I'm currently running a Clone Wars campaign, and next session, I plan on Knighting my Jedi players. Since this is taking place at the height of the Jedi's power as an order, I figured I'd actually put them through the Jedi Trials.

This means I have to have each player go through the Trials of Spirit, Insight, Flesh, Courage, and Skill. Nexus of Power has a small blurb for each of these, but not much in the way of examples. I've got a good plan for both Flesh and Skill for each of them, but it'd be cool if I could get some recommendations for the others.

Spirit is supposed to focus on overcoming an emotional weakness. One player's weakness is his Doubt, his uncertainty of the Jedi's role in this war. How would you handle his Spirit trial? The other's weakness is Trust, or more specifically a lack thereof. She is hesitant to extend trust to anyone. I figure the trial will force her to place her trust in someone else, but what would be a good scenario for this?

Insight is another odd one. Nexus of Power recommends a Vigilance check to solve a riddle or puzzle of some kind. Got any suggestions for a good Jedi-themed riddle? If not, there's always the option to have them solve a puzzle box or something.

Lastly, the Trial of Courage. It's supposed to be a Fear check, drawing upon the characters' fears. Would you do this as some form of vision through the Force? Or would you say that by constantly fighting on the front lines of the war, the Jedi have already passed the Trial of Courage by demonstrating their bravery?

Perhaps combine Insight and Spirit into one. The characters are presented with a scenario where one NPC is a traitor and another is a steadfast ally, but is the key to defeating the traitor. If not caught, the traitor could bring about a major defeat with lots of collateral damage in its wake.

Not only must they root out the traitor (Insight), but they must come to trust the ally in order to win the day (Spirit: Trust) and learn that though the war is terrible, a Jedi's resolve is necessary to keep as many people safe as possible. (Spirit: Doubt)

I definitely think Courage, Skill, and Flesh would be covered by fighting in the war. I'm in a similar scenario with my Jedi PCs. I sat down to map out potential trials and realized they had already fulfilled most of them in their ongoing adventures. It's really cool because when you knight them, you can call back on all their past triumphs and show how much their struggle mattered.

I like the idea of combining trials, but I'm more leaning towards trials that can be conducted within the Jedi Temple, as a form of formalized testing. After all, the Jedi didn't always have a war going on that they could use to test their Padawans with. I could easily just pull examples from their previous adventures as examples of them passing trials, but I want the trials to be a session of their own, so I'd rather cover the more conventional ceremonial tests.

If you are wanting it to be very blatant, as in "Welcome to your Trial of Spirit Padawan! Step through that door!" then I'd set up some very structured tests. But, as rogue-09 pointed out, in a time of war, they would be sort of hard pressed to do things the old fashioned way. You could instead, have them just do some various adventure modules that you have set up, and have the emphasis be on the other things, Spirit, Insight, Courage. Just don't tell them about it. Then, when it's done, depending on how they performed, and after they report back to their Master, or the Council directly (however you have their hierarchy set up for the game, they could then say that they basically accomplished a task that met the parameters of the trials, and are thus approved for Knighthood.

If you're going the structured way, I would basically do the Insight trial as a big red herring. Have the setup, instructions, etc, all basically say "You need to accomplish X", but have it really be "You need to figure out that you really need to accomplish Y, despite being distracted by trying to accomplish X" Give them subtle clues here and there, in dialogue and checks, to say "Hey, maybe there's more to this than we were told." and go from there.

There may not always have been a war on, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have been sent out to do things as part of their training at other times. Practical experience has to be part of the regimen too, and it's all the better if that just happens to end up providing for one of the trials while they're at it.

The Consular sourcebook has a little more on how to run these trials.

So, I wrote that section in Nexus of Power. If you look at my work on Mentors in Disciples of Harmony, you can get some ideas on other tests (mentor encounters, pages 76, 77, 78) that should provide some more guidance, including some specific guidance on the trials. When I wrote Mentors (which was a job I got not too long after Nexus of Power) I definitely thought of the two pieces as sort of companions.

Also, in Nexus of Power, I wrote the Vault of Justice modular encounter, which can sort of function as a field trial depending on what the PCs do.

On 7/21/2019 at 12:53 AM, KRKappel said:

So, I wrote that section in Nexus of Power. If you look at my work on Mentors in Disciples of Harmony, you can get some ideas on other tests (mentor encounters, pages 76, 77, 78) that should provide some more guidance, including some specific guidance on the trials. When I wrote Mentors (which was a job I got not too long after Nexus of Power) I definitely thought of the two pieces as sort of companions.

Also, in Nexus of Power, I wrote the Vault of Justice modular encounter, which can sort of function as a field trial depending on what the PCs do.

Sorry to necro this thread, but this is exactly what I have been looking for. I've been racking my brain for about a week for something and this post led me right to it.