My husband and I are brand new to F&D and we are trying to get a good grasp of the new setting before we gather a full campaign group and begin guiding them through it. I know all of us will learn best once we are actually playing the game as a group, but I know my people will have a ton of questions building their characters and I would like to be somewhat prepared.

Firstly, I already am in love with the wealth of knowledge and the positive vibe I'm picking up in this community. I just want to preemptively thank you for your patience as I am likely about to ask a lot of noobish questions.

I stumbled across swsheets.com (likely from diving into old posts on this forum) and I love having it as a tool. However, I've started to notice a pattern with the characters that pop up in the new character feed. Many of them have more starting xp than I would expect from reading the F&D core rulebook. Is this a common house-rule? If so, how much extra do people tend to start with? Or is it more likely I'm seeing "new" characters to that site that actually have a session or even two under their belts?

Also, can anyone explain to me why Pantorans start with 110 XP? I am missing why they have the 10 bonus starting xp baked into their starting experience. At first, I thought it must be that Willpower is that important of a characteristic that it needed something to balance starting with a 1 in Willpower. But then I realized it certainly isn't the only species with a 1 in Willpower. It only bothers me because we are diving into F&D and embracing a new narrative approach to get ourselves away from our min/maxing habits that are starting to annoy us. Our whole group suffers from a min/maxing addiction and I'm afraid once I release the species choices on my companions I'll be the lone Togruta in a sea of Pantorans.

Lastly, keeping in mind I am trying to move away from my min/maxing addiction, would someone feel in-effectual if they took something like a 1,3,2,3,2,3 for their starting characteristics in favor of spreading some of that starting xp into force powers/talents/skills? Is it really significantly different than a 2,3,2,3,2,3? Is it min/maxing to go for the 1,4,2,3,2,3 build with 5-10 remaining for force/talents/skills?

I apologize for such a long post and appreciate any insights, even if you only answer one and not all questions it would be helpful! Thank you!

The rules for Obligation, Duty and Morality give the option to gain additional starting XP (5-10), that might be where the extra XP came from.

Pantorans are randomly more powerful than most other species. Dunno why, it's just a fact. And out of all the characteristics; I'd dare say Willpower is the one you can skimp on whenever your character isn't focused on skills related to it.

Most people will buy as many points in characteristics as possible during character creation since it takes quite a while to boost them otherwise. That being said, if people play a Force-sensitive character, they're more likely to swap a characteristics increase for some Force power investment.

Pantorans are flat-out overpowered, no matter what the developers might claim. Their starting XP should be 95.

Re: Pantorans

They're a species that starts with a 1 Willpower in a game line where opposed Force power checks (something that's far more likely to occur than in EotE or AoR) is by default based upon Discipline. Discipline is also the default for fear checks, which the designers intended to come up a lot more often than they do in EotE or AoR (whether GMs follow through on this varies by GM).

It's also the stat that feeds into strain threshold, which again is more of a concern in F&D than it is in the other game lines, between strain taken for using talents (especially Parry and Reflect) but also from converting black pips on Force dice rolls to usable Force points, something that the devs figure will happen about half the time at Force Rating 1.

From my own experiences, Willpower is the one characteristic you do not want as a dump stat in F&D.

So if you're in a campaign where the GM has made Willpower and it's associated skills almost irrelevant (making any characteristic almost irrelevant is bad GMing in general, but that's another topic), than yes Pantorans can seem overpowered. But if the GM is doing their job in a F&D campaign and requiring opposed Discipline checks to affect major NPCs or to resist fear on top of worries about strain threshold, then they're not nearly as overpowered as they look at first glance.

I don't know about you guys. But when I am going into a campaign which will feature lots of discipline checks, I am going to invest those 50 xp after character creation to just raise the thing to 4 and be done with it. That is, if this is my only concern about willpower based checks. Vigilance is a kind of important skill too … to put it mildly. So most likely I would go with a an Pantoran with a 3 in willpower, a 3 in presence and another 4 in my primary characteristic. That's 1 point better than most other species can achieve, because the pantorans simply have 10xp more for characteristics than humans.

Besides, as long as I like my presence at 3, I can fix this willpower dumbstat and still have 10xp extra for characteristics when compared to humans, which leads to being able to start with a 222343 and having especially high willpower. Quite a solid leader/wizard/face character actually. Quite a lot Willpower as well, some outstanding Pantoran, sure, but at the same time not unusual as player character I would assume.

I don't agree with the 95xp starting xp though, 100 or even 105 would have been fine. And the 110 are still kind of nice, better than others? Sure, but still nice for the possible starting builds. In some ways I would prefer the Pantorans being the baseline for the species creation instead of one of the outliers. It's funny as well that they can gain 15xp extra from their free rank in negotiation/cool, because it can bring that skill up to rank 3, so that's another XP advantage, perfectly suited again to something like an adviser or some other commanding character.

6 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Re: Pantorans

They're a species that starts with a 1 Willpower in a game line where opposed Force power checks (something that's far more likely to occur than in EotE or AoR) is by default based upon Discipline. Discipline is also the default for fear checks, which the designers intended to come up a lot more often than they do in EotE or AoR (whether GMs follow through on this varies by GM).

It's also the stat that feeds into strain threshold, which again is more of a concern in F&D than it is in the other game lines, between strain taken for using talents (especially Parry and Reflect) but also from converting black pips on Force dice rolls to usable Force points, something that the devs figure will happen about half the time at Force Rating 1.

From my own experiences, Willpower is the one characteristic you do not want as a dump stat in F&D.

So if you're in a campaign where the GM has made Willpower and it's associated skills almost irrelevant (making any characteristic almost irrelevant is bad GMing in general, but that's another topic), than yes Pantorans can seem overpowered. But if the GM is doing their job in a F&D campaign and requiring opposed Discipline checks to affect major NPCs or to resist fear on top of worries about strain threshold, then they're not nearly as overpowered as they look at first glance.

Surely species design isn't meant to be balanced based on which game line it appears in, but on the 3 games as a whole? (Also, do you have a source for the "[...] fear checks, which the designers intended to come up a lot more often than they do in EotE or AoR" part?)

I'm not saying Pantorans are unusable as-is (though they are one of the few species I'll try to convince my groups to house-rule), but I will argue that a mistake were definitely made when their stats were created. It happens; I just wish they would admit it.

4 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

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I don't agree with the 95xp starting xp though, 100 or even 105 would have been fine. And the 110 are still kind of nice, better than others? Sure, but still nice for the possible starting builds. In some ways I would prefer the Pantorans being the baseline for the species creation instead of one of the outliers. It's funny as well that they can gain 15xp extra from their free rank in negotiation/cool, because it can bring that skill up to rank 3, so that's another XP advantage, perfectly suited again to something like an adviser or some other commanding character.

Yes, I just realized that they should have 100 XP, not 95 - comparing them to twi'leks, one of the first published species, and one that also get skill rank + environmental hardiness.

55 minutes ago, Sharatec said:

Surely species design isn't meant to be balanced based on which game line it appears in, but on the 3 games as a whole? (Also, do you have a source for the "[...] fear checks, which the designers intended to come up a lot more often than they do in EotE or AoR" part?)

I'm not saying Pantorans are unusable as-is (though they are one of the few species I'll try to convince my groups to house-rule), but I will argue that a mistake were definitely made when their stats were created. It happens; I just wish they would admit it.

Hard to say, as by the devs' own admission in past episodes of the Order 66 podcast that there's no definitive formula for species design, and a lot of it can boil down to what the author feels is appropriate and what feedback the playtesters give.

Problem with calling something that's subjective a "mistake" is that it's purely subjective. You may not like how Pantorans shook out, but that doesn't mean they're universally bad or maligned. Sam gave the reason why the Pantoarns have the numbers they have, and if you don't like his answer, too bad. You're certainly welcome to change it for your games, but that doesn't mean FFG made an actual mistake just because you don't like it. Now, they've published a few things I disagree with, but (in spite of what some might say) I'm not so arrogant as to claim that FFG "made a mistake" with what they did simply because I might have done something different or disagree with how they approached it.

1 hour ago, Sharatec said:

Yes, I just realized that they should have 100 XP, not 95 - comparing them to twi'leks, one of the first published species, and one that also get skill rank + environmental hardiness.

The comparison in value between the different species boni is rather irrelevant. Because the xp avaible for characteristics is what is outlandish valuable, while getting 5 or 10 extra xp for stuff outside of characteristics is only minor tweaking.
But as I said in general I would not mind 120xp humans either if your GM decides to adjust all species in that way it would be still rather fine gameplay wise. Might actually even reduce the amount of people who go straight for knight level play. ;-)

Either way tweaking the races down to an more universal power level is rather easy. As mentioned 110 xp for characteristics assuming that human 2 base-line and make the math from there. The FFG designers are not really wrong either to weight some racial boni higher than an extra point in characteristics, simply because they don't necessary balance everything around a long game. Considering all FFG publications, it seems rather that FFG is balancing the game for 150-300xp and assumes that you start over after that point anyway. If you think your group will play together longer than just a few sessions, adjusting the system and building your own version of the universe in general seems like a smart and natural choice. Staying away from FFG adventure modules would be a good choice in that context as well ... as mentioned, they are aimed at basically starting groups.

42 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Hard to say, as by the devs' own admission in past episodes of the Order 66 podcast that there's no definitive formula for species design, and a lot of it can boil down to what the author feels is appropriate and what feedback the playtesters give.

Problem with calling something that's subjective a "mistake" is that it's purely subjective. You may not like how Pantorans shook out, but that doesn't mean they're universally bad or maligned. Sam gave the reason why the Pantoarns have the numbers they have, and if you don't like his answer, too bad. You're certainly welcome to change it for your games, but that doesn't mean FFG made an actual mistake just because you don't like it. Now, they've published a few things I disagree with, but (in spite of what some might say) I'm not so arrogant as to claim that FFG "made a mistake" with what they did simply because I might have done something different or disagree with how they approached it.

Sorry that I came of as arrogant: perhaps it is better that I state that I really believe that they miscalculated when statting out the Pantorans, rather than claim that they made a mistake. Of course, I can't really know for certain. (Then, my argument isn't based on me disliking with the stats, but on the opinion/fact that they are mathematically better than almost all other species - compare them to twi'lek.)

I really ought to listen to the Order 66 podcast, though.

Also, thank you for explaining your point! I do appreciate it.

5 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

The comparison in value between the different species boni is rather irrelevant. Because the xp avaible for characteristics is what is outlandish valuable, while getting 5 or 10 extra xp for stuff outside of characteristics is only minor tweaking.

[---]

I disagree; as the two species are so easily comparable in what they get I actually think that it is very relevant to compare them to see if one is over-/under-powered. (Still not by much, though.)

Interesting thoughts in the rest of your post, which I must contemplate further. Thanks!

What do you mean by not much? Twillics reach at best a 122244 profile, whole pantarans get a 222244. That's basically a free dedication at the start. Those 10xp extra or worth tons of xp. What's a 332233 for a twillic becomes literally a 432223 for a pantoran.
The difference in character options is huge.

56 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

What do you mean by not much? Twillics reach at best a 122244 profile, whole pantarans get a 222244. That's basically a free dedication at the start. Those 10xp extra or worth tons of xp. What's a 332233 for a twillic becomes literally a 432223 for a pantoran.
The difference in character options is huge.

True, considering that it is usually wisest to invest most or all of one's starting XP in characteristics, you have a good point there.

14 hours ago, EpicTed said:

The rules for Obligation, Duty and Morality give the option to gain additional starting XP (5-10), that might be where the extra XP came from.

This was my first thought too, but then I noticed it was a lot of non-humans starting with 120-130 XP. I would link a few examples, but they aren't my characters and I don't really feel right doing that.

I really appreciate all of the great discussion here! I started to multi-quote but there were just too many great ideas! I will certainly pass the GM suggestions on to my husband. I feel more comfortable maybe suggesting a house rule to bring Pantorans down to 100, or really maybe bring the other races to 110.

As a follow up, how detrimental is it to keep the 1 from a species starting array? I saw many of you using arrays with no ones as examples. Does keeping a 1 give a weakness to play into with narratives, or is it good practice to bring at least everything up to a 2?

Perhaps they're playing in games where they're allowed to use Obligation, Duty, and Morality at the same time?

As long as you're comfortable with it, you can live with a 1 in a characteristic, although it basically is accepting failure on testing untrained with it, and expecting fairly mediocre results if you train the skill up. It also largely depends on what characteristic you're talking about. 1 Brawn is a victim almost no matter what (the difference in soak will be very noticeable very quickly). 1 Cunning/Intellect/Presence can be coped with if you're in a group that can mitigate it. 1 Agility is fine if you're not sneaking/shooting. 1 Willpower is asking for trouble with fear/strain.

Personally though, I wouldn't advise it unless the character concept really does just demand having that weakness (even then though, you can play up a 2 as being pretty bad, and just still have a shot at success).

15 hours ago, Nymerias said:

As a follow up, how detrimental is it to keep the 1 from a species starting array? I saw many of you using arrays with no ones as examples. Does keeping a 1 give a weakness to play into with narratives, or is it good practice to bring at least everything up to a 2?

I'll echo Kommissar somewhat, but stress a bit more: Having a 1 in something is great if you want to tell interesting stories. If you want to "win," it's not so great. In other words, having a 1 in Cunning means your character can't tell a lie, probably didn't spend a lot of time outdoors growing up, and is pretty clueless when it comes to looking for clues and that sort of thing. This can be a bad thing if you want your character to have a good shot at those things. Or it can be a good thing if you want to portray a character who perhaps comes from a sheltered background, or who despises dishonesty. In other words, failure is interesting narratively, so it really depends on how you approach the game.

The starting characters you are seeing may be using the optional "Knight Level" rules. They grant an additional 150xp after initial character creation to spend in order to beef up characters. This option also has them start with either a basic Ilum crystal lightsaber, or 10,000 credits in starting gear.

16 hours ago, Nymerias said:

As a follow up, how detrimental is it to keep the 1 from a species starting array? I saw many of you using arrays with no ones as examples. Does keeping a 1 give a weakness to play into with narratives, or is it good practice to bring at least everything up to a 2?

It depends on where that 1 is and what sort of character and campaign you're running.

A 1 in Presence in a combat-heavy campaign isn't much of a detriment, and I've played a Zabrak ex-mob hitman (Hired Gun/Enforcer) who was a serious a-hole (Presence 1) but it wasn't much of a hindrance provided I wasn't setting up ambushes (using Cool) since this PC was never meant to be the face of the party (at best he'd use Loom to provide a boost to the party's face). Meanwhile, a 1 in Brawn in a combat-heavy campaign is asking for trouble, since it hoses their close combat capability (skill checks and damage) as well as wound threshold, and gets worse for those species that are not only Brawn 1 but have a reduced starting wound threshold. A 1 in Brawn can also hurt for Athletics and Resilience checks.

A 1 in Intellect isn't that big of a problem since it mostly impacts "support" skills that if you're a front-line combatant or party-face you don't really need to rely upon. Obviously it sucks if you're going to focus on Knowledge skills or support stuff like Medicine, Mechanics, and Astrogation.

Agility 1 hurts not only for ranged combat (the most prevalent form of combat in the system and setting), but also Piloting. If you stick to melee combat (generally a sub-par option unless you've invested heavily in lightsaber talents), you can survive, but Coordination checks will not be your friend.

Cunning 1 is tough, but is survivable. Yeah, you're Perception checks are kinda hosed being reliant purely upon skill ranks, as is Streetwise (aka the general "gather information" skill). But odds are at least one person in the party is going to have a high Cunning and ranks in those skills.

Willpower is probably the worst characteristic to have as a 1, since it impacts strain threshold (your currency to take extra maneuvers as needed and fuel various talents), and gets more painful if your species has a reduced starting strain threshold (Wookiees for instance), as well as impacts Vigilance (the most commonly used skill for initiative) and Discipline (fear checks and especially opposed Force power checks). It also impacts Coercion, which if you're a Wookiee is kind of a downer (hard to be an intimidating mountain of fur and muscle if you've got a 1 Willpower and no Coercion ranks).

On 1/29/2018 at 9:49 PM, Nymerias said:

Lastly, keeping in mind I am trying to move away from my min/maxing addiction, would someone feel in-effectual if they took something like a 1,3,2,3,2,3 for their starting characteristics in favor of spreading some of that starting xp into force powers/talents/skills? Is it really significantly different than a 2,3,2,3,2,3? Is it min/maxing to go for the 1,4,2,3,2,3 build with 5-10 remaining for force/talents/skills?

I can't answer your questions on Pantorians but with the way EXP works and how quickly Characters progress I wouldn't be concerned if any particular species starts with a few extra.

The best advice I can give for Character creation (besides getting Oggdude's tools, link below) is the same as the developers and that is to put as much starting EXP as possible into Attributes then buy other stuff (this is because it's the only time you can spend EXP directly on Attributes, after Character Creation you can only raise them through the Talent Tree(s) ). This may mean your PC could start their very first session with no Force Powers at all . I know that sounds counter to what you'd imagine but you're going to get 15-25 EXP at the end of your first session and you can buy a few things with that, especially if you take the Mentor bonus. I've started two campaigns with no Force Powers or Talents and it's been fine, plus it gets you used to not relying on them all the time and that comes in very handy especially when your PC is out in the open where using a Force Power can get you into trouble...

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/89135-another-character-generator/

Personally, if I was starting my campaign again I'd give a starting character around 20 xp after starter xp, so they can get things other than characteristics without being gimped, rather than waiting til the end of the first session.

18 hours ago, Nymerias said:

As a follow up, how detrimental is it to keep the 1 from a species starting array?

It basically means they will only be able to have 1 yellow die in any pools based on that characteristic, without having outside assistance. When they buy ranks in the skill, they will only be adding greens. Which isn't bad, I mean a 3 green, 1 yellow pool is pretty darn good for most types of actions, but it would limit the amount of really awesome stuff they might be able to do, and would limit the number of talents they might be able to trigger, through spending Triumphs or large amounts of Advantage.

18 hours ago, Nymerias said:

I saw many of you using arrays with no ones as examples. Does keeping a 1 give a weakness to play into with narratives, or is it good practice to bring at least everything up to a 2?

I think the "make everything at least 2" is just a bit of meta-crunch theory that a lot of us work with. It means you can at least grow to having 2 yellow dice in any given pool, which is pretty good. As to a 1 playing into narratives, well, think of some of your favorite characters from movies and tv shows, that had a glaring flaw that came up a lot. Jane's (From Firefly)1 Intelligence making him have some really stupid decisions, and lines that made the rest of the group sort of dumbfounded by it. Another character's low Willpower, making Fear checks almost impossible, and they were a character that was known to be cowardly, and had to eventually grow out of it (translation: spent XP to boost that characteristic, and the Discipline skill). Things like that can easily be worked into a narrative, if the player and GM are both conscious of it, and make a point to bring it into play form time to time.

Mechanically, it just means that you will have some crappy dice pools related to that trait. Narratively, you are limited only by the amount of creativity and focus you put into the character flaw.

17 hours ago, Darzil said:

Personally, if I was starting my campaign again I'd give a starting character around 20 xp after starter xp, so they can get things other than characteristics without being gimped, rather than waiting til the end of the first session.

I've used +25XP/+1500 credits (about 1/6th of what Knight Level provides) for PCs that I want to not be quite so fresh-faced but not nearly as accomplished as a Knight Level PC would be. It works out pretty well, as it not only provides some extra XP to help flesh out a concept (such as buying a couple talents, maybe a second rank in a skill or two) but also doesn't require the PC to take Obligation or spend Duty to have enough scratch to get some decent starting gear.

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

I've used +25XP/+1500 credits (about 1/6th of what Knight Level provides) for PCs that I want to not be quite so fresh-faced but not nearly as accomplished as a Knight Level PC would be. It works out pretty well, as it not only provides some extra XP to help flesh out a concept (such as buying a couple talents, maybe a second rank in a skill or two) but also doesn't require the PC to take Obligation or spend Duty to have enough scratch to get some decent starting gear.

Yeah it kind of depends on the mood of the game. I personally get tired of the "newbie" growing pains in the first several sessions, and would like to have them speed things along a bit. So giving them a bit more xp at start makes that a lot easier.

On 1/30/2018 at 7:08 PM, Nymerias said:

As a follow up, how detrimental is it to keep the 1 from a species starting array? I saw many of you using arrays with no ones as examples. Does keeping a 1 give a weakness to play into with narratives, or is it good practice to bring at least everything up to a 2?

Around mid-game, it's not much of a disadvantage if you rank up the important skills in that characteristic. A 1 in Willpower with 3 ranks each in Discipline and Vigilance is not much worse than a 3 in Willpower, for example.

--

On the issue of the Pantorans, they are completely OP compared with other species. If you take the +10 XP option from Morality/Obligation/Duty, they can begin with a characteristic profile of 4,3,3,2,2,2 and the 4 can even be Willpower if you want (so Donovan's point above is a complete red herring, Pantorans can have great Willpower at no extra cost).

You can also do the same trick with Gands that have lungs, but at least then there's a disadvantage you have to cope with.

I would house rule Pantorans so they have 100 starting XP instead of 110.

I should add, by the way, that I don't care about RPGs being balanced unless it impacts the fun factor, so I don't hold it against the devs that they made the species unbalanced. But if you want them to be balanced, I would take 10 XP away from the Pantorans.