I was wondering, what kind xp bracket and Force rating do you guys think a jedi / sith would be in as they progress through their training from Padawan up to grand high master poobah ?

Ive not had a great deal of experience running F&D but one of my EotE Player characters has picked up Force sensitive and Emergant and I was wondering what Force Ratings you would need, to throw some serious force powers around?

I was spitballing :

Padawan - FR 0-2

Apprentice - FR 3-4

Jedi Knight - FR 5-7

Jedi Master - FR 8-10

Grand Master - FR - 11+

Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated.

Way back in the EotE Beta, there was a rough chart of what Force Rating equated to what level of "training" a character had. It's never been published elsewhere, presumably as FFG realized just how unnecessary it was as playtesting both internal and external likely revealed that a character really doesn't need 8 or more Force dice, and at even half that many Force dice a Force using PC can pull off some incredible things.

To be frank, your scale is way more potent than what's really needed. In terms of published stats, the highest Force Rating we've seen is Darth Vader at a 6 as per Dawn of Rebellion, and he's considered to be one of the strongest Force users the galaxy has ever seen.

Also, how much actual play experience do you have with Force users in this system? I ask this because while it may not seem so on paper, the reality is once a character has invested a decent amount of XP into their Force powers, they can do some pretty impressive things with only one or two Force dice.

As for XP benchmarks... frankly that's going t vary depending on how a PC is built. If anything, a Padawan/Apprentice (both are the same thing really, as a Jedi is considered an apprentice until they reach Knighthood, and apprentices are referred to as Padawans no matter their age) is probably going to be at 150XP at a minimum, or at least be at the level of competence that the old Jedi Order would trust a Padawan to operate outside the temple without near-constant oversight by their master.

Becoming a Jedi Knight is less about XP totals and more about mindset. To quote Sam Stewart c/o of the Order 66 podcast, you become a Jedi Knight at the point when you can toss away your lightsaber; i.e. you can resolve conflicts without relying solely upon your weapon or blatant Force usage. The bulk of the Jedi Trials were less about prowess and more about the prospective knight's mental and spiritual state of development, things that aren't reflected in game mechanics.

If you're just looking for "mastery of the Force", the old scale was something like:

• Youngling: 1
• Padawan: 2
• Knight: 3-4
• Master: 5-6
• Yoda/Palpatine: 7+

I find that fits pretty well with what the media shows them capable of and how that translates to the game mechanics. It's important to keep in mind that a lot of that ability can be chalked up to less flashy powers like Enhance and other powers that let you Commit Force dice to an effect, or let you add Force dice to a skill roll.

But a Jedi is more than their Force powers, as noted. If they aren't also historians, diplomats, and generally well-rounded, the Jedi Order would have been less likely to promote them. So in your campaign, you don't have to necessarily tie their "rank" with their Force abilities.

15 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

I ask this because while it may not seem so on paper, the reality is once a character has invested a decent amount of XP into their Force powers, they can do some pretty impressive things with only one or two Force dice.

Yeah. FR2 is enough to reliably get 3 FP for 0-2 Strain, which lets you trigger Move + Increase Number + Increase Silhouette and throw 3 silhouette 3 TIE fighters around, dealing 3 x 30 damage hits. That's on a par with the most impressive stuff we see Yoda do.

It actually read:

Rating - Magnitude - Examples

0 - No Affinity - Common Populace

1 - Sensitive - Jedi Initiate

2 - Tenuous - A Self-taught exile; Padawan

3 - Moderate - A Young Jedi Knight

4 - Strong - A Well-trained Jedi Knight

5 - Potent - A Vetran Jedi Knight

6 - Formidable - Jedi Master, Sith Lord

7 - Legendary - The most truly heroic Jedi or the most villanious Sith Lords

Thank you very much for the info guys, much appreciated. Ive had no real experience with the force in FFGs rule set, so im kind of in the dark so far as how many FR can generate FP to trigger powers.

39 minutes ago, SirSaiCo said:

Thank you very much for the info guys, much appreciated. Ive had no real experience with the force in FFGs rule set, so im kind of in the dark so far as how many FR can generate FP to trigger powers.

Keep in mind you always get at least 1 FP per die. It's up to the player whether they want to use Strain and flip a DP to be able to use the dark pips. If you have a player who's averse to using dark pips, they have a little over 40% chance to get a usable pip per die (but most of these will be doubles). This can be frustrating early on if they invest in powers that require a pip to trigger. As hinted above, they'll probably get much more mileage out of investing in powers like Enhance and Sense early on, since these let you Commit, which guarantees an effect without requiring a roll.

Note that using dark pips doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if the player wants their PC to flirt with the dark side, and the party is okay with the DP usage.

37 minutes ago, SirSaiCo said:

Thank you very much for the info guys, much appreciated. Ive had no real experience with the force in FFGs rule set, so im kind of in the dark so far as how many FR can generate FP to trigger powers.

Well remember, most of what they're quoting is from the beta, so doesn't quite match how things ultimately panned out.

Really, it's gonna be super dependant on you and your interpretation of things. How much a "Jedi" does with thier own natural ability vs. force enhancement, if certain effects need to be power checks or can just be Advantage and Triumph results with colorful descriptions. Even just a simple question of how much a Jedi uses the force at all will matter. So it's really up to you.

I'm of the opinion that most basic Jedi stuff can be done with an FR of 1 or 2, factoring in the regular use of dark pips (and by extension not treating dark pips as a serious dark action [unless it truly is] but as just a "not in the perfect frame of mind").

But that's just my view.

Frog makes a point regarding the use of committed dice based powers, and once made an interesting observation about how you could interpret Jedi as using the Sense power almost all the time.

So yeah... Certain point of view...

Thanks for clearing up the dark pip usage I've been viewing them as 'evil' and to be avoided at all costs, but looking at it from 'a certain point of view ' makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

18 minutes ago, SirSaiCo said:

Thanks for clearing up the dark pip usage I've been viewing them as 'evil' and to be avoided at all costs, but looking at it from 'a certain point of view ' makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

On that note...the way I view it, the Strain + DP cost represent the PC taking the extra effort to get their head right, to balance themselves so they aren't drawing on the dark side.

I do also allow dark pip usage without the Strain+DP cost, but that causes a serious moral hit. This can be useful representing those moments where the character is at the brink, out of Strain, no DPs to flip, and they have to make that fateful choice.

(I've also replaced the Morality mechanic with something else, but that's a different topic.)

2 hours ago, SirSaiCo said:

Thanks for clearing up the dark pip usage I've been viewing them as 'evil' and to be avoided at all costs, but looking at it from 'a certain point of view ' makes a lot of sense. Thank you.

The Dark pips are tapping into the Dark Side, hence why they garner Conflict if you use them. However, they're relatively minor , as they represent letting your emotions get the better of you , rather than committing an act of evil.

3 hours ago, whafrog said:

On that note...the way I view it, the Strain + DP cost represent the PC taking the extra effort to get their head right, to balance themselves so they aren't drawing on the dark side.

I do also allow dark pip usage without the Strain+DP cost, but that causes a serious moral hit. This can be useful representing those moments where the character is at the brink, out of Strain, no DPs to flip, and they have to make that fateful choice.

(I've also replaced the Morality mechanic with something else, but that's a different topic.)

Oooh I like those ideas I might just have to borrow them myself.

I also do not use obligation beyond char-gen , and my morality rules are homebrew but i love the temptation of choosing not to use DPs and taking a juicy morality hit.... very thematic.

On 7/5/2018 at 12:21 AM, SirSaiCo said:

I was wondering, what kind xp bracket and Force rating do you guys think a jedi / sith would be in as they progress through their training from Padawan up to grand high master poobah ?

Ive not had a great deal of experience running F&D but one of my EotE Player characters has picked up Force sensitive and Emergant and I was wondering what Force Ratings you would need, to throw some serious force powers around?

I was spitballing :

Padawan - FR 0-2

Apprentice - FR 3-4

Jedi Knight - FR 5-7

Jedi Master - FR 8-10

Grand Master - FR - 11+

Any thoughts on this would be much appreciated.

Padawan FR 1-2
Jedi Knight 3-4
Master 5-6
Darth Vader FR 6 ?
Palpatine ... more like 7

Sith Apprentices? Somewhere between 3 and 6

In the campaign that I'm running, the most powerful force sensitive PC has an FR of 2. They have PLENTY of force potential to use the force and are rarely tapping into the dark side.

But as has already been pointed out, using 2-4 darkside points per session usually isn't enough to slow down a light side user from the trail to becoming a light side force paragon.

As an aside, I did let my players know that if their characters ever hit a Morality score of less than one, then their PC's would become evil NPC's. . But with half a year's game play they are all 70+ in their Morality ratings, so no worries there.

From the perspective of the game narrative, I've introduced Yoda as their trainer and he addresses all of the PC's as "Younglings." In my Star Wars campaign, the Jedi Titles are less about the Force Rating and more about proven capabilities with the various force powers. If the PC's somehow get a force rating of 6 and yet they only have the same basic three force powers that Yoda started them on, then Yoda is going to continue to call them Younglings.

Knights are around 800-1500xp, padawans from 300-700, masters 1500+...if say most jedi Knights are around fr 4, and most masters ar 5-7

Anything being 7+ fr is extraordinary, reserved for skywalkers and yodi mostly.

Knight Level play means starting with 150 extra XP, though. 800XP characters are completely insane, let alone 1500XP ones.

7 minutes ago, Talkie Toaster said:

Knight Level play means starting with 150 extra XP, though. 800XP characters are completely insane, let alone 1500XP ones.

Depends on how you do it.

If you watch TMP, and view it as the start of Obi-wans story, split it into 3 sessions of play, break down what he does in each act, accept that he'll roll and use dark pips, and apply that to a character in an efficient manner using a somewhat minimal approach, you are totally correct.

On the other hand if you see what Obi does as a sampling of all the things he could do, and assume he needed the abilities to reliably do everything he does Ithe film with at least an 85% success rate, then you need more.

If you insist that all Jedi are highly capable and would almost never ever use a dark pip, Obi would need a fully loaded suite of powers with many upgrades, multiple trees well populated with purched talents, and you don't care about efficiency, just endstate capability... Yeah I can see 1500XP knights... And masters in excess of 3000XP for that matter.

1 hour ago, Ghostofman said:

Depends on how you do it.

If you watch TMP, and view it as the start of Obi-wans story, split it into 3 sessions of play, break down what he does in each act, accept that he'll roll and use dark pips, and apply that to a character in an efficient manner using a somewhat minimal approach, you are totally correct.

On the other hand if you see what Obi does as a sampling of all the things he could do, and assume he needed the abilities to reliably do everything he does Ithe film with at least an 85% success rate, then you need more.

If you insist that all Jedi are highly capable and would almost never ever use a dark pip, Obi would need a fully loaded suite of powers with many upgrades, multiple trees well populated with purched talents, and you don't care about efficiency, just endstate capability... Yeah I can see 1500XP knights... And masters in excess of 3000XP for that matter.

Very much this.

In the first 5 minutes of Phantom Menace , Obi-Wan:

• "has a bad feeling"; Qui-Gon tells him he doesn't sense anything; Obi-Wan says its something "elusive" - he clearly believes he's sensing something
• Survives a poison gas attack that presumably would have killed normal humans ("they must be dead by now")
• Knocks over 3 battle droids in a single Force Move action
• Reflects a blaster bolt back to kill its target, three different times in a row
• Force Leaps with Qui-Gon down a hallway a significant distance (probably medium range)

Force Move - 5 XP base; 10 XP for Sil 1, 10 XP for three targets = 25 XP

Force Enhance - 5 XP base; 5 XP for Resilience blue dice; 10 XP for Force Leap, 20 XP to have it go medium range = 40 XP

Foresee - 5 XP base; we'll leave it at that as the "bad feeling" isn't well described

Reflect - we'll assume Obi is a Guardian (he clearly appears three times in the art in the Guardian book, and arguably a fourth time). Legends have it Obi-Wan favored Soresu, and being that's the Guardian's lightsaber spec, we'll go with that. Standard Reflect doesn't let you hit targets (outside of maybe despairs or something) ... since he does this three times in a row, we have to buy through Soresu Defender down to Improved Reflect. If we take the absolute cheapest path, that's 90 XP. The cheapest path only reflects 4 points of damage, though, so arguably a more expensive path (105 XP) with additional Reflects should be used.

We're already at 160 XP or 175 XP.

That doesn't seem crazy until you realize that we haven't accounted for all the skills, anything beyond FR 1, assuming all chargen points are on characteristics, he's only at 4 x 3 ratings and 2 x 2s. 25 more XP will buy him a +1, since Improved Reflect is next to Dedication in the Soresu tree. The Force Move usage against the droids requires FR 2 (at least 3 pips have to be spent, and that can't happen on 1 Force die) - so we have to give him a whole new spec, and buy our way down to Force Rating (minimum 95 XP).

21 minutes ago, sarg01 said:

In the first 5 minutes of Phantom Menace , Obi-Wan:

• "has a bad feeling"; Qui-Gon tells him he doesn't sense anything; Obi-Wan says its something "elusive" - he clearly believes he's sensing something
• Survives a poison gas attack that presumably would have killed normal humans ("they must be dead by now")
• Knocks over 3 battle droids in a single Force Move action
• Reflects a blaster bolt back to kill its target, three different times in a row
• Force Leaps with Qui-Gon down a hallway a significant distance (probably medium range)

• Having a bad feeling could just be the GM foreshadowing the battle to come
• Poison gas could indeed be Resilience boosted by the Force
• The 3 battle droids were a minion group, so only needed to affect 1 target
• The blaster bolt reflection could easily be taken care of as spending threat on the minion's combat check to cause strain—which becomes wounds for them

That's about 105XP (give or take, depending on the talent tree and the path taken to Reflect).

Vegeta, what does the scouter say about his midacholorian count! XD

That being said, while force rating is interesting, I don't it's the sole determining factor for Jedi Master, which probably more prefers to a particular mastery or maturity that comes with the position, which could only be obtained by training a student up to knighthood. Anni was still a Knight despite likely being a much more powerful combatant then most Jedi Masters because technically he still hadn't trained a student up to graduation and thus couldn't be considered a master. He lacked maturity to graduate by the orders fairly rigid standards. A master might be more experienced having trained up a student, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a higher force rating.

Just look at Kit Fisto, he was demolished by a Sith Lord in a single exchange and arguably his greatest accomplishment was being able to hold Greivous off fairly well, which isn't a particularly exceptional feat. I imagine most of the Order are in the same boat, they are fine leaders but they aren't necessarily powerful force wielders or warriors. A jedi role after all is to mediate and learn about the force; I imagine the vast majority of the order was more scientist then warrior and accounted for a large number of death in the genosis pit.

I imagine Yoda, Mace, Obi-Wan, Anie and a few others are capable of that higher standard, but I don't think most of the order was of the same level of capability. I think most of never exceeded a force rating of 3/4 and largely dabbled with one lightsabre tree at most.

On 7/5/2018 at 6:28 AM, whafrog said:

If you're just looking for "mastery of the Force", the old scale was something like:

• Youngling: 1
• Padawan: 2
• Knight: 3-4
• Master: 5-6
• Yoda/Palpatine: 7+

I find that fits pretty well with what the media shows them capable of and how that translates to the game mechanics. It's important to keep in mind that a lot of that ability can be chalked up to less flashy powers like Enhance and other powers that let you Commit Force dice to an effect, or let you add Force dice to a skill roll.

But a Jedi is more than their Force powers, as noted. If they aren't also historians, diplomats, and generally well-rounded, the Jedi Order would have been less likely to promote them. So in your campaign, you don't have to necessarily tie their "rank" with their Force abilities.

I tend to agree with this, but the Unmatched Destiny signature talent could serve as an alternative to higher numbers of force dice for characters like Palpatine and Yoda. Its capstone power effective doubles your available force pips 1-3 times per day. As a result, you could build "super-powerful" jedi knights and masters without pushing their force rating past the 4-6 range. We have a Jedi with FR-4 and the Unmatched Destiny tree in our group. For well chosen critical moments he is sensationally effective and accomplishes amazing feats.

For our games we assume:

• Youngling: 1.
• Padawan: 1-2
• Knight: 2-4.
• Master: 4-6.
• Yoda/Palpatine: Unmatched Destiny and / or intelligently flipping destiny points at key moments.

On 7/9/2018 at 11:21 AM, c__beck said:

• Having a bad feeling could just be the GM foreshadowing the battle to come
• Poison gas could indeed be Resilience boosted by the Force
• The 3 battle droids were a minion group, so only needed to affect 1 target
• The blaster bolt reflection could easily be taken care of as spending threat on the minion's combat check to cause strain—which becomes wounds for them

That's about 105XP (give or take, depending on the talent tree and the path taken to Reflect).

There was some good discussion of Knight Level in this older thread .

My opinion from then:

Quote

--The movies are pretty clear that Padawans can make vertical and horizontal Force-fueled jumps. Enhance with 2 upgrades = 25 XP (with Mentor discount)

--Padawans have lightsaber skill, presumably not cross-class, and at least one rank each in Parry and Reflect. The cheapest way to get this is with Arbiter talents = 70 XP

--Padawans aren't constantly fizzling in their use of the Force. This means they don't have FR 1, so they must have the Force Rating talent, at a minimum cost of 70 further XP (if you add a Navigator spec; or it's another 75 to just buy the talent from the Arbiter tree)

--Padawans can use Force telekinesis to attack enemies, so they must have Move: Hurl = 20 XP

This strikes me as the absolute rock-bottom minimum for a Padawan. It's also 185 XP. That means you're using 35 of your starting species XP on talents and Force powers, rather than characteristics, which is where any sane person will spend their starting XP. There's no way to make a Padawan at Knight-level without crippling your character.

Now we are assuming that all Padawans are indeed skilled combatants. Even Obi-Wan, though a Padawan of Qui-Gon was clearly much more experienced then your average student, being a young adult that his Master trusted to protect himself and treated him more as a wingman he trained then a child to educate. I figured Obi-Wan was on the cursp of becoming a Jedi Knight even before beginning as his very first action, after his master's death was to train young Anakin, something only a Jedi Knight or greater was entitled to do. I mean, if they were that good, then the Jedi that was gunned down by Dooku wouldn't have happened, or Kit Fisto wouldn't have been cut down in a matter of seconds after two other knights despite being in theory much more experienced then them.

I'm personally of the opinion that many of the Knights and Masters are a bit lacklustre compared to the heroes we follow; they were largely recruited for their tactical mind and for Sidious's goal of spreading them thin across the galaxy then their ability to fight necessarily. If the masters of that standard, then likely the standards of many students would be lower. It would explain why the hundreds of Jedi didn't simply just wipe out the droids in the arena, most of them weren't that good.

Akosha seemed like an anomaly by many standards, a very skilled child right out of the gate that came out to fit in the high level campaign that the current party of two are in; I imagine many more start. I imagine Knight Level fits perfectly a intiative student or a fresh Padawan. They have a defined area of expertise but very rough around the edges. Perhaps lacking in one or two key lessons that could lead to a great bonding between the mentor figure and the PC, or maybe PC to PC if that is the way your campaign is going. At this point we have PC's that are firmly in the master territory, with 1000xp or more, so we are likely to stand in as mentor figures when required.