Rise of the Separatists states that a Jedi only gets 3 free skill ranks but future training of those ranks is at a faster rate (I don't have the book on me so wording is a little off). I can't seem to find any information on what that faster rate is. The sidebar on the next page goes on to say the rule overrides the core rulebooks but still doesn't explain it.

Any direction would be greatly appreciated.

19 hours ago, SBR-13a said:

Rise of the Separatists states that a Jedi only gets 3 free skill ranks but future training of those ranks is at a faster rate (I don't have the book on me so wording is a little off). I can't seem to find any information on what that faster rate is. The sidebar on the next page goes on to say the rule overrides the core rulebooks but still doesn't explain it.

Any direction would be greatly appreciated.

Not sure what that means in the published material, but I would translate "at a faster rate" to translate to an XP cost discount for buying new ranks in that skill. Similar to the Mentor resource. Giving them a -5 XP would work just fine, and add up pretty well in the long run, if they are buying into those skills heavily.

It says Jedi get an unspecified XP discount and then it never gets brought up again.

At a guess, this is something they intended to do at one point, scrapped the entire idea, and poor editing left a few references to it in the text. That, or they completely forgot to put the chapter on XP into the book.

Giving them an XP discount seems unbalancing because the otherwise mechanically identical F&D careers don't get it.

I think this is just to mention that Jedi (like F&D Careers) get fewer ranks in Career skills to start with than EotE and AoR careers do. The "discount" is probably the lower cost for buying ranks in career and specialization skills that every charachter gets.

The wording is identical to all other careers.

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He automatically gains one rank in (4 for AoR/EotE and 3 for FaD) of these skills (of his choosing) without spending experience, and he receives a discount when he spends experience to purchase ranks in any of these skills.

The sidebar says:

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Like the careers in [FaD], the Jedi career has only six career skills, and begins with a free rank in 3 of these. Although the rules for character creation in [EotE] and [AoR] state that a career includes eight career skills and a character gains a rank in four of these at character creation, players can create a Jedi character using only this book and the [EotE] and [AoR] [CRB]. Simply follow the more specific instructions for gaining career skills and choosing starting ranks in the Jedi career description, which supersede the guidance in the [CRB].

That means that the rules are identical to the rules in FaD, but that you can still use this with EotE and AoR, but you follow the rules for this career in this book rather than the rules in the EotE and AoR CRBs.

Experience "discount:"

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Training a career skill to the next highest rank cost 5 times the rank it is being raised to.

Each rank of a non-career skill costs 5 additional experience points. For example, training a non career skill from rank 0 (untrained) to tank 1 requires 10 [xp]. Improving a rank 1 non-career skill to rank 2 requires 15 [xp].

Thus, the non-career skill is the default starting cost, and choosing a career gives you a "discount when he spends experience to purchase ranks in any of these skills" which simply means that you use the rules for buying career skills rather than the rules for non-career skills.

Again, to reiterate, you have NO career skills by default, therefore the rules for non-career skills are NOT a penalty, the rules for career skills are a discount.

1 hour ago, micheldebruyn said:

It says Jedi get an unspecified XP discount and then it never gets brought up again.

At a guess, this is something they intended to do at one point, scrapped the entire idea, and poor editing left a few references to it in the text. That, or they completely forgot to put the chapter on XP into the book.

Giving them an XP discount seems unbalancing because the otherwise mechanically identical F&D careers don't get it.

Mechanically identical, but didn't have Jedi training, is kind of the point of the difference. Which is best reflected with a discount. The fact that they didn't specify might mean they just left it up to the GM to decide how much.

Yeah, I wouldn't read too much into that one bit of text.

Odds are, it's as micheldebruyn said and was something that was in early drafts of the material but got taken out, with the editing team having missed that bit of text. The Jedi career already gets some perks over F&D careers by way of a GM option to start at Force Rating 2 and/or having a lightsaber right at chargen without having to be a Heroic Level character.

Or as Sharatec said, and just refers to the discounted XP cost of increasing career skills that all characters receive from the skills provided by their career and specializations.

1 minute ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Odds are, it's as micheldebruyn said and was something that was in early drafts of the material but got taken out, with the editing team having missed that bit of text.

I don't believe that that is the case, because as I showed, the language is identical to that of every other career in the game.

1 hour ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Yeah, I wouldn't read too much into that one bit of text.

Odds are, it's as micheldebruyn said and was something that was in early drafts of the material but got taken out, with the editing team having missed that bit of text. The Jedi career already gets some perks over F&D careers by way of a GM option to start at Force Rating 2 and/or having a lightsaber right at chargen without having to be a Heroic Level character.

Or as Sharatec said, and just refers to the discounted XP cost of increasing career skills that all characters receive from the skills provided by their career and specializations.

Well I mean there is precedent for XP discounts in the system, so I don't think it's unusual that they went down that route. Sure it could be a typo, or an abandoned track that got through editing, but I don't think it's out of the spirit of the franchise, that Jedi training can give you a leg up in certain skill areas, compared to other training methods. I mean, having a Holocron, gives the entire party access to skills as Career skills, which is effectively the same thing as giving them a skill discount, when compared to non-career skills. So it doesn't seem that out of left field to me.

If people are worried about the "ermagurd unbalanced OP force users!" event happening, then you can easily just allow other Orders to provide training discounts in a handful of skills that are thematically appropriate as well. An assassin who actually is part of some Assassin's Guild for example, could easily justify an XP discount in things like Stealth or Ranged Combat. Someone who was a doctor, and actually went to a prestigious medical academy, and spent years as an actual medical professional could justify Medicine, or Knowledge: Education as having a discount. Limit it to only 2 skills, maybe 3, depending on how generous the GM wants to be, and let everyone pick a skill or 2 from their background that would be appropriate.

Or if it still feels unbalanced (though I'm not sure how if everyone has access to it), then just ignore the line entirely and operate as normal.

*shrugs* doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

1 hour ago, KungFuFerret said:

Mechanically identical, but didn't have Jedi training, is kind of the point of the difference. Which is best reflected with a discount. The fact that they didn't specify might mean they just left it up to the GM to decide how much.

"Jedi" is just the name of a career. It doesn't define that career, and if, say, you want to play a more cloak and daggers kind of Jedi like Quinlan Vos, you're better off taking the Sentinel career, which wouldn't give you the discount despite your character being as much a Jedi as Obi-Wan.

And I now agree with Sharatec, it seems to simply refer to the discount for career skills everybody gets.

[flips through some books]

Yep, every career in all three core books gets the same wording.

I think P-47 Thunderbolt actually hit the nail on the proverbial head.

The "discount" I think represents the fact that the Career skills are cheaper to raise than non-career skills. Thus Career skills having a "discount".

10 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

The Jedi career already gets some perks over F&D careers by way of a GM option to start at Force Rating 2 and/or having a lightsaber right at chargen without having to be a Heroic Level character.

Where does it say that? I must have missed that bit of text.

It doesn't matter to me right now as I kind of fell into playing this Jedi (it's a long story) and she had a saber right out of the gate anyway. But for the future, a citation would be nice.

5 hours ago, Desslok said:

Where does it say that? I must have missed that bit of text.

It doesn't matter to me right now as I kind of fell into playing this Jedi (it's a long story) and she had a saber right out of the gate anyway. But for the future, a citation would be nice.

The Force Rating one ("The Short Path to Power") is a sidebar in Collapse of the Republic on page 17, added since the two Jedi specs in that book both require the character to have a Force Rating higher than 1, making it so that a PC could start as a Jedi General (from that book) or Jedi Knight (Rise of the Separatists).

As for the lightsaber, again it's a sidebar ("Weapons of Tradition") in both books in the equipment chapter in the section about lightsabers, that says instead of taking 2500 credits as their starting bonus (be it Morality, Obligation, or Duty; the sidebar doesn't specify) the PC can instead begin play with a lightsaber. Doesn't say it has to be a basic lightsaber though, so a PC could start out with a shoto or double-bladed lightsaber or 'saber pike. The idea is that rather than having purchased a lightsaber with those credits, the character had spent that time prior to the game beginning building their lightsaber as opposed to doing things that would have netted them extra starting XP or credits.

Isn't building his / her own lightsabre the test an apprentice / youngling must pass to become a Padawan ? In this case any Jedi career's specialisation should award a basic lightsabre, imo.

2 hours ago, WolfRider said:

Isn't building his / her own lightsabre the test an apprentice / youngling must pass to become a Padawan ? In this case any Jedi career's specialisation should award a basic lightsabre, imo.

Seeing as how characters in the Clone Soldier career have a similar option to get "basic Clone Trooper gear" at a heavily discounted value, as well as lightsabers being a very powerful weapon in this system, you'd be incorrect in that it should just be an assumed default.

Apart from the very high chance of PCs in a group featuring Jedi or Clone Soldier PCs, none of the careers in AoR, EotE, or F&D have access to such high amount of gear as "part and parcel" of their being in a career. And seeing as how FFG is trying to keep these new careers relatively balanced against the previous careers in the three core book lines, just saying "well, if you start in the Jedi career, you have a lightsaber free of charge" is problematic. It wasn't a problem in the d20 versions as a lightsaber was far less powerful, and for the most part was on part with a blaster pistol in terms of damage, so the d20 Jedi classes could start with a lightsaber without any concerns of party balance.

It also can irk those players who perhaps don't want to have their PCs be forced to start with a lightsaber, and prefer the acquisition of their character's first lightsaber to be something that is accomplished in game and not simply trivialized away as "well, here's your bog-standard generic lightsaber as part of your starting kit, off you go." Not every GM is comfortable with just handing out high-end items (of which a lightsaber constitutes) without the PC paying something in exchange for that item. Thus, the sidebar in both books of how a Jedi character has the option to start with a lightsaber rather than getting one "just because," especially as no career in the game has a "well, you're this career, so you automatically get a high-value item just because you're in this career." Closest to a "have this just because you're in this career" is the Bounty Hunter in EotE getting a bounty hunter's license, which has no real mechanical effect and is more of a narrative thing (especially as Bounty Hunter PCs can opt to not have a license for whatever reason).

It may not be a concern for you, but it is a concern for other GMs.

Saying that "the character starts with a lightsaber automatically" "forces" the player to start out with a lightsaber is an erroneous allegation. Not everyone is so legalistic about it.
I son't think many GMs object to players not wanting free stuff.

Other than that quibble, I agree with pretty much everything you said.

There a part of me that find hard to see a Jedi character without a lightsaber. But another part of me understand the arguments against it.

I don't run any SW FFG game with Jedi. In the F&D campaign I run the character are Force users but started without any knowledge of the Force and Jedi. It's only after five scenarii they learned how to make a lightsaber after they reunited the three holocrons in the Jedi Temple in the F&D beginners kit's adventure follow-up. They hope to learn the way of the Jedi too, but The Force has other plans for them.

18 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Saying that "the character starts with a lightsaber automatically" "forces" the player to start out with a lightsaber is an erroneous allegation. Not everyone is so legalistic about it.
I son't think many GMs object to players not wanting free stuff.

From my experiences, it's usually the players (typically those who are focused more the role -playing aspect of RPGs than the roll- playing) that take issue with being required to take certain items just because of their class choices. Sure, a player can just ditch that free item, but at the same time doing so doesn't always mean they'll get something of roughly equivalent value in exchange, as such exchanges usually depend on the GM.

And speaking of GMs, there are some (typically newer as well as less experienced ones in my experience) that don't want to deviate from what's written in the books for a number of reasons, so if a class (or even species) says a character gets X, Y, and Z for standard equipment, then that character gets that equipment no matter how much it might clash with the player's character concept. As well as the hard-liner GMs (who granted aren't likely to touch a system like this with a 39-and-half foot pole, but there are some GMs of that type who run games in this system) who are sticklers for having the players go by the rules as they are written with little to no variation permitted. Since the writers have to keep in mind that a broad spectrum of GM types are potential customers, they have to bear in mind that if they set a hand-and-fast rule of "Characters of Class X always begin play with Item Y" there are going to be GMs who are going to take that as gospel and stick to it no matter what.

You and WolfRider have the luxury of being able to have a fairly narrow view of how the game works, since neither of you has to worry about how folks other than those at your table are going to react or handle things. FFG on the other hand doesn't have that luxury.

It's a luxury any GM has, his / her own view of how the game works. FFG writes the rules every and each GMs interpret these their own way. What's your point exactly ?

28 minutes ago, WolfRider said:

What's your point exactly ?

That you and P-47 are treating your own points of view and interpretations of the rules as an irrefutable gospel of how things should be run, when that's the furthest thing from the truth.

1 hour ago, WolfRider said:

It's a luxury any GM has, his / her own view of how the game works. FFG writes the rules every and each GMs interpret these their own way. What's your point exactly ?

That's not how it works. If a GM's interpretation of certain rules is rejected by his players, he'll have to adjust his views. Being the GM is not supposed to be a dictatorial position.

I don't know how to answer to such bullsh.it.

41 minutes ago, WolfRider said:

I don't know how to answer to such bullsh.it.

It isnt bull. A gm needs tonwork with his players. If he doesnt he wont have players. You are not a dictator.

I do not think that a lightsaber should, by default, be granted to a player of a certain class, I was just critiquing your statement. For that matter they could just say that "the player may choose to start with a lightsaber" I'm just not really a fan of making it a trade-off since it seems like something of a default for a Jedi anyway. If you aren't an advanced starting character, it is a choice of 1. +-21 Morality, 2. +10 XP, 3. 2,500 credits/lightsaber.

I don't think they should change it, I just see the reasons for it.

1 hour ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I do not think that a lightsaber should, by default, be granted to a player of a certain class, I was just critiquing your statement. For that matter they could just say that "the player may choose to start with a lightsaber" I'm just not really a fan of making it a trade-off since it seems like something of a default for a Jedi anyway. If you aren't an advanced starting character, it is a choice of 1. +-21 Morality, 2. +10 XP, 3. 2,500 credits/lightsaber.

The thing is, for starting characters, a lightsaber is an incredibly powerful weapon, since it's going to blow past the soak values of any opposition the character is likely to face at that level, with a low enough crit rating that a reasonably competent wielder (1 skill rank, 3 in Brawn) is almost assured of taking out two minions with a successful attack (one from sheer damage, the other from a crit). The F&D Beginner Box adventure suffered greatly from the fact that three of the six pre-gens started out with basic lightsabers (including having Breach 1), as it made the final boss a push over that could be defeated in a single round if you had two lightsaber users (or just had the Nautolan Warrior with his Brawn 4) as he didn't have Parry and thus no way to negate the damage from a successful lightsaber strike.

Just handing one out with out some sort of trade-off is akin to just handing a Soldier or Clone Trooper PC a heavy blaster rifle "just because." Doing so is going to seriously skew the balance of the game in the early going. Thus, why if a Jedi PC wants to begin so badly with a lightsaber, they have to forego the extra XP (which Force users in this system are always in dire need of). It's not quite an equivalent exchange, but it's at least something, and as a sidebar it's also an option that the GM can opt to disallow if they're not comfortable with one or more PCs having a lightsaber in the fray right away, especially if they're worried about the player in question falling victim to lightsaber syndrome. After all, different GMs and different players require different approaches, and any RPG designer trying for a "one solution fits all dilemmas" resolution is doomed to failure.