Hi,

New to Star Wars role playing and need some advice on books: I have purchased the Force and Destiny Core book, GM Screen, Chronicles of the Gatekeeper adventure, and all three beginner games. I'm personally most interested in force users and their stories but my group may also like playing characters from the other two worlds. Do I need to buy the core books from the other sets if my pals want to play a bounty hunter in the Force and Destiny beginner campaign (or future campaigns)?

And what if I wanted to create a bounty hunter character who could also be a force user? Best to have the Edge of the Empire core rule book as well? Or is that not necessary and I can get away with a bounty hunter career book and then just use my Force and Destiny core book for most of the rules?

Any help appreciated!

It all depends on how much you're willing to extrapolate from online sources. You can definitely find the Career Skills and Talent Trees for the Bounty Hunter Career online in several places, but you won't get the full-form, spelled-out versions of those talents. But if you're on a budget, stick to what you've got and download a PDF of the Talent Trees.

If you think your players are going to want to play more non-Force users than Jedi wannabes, you should probably look at getting the Edge of the Empire core book. It duplicates a lot of rules, but you'll get the fleshed-out versions of the Careers and Talent Trees, a free Edge adventure, and lots of threats to throw at a group of outlaws.

One final thing worth noting is that you can create a bounty hunter that doesn't have the Career named Bounty Hunter. By that I mean that you can create a Mystic Advisor or a Guardian Armorer and just say that he happens to make his living hunting bounties. In other words, don't get hung up on the names of Careers and Specializations when you're coming up with your character's backstory, motivations, and so on. Narratively, your character can make his way in the galaxy however you want.

8 minutes ago, player644042 said:

Do I need to buy the core books from the other sets if my pals want to play a bounty hunter in the Force and Destiny beginner campaign (or future campaigns)?

There's some minor differences in Character Creation between FaD and the other two Cores. Nothing huge, but you'll see a difference when you start to execute. If that's something you can deal with or not is up to you.

Also regardless of your primary Core, if you want to have heavy Starfighter action the AoR GM Kit is almost mandatory for it's squadron rules.

9 minutes ago, player644042 said:

And what if I wanted to create a bounty hunter character who could also be a force user?

Technically anyone can be a Bounty Hunter, the Careers and Specs are just how your character works. Nothing stopping a Ataru Striker form bagging a bounty head and turning it in. Don't lash your character's behavior and job to their Career/Spec. A Smuggler:Thief has the right skills and abilities to be played as a hardboiled Private Investigator (arguably a "bounty hunter" of sorts) just as well as an actual thief.

However, yes, both EotE and AoR cores have Universal Specializations that can be added to any Career to make them Force Sensitive. There's Exile in EotE, and Emergent in AoR. Both are pretty generic in available talent and can benefit pretty much any Career/Spec they are attached to. Furthermore there's a "Padawan Survivor" UniSpec in Dawn of Rebellion that can allow you to develop a non-force user into someone revealing they had prior Jedi training. (Note However that Padawan Survivor is not really representative of an actual Jedi-in-training, that's being released in an upcoming book).

While we're talking about Unispecs AoR also has the Recruit UniSpec that can add combat capability to a more "civilian" character.

Finally, you'll find that EotE and AoR don't have Morality (instead they have Obligation and Duty respectively) and that their stats for Lightsabers are different. Morality is a FaD thing, so that's kinda obvious. The Lightsaber thing is because they are represented as more Artifacts and Heirlooms than actual weapons in use. In a pure EotE/AoR game the player can't get any lightsaber skill ranks, and there's no dedicated saber talents, so in exchange the sabers are a bit more powerful.

This isn't to say that the two different saber types can't coexist, especially in a mixed game, just that doing so requires the GM to be aware of what's up and how to deploy an artifact saber in a way that won't be unbalancing. Anakin's lightsaber in ESB and TFA/TLJ would likely use EotE/AoR numbers, though Luke's Saber in RotJ woud use FaD numbers and if Rey makes a saber in EP 9, it would use FaD numbers. So you can see in both cases even though the artifact saber was initially deployed, the GM set up situations in both Campaigns where the artifact saber would be lost and the Jedi character had to build a new one.

For what it's worth, while the base numbers are better, an artifact saber is what it is, and can't easily become something more. A FaD saber can be modified, and if you really trick it out, can become something far more powerful.

It's true only for the basic lightsaber. It could be explained by the fact the EotE / AoR basic lightsaber has a better crystal than the F&D lightsaber. Once the PC start modding his / her lightsaber it doesb't matter any more.

Thanks for the quick replies and clarifications. I didn't think about using a force character and just having them "be" a bounty hunter as part of their back story...

I mostly bought the beginner games for the dice so I suppose I can play a few sessions and see if it's worth expanding to the other core books in the future.

2 minutes ago, player644042 said:

I can play a few sessions and see if it's worth expanding to the other core books in the future.

Famous last words...

On 11/26/2018 at 8:57 AM, Ghostofman said:

For what it's worth, while the base numbers are better, an artifact saber is what it is, and can't easily become something more. A FaD saber can be modified, and if you really trick it out, can become something far more powerful.

On 11/26/2018 at 9:05 AM, WolfRider said:

It's true only for the basic lightsaber. It could be explained by the fact the EotE / AoR basic lightsaber has a better crystal than the F&D lightsaber. Once the PC start modding his / her lightsaber it doesb't matter any more.

The AoR/EotE Saber's stats are identical to a fully modified Ilum crystal. I'm pretty sure that the Ilum crystal was given those max stats intentionally, so to suggest that the saber in AoR/EotE has a maxed out Ilum crystal.

17 hours ago, DarthHammer said:

The AoR/EotE Saber's stats are identical to a fully modified Ilum crystal. I'm pretty sure that the Ilum crystal was given those max stats intentionally, so to suggest that the saber in AoR/EotE has a maxed out Ilum crystal.

Not quite.

The Damage/Crit/special Qualities are the same as a fully modded Ilum Crystal, but a FaD Saber will have left over hardpoints, where the AoR/EotE Saber won't. \

So with additional attachments a FaD saber with a fully modded Ilum Crystal will be better than a EotE/AoR artifact saber, not to mention the possible benefits of using a different crystal...

14 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

Not quite.

The Damage/Crit/special Qualities are the same as a fully modded Ilum Crystal, but a FaD Saber will have left over hardpoints, where the AoR/EotE Saber won't. \

So with additional attachments a FaD saber with a fully modded Ilum Crystal will be better than a EotE/AoR artifact saber, not to mention the possible benefits of using a different crystal...

Well yeah. I said that the stats are the same as those provided by the crystal, not the same as that crystal in a basic hilt from FaD. Guess I could have been slightly more clear on that.