The other three PCs aside, I just want to address the two Force users in my game. It's time they face a dark side user, but I don't want to accidentally make him too powerful.

The two PCs have grown pretty powerful compared to the sort of foes the group has faced so far. They've got many sessions and lots of XPs under them. One is a Mystic (Seer) with Influence , Move , and Seek . The other is a Guardian (Armorer) with Bind and Sense . Neither have a proper lightsaber yet. The Guardian has a training lightsaber.

Dark forces have taken a notice to these two and they're sending an acolyte to kill them. Of course, I don't want to unintentionally create an NPC that's too much for them to handle and they actually get killed. I want a challenging fight that makes the two players realize they're taking their first steps into a larger world now. The acolyte will strike when the other PCs can't help their comrades. If need be, he'll send other others to attack them at the same time the Force-users are getting attacked.

I do want this dark acolyte assailant to be more of a physical character. He's going to fight them with a corrupted-crystal-lightsaber. (Corrupted crystals are in Disciples of Harmony .) However, I also want him to have a Force power or two up his sleeve as well.

I am very open to suggestions. Species, lightsaber form, Force powers, talents... I think a non-human would be more cool than a human for this NPC. I do know what I don't want for a species: not a Twi'lek, not a Rodian, not a Togruta, not a Shistavanen, not a Trandoshan, not a Karkarodon, and not a Kyuzo. They have encountered all of these in recent sessions.

Whacha got!

I don't think there are any official stats for this species, but my favorite species to have for a dark Force User is a Givin, because they look very unnerving. So unnerving that I would probably ask for a fear check, just to make kind of drive home how unnerving he/she looks and "feels" in the Force. Givin also don't breathe in the traditional sense, so are essentially immune to poisonous gasses.

Regardless of species, maybe give the dark sider Bind and Harm, Bind to hold a player down for a little while and the other to hurt the PCs and ignoring Soak, but keep Harm at around the base power so that your PCs won't die.

Take what I say with a grain of salt though. I've only really finished one campaign and my Inquisitors tended to die immediately upon meeting the players.

I've been wrestling with this too! My players have all made their characters from Edge of the Empire, except for a Jedi Consular. So far he hasn't attracted too much attention to himself, but the party has recently caught the eye of an Imperial Officer, and if he ends up doing anything that might reveal that he's a Jedi, I would think that Imperial Officer would inform the proper authorities. The problem is that I too don't want to kill my player(s) off, but I don't want this Dark Sider to be a pushover. I want him to be a very real threat to the party. Unfortunately, since my campaign has been primarily EotE, and the Jedi character is still relatively new, I don't have a lot of experience using the Force in my campaign, so I'm not sure just how powerful it is in practice. I would love to see what more Force savvy GMs recommend!

just be careful and play it smart, i had a situation where a character disarmed an inq and just shot them to pieces when he had nothing to technically reflect with.

I'd say move, harm, bind are generally good in terms of force powers. but you can still make a nemesis who can overpower them but pulls back if he hits a certain threshold of damage taken. Then leave him as a recurring NPC who slows down and makes things complicated for the players.

Protect is an awesome ability to help keep a force user alive.

Because I love 'Pencils and Parsecs' and if you're not watching it on YouTube you should.

I would suggest using a Togorian as a Species, they're 9ft tall bipedal Cat creatures. Base characteristics are. 3 brawn, 1 intelligence, the rest are 2

Increase brawn, intellect presence and will by one. Force rating either 3 or 4.

Make the PCs do a fear check

Durable 2, adversary 2, add defense depending on the PC dice pool

If the PC weapons have high damage make sure to add Parry and reflect.

I would avoid giving the NPC ranks in lightsaber because the damage is already high, and ranks will lead to more crits.

Use move and bind to limit the PCs to attacking one at a time.

Most importantly, don't tell the PCs the wound threshold, make it fluid, the fight Should last as long as you feel is right

My philosophy in this game has become "When in doubt, overshoot". What I mean is if you want to give your players a fight that is tough, design the villain to defeat them and do not pull any punches. Aim to kick their butts.

Now you are thinking: "But I don't want to kill them!". And to that I say, due to this game's critical system it is super hard to kill a character as your means of defeating them. Of course this is made harder with the vicious quality on a lightsaber so you may want to find ways to lower that quality (or GM magic that quality away or weaker). You don't have to kill the characters if you defeat them if you do not cause a killing blow critical. Just put them in a new situation when they regain consciousness, like locked in a prison or left for dead on a seemingly uninhabited world.

What Hazar said. I set my players up against a full-fledged Sith Lord from SWTOR timeframe (long story), who was built on about 1,800 XP. The three PCs had 450 XP each, and an allied NPC at about 900 (though he sat out almost the entire fight due to Bind, which isn't technically how it works, but hey). The PCs came surprisingly close to defeating the bad guy, even though I intended it to be a curb-stomp against them. I just never used Advantage to activate Crits, so they were in no danger of dying by the rules. Thematically, they were found "dying" by an ally who plunked them in bacta tanks to save them, but by the rules, the characters were never in danger of going away permanently.

So yeah, best to overshoot, and if he's more capable than you intended, it should be a cue for the PCs to run like fun for the nearest horizon. If they don't take the hint, then don't activate Crits, and watch them drop like nine pins.

Have you considered running a split encounter, but using a single Initiative track? Much as in the prequels, when Obi and Qui go against Maul, all the armed peeps that were with them blundered off to get into their own encounter, under the pretense that .. 'this was the jedi's fight!' and then Obi and Qui fight Maul.. and Panda-Bear and the rest of the players running the other armed guys had another encounter with regular people and blasters? You'll need to vet it with your players. But since it's a narrative game that shouldn't be a problem. Just say .. Okay, the battle is going to be split .. the force user people are going to fight the inquisitor.. the rest of you are going to engage a few waves of elite stormies or something similar? So like the inquisitor and the force users are fighting off to one side .. and your other players are fighting another encounter. You'd have to agree not to interject into each other's battles. But that seems like a simple agreement?

I'm still just building a concept at this point, I don't think I'll need to add him/her into campaign yet, but I was thinking of giving my Dark Sider a one or two ranks of Adversary. Is that overkill when combined with Force powers? I have a group of 5 players: Bounty Hunter (Gadgeteer); Hired Gun (Mercenary Soldier/Commando); Smuggler (Pilot/Scoundrel); Technician (Slicer/Outlaw Tech); and the Jedi Consular (Niman Disciple). They're each sitting at 200 XP right now, so it's a pretty good size group and I'm concerned that without some ranks of Adversary, the 4 non-Jedi characters will just shoot the crap out of him while he's duelling with the Consular. I'll probably throw some minion groups of Stormtroopers at the rest of the party to keep them busy, but a few lucky shots could do some serious damage. I want their first encounter to be a fairly savage beating so that the players fear future encounters with the Dark Sider. I'll allow them to narrowly escape of course, but I don't want a situation where the Dark Sider suffers a defeat, even a minor one. I think that might undermine his value as a threatening figure in the campaign.

Another question I had involves the Dark Sider trying to tempt the Jedi to turn to the Dark Side. I was thinking of making some Coercion checks while they're fighting. Obviously it'll be entirely up to the player if he would want to turn to the Dark Side, but I thought I could use the results of the Coercion tests to generate Conflict somehow. Like maybe one point of Conflict for every Threat generated or something. Any thoughts on that idea?

Well, the system can be pretty swingy. That's for sure. Firstly. Will you be building him with the Inquisitor rules? Because Inquisitors start with Adversary 3. And if you're going to insist on throwing him against 5 PC's .. he's going to need reflect as well as parry. One for the blasters in the party, and one for the lightsaber user (I assume the Niman has a lightsaber).

Typically, a lone Inquisitor or Nemesis going against a multi-party of PC's, is going to get chewed up. One of the rules suggests allowing lone threats like this to take 2 initiative slots, essentially taking 2 attacks a turn. But this is no real guarantee. Like I said, the system can be swingy.

200 xp doesn't really say much about the party. What you'll need to look at is their weapons (what they're bringing to the combat in terms of base damage). A Heavy Blaster pistol or Carbine is one thing. A Heavy Blaster Rifle with Pierce and Autofire is something else entirely, especially if the PC's have the skills to use it effectively. What defenses they're sporting. Such as Ranged or Melee defense (soak won't mean anything against a breach weapon). And most importantly, their combat skill ranks. It won't matter if they're 200 xp if the Consular's lightsaber skill is so low he won't ever be able to lay a hand on your villain. And Even with Parry talents, lightsaber combats can often be frighteningly quick.

Also keep in mind that if your non lightsaber users are hit with the darksider's weapon, they're going to go down rather quickly. Even with a base 6 damage lightsaber you're looking at a minimum of 7 damage per hit, without the benefit of soak. Unless your non-force characters are sporting high wound numbers, they're going to go down in 2 or 3 hits. And with that level of damage, even popping stims quickly begins to give diminishing returns. It's not a question of 'if' they're going to drop against the lightsaber, it's a question of how soon is it going to happen.

You could certainly try Adversary 2. If they end up murdering the guy, you can always spin it as he was a low-level darksider or inquisitor ... and slowly ramp up the next guy, using the first one as a kind of yardstick to see how effective they were and adjust the next encounter accordingly?

On 2/21/2018 at 10:08 PM, RLogue177 said:

Dark forces have taken a notice to these two and they're sending an acolyte to kill them. Of course, I don't want to unintentionally create an NPC that's too much for them to handle and they actually get killed.

Then give the NPC an agenda of his own. You have an EXCELLENT example to work with, from the original trilogy. Darth Vader. He was basically sent to kill Luke, but when he's actually fighting him on Bespin, he pulls the whole "Join me!" angle, allowing the protagonist a chance to escape (after getting a nasty critical injury).

Do that. Not exactly that of course, but come up with some NPC that has a reason of their own, to not kill them. Hurt them, maim them, horribly scar them, sure, but not kill. At least not right away. Have the NPC toy with them. You can have them be powerful, but there is nothing saying you have to apply all the damage you roll. Give them a large combat dice pool if you wish (or make it only slightly higher than the PC's, if you want the NPC to not totally steamroll them). If he rolls a really high success, just have him do a glancing blow. If he's that good, he can totally pull his punches. And make it obvious too. Don't fudge the dice, just describe the NPC as clearly be toying with them. For example:

*you roll the dice, they come up with tons of successes and triumphs, the PC's player wails that his doom is upon him* "The attacker fights with you, pushing back your defense. You feel yourself offbalance, and totally exposed. You watch as his blood-red saber descends upon you, certain your life is at an end....and you feel a burning agony in your arm. You look over to see a small burn in your clothing, and a nasty burn in your shoulder, but you are otherwise unharmed. The assailant takes a step back, repositioning, and returns to a guard position with an elaborate flourish. A slight smile creeps across his face, clearly he could've done more damage, but he appears to be toying with you."

Tah dah. You have now established a threat, without insta-killing your players. Then you can just have him curb his attacks however you want, whenever you want, and it makes sense in the narrative. If he starts to take serious damage, he can switch to "Sirius Bidness Mode" and then you let all the successes stand as damage. But it's VERY traditional, in this kind of storyteller, to have an opponent that "plays with his food", if you will. Especially if they are prideful, and superior in skill. They can get off on playing with the heroes, for his own ego-stroking. There are countless examples of this in storytelling, and I'm pretty sure plenty in Star Wars too. I seem to recall in Rebels, the two rofl-copter Inquisitors frequently toyed with the members of Phoenix squad, because they enjoyed it. Stoking their fear and desperation, etc. Or at least I recall the female Inquisitor doing that a lot.

Just make an NPC like that, and have them literally toy around with the PC's for a while.

One of the best things about Precision Strike is one of the abilities that most people overlook on the talent is the user can control if he kills minions or rivals even if the circumstances would make it impossible for the person to survive. Give your Dark Sider a version of that.

I've seen it recommended before, but not here yet, that I noticed.. Resist Disarm!