Dear all,

I am starting a new campain as an Arbiter who is the group face/scholar and will later branch into Sage. My character does not know that he is force sensitive and know very little of the Jedi, so I won't take anything related to those. I was wondering what could be a good starting gear set with 500 credits. The campain will be a treasure quest like where we should visit several planets. However, I have no clue if it will be more wilderness of city oriented. I guess a bit of both.

So far, I have:

Comlink (handheld) (25 credits)
Utility belt (25 credits)
Backpack (50 credits)
Datapad (75 credits)
Heavy clothing (50 credits)

Few other ideas:

Water purifier ( 50 or 100 credits, the one from Disciples of Harmony and Savage Spirits seems identical but the price is different. Am I missing something?)
A MK III or MK IV (which one?) modular backpack instead of the standard one?
Data google (250 credits) : I guess it could be interesting with his scholar background and future Sage

Thanks for your help and advices.

7 hours ago, Aristide said:

Comlink (handheld) (25 credits)
Utility belt (25 credits)
Backpack (50 credits)
Datapad (75 credits)
Heavy clothing (50 credits)

Looks ok. What do you see the Datapad as being good for? Not saying it's bad, just saying to look at it's utility vs. cost/enc.

Going to get a weapon too, or hope one becomes available when you need it? Worst case the CDEF pistol is cheap as chips, and can easily hold you over until you can get something better.

7 hours ago, Aristide said:

Water purifier ( 50 or 100 credits, the one from Disciples of Harmony and Savage Spirits seems ident  ical but the price is different. Am I missing something?)

One just cleans out things like bacteria, viruses and toxins, the other also removes stuff like radioactive materials and heavy metals.

Unless you know you're going to somewhere nasty, just get an Imperial Canteen from DC for 7 credits. It has a built in filter, so no need for a dedicated purifier.

7 hours ago, Aristide said:

A MK III or MK IV (which one?) modular backpack instead of the standard one?

Up to you. You can also hold off on this, as you may not need it right off. Look at what you need to carry all the time, vs. what you don't. This isn't an MMO, so if you walk around looking like Patsy from Holy Grail, you may get some guff from the NPCs. When you're out in the bush, get what makes sense. A big honking frame pack from DC is also a good choice.

Also don't fear getting a little overloaded on long treks. If you're not the shooter of the group you can just spend your first combat maneuver to drop the pack and everything you designate as being it, and boom, unencumbered!

Also note that packs only provide an Encumbrance Threshold bonus of a certain amount, but that's not it's max Enc capacity. So you can shove as much Enc worth of gear in a bag as it would logically be able to fit. So like a backpack might increase your threshold by 4, but there's nothing saying it can't contain 8 enc worth of gear provided it makes sense for it to all fit.

I would actually recommend a Jedi Utility belt from Keeping the Peace . IT costs 1000 credits, but comes with quite a bit of gear "built in", so to speak, with no additional Encumbrance cost. The Jedi utility belt comes with:

• three day supply of food capsules
• one emergency medpac
• one Jedi Multitool (Lightsaber Maintenance Kit KtP page 53)
• one slim glow rod
• one comlink
• one aquata repreather
• several empty pouches
• clip to hang a lightsaber.

With only 500 credits how do you buy something that cost 2 times that ?

On 2/4/2019 at 8:32 PM, Ghostofman said:

...

Thanks a lot for all the useful information.

For the datapad, I though it was cool for the scholar side of the character. For the weapon, I was thinking that at this point, background wise, there is not much reason for the character to have one.

You are probably right for the water purifiers, even some rations should do for a start.

Any call on the datagoogle?

For the Encumbrance, if I understood properly, for a character with Brawn = 2, his Encumbrance threhold is 7. Backpacks increase this value. However, with Brawn = 2, as long as his Emcumbrance is greater than 2 (e.g. wearing heavy clothing, having a datapad in his backpack and holding a holdout blaster), he won't get the free maneuver each turn. Is that correct?

1 hour ago, Aristide said:

Any call on the datagoogle?

If it's the thing I think it is... eh... your call. I think it's kinda pricey for starting gear, but if you're worried about it, it's a good deal. Though if you're the brain, a Scanner of some kind might be more valuable, as it's a "right tool for the job" meaning it may allow a check that would otherwise be impossible.

1 hour ago, Aristide said:

For the Encumbrance, if I understood properly, for a character with Brawn = 2, his Encumbrance threhold is 7. Backpacks increase this value. However, with Brawn = 2, as long as his Emcumbrance is greater than 2 (e.g. wearing heavy clothing, having a datapad in his backpack and holding a holdout blaster), he won't get the free maneuver each turn. Is that correct?

No, you gotta go over the Threshold to get penalized, and go [Brawn] over to lose the Maneuver. So at Brawn 2, you have a threshold of 7, and you will lose a free maneuver at 9.

You also take a setback to Agility and Brawn checks for every point over the Threshold, so at 9 you'd also get 2 Setback.

13 hours ago, WolfRider said:

With only 500 credits how do you buy something that cost 2 times that ?

That's easy, You take one of the 50 Morality options, that either grants you 2500 additional credits, or 5 extra starting XP and 1000 extra starting credits.

On 2/5/2019 at 3:08 PM, Tramp Graphics said:

That's easy, You take one of the 50 Morality options, that either grants you 2500 additional credits, or 5 extra starting XP and 1000 extra starting credits.

Depending on species and build plan, that doesn't always play nice with the standard recommendation of dumping "all" (square qoutes, so you don't misunderstand again) starting xp into attributes. Given the op's specification of 500 credits this (extra credits not an option) is probably the case for the OP.

Cases where it's an option commonly involve starting with a 4 and 3 in the attributes of choice, or playing a species with a 1 in the dump stat, and/or a species with an unusual amount of xp (like mandalorian humans or pantorans)

Thanks for your answers. Yes, I mentionned 500 credits because I already took the morality option to get extra xp.