Considering that Palpatine got voted into office by a thousand senators and that it was the senate who gave him the authority to call out the empire. So he had rolled some quite fantastic social checks and influence rolls. It is a wonder that it took him afterwards 20 years to dissolve the senate, guess those senators were not completely useless in all those years. ;-)

4 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Considering that Palpatine got voted into office by a thousand senators and that it was the senate who gave him the authority to call out the empire. So he had rolled some quite fantastic social checks and influence rolls. It is a wonder that it took him afterwards 20 years to dissolve the senate, guess those senators were not completely useless in all those years. ;-)

Yeah, Palpy definitely won that extended social war. Even if someone managed a lucky success on a Charm roll (remember that just starts the encounter, not wins it automatically), all that meant is that they got to have a nice sit-down with him instead of being brushed off with a pithy or gentle rebuke.

As for their usefulness...the bureaucracy was being used to maintain control for those 20 years. It wasn't until the Death Star that Palpatine was comfortable handing direct control to the governors, knowing that the Death Star was worth a hell of a lot of boosts and upgrades in any Coercion check.

7 minutes ago, LadySkywalker said:

If the character has no ranks in the Lightsaber skill? Then yes I am.

It'd be like saying that someone who takes the Pilot spec for the skill array and odd talent should immediately be the best pilot encountered by the group despite having no skills in any Piloting areas. By spec? Yes, they should be, but without the skill ranks to back it up then the character merely has potential, and no actual skill.

Sure, you COULD handwave it and say that bugger it, they still are pilot aces because they have the spec regardless of skill allotment, but when the dice fall the results will more frequently tell a different story.

But justification is just my way of doing things. Each GM to their own.

Now that pilot has ironically 5 dice on piloting, is a natural on the joystick, learns faster and is thanks to his talents regardless of his pilot skill anyway a better pilot than anyone without a piloting spec. Now you say, he is require to have a piloting teacher.

Though, as I would be willing to bet that a player who creates a high presence makashi duelist is starting with a rank of 1 of lightsaber, 2 ranks of charm. I would guess further one rank of vigilance, though the last free skill rank is really hard to guess, especially with so little knowledge of the real person who picked up that character … my guess would be perception. ;-)

BTW, so solve the issue of the character not being combat useful, I would like to point out something which has been pointed out already a few times.

A training lightsaber is rarity 6, a basic hilt rarity 5 and rarity 6 for the emitter and both training sabers cost 400 credits, that is literally easier to acquire than a heavy blaster pistol, which is rarity 6 and cost 700 credits. It is not restricted either, which means getting a training saber is an hard check on negotiation and that's it. Average check for the hilt even, and average as well if you have any talents that reduce rarity by just one.

I just have to say that we have different kind of characters in our group. Some of the characters are useless at some bits: my character was able to malfunction the entire submarine by simply trying to read a map! Yeah the roll was THAT bad and his skills suck with computers. Other characters are not as good in combat. And others are not very good at talking.

YET we make it work. And our GM is VERY good at giving us all something to do. A chance to shine. And that is always something GM should do. Different kind of characters is a good thing. And imo, as long as the reasoning is good, why not being able to talk down the Sith lord? That might actually be really interesting if done right.

Anyhows. I hope your problems are gone and you had a nice talk with the player.

Would still argue that someone with 3 Proficiency dice is going to get more spectacular results that someone with 5 Ability dice.

And being quicker at picking up abilities shows that the character has a natural affinity with flying, it doesn't mean that a character with no ranks in Piloting should, based on the description and application of skill ranks in the rulebooks, be considered to have a high degree of training, only raw ability.

7 hours ago, LadySkywalker said:

Would still argue that someone with 3 Proficiency dice is going to get more spectacular results that someone with 5 Ability dice.

And being quicker at picking up abilities shows that the character has a natural affinity with flying, it doesn't mean that a character with no ranks in Piloting should, based on the description and application of skill ranks in the rulebooks, be considered to have a high degree of training, only raw ability.

You mean like Anakin Skywalker as pod racer? *g*

Lets be here absolutely frank: The system is build in a way that a pilot skill 5 makashi duelist is still absolutely useless in a starfighter, meanwhile a piloting space 1 starfighter ace with some xp in his tree will actually get some results and a piloting 1, agility 6 hotshot/pilot with his trusted astromech, showboat, tricky target, and brilliant evasion, presence 1 and leadership 2 can lead a squadron x-wings to utterly destroy 3 squadrons of TIE-Fighters lead by aces without even taking a single hit.

Talents are what makes the difference between a hobbyist and a professional. Between Leia picking up some flying and Han Solo being one of the smuggler pilots in the galaxy.

And this is not only limited to ace: specs, it applies across the board to basically all specs. Skills are nice to have, talents make your core abilities of your profession. Skills outside your career and specialisation are GREAT to have, because they extend your scope. And now let's get away from mechanics and talk about the roleplay aspects of picking a career, because that is what defines your character. You decide to play that type of character that is the lense through which you watch your character. He is an solider, he thinks in solider solution first, he is smuggler, he thinks in smuggler ways first. That does not mean, as mentioned before, that he actually has to work in the field currently, but that is his perspective and field of basic interest. In the case of a career and spec we have some clear focus of interest on a certain skill set and certain way of thinking and that skill set will. If you take a lightsaber spec with the lightsaber career skill, but no rank in lightsaber, than sure, you might lack practice, but you have looked into the field, into the skill, and how to apply to principles of your lightsaber specialisation to the skill of wielding a lightsaber. You have not figured out maybe how your presence can substitute for raw brawn, but you at least should be usually familiar with the concept. How else could there be any career skills at all if the character has no connection at all to his career and it's skills?

You later pay even significant amounts of xp just to familiarize yourself with the basics of the trade of a new specialisation and gain those additional career skills. So there is certainly training and commitment (of xp and otherwise) involved in just getting your career skills. So not allowing to gain rank 1 of career skill after character generation seems really, really odd. And I am in general totally on board with the idea of requiring a mentor to pick up new skills and specialisations.

All that was said is in context of a career/spec (class) and very talent heavy system, just like Fad, AoR and Edge are . For various reasons, especially roleplay aspects I am in general not a fan of talent based systems and even less of systems which combine talents with classes. So I can fully understand the wish to adjust the system into some other direction, but I think you have to acknowledge the intentions of the system and how its mechanics work while doing so. I can as well fully understand the desire of restricting access to new specs, talents and even skills and requiring mentors for all of that, it does indeed encourages more interesting relationships with npcs and can be beneficial to the game experience.

But we are we talking about a galaxy far, far away with full access to the benefits of the information age, while particular lightsaber combat might be not freely avaible on the holonet, basically every other skill is, so I can get actually behind the idea that every character can be to a great deal self taught, which is represented by just spending xp and I think that career skills really mean something, because the XP spend to get them is significant and the XP saved by them is even more significant.

As I said, each to their own. :-)

So, running the next session a few nights ago, I allowed the PC in question to find and swindle his way into an Ancient Sword equivalent. He wont, however, be pleased when he sees the amount of damage he will be doing (He has a Brawn of 1). I also threw in opportunities for him to Charm mobs that wanted to collect the bounty on his head. And of course he chooses to do nothing and let the party members talk their way out of it.

Overall it was a smooth session. He didn't argue with me nearly as much on rules, and he explained to the rest of the party out of character that he wanted to steal from them and get caught so they know to not trust his character with loot. Everything went well from that point on, though the small combat that did happen brought our PC to -9 health.

48 minutes ago, Krodarklorr said:

So, running the next session a few nights ago, I allowed the PC in question to find and swindle his way into an Ancient Sword equivalent. He wont, however, be pleased when he sees the amount of damage he will be doing (He has a Brawn of 1). I also threw in opportunities for him to Charm mobs that wanted to collect the bounty on his head. And of course he chooses to do nothing and let the party members talk their way out of it.

Overall it was a smooth session. He didn't argue with me nearly as much on rules, and he explained to the rest of the party out of character that he wanted to steal from them and get caught so they know to not trust his character with loot. Everything went well from that point on, though the small combat that did happen brought our PC to -9 health.

It sounds like things went a lot better. If he says anything about the amount of damage he's doing, point out that despite doing low damage he can still crit or generate blues for the rest of the party to use.

It interesting that he let the rest of the party talk to the "mobs" given that before he was more than happy to pull out Charm. Did you explicitly tell him you weren't going to keep Charm from working this time? He might be a bit gunshy after the previous attempt.

It's also good to see that the stealing thing was more character establishment than OOC revenge, that makes your job a lot easier!

And yeah, with a Brawn of 1 and no ranks in Parry the guy is going to be made of glass. Fortunately, Makashi will give him a bunch of parry and Talents to help him survive melee combat, particularly against a single enemy.

8 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

It sounds like things went a lot better. If he says anything about the amount of damage he's doing, point out that despite doing low damage he can still crit or generate blues for the rest of the party to use.

It interesting that he let the rest of the party talk to the "mobs" given that before he was more than happy to pull out Charm. Did you explicitly tell him you weren't going to keep Charm from working this time? He might be a bit gunshy after the previous attempt.

It's also good to see that the stealing thing was more character establishment than OOC revenge, that makes your job a lot easier!

And yeah, with a Brawn of 1 and no ranks in Parry the guy is going to be made of glass. Fortunately, Makashi will give him a bunch of parry and Talents to help him survive melee combat, particularly against a single enemy.

Well, considering a basic hit is only 4 damage, he's only likely to crit against minions, maybe weak rivals. But it keeps him happy.

Yeah I told him that I would be working in more social encounters for him (which he enjoyed when swindling a shopkeep out of the ancient sword). But it was a bit odd. Granted, the ending of that mob encounter was hilarious (They didn't pay their bar tab, and when confronted in the alley, the Zabrak Executioner PC lied and said it was the scar-faced, drunk Twilek at the bar that didn't pay, whom they encountered earlier. He succeeded with flying colors, so the Twilek proceeded to get his ass beat in the alley instead of them. It's now a running joke.)

The PC did say he doesn't care much for Makashi Duelist at the moment, and I recommended maybe the Advisor, since it would fit him a bit more. He said that he agrees and will probably go with that for awhile.

13 minutes ago, Krodarklorr said:

Well, considering a basic hit is only 4 damage, he's only likely to crit against minions, maybe weak rivals. But it keeps him happy.

Yeah I told him that I would be working in more social encounters for him (which he enjoyed when swindling a shopkeep out of the ancient sword). But it was a bit odd. Granted, the ending of that mob encounter was hilarious (They didn't pay their bar tab, and when confronted in the alley, the Zabrak Executioner PC lied and said it was the scar-faced, drunk Twilek at the bar that didn't pay, whom they encountered earlier. He succeeded with flying colors, so the Twilek proceeded to get his ass beat in the alley instead of them. It's now a running joke.)

The PC did say he doesn't care much for Makashi Duelist at the moment, and I recommended maybe the Advisor, since it would fit him a bit more. He said that he agrees and will probably go with that for awhile.

You don't need damage to crit, only Advantage. For an Ancient sword, it's 3 Advantage to crit. He DOES need to do damage past Soak, but unless you're regularly tossing 5+ soak enemies at beginning level characters, he shouldn't have any problem with that.

He might have assumed he couldn't Charm a mob of people. Probably the best thing to do in this kind of scenario is to wait until you can get him 1 on 1 and just flat out ask, "Hey, why didn't you try to Charm X?" He might have thought it wasn't allowed for some reason, or he might have thought that the other players wanted a combat instead, or some other reason. Asking will help you get an idea of the situations where he will and won't try to charm something which will help you to predict his future charm attempts and keep from being caught flatfooted.

Advisor is not a bad spec, but it's much more socially oriented than Duelist so be prepared for that. He'll definitely not be much use in combat with that spec unless he takes a Force Power with combat utility (like Move) and gets his Force Rating up a bit. Don't forget that Makashi Duelist is a lightsaber spec, and thus is going to not really perform well until you get an actual lightsaber. If that is the distant future, then Advisor makes sense as his first spec and he can pick up Duelist or another lightsaber spec once lightsabers enter the picture. He may want to rejigger his stats if he doesn't have a 3 in Cunning to help with Deception checks and get more Strain out of Contingency Plan. If lightsabers are expected in the next couple of sessions, however, he might be switching just in time to miss out being good at combat.

22 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

You don't need damage to crit, only Advantage. For an Ancient sword, it's 3 Advantage to crit. He DOES need to do damage past Soak, but unless you're regularly tossing 5+ soak enemies at beginning level characters, he shouldn't have any problem with that.

If I remember correct, you need to do 1 point of damage for a critical injury, unlike a critical hit in vehicle combat, which just need to get past the armor and is not required to deal any damage.
Besides, with his high presence rolling 2 or more successes should not be that hard, melee combat is afterall just an average roll. Half the time he should be able to crit even against damage sponges with high soak. The ancient sword does count as melee weapon while being used with the lightsaber skill, so adding a mono-molecular edge would solve the problem all together as you can mod pierce 2 to it and reduce the crit rating to 2.

Yeah, that would make him a regular critting machine, especially once he started putting ranks into lightsaber.

3 hours ago, Krodarklorr said:

Everything went well from that point on, though the small combat that did happen brought our PC to -9 health.

Sounds like the next session went a lot better! Awesome!

I just want to address this sentence real quick.

In this system, when a PC or NPC takes wounds/strain, you count upwards from 0. So when you go past your wound/strain threshold, you should be at something like 13/12 wounds and you stop counting at 2x your threshold, so something like 24/12. Put simply, you don't lose hitpoints, you gain wounds.

The only reason I mention this is that using the count down method might conflict with how some items & rules are written, as the game always assumes you are counting upwards from 0 when you take damage.

10 minutes ago, GroggyGolem said:

Sounds like the next session went a lot better! Awesome!

I just want to address this sentence real quick.

In this system, when a PC or NPC takes wounds/strain, you count upwards from 0. So when you go past your wound/strain threshold, you should be at something like 13/12 wounds and you stop counting at 2x your threshold, so something like 24/12. Put simply, you don't lose hitpoints, you gain wounds.

The only reason I mention this is that using the count down method might conflict with how some items & rules are written, as the game always assumes you are counting upwards from 0 when you take damage.

Huh. I obviously missed that part. I always just count down as a force of habit. Haha. We will definitely change that.

8 minutes ago, Krodarklorr said:

Huh. I obviously missed that part. I always just count down as a force of habit. Haha. We will definitely change that.

I like to play doctors, and it is very frustrating for me when I count up and the person who I am healing counts down.

So, I need further assistance on this matter. The PC in the spotlight here has been handeling things well. Even with his ancient sword he is doing negligible damage at best and still gets 2 shot by most things. I've add options for him to do his thing, such as talking the main contact out of ambushing them, meeting him alone in a cantina, and poisoning his drink.

However, last night there was a very in depth conversation on whether to join the Sith or the Jedi. Everyone was on the Sith train save for one player, solely for the reason of "money". However, the player left out not only has to go along with it, even when he doesn't feel good about the situation, but he also received threats upon his life from the PC in the spotlight if he messed this opportunity up in any way.

While I'm okay with them choosing Sith (when my story calls for them being good guys, but they'll soon realize how big of jerks the Sith really are), and I'm okay with the RP discussion the players had about their options, I'm not okay with this PC threatening other party members, and don't know how to prevent bad things happening.

Any advice?

You're OK with the party going Sith, but not with them threatening violence against each other when they have significant conflicts. Those two things will quite often go together.

1 minute ago, HappyDaze said:

You're OK with the party going Sith, but not with them threatening violence against each other when they have significant conflicts. Those two things will quite often go together.

You are correct. But when a party member voices his concerns and immediately gets shot down, with threats of "you're gonna have to make a new character because I just got a lightsaber and could end you", a healthy game that does not make. I don't want to lose a player because of this. Hence why I'm asking for advice on what I could do as a GM to help the situation.

I'd argue that running a Sith/pro-dark side game doesn't make for a healthy game then. If you want a suggestion, I'd say back up to that decision and take the other fork in the road. Otherwise, let them play the "unhealthy" game for a bit to see if that's what they really want.

3 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I'd argue that running a Sith/pro-dark side game doesn't make for a healthy game then. If you want a suggestion, I'd say back up to that decision and take the other fork in the road. Otherwise, let them play the "unhealthy" game for a bit to see if that's what they really want.

Well taking advice from previous posts in this thread and throughout the internet, I didn't want to limit the players. There for they talked with the bad guy instead, charmed him, and now he offered them a job. Which they happily accepted. So I'm allowing them to do as they please, but I want to have incentive to not murder each other.

What are their motivations?

2 hours ago, Krodarklorr said:

While I'm okay with them choosing Sith (when my story calls for them being good guys, but they'll soon realize how big of jerks the Sith really are) , and I'm okay with the RP discussion the players had about their options, I'm not okay with this PC threatening other party members, and don't know how to prevent bad things happening.

Any advice?

Well, I'll start with the part you're asking about first and then move onto the first part.

1. Interparty conflict is one place where it's generally OK to be heavy-handed as a GM. This is one of those things that all players AND the GM need to be on-board with 100%, or it doesn't happen. It may be that that player doesn't mind, but that kind of action is very very difficult to GM (unless you're playing Paranoia, but that's a different kettle of fish). You may need to sit everyone down and make it clear that, regardless of which way the party goes, killing other characters unprovoked isn't gonna fly.
2. That being said, while you're doing a good job of loosening up and broadening your options for your players (and I hope it's been fun for you!), the bit I bolded shows that you've got a ways to go. The first problem is that you're assuming that they'll do what you want, which is a HUGE mistake. Players will always surprise you, be it their capacity for ingenuity, humor, evil, or (often) all three at once. This is why I suggested that you not become attached to any one outcome or "story" for your game, but rather focus on the story that the players are creating right along with you in the moment. Once you've done that, you'll find a lot more enjoyment because you worry much less about trying to herd a bunch of cats in the "right" direction, and instead throw interesting scenarios and consequences from their previous actions at them to see how they handle them. In this specific case...they might be cool playing card-carrying, baby eating villains with their characters. Or they may be comfortable just working for those sorts. It's not like Star Wars fans are unfamiliar with the Sith, they know they're not the "Good Guys." If you're 100% against an evil/amoral campaign, you again need to have a sit-down and discuss this with them so that they understand where you're coming from.

Hope things go well, and keep us posted! These aren't easy issues to manage as a GM but they're not insurmountable so long as you bring them to the fore and discuss it openly and honestly, instead of just letting it fester until it boils over.

2 hours ago, Krodarklorr said:

You are correct. But when a party member voices his concerns and immediately gets shot down, with threats of "you're gonna have to make a new character because I just got a lightsaber and could end you" , a healthy game that does not make. I don't want to lose a player because of this. Hence why I'm asking for advice on what I could do as a GM to help the situation.

This is an OOC, player threat, and not cool. In character threats would be more appropriate, and perhaps expected, under these circumstances.

The whole thing with inter-party conflict is that it has to something narrative; players generally have to work together, even if now and again it brushes other characters (Not necessarily players, it's important to keep that distinction!) up the wrong way. The key thing with characters with motivations should generally be united on one long term objective that ISN'T money. My group for example are operatives to the alliance and are looking to destroy the empire's R&D department, managed by first grand moff Kevlin and later a mysterious character known only as Lt Klevic.

One example of this was defending a rim colony to give time for the alliance to arrive; half of the party was absolutely apposed to dealing with Slavers yet my and one other PC felt very strongly against it (especially when initial recruitment rallies left defences really lacking), so under urgency we went behind the parties back to recruit a slave force which proved pivotal for the battle. Even with that extra 400 troops the battle was so vicious one of our party was killed and we were driven all the way into the command centre, the paragon's still hadn't forgiven us for that but Tobin is a rimer and doesn't much care; though he is a paragon himself but he understands that at the end of the day, rebellions aren't born of good intentions alone and we can't save the galaxy if we are dead. This morality sacrifice on his part has made him a more mature character.

"you're gonna have to make a new character because I just got a lightsaber and could end you" Threats like that would be unacceptable at my table. Either the threats are meant in character or not said at all; after once incident with a crazy captain who believed authority was his alone, crazy characters that murder's other pc unprevoked would likely be killed, mashed up and sold to a trandosian slave ship to serve as their packed lunches for the next day. This crew does not tolerate outright betrayal lightly (though of course, that actually requires being caught)