Hi all,

I've been running a combined EotE/AoR/FnD campaign for several years. We're nearing the end of the campaign as originally conceived but the overall story will continue in another campaign (think this campaign is the Hobbit, next will come Lord of the Rings).

My players have expressed interest in continuing to use their same characters in the next campaign. However those characters are very high level now (over 1,200 xp, 4+ specs each with incredible gear). Play is still fun and they are still challenged by things, but the start of the next campaign is meant to be at a much less high-level place than the end of this one (they are currently up against elite enemies- Inquisitors, Grand Admirals, etc- the next campaign is meant to be essentially lower level).

My players love their characters and I'd like to accommodate this wish, but their characters are very cumbersome (6 page character sheets, so many talents they forget to use half of them, etc) and they are so powerful they would breeze through everything in the early stages of the next campaign.

The easiest thing would be to mandate we start over with new characters (and the old characters become Kenobi/Yoda-like NPCs, etc).

However I'd like to entertain the possibility of letting them play their old characters. To do that I was thinking of altering the characters in the following ways:

At Start of New Campaign:

• Reduce EotE/AoR characters to 10 signature talents (including improved versions- supreme full throttle counts as 1 talent and so on).
• Reduce FnD characters to 8 signature talents. Reduce force powers to first two tiers (no upgrades beyond second row on the chart).
• Reduce skills, Force Rating, and attributes by 2 (5 and 6 become 4, 4 becomes 3, 3 becomes 2, 2 remains unchanged).
• Start with one new spec with no XP spent in it. Consider any newly purchased specs to be their 3rd spec.
• All gear reduced to basic (they've fallen on hard times and lost much of their specialized gear- except their ship though it may have lost some upgrades)

The idea here would be to simplify their very complex characters, but give them the opportunity to keep the abilities they consider central to their identity, while resetting gear progression and giving them room to continue progressing on their old paths or the option of progressing in totally different directions as they start a new lengthy campaign.

This would have to be an all or nothing choice by the group (they all use the high-level modified PCs or we all start over. Balancing old PCs done this way with newly created ones would be extremely difficult to do well).

I know that this is a very unscientific method of handling it, the idea is to get the feel of their characters right and worry about balance as we discover issues (one player could pick a lot of tiered talents, while another doesn't, effectively giving the player with tiered talents more power and so on).

Has anyone tried anything like this or had similar scenarios?

Any thoughts on the viability of this?

Many thanks for any thoughts or insights you care to share!

Why not both?

Have the players make fresh characters. Run the campaign. An adventure or two in the players meet their former characters as NPCs, and are tasked with trying to "get the band back together." A very "Help me Obi-wan, your my only hope" kinda thing. Each character has his motivations for not doing it, and don't totally come around except one, the last one on the list and the "leader" of the old group.

Next Adventure is a hardcore Empire Strikes Back. Leave the players battered, broken, and in the worst location possible.

Next session the players arrive and you tell them to break out the old guys. Open with leader having convinced the others to go out for one last ride to save the new player characters from a fate worse then death.

The old guys go out, kick donkey, take names, save the whipper-snappers, and heroically sacrifice themselves for the good of all while passing the torch to the new player characters.

eh?

I'm actually dealing with this exact same situation. We're coming into the final phase of this campaign (appropriately enough, it's Episode VI) with 60+ sessions (each one being four to five hours) and 1,000+ earned XP. We probably won't finish until later this year/the start of next year, which means they're probably going to be in the same range as your players. We're planning on a break to play some Genesys stuff, but it won't be long until we're back, at which point I'm thinking of picking up with the "next generation."

My plan has been to use some of the PCs as high-level NPCs, possibly mentors, and my players have all expressed an interest in running new, lower-level characters and building them back up. But I know at least one or two who might be interested in picking up their old PCs, at least for a little while. I don't want to say "no," but I do want them to get invested in the new heroes coming up. So I've been working on my own way of handling it. Here's my thinking:

• First of all, the new campaign is starting at Knight-level play for new characters , since everyone already knows how to build characters and play the game. That way, all the new PCs come in with some teeth.
• Then, if anybody wants to play their old character, they have to choose: either play their old sheet with no changes or respec their character with 950 XP. Why 950 XP? I dunno. Seems reasonable for anyone who previously had over 1,000 XP but then gets to redo their stats however they want. The only limitation is they can't change their species, and I'd like them to stick to the core concept of their character—for example, the Technician Slicer who also took Outlaw Tech, Droid Tech, and Shipwright can't come back as a Bounty Hunter Assassin*, but the Explorer Driver who took Force Sensitive Exile, Shien Expert, and Seer could decide to respec as a Sentinel Racer and build from there.
• Finally, and crucially, returning PCs will not earn XP. My reasoning is, at this point, they're fixtures. They're heroes and legends now: they have reputations, they had adventures, but their time is past and they're done growing. They're old now. They can still get other rewards, but the focus is on the new characters.

Basically, I want to respect my players' wishes, strengthen their characters' archetypes, and reward their storied pasts without having to compromise on my vision of a future-oriented campaign. I also want to motivate them to move on: even if someone decides to start the campaign as her old PC, I'd like her to pass the torch and create a new character at some point.

Part of how I want to do that is environmental. After all, the turning PCs are big names in the galaxy. They became experts in their fields. One of my players has decided her character's going to start her own Jedi school if she survives the campaign, and of course I said, "**** yes." But (and here's the important part) that makes her a high-value target. That PC can expect a personal visit from Kylo Ren and his six closest friends, plus a legion of First Order stormtroopers. Likewise, every other PC from the previous campaign has enemies who are shooting to kill because they're each a big deal.

Granted, not playing their old PC is no guarantee of that character's survival—that Jedi dojo getting a Youngstown tune-up by Snoke is pretty much guaranteed, so long as the end of the current campaign doesn't derail the canon development of the galaxy. But that's not really the point, is it?

So I absolutely support you being accepting of your players' wishes, but remind them of your wishes, as well. Let them know that the new campaign is supposed to be an opportunity to start fresh and build something new onto what's already been done. If they insist, I think your ideas are solid and can still lead to a fun game... for them. But don't forget to include your happiness in this equation.

* Okay, I wouldn't say no to this outright, but I would need a really good reason for this to be the case.

I don't know if its feasible with any of your character concepts but what about Clones, Carbonfreeze, Amnesia, or Memory wipe. Same characters but with reduced or starting over skills.

For Clones or Droid copies/backups: They'd need to die in the final game. Wake up in the next with limited memories.

Carbonfreeze: Due to faulty/unstable facilities, upon awakening you've lost some of your sight/skills/etc, and will need to regain over time.

Amnesia: Perhaps as a jedi they find an sith artifact that corrupts part of their memory. (Read: Magic muguffin gives everyone amnesia)

Memory Wipe: Pretty obvious

The thing I really like about this that it gives you instant plot and motivation for game 2...who am I, and how do I get back my memories? who did this to me? Etc.

The only major problem i see is finding a way to justify that they all happen to everyone, but that's your storytelling problem ?

I actually feel for theses guys... We've just finished Curse of Strahd (yeah AND WE KILLED THAT MOFO) and I really wanted to continue using my character.

We've decided in game to stay in Barovia and MAY come back to the campaign in a few months to 'tidy up' as there's a shedload of stuff we never did....

I would sit down with the guys and discuss it.... have you ran all the published adventures or have they achieved their levels with all your time consuming, effort giving, selfless, entertainment making own adventures? You can set them up as mentors and dust them off occasionally.

Great ideas so far. You can also just move the clock forward. Maybe after the last mission they all went their separate ways and settled down, had kids, opened that restaurant, homeless shelter or Jedi school, became a hermit ... 10 years on, and they're not as good as they used to be. They lost ranks in skills (nothing higher than 3 ranks anymore), forgot Talents, and worst of all, they have aches and pains in weird places (GM is now allowed to give setback for a while because "you're old and out of shape").

This is more difficult when high XP characters are highly-specialized "Pro From Dover" types who have maxed out their signature niche. A group of those kinds of characters will eventually outclass all reasonable opposition. On the other hand, a group of generalists built for breadth can often be used indefinately. They will be impressive and effective without dominating every single situation. Our group made a conscious decision to plateu and then switch to breadth over depth so that the characters would remain in the "playable zone." They all have three specs, but only force ratings, key stats, and signature skills were pushed to 4. I would ask the players to "distill" their character concepts down to an agreed upon "playable zone." It will require some hard choices, but you may need to make a few exceptions. For instance, not being able to force leap as an incidental because that's too deep into a force power chart. That sounds silly, but when we started at knight-level play that was the one thing all of my players sunk points into right away. I would be very conservative about exceptions, but talk to the players about whether there is that one force power schtick that really makes the difference in conceptualizing the character.

7 hours ago, Vondy said:

This is more difficult when high XP characters are highly-specialized "Pro From Dover" types who have maxed out their signature niche. A group of those kinds of characters will eventually outclass all reasonable opposition.

I actually think this goes for everything except combat. The EotE combat system is so lethal that unless you're really min-maxing like The Bulk , you can spend a couple thousand XP on combat-focused abilities without making your character invulnerable.

Also, there is the fact that the stats for SWRPG dice make it difficult for a roll to ever be much of a "sure thing." A basic difficulty 2 roll with a completely maxed-out skill, 5Y+1G, still has a 4.5% chance to fail and a 7% chance of Threat. Contrast that with d20, where a high-level character can easily have a +15 skill bonus that makes failure on a basic DC15 roll impossible.

30 minutes ago, DaverWattra said:

I actually think this goes for everything except combat. The EotE combat system is so lethal that unless you're really min-maxing like The Bulk , you can spend a couple thousand XP on co  mbat-focused abilities without making your character invulnerable.

Also, there is the fact that the stats for SWRPG dice make it difficult for a roll to ever be much of a "sure thing." A basic difficulty 2 roll with a completely maxed-out skill, 5Y+1G, still has a 4.5% chance to fail and a 7% chance of Threat. Contrast that with d20, where a high-level character can easily have a +15 skill bonus that makes failure on a basic DC15 roll impossible.

I mostly agree with what you are saying, especially vis-a-vis AoE and EotE. And you can scale the opposition fairly well even for high-experience characters. My experience with FAD, however, has been that the synergy of several force powers and saber-specs can lead some some some sublte exploits that can have unforseen tectonic effects on a character's combat effectiveness in play. This is why we decided to plateu in our game. We wanted to make sure opponents didn't have to be powerful force users to remain interesting. On the other hand, because most saber specs don't have force ratings, force users typically need at least 3 specs, whereas a AoE and EotE characters can usually become pros from dover on 2.

21 hours ago, Vondy said:

I mostly agree with what you are saying, especially vis-a-vis AoE and EotE. And you can scale the opposition fairly well even for high-experience characters. My experience with FAD, however, has been that the synergy of several force powers and saber-specs can lead some some some sublte exploits that can have unforseen tectonic effects on a character's combat effectiveness in play.

What sort of combinations do you have in mind? I can think of a few that would be OP, but I'm always on the lookout for more things to keep an eye out for since I GM a high-level/high-XP game that I would like to see remain fun at least until the 2,000 XP neighborhood.

3 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

What sort of combinations do you have in mind? I can think of a few that would be OP, but I'm always on the lookout for more things to keep an eye out for since I GM a high-level/high-XP game that I would like to see remain fun at least until the 2,000 XP neighborhood.

One is Seek and any crit optimized saber / spec combo. The bottom-right-most upgrade allows the player to "tag" an opponent for an automatic triumph on all combat checks against one target for three force points. You don't have to commit the dice for the effect. You pay the three force points once and the effect lasts for the rest of the encounter. Now, one mitigating factor is that it requires a force action at the beginning of combat, but the Sage and Seer specs have The Force is My Ally, which allows you to burn 2 strain to perform a force action as a maneuver. We have a seer-makashi-niman Jedi in our group. He wears armored robes and has a superior quality duelist hilt and fully modded dantari crystal.

Its not uncommon for him to draw and ignite his saber (maneuver), suffer four strain to "tag" his opponent with Seek (second maneuver), and then open with his Makashi Finish with 3 of his 4 force dice applied knowing that any given hit is automatically a crit because of the auto-Triump. He also has Defensive Training-3 and will commit his fourth force die to Sense to upgrade the difficulty of 2 incoming attacks per turn by 2. This makes Improved Parry much more reliable, and against tough foes who pump negative dice into his attack pool, Feint remains useful.

But, a character with Lightsaber-4, duelist's training, a garunteed triumph on every attack, and 3 force dice committed to one Makashi Finish after another? He treats most inquisitors like they are grist of the mill. Now, he does burn strain like its going out of style, but between using advantages he no longer has to pay for crits, the Dantari Crystal, Intense Presence, and Makashi Flourish he seldom uses so much that he worries. Now, you may say, why not Presence 5, Lightsaber 5, etc? The answer is that we intentionally plateud to stay in the playable zone, but this combo does make him a a lethal headhunter.

Now, this isn't very useful against minions, especially minion groups, but... he also has Draw Closer. Against minions he skips the Makashi Finish and dumps those three Force Dice into Draw Closer for added successes instead of improved critical results. Also, a crit automatically removes a minion irrespective of damage done and he only needs one advantage for a crit with his saber. Its not uncommon, since minions don't typically wear cortosis, for him to take down 3+ members of a minion group in one turn . Its not impossible to challenge him, but... he's a Bombad Jedi .

The scene from Rogue One with Vader slicing-and-dicing his way through the rebel troopers? He can, and has, done that to a hallway filled with Stormtroopers. The trick is to force him onto the defensive, but he is seldom alone, and rolls with two other Jedi. As a group... Gott in Himmel.

One of the little nuggets of wisdom I have collected over the years as a GM simply says "Know when a campaign is over. When it ends, it ends." And as was originally posted, the current campaign will be ending.
However....
At the very end of the campaign...the 'wrap party', if you will...have the players describe what their characters do after the campaign ends. An epilogue, if you will. Once your players have said 'Well, my guy....', try to work that into the next storyline. If one of the characters becomes a weapons trader, well, perhaps your new group has to hit him/her up for a particular weapon for their next job.

This last session we decided that the player characters had entered their "Iconic Stage."

They are "mechanically complete" and will gain no further experience.

They will likely star in future adventures, but the goals and rewards will have to change.

I find that the starting characters in this game are very serviceable and not fragile things like in a lot of other games, but the progression system can throw a wrinkle in situations like yours because the characters at 1000 xp are gods.

I liked the idea that someone had of making the old PCs into NPCs and I think that is the proper main retirement of PCs: icons of some sort in the living world you are creating with your games. At some point it's great to start over and have new experiences, and if you are playing the game as a collaborative effort and don't see negatives for the characters as bad things then the chance to have characters that are more easily challenged in their adventures should be a welcome change.

1000xp PC vs. Rival or Nemesis that is a challenge for them is the same thing as 100xp PC vs. Challenging Enemy just without all the futzing about with a ton of talents/force powers and modded special gear. 2345/2345 = 1 as 1/1=1

I always wonder if people enjoy the progression as their primary source of fun , or if they are capable of enjoying baseline characters and being satisfied with the story and characters' exploits. Clearly FFG has designed this game to be "Buildy" as I call it, and to encourage people to want to engage in the mechanical aspects so that they need to buy books and not have a culture in the game of DIY. The devs arranged trees and it's fun to watch those builds come to reality, but the focus being on that progression is often a bit weird to me as sometimes story has to be altered to be viable in the face of near-automatic success situations. Narrative Dice helps with this, as does a level of narrative and abstract handling of a lot of situations, but I stopped playing D&D because I was tired of characters progressing out of danger and into safe cocoons of mechanical superiority except when facing Galactus or Sauron.

It also seems to me that the more progression the more complex the character's bag of tricks is, the more the player as Lawyer has to come out in order to manage the machine that was built over the course of the game. That works because of this but is invalidated because of this but you could use your X Ability cause you have so many ranks and I'm sorry I know that was way down the tree and cost you a lot of XP but it can't be used right now because of this condition. The higher up the PC and the more dependent on their myriad complexities and powers the more they seem to see that as the game. You spend more time with the system playing you. I know that is fun in varying degrees and admit I like it too, but sometimes it's a mousetrap with 3500 moving parts.

You can say Yes to both types of characters easily, but you can't usually as easily say No to progressed characters without an objection or a motion to dismiss. I don't enjoy saying No, but I enjoy having adversity in the game, and sometimes that requires saying No/Fail to characters who hear it either less and less as they adventure. The Progression mechanic in any game of this type uses that as the incentive: more XP means you can do X easier, and that is a valid motivation. I just feel that as a side effect the desire for success as reinforcement for XP earning can subsume other things that I feel are more interesting, like what the characters are doing within the context of their setting.

I'd suggest you play another game for a few sessions to cleanse the palette so to speak, something different none or few of you have played before. Maybe Tales from the Loop (kind of like Stranger Things) or Call of Cthulhu, both these games can be played as one shots that last a few weeks.

Sometimes you just need to take a break to create a break from something you've devoted so many nights too. After you do this you may find that your players are more amenable to starting with new characters.

On 6/28/2018 at 11:41 AM, Archlyte said:

I find that the starting characters in this game are very serviceable and not fragile things like in a lot of other games, but the progression system can throw a wrinkle in situations like yours because the characters at 1000 xp are gods.

I liked the idea that someone had of making the old PCs into NPCs and I think that is the proper main retirement of PCs: icons of some sort in the living world you are creating with your games. At some point it's great to start over and have new experiences, and if you are playing the game as a collaborative effort and don't see negatives for the characters as bad things then the chance to have characters that are more easily challenged in their adventures should be a welcome change.

1000xp PC vs. Rival or Nemesis that is a challenge for them is the same thing as 100xp PC vs. Challenging Enemy just without all the futzing about with a ton of talents/force powers and modded special gear. 2345/2345 = 1 as 1/1=1

I always wonder if people enjoy the progression as their primary source of fun , or if they are capable of enjoying baseline characters and being satisfied with the story and characters' exploits. Clearly FFG has designed this game to be "Buildy" as I call it, and to encourage people to want to engage in the mechanical aspects so that they need to buy books and not have a culture in the game of DIY. The devs arranged trees and it's fun to watch those builds come to reality, but the focus being on that progression is often a bit weird to me as sometimes story has to be altered to be viable in the face of near-automatic success situations. Narrative Dice helps with this, as does a level of narrative and abstract handling of a lot of situations, but I stopped playing D&D because I was tired of characters progressing out of danger and into safe cocoons of mechanical superiority except when facing Galactus or Sauron.

It also seems to me that the more progression the more complex the character's bag of tricks is, the more the player as Lawyer has to come out in order to manage the machine that was built over the course of the game. That works because of this but is invalidated because of this but you could use your X Ability cause you have so many ranks and I'm sorry I know that was way down the tree and cost you a lot of XP but it can't be used right now because of this condition. The higher up the PC and the more dependent on their myriad complexities and powers the more they seem to see that as the game. You spend more time with the system playing you. I know that is fun in varying degrees and admit I like it too, but sometimes it's a mousetrap with 3500 moving parts.

You can say Yes to both types of characters easily, but you can't usually as easily say No to progressed characters without an objection or a motion to dismiss. I don't enjoy saying No, but I enjoy having adversity in the game, and sometimes that requires saying No/Fail to characters who hear it either less and less as they adventure. The Progression mechanic in any game of this type uses that as the incentive: more XP means you can do X easier, and that is a valid motivation. I just feel that as a side effect the desire for success as reinforcement for XP earning can subsume other things that I feel are more interesting, like what the characters are doing within the context of their setting.

I'm not a "buildy" player or game-master. This would sound strange to many who know me, because I ran a two decades long series of Champions / Hero System campaigns (as crunchy-buildy-lawyery as it gets), but the truth is, I like getting a character to their fully realized stage and then just staying there for further play. One thing I've learned over the years, however, is that the sweet spot is usually only 90% of what you thought you wanted. This is because of the more XP means doing X easier aspect. You want some gap in competency or margin of failure in the mix to keep it interesting and have some tension in the mix. If the character becomes a genuine "Pro From Dover" they stop being fun to play. It can be hard to find that sweet spot. It takes both compromise and nuanced judgement.

On 6/28/2018 at 1:41 PM, Archlyte said:

I find that the starting characters in this game are very serviceable and not fragile things like in a lot of other games, but the progression system can throw a wrinkle in situations like yours because the characters at 1000 xp are gods.

That very much depends how the PC is built. You can easily build a PC with well over 1000 or 2000 XP and still be a balanced character with weaknesses in some areas and strong-but-not-overbearing in others. Gods at 1000XP only happen with 1.5-trick-ponies...Brawn 6/Melee 5 Wookiees who can't make a Fear check...and never put any XP into Discipline because the GM never made it relevant.

Yeah, what Whafrog said. I converted my old WEG Star Wars campaign to the FFG system last year and ported the PCs over at 1,500 XP each plus starting build XP, and I certainly had no problems giving them a challenge. The very flexible NPC build rules makes it pretty easy to scale the opposition to the PCs' power level; sure, you have to keep track of some talents for your NPCs but that's no different that keeping track of all the abilities of high-level monsters in a fantasy campaign like Pathfinder.