carrier skills). then you get to spend your racial xp you could buy Modder for 20xp (in carrier) or slicer for 30xp (non carrier) you would add the 4 skills to your class list (but not get any free) and could buy from the top of the tree talents (5xp) and continue down as normal. if you wanted to buy both additional specs it would be 20xp 2nd spec + 40xp out of class 3rd spec = 60xp or 30xp out of class 2nd spec + 30xp 3rd spec = 60 xp.

Or to use the terms from the system itself; you start with 1 Career that never changes. If you start as the Technician, Mechanic, or even Bounty Hunter Career that stays the same forever. You then pick 1 specialisation within your chosen career as part of character creation.

Example: You start with the Technician Career and then select Cyber Tech as your starting specialisation.

As Vixen said above this just determines your starting skills. You can then branch out from there into new specializations to gain access to more. But your career never gets added to or changes. You just add more specializations.

The thing I would suggest is to work backwards from whatever your goal is. Decide where you want to end up, then work out how to best get there.

To take the example from Firefly, Malcolm Reynolds started out life as a Soldier, then became a Smuggler after the war was over. But, if you were playing Mal, you might want to decide that your career should be “Smuggler”, and maybe you add a secondary specialization from Soldier.

You do this because once you choose your Career, that’s the career you’re going to keep for the life of that character. And if you want to add more specializations to your character, they’re less expensive to do so if they come from within the Career you’ve chosen, than if they’re outside the career. So, if you want to play a Smuggler with various specs from the same career, you should choose that first and then add the other stuff you feel you need to in order to make the character concept work.

Focus on what you want your character to be, then work out the Narrative of how to explain how you got there.

So that's the issue I'm learning the mechanics and I'm trying to figure how they can be used to get the character right.

He's a street kid enslaved by a hutt, so here's going to be sneaky and cunning to survive...

He will end up tricking out starships, after the rebellion is over and eventually starting Shard Shipyards. During the rebellion he gets sucked into the conflict and uses his technical aptitude to slice and privateer (jack ships) for the rebellion.

He tinker's with everything, droids, himself, ships etc.