Which careers for pre and post OT jedi?

By DarthDude, in Star Wars: Force and Destiny RPG

I would like to run a game that either takes place in a KotoR/Clone Wars or in a post OT New Republic era and contains regular jedi characters in a stable jedi order environment. Now we have 4 jedi trees in Collapse of the Republic and Rise of the Seperatists which feel to be very few when compared to the wealth of the FaD careers and trees.

How would you combine both, the jedi and the FaD trees to create regular diverse jedi characters? Are there maybe already threads/sources elaborating on this topic in depth (which I sadly didn't find with search)?

I’d go for the Force and Destiny careers in a post trilogy game. At that point in the timeline, the Jedi traditions of the republic are still largely being rediscovered, so I think the careers fit well.

For the old republic, I would use the Jedi career from then clone wars books and give each character access to one lightsaber form specialization and one other Jedi specialization (e.g. seer, protector, sage). You could give those to them for free if everyone is playing Jedi, or count them as career specializations if your party is mixed. That would bring the Jedi career up to six specializations and provide a little differentiation between Jedi characters.

For some more peaceful eras I feel that the Jedi career's General tree is an odd fit. In such a situation I'd consider the General tree to be a Force sensitive-only universal tree, which would open up the Jedi career for three extra trees.

With that in mind, I have the same idea as yoink101, but would add that all three new "Jedi" trees would have to come from the same FaD career (Consular, Guardian, etc.).

E.g., Padawan, Knight, Master, Niman, Healer, Sage.

Or Padawan, Knight, Master, Shien, Artisan, Sentry.

And so on.

10 hours ago, DarthDude said:

I would like to run a game that either takes place in a KotoR/Clone Wars or in a post OT New Republic era and contains regular jedi characters in a stable jedi order environment. Now we have 4 jedi trees in Collapse of the Republic and Rise of the Seperatists which feel to be very few when compared to the wealth of the FaD careers and trees.

How would you combine both, the jedi and the FaD trees to create regular diverse jedi characters? Are there maybe already threads/sources elaborating on this topic in depth (which I sadly didn't find with search)?

Depends on what source they are getting their knowledge from.

32 minutes ago, Bellona said:

For some more peaceful eras I feel that the Jedi career's General tree is an odd fit. In such a situation I'd consider the General tree to be a Force sensitive-only universal tree, which would open up the Jedi career for three extra trees.

With that in mind, I have the same idea as yoink101, but would add that all three new "Jedi" trees would have to come from the same FaD career (Consular, Guardian, etc.).

E.g., Padawan, Knight, Master, Niman, Healer, Sage.

Or Padawan, Knight, Master, Shien, Artisan, Sentry.

And so on.

I don’t see any reason to limit the extra careers to one career. But I don’t like that limitation in any case. Especially because there are some specializations across different careers that I think work really well together. Examples being: soresu and artisan, seer and niman, Makashi and the guardian that uses leadership, for example.

I’d rather my players have the opportunity to try different and interesting combinations.

8 hours ago, Daeglan said:

Depends on what source they are getting their knowledge from.

Regularly from a jedi academy and then doing a apprenticeship under a jedi knight/master, so nothing self-taught.

5 hours ago, DarthDude said:

Regularly from a jedi academy and then doing a apprenticeship under a jedi knight/master, so nothing self-taught.

That would lead to Padawan Knight Master line. as that is a very formal curricula.

5 hours ago, DarthDude said:

Regularly from a jedi academy and then doing a apprenticeship under a jedi knight/master, so nothing self-taught.

I guess a part of it for a pre-OT campaign depends on how much life experience the prospective Jedi had prior to joining the Order.

In a KOTOR/SWTOR time frame, where the Jedi Order was willing to accept students that weren't still-impressionable children, such as teenagers and especially adults, then the F&D careers would be more applicable as they reflect a Force user who hasn't benefited from a lifetime of Jedi training, generally being self-taught or having limited instruction prior to joining the Order. I guess a good rule of thumb would be that if the PC was of the age of majority by the time they joined the Jedi Order, then they're going to be using a F&D career as their basis.

From about the time of the Ruusan Reformations (circa 1000 BBY), the Jedi Order restricted new applicants to very young children, so most "Jedi" PCs would be using the Jedi career and probably following the Padawan->Knight->Master specialization chain, with a possible divergence for either a Lightsaber Form spec or a spec that centers on that Jedi's particular area of expertise. You could still have F&D careers being used, but those would kind of be the "oddballs" who don't quite follow the Order's increasingly dogmatic approach to instruction.

With post-OT, the Jedi Order is gone and defunct, with (canonically) only Luke being around to train a new generation of Jedi, and if you stick to the storyline of the sequel trilogy that effort winds up going pear-shaped, and by the ST's end, there's only Rey around to build her own version of a New Jedi Order. So PCs there who, like Rey, adopt the Jedi path are again going to be built using F&D careers, with those specs that focus on sheer lightsaber prowess being quite rare, and the Jedi career and its specs being largely unheard of unless the PC is well over three-quarters of a century old, since again there's not really anyone to train new Jedi. Sure, you could have the "my PC survived the razing of Luke's training academy!" background (which I did for a PC back when all we had was the info in TFA), but that might be too cliché for some folks (it did get used an awful lot in the days of WEG D6).

However, if you opt to veer more towards Legends with regards to a post-OT campaign, then you have Luke's Yavin 4 Praxeum, and would likely follow the same rule of thumb that I offered about the KOTOR/SWTOR era Jedi, in that if the PC was either in their late teens or full adulthood, then they should be using F&D careers, while a PC that came to Luke's Praxeum as a child/tween is more likely to be starting play as a Jedi/Padawan.