I have a clone character who faked his own death after Order 66 and is working with a Jedi whose death he also faked. The clone has the Oath obligation and has sworn to not kill any of his fellow clones, if it can be avoided. I have a pretty good idea how he would take on more Obligation, but since it is an "I shall not" how would he pay it down? With an Oath like swearing to come back for someone, you can see how they would pay that down (in a variety of ways) but with something like this, how do you pay it down? The intention is for it to always be there, but if he can accumulate it, he should be able to un-accumulate it as well. Thoughts?

The clones might start to be phased out with other less capable ones filling the ranks or non-clones as well. That way you can start blasting storm troopers while still holding true to your oath, so you get around the problematic portion of the oath. Or the clones turn out to be jerks and you go "these are no brothers of mine!" and then blast them.

13 minutes ago, Darth Revenant said:

The clones might start to be phased out with other less capable ones filling the ranks or non-clones as well. That way you can start blasting storm troopers while still holding true to your oath, so you get around the problematic portion of the oath. Or the clones turn out to be jerks and you go "these are no brothers of mine!" and then blast them.

Well that's the narrative part of the Obligation and the Obligation's relevance decreasing/circumventing the Obligation, but how would I mechanically pay down the Obligation?

He has only sworn not to kill them right? So whenever he has the opportunity to kill clones but doesn't (e.g. he lands the finishing blow on a clone NPC, but narratively says he took him out non-lethally) he can build up a sort of 'moral credit' that can be used to reduce the Obligation. He can approach it like Batman fighting supervillains - often he has to make things more difficult for himself in order to keep to his no-kill policy, but it is worth it because there is still a mechanical benefit.

As oaths go, I find it lacking.

It's "I swear not to do the thing if it can be avoided." That to me is less a serious oath and more "I will try not to do the thing."

And since this is set post-Clone Wars, the thing is not very likely to come into play anyway. It's basically forcing the GM to find ways to put antagonistic clones into the story. And like Kualan said, even if you run into hordes of killer clones, that's not an issue, you can just take them out A-Team style.

It's nice as a character trait, but I would not allow it as an Obligation because it's too specific and easily avoided.

You in theory would accumulate obligation by being reminded of what made you swear it in the first place, things like spending time with clones. And also by having to break the oath and feeling really bad about it afterwards.

You un-accumulate it by... getting over it. By having negative experiences with clones. And by breaking the oath a lot.

Try this: I swear not to kill clones unless not doing so would result in the death of one of my friends. He'll do anything he can to avoid killing clones except put his companions at significant risk. I'm leaving little ways out because I like to hedge my bets, but in general he won't kill clones because there is (almost*) always another way.

*there I go again .

The campaign starts a little bit before Order 66 and then continues on, there isn't any time skippage where it fast-forwards to 5 BBY or anything, so running into clones won't be rare.
It would be sort of like an EotE character swearing to never kill an Imperial soldier.

Remember, the character is a clone, this isn't some random person who doesn't want to kill clones, this is a clone swearing to avoid killing his brothers.

12 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I have a clone character who faked his own death after Order 66 and is working with a Jedi whose death he also faked. The clone has the Oath obligation and has sworn to not kill any of his fellow clones, if it can be avoided. I have a pretty good idea how he would take on more Obligation, but since it is an "I shall not" how would he pay it down? With an Oath like swearing to come back for someone, you can see how they would pay that down (in a variety of ways) but with something like this, how do you pay it down? The intention is for it to always be there, but if he can accumulate it, he should be able to un-accumulate it as well. Thoughts?

The way you play it, it's not an obligation, it's a motivation.

20 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Try this: I swear not to kill clones unless not doing so would result in the death of one of my friends. He'll do anything he can to avoid killing clones except put his companions at significant risk. I'm leaving little ways out because I like to hedge my bets, but in general he won't kill clones because there is (almost*) always another way.

*there I go again .

The campaign starts a little bit before Order 66 and then continues on, there isn't any time skippage where it fast-forwards to 5 BBY or anything, so running into clones won't be rare.
It would be sort of like an EotE character swearing to never kill an Imperial soldier.

Remember, the character is a clone, this isn't some random person who doesn't want to kill clones, this is a clone swearing to avoid killing his brothers.

Again, "I shall not kill clones, unless they're attacking me or my friends" isn't an Obligation. It's also not something that is likely to ever be an issue for the character because you play it super-safe and include an allowance to slaughter them if it is necessary. How often do you figure you'll ever be in a position where you need to kill clones who are not bothering the party? An Obligation doesn't leave a way out.

I think Obligation isn't really the right word for the game mechanic, but I can't think of a better one. Edge Of the Empire characters are people who are outside of the mainstream of society, and their Obligation is why this is so. Their Obligation is why they can't just be normal people, get a job, and settle down. You should think about the effects of having a high/low Obligation on a party (the table on page 308 of the EotE Core book gives a good idea).

An unwillingnes to kill certain kinds of people isn't an Obligation, it's almost an anti-Obligation. It makes your character more normal.

A good Oath Obligation would be more along the lines of "I shall hunt down slavers anywhere without mercy and free their victims."

24 minutes ago, micheldebruyn said:

Again, "I shall not kill clones, unless they're attacking me or my friends" isn't an Obligation. It's also not something that is likely to ever be an issue for the character because you play it super-safe and include an allowance to slaughter them if it is necessary. How often do you figure you'll ever be in a position where you need to kill clones who are not bothering the party? An Obligation doesn't leave a way out.

It prevents him from using lethal force. He has a tricked-out DC-15, but since stun setting only works at short range, he can't utilize a range advantage and must get in close. The only reason I'm leaving it open at all is that he wouldn't put the lives of clones above the lives of his friends, but he would refuse to use lethal force against them in order to save his own life. And once you get into space, he becomes unable to fire upon any republic military fighters etc. (unless he uses ion weaponry) because if he hits/destroys his target the likelihood is that he would end up killing a clone. Further more, he would try to restrain his allies and one of them relies entirely on vibroswords and vibroknives. It increases the difficulty of a lot of things and situations. And since he is an ARC trooper (ergo, he is very combat focused), social skills (deception in particular) are not his strong suit.

Some of the Obligations are more like "motivations" than actual "obligations" per se, like Betrayal, where you want to find out why you were betrayed, Obsession where there is some driving force behind why you do what you do, or Responsibility where you feel a need to take care of something or, in an example from the book, "a strong desire to care for orphans in a given location." That isn't a "you've sworn to do such-and-such and now you can't get out of it."

I think that this Oath matches the description from page 39 quite well.

We also don't really use the "Duty/Obligation as a threshold" thing. Especially when the Obligations wouldn't really apply (i.e. does the Mayor refuse to meet with you because you are a super-fan of Wynssa Starflare [and have recently lost your holo-projector that stored every picture of her readily available on the holonet]?).

An obligation, by definition of the word, requires someone to engage in an action. "I'm not going to kill/steal from/hurt/bribe Population X," is a statement of inaction and, ergo, not an obligation.

An oath is a promise made ("Thou shalt not steal") but an oath as an obligation requires action, i.e. "I swear I will spread the holy word."

As a rule of thumb, if you can dodge an Obligation by simply avoiding the situation, it's not a very good Obligation.

On 9/15/2019 at 8:51 PM, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

It prevents him from using lethal force. He has a tricked-out DC-15, but since stun setting only works at short range, he can't utilize a range advantage and must get in close. The only reason I'm leaving it open at all is that he wouldn't put the lives of clones above the lives of his friends, but he would refuse to use lethal force against them in order to save his own life. And once you get into space, he becomes unable to fire upon any republic military fighters etc. (unless he uses ion weaponry) because if he hits/destroys his target the likelihood is that he would end up killing a clone. Further more, he would try to restrain his allies and one of them relies entirely on vibroswords and vibroknives. It increases the difficulty of a lot of things and situations. And since he is an ARC trooper (ergo, he is very combat focused), social skills (deception in particular) are not his strong suit.

That's not really that much of a drawback. Getting into short range is quite good since you get an easier time hitting fools, there are also talents and mods to let you do more damage in close. You could also get a modded DC-15 which only deals stun damage, then it has full range.