Hi!

I have a player who started out as a wookie Assassin and later bought the Shii Cho specialization. The character is really bloodthirsty, has the emotional weakness Anger and has been fallen closer to the dark side since day one. He wants to become a powerful warrior, the strongest one and he actively challenges stronger opponents just to test his own strength. He is not above torture or cutting of arms or legs to be succesful at a coercion check. He really wants to play as a dark jedi and now I'm planning an adventure where he gets his lightsaber crystal. But I'm not sure how he is going to get the crystal in a way that seems both impactfull and in line with the character.

Normally you go into some crystalcave, you resist your emotional weakness and find your crystal that way. But this character doesn't want to resist his anger, he wants to fall and become a darkside-user. So that way seems a bit too... serene for him.

I have been thinking about him stealing a lightsaber or defeating another forceuser for it, but it doesn't seem as impactfull as finding that special crystal among hundreds in a cave. If he stole it or took someone elses, it wouldn't be his "chosen" crystal that way.

I've also thought about killing a krayt dragon for it's pearl, but that seems too much for his first lightsaber crystal.

Any ideas on how to allow him to get his crystal in a way that is in line with that sort of character?

New canon:

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Kyber crystals were inherently attuned to the light side of the Force, and would attempt to resist any effort by dark side practitioners to utilize them in lightsabers. To this end, the only way a Sith, or other darksider could make use of a kyber crystal was to use the Force to dominate the crystal, bending it to their will. This process would cause the crystal to "bleed", as if it were a living organism, resulting in the distinctive crimson-bladed lightsabers synonymous with the Sith.

Sounds like you should come up with a challenge that would allow the wookiee to dominate his crystal.

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doesn't seem as impactfull as finding that special crystal

I'm not sure this is a thing, with dark side practitioners. The Sith, and their ilk, don't seem to share any special affinity with their crystals. It also doesn't seem like there is much of a fall to narrate here. I'm inclined to agree with kasoe- his suggestion is in line with the character's motivations. If there is a force-user with any connection to his backstory, or previous adventures, perhaps an encounter where he has an opportunity to take a crystal would be your best bet?

I just don't see this guy meditating in some cave.

I would just like to make my distaste for this new canon approach to this in a straightforward and clearly articulated manner .

Wookie meet Krayt Dragon. One Alien enters only one Alien leaves.

19 minutes ago, Blackbird888 said:

I would just like to make my distaste for this new canon approach to this in a straightforward and clearly articulated manner .

To be fair, I never cared much for the synthetic crystals, either.

1 hour ago, Blackbird888 said:

I would just like to make my distaste for this new canon approach to this in a straightforward and clearly articulated manner .

ROFLMAO!!!!!!

Well, if you're not going with the synthetic crystal approach, then a dark sider would simply go to wherever they could get a crystal of the type they wanted, and simply claim it as theirs. In this case, hunting down and slaying a Krayt Dragon for one of its pearls works perfectly in that context.

18 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Well, if you're not going with the synthetic crystal approach, then a dark sider would simply go to wherever they could get a crystal of the type they wanted, and simply claim it as theirs. In this case, hunting down and slaying a Krayt Dragon for one of its pearls works perfectly in that context.

I thought about synthetic crystals too because it seemed almost like the sith version of the Gathering i think. Instead of the crystal picking you, the Sith makes their own, it's a cool idea! But there's not much time in the campain for tracking down the knowledge, then learning it and finally to sit down and craft the crystal. But possible in the next campain

The Krayt dragon idea seems very cool and it's the best I've come up with so far. But i'm a bit hesitant because the krayt dragon pearl is really powerful. I mean, dmg 9 AND crit 1! Do you guys think that's a bit too powerful for a starting crystal?

I think this new crystal-thingy is dumb.

2 hours ago, ForceUser said:

I thought about synthetic crystals too because it seemed almost like the sith version of the Gathering i think. Instead of the crystal picking you, the Sith makes their own, it's a cool idea! But there's not much time in the campain for tracking down the knowledge, then learning it and finally to sit down and craft the crystal. But possible in the next campain

The Krayt dragon idea seems very cool and it's the best I've come up with so far. But i'm a bit hesitant because the krayt dragon pearl is really powerful. I mean, dmg 9 AND crit 9! Do you guys think that's a bit too powerful for a starting crystal?

Depends on what you want to do.

I mean it doesn't have to be a Krayt Dragon Pearl. One of the things that seems consistent is that most non-super-special crystals are equivalent to Illum crystals. So if you don't want actual Krayt pearls, perhaps a Gorax bladder stone (that's the same as an Illum crystal stat-wise) is more to your liking.

The krayt dragon pearl looks powerful at first glance, but when you compare the stats and mod options it's actually only slightly ahead of an ilum crystal. Unmodded it's equivalent to an ilum crystal with two mods (-1 crit, +1 vicious), and fully modded it is two mods ahead (+2 vicious, otherwise equal). That's presumably the basis for the price difference.

Yes, it's better, but not by that much, and it doesn't bring anything unusual in the way of lightsaber traits to the table

That said, there are other options for a crystal and it might be worth looking at those for one that's a fit to the character's thematics.

9 hours ago, kaosoe said:

New canon:

Sounds like you should come up with a challenge that would allow the wookiee to dominate his crystal.

The easiest and classic challenge would be to steal a lightsaber from a lightside user.

3 hours ago, SuperArppis said:

I think this new crystal-thingy is dumb.

Was the old crystal-thingy much different? The crystals revealed themselves to their user. They don't reveal themselves to dark siders, this is legends and canon the same. The only difference is that the crystals the sith use are not synthetic to compensate for that, but instead stolen. In context that there is an abundance of kyber crystals in the galaxy and more than enough crystals around to build giant synthetik crystals for death star and star killer super-lasers. I really don't see the giant difference from old to new.

I wanted to point out that this character would need a dip into one of the univerisal Force universial specs if he wants to use Force abilities. Aside from that they would gain their crystal either with sythentic means or ..... through a quest that befits their personality. So maybe this PC encounters someone else on a planet search for a crystal and he has to defeat him in some manner in order to get the crystal. Or maybe he has to take down a more powerful Force user and take the crystal from his broken lightsabre.

Or kill a Krayt dragon which would be an awsome thing to brag about on its own merits.

You could always just let him roll Streetwise to try and find that Rarity 10 (R) crystal from some disreputable source. Sometimes it doesn't deserve any more table time than that.

If your game is set after Order 66, there are 10,000 dead Jedi, which means there are somewhat more than 10,000 lightsabers & crystals that just lost their owners. The clones aren't going to sweep them all up and return them to the Empire - some just be missed or unrecoverable, some will fall off the back of the cargo skiff. So he can track one down and buy one.

The Star Wars comics had a Hutt named Grakkus that collected Jedi paraphernalia; he had lightsabers and probably some crystals. Canonically, the Empire arrests him after Yavin 4, but he could have other storage depots that Vader & co. didn't know about. The PC might need to rob; or, since he goes to prison, they might reach out to him and have to do something for him to get a crystal (e.g., Obligation time).

(IMO, the synthetic crystals thing was lame.)

12 hours ago, Garran said:

The krayt dragon pearl looks powerful at first glance, but when you compare the stats and mod options it's actually only slightly ahead of an ilum crystal. Unmodded it's equivalent to an ilum crystal with two mods (-1 crit, +1 vicious), and fully modded it is two mods ahead (+2 vicious, otherwise equal). That's presumably the basis for the price difference.

If both are unmodded the pearl is far better. It's equal to an ilum crystal with 3 +1 damage mods, reduce crit by 1 mod, and a vicious +1 mod.

Greetings,

I think you can have Dark Side Quests for a user of the Dark Side within an old Sith temple or some other Dark Side place, very similar to the Light Side Quest a Jedi Padawan has to master in order to earn their crystal.

Instead of overcoming your emotional weakness like a Padawan would have to, you could make it a challenge to overcome a personal fear. In case of your Wookiee Warrior it could be a more powerful opponent he has no chance of defeating in normal combat unless he channels his Fear of losing into Anger and his Anger into Hate. And his opponent will Suffer and will be forced to give him a crystal... The opponent is only a force vision within the temple, of course.

Or the Force Vision could challenge the Dark Jedi to sacrifice something/someone he loves in order to increase his power. E.g. he can reach the crystal or save his friend. I'm sure there are Dark Side places that do nasty stuff like that.

May the Force be Dark

Fred

1 hour ago, Deimos119 said:

If both are unmodded the pearl is far better. It's equal to an ilum crystal with 3 +1 damage mods, reduce crit by 1 mod, and a vicious +1 mod.

Yeah, but putting those mods on an ilum crystal is almost trivial. Even with base stats and nothing in mechanics, that Wookiee is 500 credits, a couple days, and a handful of Easy rolls away from a modded crystal. Even if the GM upgrades the task with destiny points or because the Wookiee has no ranks in Mechanics, the player can gather a few bonus dice, minimize setback dice and flip a destiny point.

In the alternative you could just say that it's a young krayt dragon and the Crystal isn't refined enough, call it standard crystal stats.

9 minutes ago, FatherTurin said:

Yeah, but putting those mods on an ilum crystal is almost trivial. Even with base stats and nothing in mechanics, that Wookiee is 500 credits, a couple days, and a handful of Easy rolls away from a modded crystal.

"Each additional mod installed in an attachment beyond the first increases the difficulty of the Mechanics check by one, and costs an additional 100 credits beyond the base cost. "

FaD page 192 about installing mods. Only tge first mod would be easy, the fifth would be a formidable check.

Missed that part. Thank you for the heads up, I was worried about my players ending up with a collection of God sabers.

13 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

You could always just let him roll Streetwise to try and find that Rarity 10 (R) crystal from some disreputable source. Sometimes it doesn't deserve any more table time than that.

That's just i really. We all know how the Jedi find their crystals, but there are countless crystals out there that have already been harvested and more to the point; I imagine Vader has better things to do with his time then standing on a mining sight picking out viable crystals for his death weapons. Maybe.

Or maybe that person doesn't get a lightsaber, because lightsabers are for Jedi. Violent murder hobo's and culturistic sharman cultures need not apply! XD Though I imagine they would get their lightsabers mainly from stealing from the dead or some other significant artifact that was passed down as a sign of friendship/a hero who had died protecting them. The character would tend to obtain the lightsaber that way if they didn't subscribe to Jedi culture; I think this is something that should happen much more often with new adventuring groups, they don't get any flavour of lightsaber at all until they either learn about the Jedi, kill someone carrying it or learn from a backwater culture.

To me this character comes from a background with absolutely no experience in lightsaber construction and simply learnt how to use a blade really well; so actually constructing a lightsaber for now is completely out of this characters reach.

Honestly based on the character and the info about dominating a crystal versus harmonizing with it I would go with a big nasty fight. Solo fight against an adversary or the like. Really make him work for it. Even like a Mirror Image fight would be interesting. I dont think overcoming or avoiding a weakness. Its about tapping into the fear and the anger and unleashing the rage to get it.

16 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

The easiest and classic challenge would be to steal a lightsaber from a lightside user.

Was the old crystal-thingy much different? The crystals revealed themselves to their user. They don't reveal themselves to dark siders, this is legends and canon the same. The only difference is that the crystals the sith use are not synthetic to compensate for that, but instead stolen. In context that there is an abundance of kyber crystals in the galaxy and more than enough crystals around to build giant synthetik crystals for death star and star killer super-lasers. I really don't see the giant difference from old to new.

Well, that's just it. Sith have to "steal" them and dominate them somehow. It puts arbitrary rules to the whole thing way too much and makes it seem less natural.

It just feels really forced.

Have you actually looked at what a Krayt Dragon Stats are?

If he can fight and defeat it by himself in a confined space he deserves his lightsaber crystal.