I was just reading someone’s horror story of having to deal with a “fluffed up” Emperor encounter and it got me thinking: now that Allies and Adversaries is out, has anyone come across any big names from the series in their adventures?

Also, has the age old fear of “if you stat it, the players will try to kill it” come to the forefront unexpectedly (such as heroes fighting heroes, just because)?

I’m curious to see if GMs are implementing more name brand characters in their campaigns now that we have stats for them or if they’re content with carving out their own corners of the galaxy. I’m also curious to see how those encounters are going when they happen.

I had players who came into contact with Vader, while experimenting with a Force artifact I made up (that the Inquisitorius used for secretive, Galaxy-wide communications). No attributes came into play (so maybe not too relevant here but... fun story) - they "hung up" the party line ASAP, but that was close enough for the whole group.

Just seeing his visage, and knowing that Darth Vader now knew what they looked like and what their presence in the Force felt like (because they felt his) was enough to send the whole party running far and fast.

I've also had the party encounter a canon, but not well known, Inquisitor (Seventh Sister). But that was before A&A, so again not too relevant.

I mostly prefer to carve out my own corner of the Galaxy. And if I do implement canon characters, I custom stat them.

All of my players agree that the best way to handle Vader and his ilk is exactly how Vader is handled in Glare Peak. If he gets within engaged range of a character, the character dies. I'm glad I don't have to worry about Vader's stats. As for other named NPCs. We'll see. I haven't used them, yet.

23 minutes ago, emsquared said:

I had players who came into contact with Vader, while experimenting with a Force artifact I made up (that the Inquisitorius used for secretive, Galaxy-wide communications). No attributes came into play (so maybe not too relevant here but... fun story) - they "hung up" the party line ASAP, but that was close enough for the whole group.

Just seeing his visage, and knowing that Darth Vader now knew what they looked like and what their presence in the Force felt like (because they felt his) was enough to send the whole party running far and fast.

I've also had the party encounter a canon, but not well known, Inquisitor (Seventh Sister). But that was before A&A, so again not too relevant.

I mostly prefer to carve out my own corner of the Galaxy. And if I do implement canon characters, I custom stat them.

Fun stories are always relevant, and so are custom made artifacts, especially ones that try and make sense out of some of the physics for Star Wars. Nice work

1 minute ago, kaosoe said:

All of my players agree that the best way to handle Vader and his ilk is exactly how Vader is handled in Glare Peak. If he gets within engaged range of a character, the character dies. I'm glad I don't have to worry about Vader's stats. As for other named NPCs. We'll see. I haven't used them, yet.

This seems to be the going trend among people I talk directly with. It’s almost as if A and A dropped too late and everyone is committed to the mentality of using named NPCs as plot devices (which is fine given the initial concepts and themes of the games).

In a couple of different groups I play in, the GM has tossed Aphra our way. In one case, the player interacting with her most had no idea about the comics side of things, so it worked out great. In the other, we ran into her along with 000 and BT, ultimately taking out the droids. Our own resident semi-psychotic astromech PC (who'd had his body trashed in a previous session) took over BT's shell.

4 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

In a couple of different groups I play in, the GM has tossed Aphra our way. In one case, the player interacting with her most had no idea about the comics side of things, so it worked out great. In the other, we ran into her along with 000 and BT, ultimately taking out the droids. Our own resident semi-psychotic astromech PC (who'd had his body trashed in a previous session) took over BT's shell.

That’s awesome. She’s definitely a more “low key” character I didn’t even think about using, which is ridiculous given her job as a space archaeologist with loose morals. Honestly she should be showing up in everyone’s campaigns.

And it’s almost as if those two droids are designed for players to wreck without regret. I wonder if Kieron Gillen had this game in mind when he wrote these characters...

Created a similar thread on the game masters subsection. Depends on the group. As the GM, I’m throwing Maul into our story as the main antagonist of the campaign, the party fought It/him during our last session (stats from dawn of the rebellion) and had a blast.

That being said, everything was purposely in their favor for the fight and I was not using the optional second turn rule for nemesis characters and the next time they fight it will not be as easy.

I personally like the idea but in moderation. From the experience with Maul, most NPC/iconic characters can be beaten by the average PC group with combat skills.

2 hours ago, Flavorabledeez said:

That’s awesome. She’s definitely a more “low key” character I didn’t even think about using, which is ridiculous given her job as a space archaeologist with loose morals. Honestly she should be showing up in everyone’s campaigns.

In the first of those two groups I mentioned, my son’s character is an archaeologist. It became established that he and Aphra went to school together (and that she kept trying to cheat off of his work).

I make it a habit to regularly have major names NPCs show up in my game, usually as small cameos, sometimes as major plot elements.

In my previous campaign, one of the players beat Sebulba in a pod race some 30 years after TPM. I also introduced the younglings from The Clone Wars as adult Jedi, hiding from the Empire. They briefly mentored a Jedi PC before another PC fell to the dark side, joined the Inquisitorious, and helped the Inquisitors hunt the surviving Jedi. That campaign ended with the Rebel PCs fighting the Imperial PCs on Korriban, where the Inquisitor was trying to use the dark side nexus to gain power enough to defeat Vader. In the end, Vader showed up before the ritual and wiped both parties (using his stats from DoR).

In my current campaign, the players are fighting in the Clone Wars. They regularly interact with the Jedi Council, they've met several named Jedi from both Canon & Legends (most recently, Sora Bulq, still feigning his loyalty to the Jedi, and a sane Kazdan Paratus). One of the players is playing a clone, but not of Jango. He's playing a Duros, and I've had plans with his backstory for the past year or so. He was a clone of Cad Bane, commissioned by Plagueis prior to his death, as a prototype for the clone army. The players in the most recent session have arrested Cad Bane in the name of the Republic (after a very nearly fatal encounter), and have finally uncovered a good chunk of this lore. They've also fought Asajj at one point, and fled two encounters with Grievous. They also played Sabacc with Aurra Sing, Bossk, and Boba Fett before hunting Cad Bane, which was a riot.

Thankfully, my players understand that I keep my games tangentially related to Canon, and they don't go out of their way to break the universe. They like seeing how their story connects to the larger picture of the series, and how their actions indirectly influence events of the galaxy that we see on screen. It's really helped with their immersion. Now, this doesn't mean they won't put up a fight against Grievous or Savage if put in the situation, but they don't go out of their way to fight/kill named characters when they don't have to.

On 9/13/2019 at 9:12 PM, Underachiever599 said:

Thankfully, my players understand that I keep my games tangentially related to Canon, and they don't go out of their way to break the universe. They like seeing how their story connects to the larger picture of the series, and how their actions indirectly influence events of the galaxy that we see on screen. It's really helped with their immersion. Now, this doesn't mean they won't put up a fight against Grievous or Savage if put in the situation, but they don't go out of their way to fight/kill named characters when they don't have to.

I started my new Campaign set in the Clone Wars by straight up telling them this is an alternative History Campaign, so they can break whatever they want.

I like some of these ideas, and might borrow some of them - the Cad Bane Clones idea is great.

22 hours ago, Spartancfos said:

I started my new Campaign set in the Clone Wars by straight up telling them this is an alternative History Campaign, so they can break whatever they want.

I like some of these ideas, and might borrow some of them - the Cad Bane Clones idea is great.

I'm planning an alternative history campaign of sorts in the future, but a lot of my players are big fans of The Clone Wars series, and like to see how their story interacts with the main series as a whole. If the players truly want to break the setting, they're more than welcome to try it, but they seem to have more fun playing a role in the larger events that they know eventually transpire. Now, of course, this doesn't mean the players aren't actively trying to change certain things (for example, learning about Order 66 early so they don't die when it happens), but I always look to make sure such things are justified in-game, and in-character.

For example, now that the Cad Bane lore drop has happened, should the players choose to keep going down that rabbit hole (and roll well on their research checks), they might discover the larger scheme at hand with the Sith and the Clone army. It would take a large focus of the campaign for them to do this, however, and won't be something that just sort of happens off-hand. And at the moment, this doesn't appear to be what the party intends to do. Now that they've used the knowledge they've gathered to clear the Cad Bane clone of the large amount of debt he'd been saddled with, the players seem content to have dropped the matter for the time being.

As for the alternate history game I'm thinking of, I'd actually like to run a game set ~300 years prior to the Clone Wars. This time period hasn't really been explored much, which gives me a tremendous amount of wiggle room for story telling. And there are a couple familiar characters I can use in unexpected ways. For example, Yoda will still be alive around this time period, but he might not be on the high council. Instead, I like to picture him doing a stint as chief librarian during this campaign. Meanwhile, Tera Sinube may also be around, but as a strapping young Jedi Knight, seeking adventure and excitement across the galaxy, rather than napping at a computer desk like we see him doing in The Clone Wars. In a time frame like this, there's plenty of room for my players to be the big heroes, go one amazing quests, fight a few Dark Lords (though never confirmed to be Sith), negotiate some peace treaties, and weave all manner of other exciting tales. And if my players break history in some fashion or another while they're at it? Oh well.

Had I not retired from running Star Wars, I'd probably alter the stats of any canon character I'd include. Definitely use those as a baseline but I find them to be weak. Several of these extremely powerful characters in canon have lower wound thresholds than your average inquisitor per the Inquisitor building rules. They would go down in a heartbeat.

On 9/28/2019 at 9:44 AM, Underachiever599 said:

I'm planning an alternative history campaign of sorts in the future, but a lot of my players are big fans of The Clone Wars series, and like to see how their story interacts with the main series as a whole. If the players truly want to break the setting, they're more than welcome to try it, but they seem to have more fun playing a role in the larger events that they know eventually transpire. Now, of course, this doesn't mean the players aren't actively trying to change certain things (for example, learning about Order 66 early so they don't die when it happens), but I always look to make sure such things are justified in-game, and in-character.

For example, now that the Cad Bane lore drop has happened, should the players choose to keep going down that rabbit hole (and roll well on their research checks), they might discover the larger scheme at hand with the Sith and the Clone army. It would take a large focus of the campaign for them to do this, however, and won't be something that just sort of happens off-hand. And at the moment, this doesn't appear to be what the party intends to do. Now that they've used the knowledge they've gathered to clear the Cad Bane clone of the large amount of debt he'd been saddled with, the players seem content to have dropped the matter for the time being.

As for the alternate history game I'm thinking of, I'd actually like to run a game set ~300 years prior to the Clone Wars. This time period hasn't really been explored much, which gives me a tremendous amount of wiggle room for story telling. And there are a couple familiar characters I can use in unexpected ways. For example, Yoda will still be alive around this time period, but he might not be on the high council. Instead, I like to picture him doing a stint as chief librarian during this campaign. Meanwhile, Tera Sinube may also be around, but as a strapping young Jedi Knight, seeking adventure and excitement across the galaxy, rather than napping at a computer desk like we see him doing in The Clone Wars. In a time frame like this, there's plenty of room for my players to be the big heroes, go one amazing quests, fight a few Dark Lords (though never confirmed to be Sith), negotiate some peace treaties, and weave all manner of other exciting tales. And if my players break history in some fashion or another while they're at it? Oh well.

My goal is to explore the Clone Wars as I would liked to have seen them. I was always disappointed the concept of cloning wasn't scary, or used for anything properly evil. Yes there is the moral ambiguity of raising an army of Child Soldiers sole to use them like droids in battle, but there is no real malevolence, it's means to an end. I am want Clones to be almost like Replicants by the end of the setting, hence there is alot less of them in the OT canon. Palpatine is going to try alot more ambitious things with Clones in my game, including Clone Jedi Council members being used to replace them, and the Senate suddenly being unable to trust any of there members due to Spaarti Flash Cloned doppelgangers.

My canon will be broken, but it will be by me, although my attempt will be to create a familiar OT at the end of the process.

1 hour ago, Spartancfos said:

Palpatine is going to try alot more ambitious things with Clones in my game, including Clone Jedi Council members being used to replace them,

Welcome to a now-abandoned subplot that was brewing in my EotE game. Palpatine had cloned the four Jedi who went to arrest him, but their connection to the Force was weak. Meanwhile, the players had been smuggling a new spice that temporarily spiked Force ability in some users, and the Empire wanted it to juice up those clones.

2 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

Welcome to a now-abandoned subplot that was brewing in my EotE game. Palpatine had cloned the four Jedi who went to arrest him, but their connection to the Force was weak. Meanwhile, the players had been smuggling a new spice that temporarily spiked Force ability in some users, and the Empire wanted it to juice up those clones.

I love it. If the EU writers were allowed to write what they did, why can't we go nuts!

On 9/12/2019 at 1:41 PM, Flavorabledeez said:

This seems to be the going trend among people I talk directly with. It’s almost as if A and A dropped too late and everyone is committed to the mentality of using named NPCs as plot devices (which is fine given the initial concepts and themes of the games).

I am not sure why they decided to release that book because you basically had the people who used the big characters as non-characters (plot devices), and the people who used a scale to try and keep them more powerful than the PCs so that the PCs were not now bigger than the characters from the actual movies. Hilariously, some of those people found that FFG stats were far below the altitude of the bloated min/maxed creations that they were playing. d20 sickness where you have to take any system and try to break it.

Ok so you have defeated Darth Vader and The Emperor and Thrawn and The Mortis Things, I guess I am going to have to convert Thor and Zeus to Star Wars to challenge you guys. Maybe Godzilla. The Beyonder?

At that point it's getting into weird territory. Everybody does their thing, and if it's fun then awesome. When I was in middle school we used to make characters who had super powered abilities in a non-super powered setting and make broken characters to fight gods and demon lords and make it look easy. Oh wait, for a second I forgot we were talking about Star Wars.

On 9/30/2019 at 5:05 AM, GroggyGolem said:

Had I not retired from running Star Wars, I'd probably alter the stats of any canon character I'd include. Definitely use those as a baseline but I find them to be weak. Several of these extremely powerful characters in canon have lower wound thresholds than your average inquisitor per the Inquisitor building rules . They would go down in a heartbeat.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should.

10 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should.

This in reference to using the Inquisitor rules or to using the official stats for Canon characters? Because I agree to both. Inquisitor rules made weak inquisitors, official stats make for weak Canon characters.

5 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

Inquisitor rules made weak inquisitors, official stats make for weak Canon characters.

With regards to the Inquisitors, they're really meant to be a serious threat to parties that are operating within the starting XP to Knight Level XP range, who generally won't have many (if any) skills above rank 3, a dozen talents at best, and a small selection of upgrades to what few Force powers they have learned, and perhaps have just gotten their lightsabers. An Inquisitor using the Build-an-Inqy rules is generally gonna get steamrolled if going up against a party of PCs with 300XP (or more) under their belt and tricked-out gear to match. Heck, a friend of mine did stabs at the Fifth Brother and Seventh Sister for a blog site using the Build-an-Inqy rules as her baseline, and my 450XP (120 base, 330 earned) Human Warrior/Shii-Cho Knight with his Damage 9/Crit 1/Accurate 1/Vicious 1/Superior lightsaber from the AoR game she was running, and he freaking plowed through each of them in a one-on-one fight during each of the several test encounters I ran, and even together they were barely able to give him a challenge before one of them inevitably got taken out just from the number of high-end critical injuries they were suffering.

Over all, in general FFG writes their Adversaries looking at the lower end of the XP range. I was in a F&D game where our party of 300-earned XP characters went up against Darth Vader (stats from Dawn of Rebellion), and we came surprisingly close to taking him down, and really only lost and suffered a near-TPK (which we were cool with, since it was Vader) due to a couple of really unlucky dice rolls on our part.

But then, with the exception of d6 which loaded up the iconic NPCs with such insanely high dice ratings that the PCs weren't going to reach without years of playing regular weekly sessions, stating up iconic NPCs has always been problematic for Star Wars RPGs. With d20, it was generally a case of only having so many points/slots for skills/feats/talents and being capped to level 20, meaning that even high-tier folks like Vader, Yoda, and the Emperor could eventually be matched by the PCs. With FFG generally aiming to keep their adversaries both with as streamlined a stat block as possible and as I said above intended for groups on the lower end of the XP spectrum to face, then yeah they're gonna come across as rather anemic. Christopher Hunt over on the d20 Radio Blog posted up a slew of NPC stat blocks that he'd used for his Star Wars group, the players of which had well over a thousand XP, and pretty much all of those stat blocks would murder characters in the XP range that FFG writes their baddies for.

14 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

This in reference to using the Inquisitor rules or to using the official stats for Canon characters? Because I agree to both. Inquisitor rules made weak inquisitors, official stats make for weak Canon characters.

So I read it wrong initially and thought you were referring to PCs being super built by power gamers. I agree that Canon characters should be very strong. I can see two viable ways to do them: make them super tough so that they will be able to maintain their gravitas, or make them within the range of normal stats but give them major plot armor.

One of the great things about this system is that it was designed to have PCs in danger throughout the progression range. Jay Little said he wanted the PCs to always be in danger and for the enemies to not really have the planned obsolescence that most games have.

Can you make this game into a circus act? Yeah it can be done. I remember one droog on Reddit actually arguing for building characters that the GM can't beat. Which, to quote GM Chris from the Order 66 podcast, is "complete Horse ****"

To me that is the purview of tactical wargames: the build-off and execution for the purpose of hopefully winning by use of stacking advantages and game mechanic superiority.

As I understand it the WotC system is better for that sort of thing isn't it? I only played it a couple of times and never ran it, but it seems like it has the Pathfinder 3.x style architecture to some degree. The wargamers in RPG Clothing can stack bonuses attained through advantageous interpretation of rule book entries, and can practice basic addition to their heart's content.

PCs are hard to actually kill in this system, so it seems to me that the system was designed to have defeats rather than kills in many cases. This being the situation, the zeal to build unbeatable PCs seems very base and just bloats the stats of everything needlessly. Oft'times more is not better, it's just more.

16 hours ago, Archlyte said:

The wargamers in RPG Clothing can stack bonuses attained through advantageous interpretation of rule book entries, and can practice basic addition to their heart's content.

Can you go one thread without being a huge *** towards people who don't play make believe the way you want them to?

That was rhetorical. We all know the answer.

On 10/5/2019 at 6:52 AM, Stan Fresh said:

Can you go one thread without being a huge *** towards people who don't play make believe the way you want them to?

That was rhetorical. We all know the answer.

I like the official write-ups of the named characters for several reasons. One, I've always felt gamer's tend to overrate and overbuild iconic characters (for reasons both mechanical and psychological). Two, they allow for more down to earth players who can be "impressive" without being min-maxed and dipping into 3+ trees, which takes the sting out of relatively slow growth inherent in the system (esp. for force users). Three, they provide a clear set of benchmarks for those who do want them. Four, over the past several decades I've come to look askance at the "GMs favorite NPC as plot device" and "big-bad install-kill" approach to dangerous NPCs. I don't find it fun or sporting or an accurate representation of the source films. And five, I'm not married to canonical outcomes and view the story about the player characters rather than iconic non-player characters who may show up. Its the player character's story. So be it if they change things. If Vader dies before Luke's time... I'm down with it.