I'm working on a two new characters and need some help planning them out. The setting will be before Yavin.

The characters will be brother and sister whose parents managed to avoid the early stages of order 66. Details fuzzy at the moment, but both parents were either padawans or master \padawans.

The sister is inspired by River Tam from Firefly. She's going to have Sense and Farseeing to the point she doesn't have control and it makes her a little unbalanced or "Off". I'm looking at Mystic, but not sure.

The brother is inspired by Simon Tam, and I'm leaning towards Guardian.

River is being difficult to nail down class wise and I'm guessing the instability is just more of a role play element.

Suggestions?

steel hands adept fits the concept given the abilities she shows in the film, in the series any of the seer types would do, as you can use enhance to boost martial arts.

I agree with Syrath for River in the film. In the tv series yes every seer class works. But i don't think forsee fits her, as she doesn't really see the future, she is more of a very powerful telepath/mind reader, so i would just take Sense and get both sides of the powers (left side is for the defense/attack , right side is for mind reading) Also Enhance fits very well for her physical abilites. Farsight also works to explain how she can point weapons to pepole she can't see, but there are only 2 scenes like that, so you can chalk it to a clever use of Sense (or super high perception).

Give her a high agility and intellect and it should work. Low/average willpower (she seems easily distracted) . Are they both human or are you willing to go to near humans too? in that case a Nautolan would be fitting stawise. Ikotchi would be also interesting for River for the partial foresee ability they have, but it would not fit Simon.

so here's my suggestions (im using Human as base specie)

River

Mystic: seer/steel hand adept (or martial artist)

2 3 4 2 2 2

force powers:

Sense (basic power + left and right control upgrades and 1 range upgrade);

Enhance (basic power +Control:Resilience + Control:Brawl + Cpntrols: Brawn)

Farsight (basic power) [this is optional]

as for abilities it's mostly your choice but I think she has a high Brawl and Melee, and a decent Ranged: light; Perception too should be high.

I also suggest starting her at Knight Level so you have enough xp to properly build her. Also get her to dedication asap and raise Intellect to 5

I'll take a shot at Simon too:

Guardian: Protector/Healer

2 2 4 2 3 2

Force powers:

Sense

Heal

Martial Artist is more River then Steel Hand. Coordination dodge and Martial Grace just fit her better.

Enhance, Sense, Warde's Foresight are really the Force Powers you should be working towards.

12 minutes ago, Decorus said:

Martial Artist is more River then Steel Hand. Coordination dodge and Martial Grace just fit her better.

Good point. And elaborating on it i think that a different way to build River would be Martial Artist/Force Sensitive:Emergent, all those Uncanny sense/Uncanny reactions in the Emergent tree really fit her beahviour and reactions

One of the reasons I shoehorned Foresee in there was for story hooks like in Serenity. I could just do that with handwavium.

Great ideas guys. Thanks a bunch.

I thought that the Healer specialization was from the Consular career?

2 hours ago, Bellona said:

I thought that the Healer specialization was from the Consular career?

It is. However, only the first specialization selected is required to be in-career.

2 hours ago, Bellona said:

I thought that the Healer specialization was from the Consular career?

16 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

It is. However, only the first specialization selected is required to be in-career.

@HappyDaze is correct here. It is only your first specialization which must be an in-career specialization. Any second, third, fourth, etc spec can be from any career or a Universal Spec.

Ah, I see where my confusion lay. The format for the suggested Simon character read: "Guardian: Protector/Healer", and I thought that it was asserting that the Healer specialization was also from the Guardian career.

Bonus question(s), since the term came up in one of the answers: what does the term "universal specialization" cover? I haven't come across one yet in my FaD CRB. Are they from AoR and/or EoE, and if so, what sort of specializations are they (if it's possible to list them)?

They are specialisations that any can get and are considered in career for cost to buy them. They are used in EoE to give access to force powers, and in AoR for that and recruit class. There are another EIGHT in Dawn of Rebellion. You can’t use them as a starter career and they don’t have signature abilities.

Thank you for that information.

At the risk go going seriously off-topic here, what are signature abilites?

(I'm a total newbie to FFG's version of SW, and I only have the FaD CRB at the moment.)

Signature abilities are extra bundles of talents that "attach" to the bottom of a talent tree. They can only be taken for talent trees in your own career, and they are covered in each of the career-specific books.

Those sound interesting ... yet will probably become a source of frustration for me!

(I started with Kaveri the seeker from the Beginner Game because my first choice [Serenda the guardian] was grabbed by someone else, and the other two offered characters didn't appeal to me - I didn't feel like playing a naive cloistered mystic [Dao], and I don't like playing Kel Dor characters [I consider the breath mask to be a staggering vulnerability]. After playing the Beginner Game scenario and starting to re-make Kaveri as per the FaD CRB, I realised that what I really wanted to start with was a consular character with the Healer specialization. "Okay," I thought, "I'll just pick up the Healer tree as soon as possible." Now I find out that there are extra Healer goodies which I cannot access because I started with the wrong career. Cue sighs of disappointment.)

... How does one make spoiler buttons on these forums? I should learn how to make them, so as to avoid presenting walls of text to those who are not interested in them.

On 7/2/2018 at 3:08 AM, Tahl said:

The brother is inspired by Simon Tam, and I'm leaning towards Guardian.

Suggestions?

Honestly I wouldn't make a PC based on Simon a Force User at all as Force Powers would just be a waste of EXP and potential Skill/Talents that would be better used elsewhere.

For a Simon like character I'd go with Colonist Doctor then Spy Infiltrator. The Doctor part is obvious, the Infiltrator because we saw in the series and in Serenity he's very capable of coming up with and executing those types of missions. He's protective but not a real fighter unless pushed. Anyway that's how I'd do it.

Both PCs don't have to be Force Sensitive and one of the downsides of F&D characters is their lack of depth in Skills and a Skill based PC along with a Force User Combat machine is a powerful role play combo.

After playing the Beginner Game scenario and starting to re-make Kaveri as per the FaD CRB, I realised that what I really wanted to start with was a consular character with the Healer specialization. "Okay," I thought, "I'll just pick up the Healer tree as soon as possible." Now I find out that there are extra Healer goodies which I cannot access because I started with the wrong career. Cue sighs of disappointment.)

The system can suck you into thinking you must have this specialization or that talent to be effective at certain things. This is not the case.

For all the words spent on it, Career is probably the least significant major component of your character. It affects three things:

Career skills (and 3 of these get free points)

Which specs do not get a one-time 10 xp cost penalty

Signature Abilities

For the skills, there are tons of ways to add career skills. Buying specializations will generally result in you adding several skills to your "career" list. Other than the three free points, this isn't that big a deal. And there's something to be said about getting your free skill points "out of type" - it makes your character a bit more well-rounded.

There's no way around the 10 xp specialization penalty, but this is not a huge number all things considered.

As for Signature Abilities, consular signature abilities have nothing to do with healing. One is about teaching, and the other is about social skills (Charm, Deception, Coercion, Negotiation). It takes a major amount of XP before you're even eligible for a signature ability, and then you have to spend XP skilling it up as well.

Thank you for that reassurance. It helps a lot hear read that.

... And now I should stop high-jacking this thread - my apologies to Tahl!

(Although my question about click-able spoiler boxes still stands.)

4 minutes ago, Bellona said:

Thank you for that reassurance. It helps a lot hear read that.

... And now I should stop high-jacking this thread - my apologies to Tahl!

(Although my question about click-able spoiler boxes still stands.)

Adding a Spoiler tag is easy, you simply type [ spoiler ] whatever you want to hide [ /spoiler ] (remove all spaces from between the brackets).

Thank you for that quick tutorial!

On 7/6/2018 at 2:43 PM, Bellona said:

Thank you for that reassurance. It helps a lot hear read that.

... And now I should stop high-jacking this thread - my apologies to Tahl!

(Although my question about click-able spoiler boxes still stands.)

No worries. I still have all sorts of questions about this system. For some reason certain things just confuse me even though they're clear to everyone else.

Maybe I'm just getting too old for this. ?