So here's a question: Are *all* of the character options in F&D considered to be Jedi and/or Force-wielders of some kind, even if they have not yet taken any powers on their character trees that have the "Force" indicator in the corner?

Put it another way: If there's an Inquisitor or Vader or some other agent of the Dark Side with the power to sense the presence of other Force-sensitive individuals out there and he or she passes by the PCs going the other way down the street, will they be 'detected'?

All the careers provide force rating 1 , so unless you are a droid, you are force sensitive.

Vader (and probably the Emperor, in Senate session) walked with Leia without realizing she was a Skywalker.

This would imply that, even if there were such a power, you couldnt detect someone who hadnt unlocked their abilities.

There isnt really a power thst lets you spot force sensitivity, although the foresight sidebar does indicate that foresee has abilities of thst nature.

No. None of the characters are automatically considered to be "Jedi," including those PCs that start with one of the Lightsaber Form specializations.

They however all considered to be Force-sensitive, as each FaD career starts out with Force Rating 1. But while all Jedi are Force users, not all Force users are necessarily "Jedi." Part of the confusion issue comes from the WEG version of the RPG, where back then they presumed that the terms "Jedi" and "Force user" were pretty much interchangeable. These days, we've got a number of Force traditions in both canon and Legends, many of whom have little to nothing to do with the Jedi Order.

As for 'detecting' if a character is Force-sensitive, unless you've caught them in the act of using obvious Force powers (such as Move or Enhance for Force leaps), there's not really any hard-and-fast rules for sensing that a person has a Force Rating. A number of GMs (self included) have opted to house rule that the basic Sense power has a third option, in that can be used to detect if a character within range (default engaged) is Force-sensitive or not. But the vast majority of dark siders don't go randomly seeing if a person is a Force user or not just on a while, and will only begin to investigate if there's reports of the person doing something that's very difficult to explain by mundane methods.

2 hours ago, Wussypillow said:

So here's a question: Are *all* of the character options in F&D considered to be Jedi and/or Force-wielders of some kind, even if they have not yet taken any powers on their character trees that have the "Force" indicator in the corner?

Put it another way: If there's an Inquisitor or Vader or some other agent of the Dark Side with the power to sense the presence of other Force-sensitive individuals out there and he or she passes by the PCs going the other way down the street, will they be 'detected'?

Just to clarify what others have said:

1. If you pick a career from Force and Destiny , you begin with Force Rating 1. This makes you Force-sensitive, but it does not make you a Jedi. Being a Jedi in this game is much more a narrative thing rather than a mechanical thing.

2. If you take a career from Age of Rebellion or Edge of the Empire , you do not start out with Force Rating 1, and if you want to be Force-sensitive, you have to take either the specialization Force-sensitive Exile or Force-sensitive Emergent. (You might argue that you could be Force-sensitive but don't know it yet, of course, but that would be between you and your GM.) But taking FSEx or FSEm does not make you a Jedi, either, as per #1 above.

3. If you take a career from Age of Rebellion or Edge of the Empire and you later take a specialization from Force and Destiny, you do not gain Force Rating 1, and the new specialization neither makes you Force-sensitive, nor does it make you a Jedi.

(Being a Droid complicates all this, since you can never become Force-sensitive. I'm not sure if it's possible per the rules for a droid PC to start with a Force and Destiny Career. I wouldn't allow it as a GM, at least.)

To sum up, being Force-sensitive in this game is tied to Force Rating (with perhaps narrative exceptions), and being a Jedi is an entirely narrative thing that requires Force-sensitivity to do.

2 hours ago, Wussypillow said:

P ut it another way: If there's an Inquisitor or Vader or some other agent of the Dark Side with the power to sense the presence of other Force-sensitive individuals out there and he or she passes by the PCs going the other way down the street, will they be 'detected'?

The entire Jedi council failed to detect Palpatine was a sith lord, even when he kept visiting the council chamber to talk to them. The foresee ability didn't do them a bit of good either.

Sensing a disturbance in the force or a familiar presence is a plot ability, it can be used by the sith or the PCs when the GM wants it to happen.

1 hour ago, SavageBob said:

Being a Droid complicates all this, since you can never become Force-sensitive. I'm not sure if it's possible per the rules for a droid PC to start with a Force and Destiny Career. I wouldn't allow it as a GM, at least.)

To sum up, being Force-sensitive in this game is tied to Force Rating (with perhaps narrative exceptions), and being a Jedi is an entirely narrative thing that requires Force-sensitivity to do.

There is no rule stopping a droid from taking a F&D specialization, nor is there one to stop them taking a career., but as a droid cannot gain force sensitivity, they are also barred fro using any force abilities or talents. There are a number of career/specializations that would work almost as well without force sensitivity, example racer / investigator amongst others. In fact a Soresu Defender makes a very interesting choice for a melee specialist that prefers defense to offense.

1 hour ago, syrath said:

There is no rule stopping a droid from taking a F&D specialization, nor is there one to stop them taking a career., but as a droid cannot gain force sensitivity, they are also barred fro using any force abilities or talents. There are a number of career/specializations that would work almost as well without force sensitivity, example racer / investigator amongst others. In fact a Soresu Defender makes a very interesting choice for a melee specialist that prefers defense to offense.

I'd actually argue that both Shii-Cho Knight and Makashi Duelist are better than Soresu Defender for a non-Force-Sensitive character. This is because much of Soresu is based on Reflect, which is useless without a Force Rating. OTOH, only a very few talents towards the bottoms of the two trees I mentioned require a Force Rating.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

I'd actually argue that both Shii-Cho Knight and Makashi Duelist are better than Soresu Defender for a non-Force-Sensitive character. This is because much of Soresu is based on Reflect, which is useless without a Force Rating. OTOH, only a very few talents towards the bottoms of the two trees I mentioned require a Force Rating.

Id agree, I was only using it as an example you can actually avoid a lot of the force sensitive talents if you buy the entire left column , dedication ,improved parry, and the right column except the last (165xp, only 10xp wasted) and you get 4 ranks of parry, improved and supreme parry, 2 ranks of defensive training, dedication.

Throw Armour (Mental Tools is the only real waste you need to purchase) into that list along with Teacher, and if Freerunning is important then Racer too. Most other specs have nothing to offer that can't be found in more useful Specialisations.

1 hour ago, Richardbuxton said:

Throw Armour (Mental Tools is the only real waste you need to purchase) into that list along with Teacher, and if Freerunning is important then Racer too. Most other specs have nothing to offer that can't be found in more useful Specialisations.

I actually put together a droid Teacher/Arbiter for an upcoming con game.

It's been my experience that if the GM knows you're a force user so do all the NPC's. Also no attempts to hide a lightsaber are successful. Very happy that campaign collapsed.

1 hour ago, Ziro said:

It's been my experience that if the GM knows you're a force user so do all the NPC's. Also no attempts to hide a lightsaber are successful. Very happy that campaign collapsed.

Sounds like a bad GM.

23 hours ago, syrath said:

There is no rule stopping a droid from taking a F&D specialization, nor is there one to stop them taking a career., but as a droid cannot gain force sensitivity, they are also barred fro using any force abilities or talents. There are a number of career/specializations that would work almost as well without force sensitivity, example racer / investigator amongst others. In fact a Soresu Defender makes a very interesting choice for a melee specialist that prefers defense to offense.

Investigator is a great tree for a non-force sensitive if that's the style of character they want to play

You can even get all the non force powers without needing to buy a force power

2 hours ago, Ziro said:

It's been my experience that if the GM knows you're a force user so do all the NPC's. Also no attempts to hide a lightsaber are successful. Very happy that campaign collapsed.

Then you had a shyte GM.

I've got a FaD campaign where all the PCs are now Force-sensitive (one of them wound up that way after mucking with a Sith artifact while it was active while on Malachor), and frankly the number of still-living NPCs in my campaign that fully know the characters are Force users of any stripe can be counted on a single hand, and two of them are Force users as well, one being a friendly mentor-type and the other an Imperial Inquisitor whom the PCs ran away from when they had their initial face-to-face encounter.

2 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Then you had a shyte GM.

My first shyte GM in fact. He also took 20 minutes to describe anything. Two sessions in and I was regretting playing a force user. I was a prisoner on my way to see a "friendly" inquisitor when the rebels (other players) launched their plan to take over the transport ship. The first game I was in a stasis pod until the last 20 min of a 4 hour session. The second game the first two hours my only possession was my stasis shorts, by the end of that session I was able to get my lightsaber out of the ship's vault. And then moments later I found out that lightsabers can't cut through blast doors. We were trying to get into a secure section before the crew started to wake up and could not make a roll to open the door, so I figured why not just use the master key. Nope doors just to tuff had to go find a torch and make attacks on the door to open it. Sorry I'm venting. My new GM is great he really embraces that "hold my beer" player style.

As others have said, no you aren't automatically a Jedi if you have Force abilities but that doesn't mean people won't think you are one if they see you using them...

On 11.7.2017 at 8:32 PM, Ziro said:

It's been my experience that if the GM knows you're a force user so do all the NPC's. Also no attempts to hide a lightsaber are successful. Very happy that campaign collapsed.

It my experience that no inquisitors will show up UNTIL someone draws a lightsaber. So I would say: Unlucky with your GM, good luck with your next one.
Not even the alliance seems to be aware about ALL of our force sensitives in our small unit of commandos, operatives and pilots. None of them are jedi either.

I recently read Ashoka, which was enjoyable if a bit short, and it gives a good example of how an inquisitor acquires a new target and what they do when they don't have one. In this case the inquisitor was looking into a report that a child may be strong in the Force and was trying to find them when they got a report from a local Imperial garrison officer that someone (Ashoka) had been seen using what was believed to be Force abilities. As soon as the inquisitor saw the report he put the child on hold and was off to investigate.

So basically inquisitors are looking for any and all force users that show any ability above the normal background average who can be of use or a danger to the Emperor, even untrained children. Anyone showing any training at all are instantly a priority. So, if your Force using PC(s) get noticed by the wrong person you should expect an inquisitor to be alerted and on their way as soon as the call goes out. I believe right now, in the setting, there are around a dozen active inquisitors, which doesn't sound like a lot but they also have the eyes and ears of the entire ISB, military, and civilian governments looking to gain favor with the Emperor, not to mention the standing bounty for those in that business.

Now, and this is of course my opinion and YMMV, in my games there aren't dozens or hundreds of groups of PCs adventuring around, there is only the group I happen to be GM'ing or playing in. Nor will they go on forever. If something happens they are the focus, this saga is about them not the whole gaming world that also plays FFGSW, so if they let the cat out of the bag it's up to me as the GM to decide if the time has come for an inquisitor to show up. Essentially bringing in a Nemesis like an inquisitor shouldn't be looked at like a game mechanic but as an integral part of the plot of your campaign's story.

Just on a side note, many of the recent canon books are actually pretty good all things considered (except the Aftermath stuff which as hard as I try I can't get past the writing style, YMMV), and each have a useful bit of reference for gaming. The Ashoka one as I've said has this nice bit on the connection between kyber crystals and Jedi, as well as how inquisitors find and pursue Force users, Kanobi and A New Dawn has some good stuff on how to be a Jedi or Force user in hiding. Dark Disciple is good reference on the dangers and redemption from the Darkside and Lost Stars gives a good perspective from the Imperial soldier's side as well as that of a rebellion convert.

I'm not saying these are great pieces of literature but they're a little different than the "Legends" books before the SW ecumenical council met after Disney took over. They tend to cover the themes presented in the films in a more succinct way and from different perspectives while answering questions in a way that make make sense in the setting. Anyway I still haven't read all of them, I throw them in between other books I'm reading, but I find them useful.

I think, and I'm UTTERLY GUESSING here (not looking at spoilers for TLJ) but I suspect the notion of what a Jedi is needs to change.

The main reason we got the NJO wearing robes, losing all personality, and flipping out like space ninjas was that Del Rey sought to "prequelise" the OT and NJO era. That is, instead of there being a natural need or fit for the prequel stuff, they took out a giant shoehorn and got to work.

Instead, we should be taking the view that was a cynical, ham-fisted marketing exercise that yanked the franchise in a terminally stupid direction until the Disney buyout, where they recognised the only sane thing to do was shoot the EU in the back of the head after telling it it was a good boy, such a good boy.

These specs are force users, pale imitations of the Jedi of old but building their own new Jedi tradition. So the question isn't if they should be considered Jedi; it's if the term Jedi means the same thing in the OT/ST as it did in the PT. (Hint: Nope. Does not.)

So what was a jedi in the Prequel Era and what is a Jedi now (OT and after)? What do you think are(or should be) the differences of the new tradition (if there is one, TFA showed that we haven't moved a single step after Endor, there seem to still be only 1 decently trained jedi in all the galaxy)?

Do all F&D specs give you +1 Force Rating when you take them, or do you need to get to the talent first? I was thinking about taking Trailblazer and then Shii-Cho Knight.

3 minutes ago, Lukey84 said:

Do all F&D specs give you +1 Force Rating when you take them, or do you need to get to the talent first? I was thinking about taking Trailblazer and then Shii-Cho Knight.

Only F&D careers give you a force rating if you don't have one, if you started with Trailblazer you would have to get Force Sensitive Exile/Emergent to get a force rating.