Greetings fellow friends!

I am currently running a new campaign with some new players during the time of the Clone Wars. One of them is a Force-Sensitive Outcast and the other is a Nightsister. The outcast was quite frustrated that he didn’t have multiple force powers from the start. He argued a seasoned Jedi of the clone wars Should have some skill in the Force (did not purchase any). My questions are these:

1) Is this table rule too OP: Allow force users to begin with 1-3 force powers.

2) Because experience is hard to come by and there are many things to use XP for, should I make the Force Power tree experience cheaper?

Keep in mind I haven’t dealt with a lot of force user players so I’m unsure the balance of it all. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated

1 hour ago, Tedward777 said:

1) Is this table rule too OP: Allow force users to begin with 1-3 force powers.

Personally I think it is OP and so I wouldn't. Instead, I'd set the amount of XP that players have at the start to a higher value than normal. Awarding the whole party 60xp each to spend on their characters means they can build out a couple of the things they're looking for, but won't let them get too OP right from the start. Out of interest, what did they spend their starting XP on? If they wanted more force powers, that was the time to get them.

1 hour ago, Tedward777 said:

2) Because experience is hard to come by and there are many things to use XP for, should I make the Force Power tree experience cheaper?

I would also heavily advise against making the trees cheaper, because I feel its better for the player and the party if you encourage progression down existing trees over getting new ones. If they really want a cheaper route to power, maybe throw them the tempting narrative option of a dark-side mentor to get a discount. That being said, the amount of XP they get is entirely up to you. You can award it for any reason you want, or double the experience stated in modules if you want to give them more.

1 hour ago, Tedward777 said:

Keep in mind I haven’t dealt with a lot of force user players so I’m unsure the balance of it all. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated

The important things with GM grants and force users which I would bear in mind are:

• Make it fair. Whatever you do should apply to the whole party (force users or not) so people don't feel like there's a massive difference in character abilities.
• Don't give away too much. In my opinion, characters should have something to aim for.
• Play the character, not the game. Remind your player that they're not playing a seasoned Jedi, they're a character who is a force sensitive outcast, and may have no formal training. It's more likely that they'll have just one thing they got good at.
• If you let them have too many force ranks/powers or skills right off the bat then they could diversify their character until they don't really have a party role anymore. No character should be a one man army, and other members of the party should be able to fill the gaps with different abilities (not just force powers)

That's going to create imbalance unles you give non-Force users and equal amount of goodies. One of the best elements of this game as a Star Wars game is that, unlike every other Star Wars RPG, it doesn't overpower Force users and keeps everybody at the same power level.

The books suggest that if you want PCs to be more powerful to just give everybody 200 or however much extra XP before play begins.

7 hours ago, Tedward777 said:

Greetings fellow friends!

I am currently running a new campaign with some new players during the time of the Clone Wars. One of them is a Force-Sensitive Outcast and the other is a Nightsister. The outcast was quite frustrated that he didn’t have multiple force powers from the start. He argued a seasoned Jedi of the clone wars Should have some skill in the Force (did not purchase any). My questions are these:

1) Is this table rule too OP: Allow force users to begin with 1-3 force powers.

2) Because experience is hard to come by and there are many things to use XP for, should I make the Force Power tree experience cheaper?

Keep in mind I haven’t dealt with a lot of force user players so I’m unsure the balance of it all. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated

If he's just at starting XP, he isn't really a seasoned Jedi of the Clone Wars. This is one of the major reasons I start my players at higher levels of XP, because it gives them more freedom with their backstory.

How much XP did you start with? I prefer to start at Heroic-level, which is starting+150 and 9,000 bonus credits. If you start at starting, XP Force users will often have to decide between characteristics and Force powers, and that isn't a great choice. I concur with @SufficientlyAdvancedMoronics that you shouldn't give them the trees for free; either there should be stuff for the other players, or they should have to earn XP to buy the abilities.

21 hours ago, Tedward777 said:

Greetings fellow friends!

I am currently running a new campaign with some new players during the time of the Clone Wars. One of them is a Force-Sensitive Outcast and the other is a Nightsister. The outcast was quite frustrated that he didn’t have multiple force powers from the start. He argued a seasoned Jedi of the clone wars Should have some skill in the Force (did not purchase any). My questions are these:

1) Is this table rule too OP: Allow force users to begin with 1-3 force powers.

2) Because experience is hard to come by and there are many things to use XP for, should I make the Force Power tree experience cheaper?

Keep in mind I haven’t dealt with a lot of force user players so I’m unsure the balance of it all. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated

Your player is asking you to let them have their cake and eat it too.

It is within the capabilities of just about any Species to begin play with a decent Characteristic spread (4/3/2/2/2/1 or 2) AND to have a couple Force Powers, and/or upgrades, using vanilla character creation rules.

If your player wanted to portray a seasoned Jedi, they had the options available to have built a character that more closely resembled that (barring the fact that, as others have mentioned, vanilla character creation in this system is not capable of matching up to that narrative - which of course your player should have take into account when making up their character's background narrative, or you should have mentioned in the session zero/campaign premise).

They must have chosen to do the more "optimal" thing, though, and spend all their XP on Characteristics?

Why would you ever consider giving the player bonus XP just because they decided to make mechanical choices that didn't match up to their narrative, when they could have made choices that did?

1) As others have said; yes. It would be OP.

2) No. Why would you make the Force trees cheaper instead of just giving them XP at a faster rate if you want them to be able to do cooler stuff faster? It'd be so much work to reconfigure all that, when just saying, "I'll award them 40 XP instead of 20, for this session." is very easy.

Force users do not need a boost. They will be plenty powerful... They do start out a little slow (fewer Skills), but that's the nature of their progression in this system. The Force makes up for it, being capable of not only augmenting many Skills with a single power in many cases, but even completely making many Skills obsolete, and all kinds of other "intangibles", in the long term.

Really it just sounds to me like you all need to start from the start and grow into the system, because you already seem to be missing several points along the way.

Give the Force Sensitives a Mentor. This would give them a 5xp discount on all base Force powers.

On ‎5‎/‎24‎/‎2020 at 1:45 AM, Tedward777 said:

1) Is this table rule too OP: Allow force users to begin with 1-3 force powers.

2) Because experience is hard to come by and there are many things to use XP for, should I make the Force Power tree experience cheaper?

The first one is very much OP, as is the case whenever the GM gives one player a bunch of extra goodies but forces the rest of the group to play the rules "as is" no matter what RPG you're playing.

As has been said, if your Jedi player just has starting XP, they're really not a "seasoned Jedi" in that they've not had much (if anything) in the way of actual "adventures" under their belt. A "seasoned" PC would be one with additional XP, such as the option listed for Heroic Level PCs. Personally, I usually start new campaigns by giving the PCs an extra 25XP (starting skills still capped at two ranks) and an additional 1000 credits to help further "solidify" their conception of the character. It's worked out pretty well and not caused any balance issues, since everybody gets the same bonus.

On the second, kaosoe has a good point of giving the Jedi PC access to a mentor. This automatically makes acquiring new Force powers (mind you, just the base power) a good deal cheaper. With a mentor, it's only 15XP to begin play with what a friend of mine calls the "default Jedi suite" of Enhance, Move, and Sense, albeit at the basic level. Plus, it's a solid roleplay opportunity for the PC, especially if they started out in the Padawan career.

4 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

With a mentor, it's only 15XP to begin play with what a friend of mine calls the "default Jedi suite" of Enhance, Move, and Sense, albeit at the basic level.

The Mentor discount doesn't apply until AFTER character creation XP is spent.

You could start your characters at 375 earned xp (and assuming they put all their starting (species + morality) xp into attributes) the 375 earned xp should be enough to get them most of 1 spec, a few force powers with a few upgrades each. In my opinion it takes something like 900 earned xp to build a character resembling a clone wars obiwan or Anakin (and that requires a highly optimized build to get something obiwan or Anakin like, and I don't mean chosen one mary sue, I mean protagonist movie jedi) so 375 earned xp is really a drop in the bucket and will make the slog to movie protagonist jedi more bearable for your players. The 375 earned xp if used carefully is kind of like an Ahsoka when she was first introduced in the clone wars series. As long as your other players get the same there's no reason for hard feelings from other players.