To start out, I'm going to fill in on everything thus far.

I wanted to run a campaign, and I got the core book for $20 at a retailer 'cause the cover had some minor damage (what a steal!). I ran a cross platform campaign that was 75% AoR 25% Star Wars Armada. The players LOVED it. I pregenerated the characters to avoid any confusion for my first campaign, and the players took to them well. The first mission was information retrieval/sabotage. I sent them to an experimental manufacturing facility on the outer rim to collect data on a new Imperial ship in development, the players had a blast doing an "undercover boss" impersonation, and plowing through opposition pretending to be an inspection team. They went through every floor and collected every piece of information I had hidden, even made some bonus rolls towards the end, they stole an Imperial Gladitor, and ended up in space combat with an Imperial patrol. It was a great game with about 8 full hours of gameplay. This is the part where I messed up.

After the mission I rewarded them with way too much EXP, and not a small amount of credits.

As a result I have one character right now who is leaps and bounds ahead of the other two in combat ability. The player himself is a veteran GM who's been running RPGs since he was in middleschool, so to no surprise he's found ways to make his character almost unbalancingly powerful.

I was stumped for a solution, 'cause storm trooper Sargents and nemesis level enemies could barely harm this player, and they definitely wouldn't last more than a round or two in combat.

I decided, instead of making exp changes and forcing the characters to rebuild with less, to roll with the idea. I figured if they were going to be epic level characters, I may as well give them an epic level of gameplay. So I ran another mission.

They were tasked with infiltrating an ore processing plant and tagging shipments so the rebellion could learn Imperial shipping routes and discover good ambush locations, they were given a guise, means of entry, and I sent them on their way. They played through the mission under the guise of loss prevention, and tagged shipments as required. Even discovered an NPC skimming off the top and they launched an investigation into locating the individual stealing. As the mission grew to a close, I threw them a twist. The station was assaulted by an unknown enemy using organic weapons and armor (The Yuuzhan Vong). I had generated some Vong with quite high stats and while stormtroopers were being swatted like flies, the party fled just as the station was destroyed. The escape pod was damaged and landed on a nearby desert moon. They managed to rig a small transport and fought through some desert monsters before coming upon a small bounty hunters guild training outpost. Being stranded, they bargained (as imperial impostors) for passage off the moon. The Bounty hunters sent them in the direction of some old Jedi ruins looking for a critical component to get their shuttle running again. Surprise. There was an old Jedi hermit still living there (of course). THis is where I decided to give them a choice. The Jedi hermit confessed he was beyond old, old enough to remember a young Yoda taking leadership on the Jedi council, (the players did well reacting with 'the **** is a yoda?'). He informed the players that there was a fork in the path before them. One direction was a life of recognition and fame but no meaning or power, and the other of obscurity but of great meaning and nearly unlimited power. I gave them a choice to go back to the rebellion in their fight against the Empire, but informed them that this path would lead to the deaths of 365 trillion people. I also gave them a choice to obtain the power of gods and stop the enemy before they could kill. (basically their choice was to follow the movie canon or the EU, had they chose to go help the rebels, the EU events would have happened, if they chose to obtain power to fight this new enemy, the universe would follow the movie plot where the Yuuzhan Vong never show). They chose to combat this new enemy and save the galaxy, the old hermit revealed a small shuttle and they started their journey. That's where I ended campaign 2.

From here, I want them to become strong enough to literally fight an army of Vong. I've broken my next 3 missions down based on a single piece of gear each player will need to complete this arc.

-The pilot/slicer needs to collect control of SWTOR's "Eternal fleet" (as the story stands, they should still be usable) The party will face Valkorion in the ruins of Zakul, and either try to kill him (presumably) or agree to his negotionations. If they choose to fight they'll need to collect Ysalamiri and weaken him to do damage. If they choose to agree, they have to sacrifice an entire coreworld, which he will consume entirely as he did in the SWTOR games and books. This will not have an immediate negative effect, but they will confronted by Valkorion later as an even stronger boss fight.

-The marauder needs to collect an ancient piece of Sith armor made of force corrupted Obolisks and plate Cortosis. Because of it's design, he will need to find a way to get it fitted to himself. It's a permanent piece. It will give him force sensitivity and boosts several of stats making him nearly undamageable (guess who's going to be on the front lines in the final conflict? lol). His character - a mon-calamari who survived an orbital bombing only to awake as part of a massive sandbar composed of dead people - already has sanity issues. Should he use this armor, he will go completely insane, and may have to fight the other players.

- The Saboteur/mechanic is tasked with locating the Infinite Empire's rebuilt Star Forge, and building an army of Droids matching his design. The players will have to fight some difficult droids and maybe even a force ghost (Revans?) Upon their success, the players will have to gather intel and plot out the final battle. (not sure what else to add here, thoughts?)

-The final battle will be both RPG and armada again. Each player is going to have separate goals on the war front. The marauder leading the mass produced war droids to vital locations or holding lines as necessary, the saboteur both commanding droids and locating areas of weakness and destroying them, and the pilot/slicer commanding the eternal fleet for air support and space combat targets, he'll also act as support for the saboteur. After completing ground objectives I'll have them run a team armada mode against NPC enemy ships.


I'm very interested in any thoughts or ideas anyone can offer.

TLDR: I made a goof on exp, so I decided to run with it and let them become insanely powerful. lol

1. Can you give a specific amount for the XP you alotted? This system is reported to still work well in the range of 2,000 XP earned. I would ask whether it actually is too much XP or if you simply need to increase the challenge of the adventures they go on.

2. What careers/specs are the PCs? Some are more combat focused and others are not. The combat focused specs will be much more useful than the non-combat specs. Oftentimes, the advice on here is to challenge the players by making them do things they are not used to, or ramping up the toughness of the adversaries (give out ranks of Adversary for minion groups, give Lethal Blows ranks, give rivals and nemesis adversaries the Durable Talent, give them stronger weapons, don't send 1 enemy after them but a group consisting of all adversary levels & slowly replace minions with rivals as they increase their strength in combat, give them goals aside from just wiping out the enemy force such as obtaining something, protecting someone, etc...)

3. Is it possible that you and your group can simply continue this campaign at a high level before retiring them? If everyone is enjoying it and you are able to find ways to challenge them, simply slow down any xp gains so they advance a little slower from now on and then continue until the story with that group of PCs is finished. I personally plan to eventually put my groups into do or die sessions when they've earned enough XP to be considered high-level.

4. If the situation is difficult for you or if you would prefer to start fresh, heck, even if you are continuing on with it as is, talk to the players about it. Open communication is a key aspect of these games. You have to be on the same page with the players or people could expect the wrong things, get upset, etc... The best thing is to explain a decision you are making and why you are making it, in a clear manner and in a way that says "the decision has already been made". If you want the player's input, then you can speak to them about it and open it up for discussion among them.

1.) For the first mission I gave them each 250EXP. They were able to use that to almost completely fill their talent tree. One of them, a mechanic used this to produce very high quality gear for the other two, and himself. (they were awarded like 100,000 credits each, part of which was to be allotted toward the purchase of a rebel capital ship, as I was going to run this campaign mixed between Armada and AoR). Due to this I've given most enemies they face an adversary 2-3 rating. The one character GR8-B8 uses a custom weapon he made with his talent tree and 100k He rolls 4 proficiency, 1 ability, and 5 boost on a weapon with accurate 3, autofire, and has superior quality. Even with the 4 added difficulty dice, he's killing nemesis enemies in single bursts. Should I be increasing the stats as well? Since I had yet to see any entries in the books for the Vong, I generated them with higher stats and better (exotic) gear, so far, those have withstood the battery of attacks okay, but time will tell for that.

2.) Actually that's some solid advice, I'll definitely look into giving boosts in these. Currently I try to engage them with groups of 4 or 5, that way the Initiative que doesn't get flooded, but I could always add more bad guys.Ironically these campaigns have not been combat heavy at all. The first mission the fought one force sensitive and 4 storm troopers in that whole 8 hours, the rest of the time, they were making killer rolls and fooling the imperial's finest lol During the moments of combat we have had though, excluding the Vong, they tear it up.

3.) I definitely don't plan on retiring any of these characters for as long as I can, the dynamic is great. Like I said in the OP I have 4 for fairly large games planned, exp will be more sparse this time around, but the characters are going to be getting some powerful stuff to play with, as the campaign continues, eventually those will have to disappear, or the PCs will have to fail. If the plan is to pit them against the YuuZhan Vong, it's gonna be a helluva opponent to knock these PCs over, but with the advice above that should balance things well.

4.) I've spoken to each of them about it, and they seem very excited for the rest of this campaign, they were unaware of the change in difficulty until about 3/4 through the 2nd campaign, they all chose the harder path. The other path would have been more Armada integrated to make AoR combat successes a little less important in the scale of the mission.


Thanks for all your input, I'll definitely be adjusting things according to your suggestions.

I don't think you need to worry about their power level per se. While 250 XP is excessive for a single award (20 per session is about average), it isn't particularly high as a character total in this system, nor is filling in your first talent tree. You're just getting a bit of a shock from the fact that their capabilities jumped more quickly than expected.

In the bi-weekly Roll20 campaign I’m in, my Besalisk Hired Gun:Heavy/Ace:Gunner just got up to 350 total XP, which is about 250xp above chargen. He’s got Agility 4, with four ranks of Ranged Heavy, four ranks of Ranged Light, and five ranks of Gunnery. He’s also got two ranks of True Aim.

I haven’t bothered to give him much in the way of custom weaponry, because the GM and I have talked and we have agreed that I want to do Four Weapon Combat with him instead of the old clichéd autofire+jury rig, and so I need to have three ranks of Burly and a higher Brawn, if I want to be carrying around the gear I want plus the four SoroSuub OK-98 Carbines that I want him to be using. Once he does get those ranks of Burly and a higher Brawn, I’ll start buying into the Gunslinger specialization, so as to really make that Four Weapon Combat technique as shiny as possible.

Still, he’s already rolling four or five Proficiency dice, plus two or more boost dice just from his natural skills and talents, and that’s before we start counting any other additional sources of upgrades and boost — like the fully modified Advanced Targeting Array that is installed on the ship.

However, if you were to throw a number of large minion groups at him (maybe ten minions per group), that would still be a serious challenge for him in combat.

And if you want to hit him in the “dump stat”, well his Cunning is still just One. He can’t lie worth a ****. And his Will is just Two. He is not very good at this Coercion thing. His Presence is also just Two, but he has bought three ranks of Leadership, so he’s a little above average in that.

There’s a lot of ways this character can continue to be challenged, and that statement will remain true for a very long time.

It does take more work as the characters advance, but there are people on these forums with characters that have literally thousands of XP awarded to them, and yet they still remain fun to play and can still be seriously challenged.

That said, I think you do want to be awarding a reasonable amount of XP per game session (like 10-20), but a game that has lasted a year, even if you only play once a month, that’s still maybe 120-240xp. So, 250xp for an epic multi-session story arc doesn’t seem too excessive.

If you were to play once a week and average 15xp per game, that would be 750xp for the year, if you missed just two weekly games due to the holidays.

1. Yeah 250XP is 50XP shy of completing a Spec tree. While it's quite a bit of XP to give out right away, it's not game-breakingly OP. Typically a session should allot about 15-20XP, per the suggestions of the core books and other GMs here. As far as the Adversary talent, I just want to be sure you are Upgrading the difficulty (turn purples to red, if no purples left, add a purple, etc...) and not Increasing the difficulty (adding purples only). It's good to remember an you can break an adversary/PC's equipment completely with 2 Triumphs on a successful combat check and Despairs on the PC's checks from the Adversary talent can damage their gear by 1 step per. It's also good to give out setback dice for the conditions in the environment (rain, darkness, fog, altered gravity, thick jungle, crowded city streets...)

2. Another thing to try out for combat is to protect the big bads (rival or nemesis) in the combat with a squad of minions to take damage for them. It keeps the tough guys in the fight longer & somewhat reduces the amount of damage that can be spread around by the PCs, making it more of a cinematic combat. You can find the Squad/Squadron rules in the AoR GM Kit.

3. Glad there's no frustration about it. This sounds like it will be quite an epic story your group tells!

4. Glad you're keeping a good communication up with the players. That clears away a loooot of problems if there are ever any that arise. Sounds like a pretty fun campaign you've got an I'm glad my suggestions could be of use!

1. Yeah 250XP is 50XP shy of completing a Spec tree. While it's quite a bit of XP to give out right away, it's not game-breakingly OP.

It's a lot more shy of it than that if they're buying up any skills. Skills can get really expensive when you buy even a single added rank in a half dozen of them. If we buy up two skills from 0 to 1, we've spent 10 XP. Two skills from 1 to 2 is another 20 XP. Finally, two skills from 2 to 3 is another 30 XP. These costs all assume that all of the skills raised are career skills, and even that small amount of skill improvement is another 60 XP. I have sets of PCs that have 450 XP beyond starting XP, and most of them have spent 150-200 XP on skill advancement.

Yep! Agreed. I only mentioned that 250xp nearly completes a spec tree to give a sense of how far it can go in one aspect of character advancement.