20 minutes ago, emsquared said:

And you can have two yellows thru base chargen, often without spending xp - especially as a human (like Luke). Throw in Destiny points especially and PCs hit that, no problem, on any important roll.

And having those two yellows makes them below competent. Which isn't what Luke is.

Never mind Han, Leia, or Obi-Wan. Or Qui-Gon. Or Padme.

Zero to hero is great when it fits the source material, but it very rarely does. And certainly not here.

Nah, Luke doesn't do anything impressive (or even competent) until he blows up the Death Star. And by then he's gained xp. He absolutely starts as a zero.

Cause swinging over bottomless pits on a bit of rope, with another person clinging to you, is neither competent nor impressive...

Or shooting down enemy high speed fighter craft.

Also, what about all the other characters I mentioned?

8 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

Cause swinging over bottomless pits on a bit of rope, with another person clinging to you, is neither competent nor impressive...

Not only had he - again - gained xp by the time he did any of that (found Obi Wan, saved Leia), but no, hitting a static target at Short range with a grappling hook is not impressive, neither is letting physics swing you across a pit when the grapple hook line is attached to your belt, the check to hold on was Leia's, with 2 Boosts, 1 from his good anchor shot and 1 for his assist - and she flipped a Destiny.

What about the others? I never claimed an experienced smuggler, wookie merc, or any princesses were zeros.

So it's so unimpressive that you need the help of the Force to do it, gotcha.

That the others don't fit the pattern either shows that the pattern doesn't fit the source material.

59 minutes ago, emsquared said:

The only really impressive thing Luke does is space pilot, no? Easy peasy to get there.

It really is. All you need is 4 dice in an Attribute and 2 ranks in a skill. Even a Formidable (5 purple dice) check has a 50% success rate at that level of skill, and obviously that will only get higher with gameplay. Of course, the flip side to this is that you're generally going to only have 1 attribute at 4, so the amount of skills you can start with in this level of ability are fairly small. But then, that's where the progression comes in!

Edit: I wouldn't say the ONLY thing he does impressively is space pilot, but I WOULD say that everything impressive he does in ANH is linked to his high Agility.

30 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

So it's so unimpressive that you need the help of the Force to do it, gotcha.

That the others don't fit the pattern either shows that the pattern doesn't fit the source material.

LOL That first bit is nonsense, it's not impressive to "need the Force" when you've chosen to make trade-offs to be a Force User. That's your thing now, of course you need it. Man you're reaching.

Threepio, Artoo and Luke are zeroes, that's the group. OWK is a Mentor NPC, Han is the loser-GMs DMPC, and Leia came in at the same XP level as everyone else, cuz [edit] that's what nice ppl do when someone joins their table.

No, you're the one who invoked a Destiny Point. Which is the Force helping you out. That's all from you.

And neither R2 nor 3po change or advance to any appreciable degree across the movies in their level of competence. They're even less fitting for your contention that zero to hero fits star wars than Luke is.

38 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

No, you're the one who invoked a Destiny Point. Which is the Force helping you out. That's all from you.

And neither R2 nor 3po change or advance to any appreciable degree across the movies in their level of competence. They're even less fitting for your contention that zero to hero fits star wars than Luke is.

Ah, I see - that makes even less sense. Engaging the game mechanics to improve your chances doesn't make something impressive, it just means you know how to play the game.

And I'm sorry, I didn't realize you saw Threepio's social skill scores at the end of the movies, or Artoo's mechanics skill and talents.

Listen it's been fun but I'm done with you.

Not only have I proven Luke is The ZtH, but also your inability to use he the abstractive-leap between drama and mechanics to say anything meaningful towards your point proves mine about the problem with statting Icons.

So the droids totally change, we just don't see any evidence of it in the movies, right...

And considering you're the one talking about Luke spending xp, it's hilarious that you now try to make it out like I'd have to see a character sheet to know that a character in a movie doesn't show any growth in the skills portrayed on screen.

See we just have two different senses of humor.

Cuz I think what is hilarious is that I chose to engage you on your own ground for the debate and won soundly.

I didn't say you can't use the system to stat the Icons, I said you shouldn't - cuz it robs them of their Iconic nature...

Luke the Zero, FR4 Yoda... best not to look behind the curtain.

8 minutes ago, emsquared said:

See we just have two different senses of humor.

Cuz I think what is hilarious is that I chose to engage you on your own ground for the debate and won soundly.

I didn't say you can't use the system to stat the Icons, I said you shouldn't - cuz it robs them of their Iconic nature...

Luke the Zero, FR4 Yoda... best not to look behind the curtain.

Ah, the ancient internet practice of declaring victory despite achieving nothing whatsoever.

I destroyed every single attempt of defining Luke as a "zero", and pointed out many, many other characters who don't fit the pattern you claim exists - for which you didn't have an answer beyond "uh, those totally don't count".

The only thing zero about Luke are his people skills. They manage to do a passable job sneaking around the death star and hit several Storm troopers. He is a passable shot with a blaster. He shoots down a tie fighter...He most certainly not a zero. But then most heroes are not.

23 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

The only thing zero about Luke are his people skills. They manage to do a passable job sneaking around the death star and hit several Storm troopers. He is a passable shot with a blaster. He shoots down a tie fighter...He most certainly not a zero. But then most heroes are not.

Zero here by Stans definition is a starting chargen rules PC. Starting PCs = zeros, according to Stan.

Who are also by definition, the "heroes" of your rpg.

And Luke does nothing in EpIV beyond the range of a 4AGI (3INT?) and the standard free skill rank allotment. And of course xp by the time he actually does anything worth mentioning.

Trying to quantify the movie characters by game rules is utterly futile. Let alone the fact that the Jedi in the movie frequently and with full intention wander into blaster fire just so they have something to reflect means they have a fundamentally different relationship to lightsaber ranks than characters in this game do, because it takes a pretty gargantuan amount of XP for that to be viable.

The game is for emulating not replicating.

25 minutes ago, mouthymerc said:

The game is for emulating not replicating.

Very true.

And with a starting XP character, one can emulate a lot of Luke's actions in ANH. The only difference is that Luke's character had the power of Plot working for him, and so generally he got far better results on his dice rolls than the law of averages would normally allow for. Or as a friend of mine puts it, they're all rolling Movie Hero Dice while the rest of us are stuck rolling normal dice.

After all, the heroes from the films/TV shows/books don't need to be able to always pull off a certain task every single time they attempt it, just have a fairly reasonable chance of accomplishing it. And with the way FFG's dice system works, a character can pull off some pretty impressive feats with a lucky dice roll.

In case anyone was interested the Table says:

3 hours ago, Ogrebear said:

In case anyone was interested the Table says:

Huh...that's actually really close to my own interpretation. I think I put 4 as a Veteran Jedi Knight, though. Then 5 FR as a Master, 6 FR as High Council Master. Upwards from there you're into the handful of Jedi or Sith who star in all the media, and where they rank is a debate that will never end, I think.

I don't stat out NPCs like Yoda or Palpatine, but I did have a player ask about Palpatine's FR once. I told him "if" I did stat them, both Palpatine and Yoda would sit around FR 8.