So, me and 2 other friends are doing co gm campaign with each other of a group of Jedi running from the Empire. This week it is my turn to GM. We are heading towards getting off the planet Weik, which is the DND planet of star wars. We have each have 2 jedi characters we can be (6 altogether) and each of us have created a Inquisitor to hunt down our Jedi. Yeah, it's kinda complicated but fun.

For my inquisitor, I did the master mind build from the Core Rule book with force harm, where he can use intellect for lightsaber (which is a 5), Parry 4 and Improved Parry. Stats are 3 brawn, 3 agi, 5 intellect, 3 cunning, 2 willpower, 4 Presence. Has Computers 4, Cool, 2, Mechanics 1, Charm 2, Deception 3, Negotiation 1, 2 in all knowledge checks.

I have been teasing over the past few sessions that my inquisitor has been keeping tabs on him and I'm at the point where he want to infiltrate the group of Jedi as they investigate a fall of a local raider group. He also has a challenger in place to see the full power among the group. So, he is going to be highly sus from the get go. I'm giving him a Blaster rifle to throw off suspicion off of him. To my players, he is going to look like a commando from a nearby town, when in reality he is anything but.

I feel like that he has the stats where he can legitimately deceive the whole group and have them on ring around his finger. He is going to try to divide them up one by one or pit them against one another.

Here's the stupid part: At some point during the adventure, he is going to take everyone on. He is going to try take one down by surprise. He is going to take on 6 Jedi and try to take them all down. Probably start off with a stun grenade to start affecting strain. His goal is to take them alive. If he has to retreat, he will cave in the mines they are in and smoke them out with the empire. The end goal of this adventure is for the players to see the full might of the empire in the sky and pick up with escaping the empire next week with someone else GM. (They are already planning it, or more accurately, planning it as much as they can)

So, am I stupid for wanting to pit an inquisitor against 6 Jedi and see how he fairs? (He will be getting 2 slots for combat, of course.) Also, what are some things I can do so the players don't just outright kill him? I'm hoping for him to stick around for a while.

My very honest feeling here is that the encounter when he actually does turn on the jedi won't be a satisfying combat. One NPC vs. a whole party just doesn't seem to resent enough of a challenge in my opinion. You pretty much have to stat them like a Rancor before you get anything that lasts a reasonable number of rounds - or long enough to have meaningful dialogue while they fight.

I would suggest taking a page from the extended universe and seeing how even seasoned sith lords would be very hesitant to take on a fight like that where the odds are this heavily against them. When an apprentice would kill their master, it would have to be done at the most opportune moment to make sure the deck is absolutely stacked in their favor (see Darth Plagueis killing Tenebrous , Sidious supplanting Tenebrous , or Zannah challenging Bane ) The primary weapons of dark side users in this era are:

1. Patience
2. Deceit
3. The almost limitless resources of the Empire

It would be better suited to have the inquisitor bide his time until the moment is just right, potentially luring them into a trap. Either way, having minions or other threats in combat is essential to having a nemesis encounter with the whole party which has a real sense of threat and isn't over in three rounds. (at least that's my experience)

Now, it doesn't have to be a trap where there are stormtroopers waiting to jump them, it can be a trap where he lures them into the nest of some nasty b e a s t i e s which can debilitate or incapacitate players to make the job easier for the inquisitor. Then you can have the ' Pints and Miles Brigade ' turn up once that battle is concluded to make escape harder if they won, or for the NPC to gloat if he won.

Love the idea of having players make their own inquisitor for the campaign, by the way. Really nice idea.

Sounds fun.

This is tough to pull off especially in this system so I'd say don't get too attached to the Inquisitor.

Here's some suggestions:

- Beef him up a lot. Force Rating 4; Bind power with Upgrades to lock them down on his first action and do some damage; Adversary 3 (which I think is the baseline for Inquisitors in the book); Parry 3

- Add a timed element to the encounter so they have something else to be concerned with other than the Inquisitor - maybe they see the Empire descending and know they need to scram (maybe leading to a chase/escape scene).

- Add environmental complications that he's set himself up to handle. Maybe it's in an icy or dark area that will pile on Setback dice to skill checks.

- Add a 'trap' event to start that puts one or more of the Jedi in immediate mortal peril or temporarily removes them from the action - like a pit trap or a droid or creature that grapples/rushes them, etc.

And be fully prepared for him to be quickly annihilated in three turns or less. For such is the way of 6 versus 1 fights tend to go.

Baseline by-the-book Inquisitors do not have a great track record for posing much of a real threat in 1-on-party combat.

Think of ways to "remove" characters from the equation without incapacitating or stun-locking them, because that's no fun if it happens right at the beginning of a combat.

If you get one character who is in trouble and needs help, that might take two of the characters out of the picture.

Or if the Inquisitor traps some of them in a "rancor pit" to fight some creature while he deals with the remaining PCs. Then you could have a moment of "You have a choice... Stop me, or save your friends."

Imperiling NPCs can have a similar effect, though the PCs may very well just go "Nah, let's fight the Inqy." Conflict traps may also be the way to go here. If you stop the Inquisitor, then you are sacrificing something else and will take X Conflict. If you act to do Y, then you don't take any Conflict but the Inquisitor gets away.

20 hours ago, micheldebruyn said:

And be fully prepared for him to be quickly annihilated in three turns or less. For such is the way of 6 versus 1 fights tend to go.

Baseline by-the-book Inquisitors do not have a great track record for posing much of a real threat in 1-on-party combat.

About the only sort of party a by-the-book Inquisitor can pose a viable threat to is a beginning-tier group. I'd say once the PC hit Knight/Heroic level, a single by-the-book Inquisitor is going to be a damage sponge at best as the PCs bring their various tricks to bear on the single foe.

To the OP, take note of how the Inquisitors from Rebels and even Jedi Fallen Order operated. They didn't go for "one against many" if they could avoid it. In Rebels, the only person that took on the entire Ghost crew alone was Darth Vader, and that's because he's Darth *bleeping* Vader ; even then, his goal wasn't to wipe out the Ghost crew but rather get them to flee to where their small fleet was located, so his absolute manhandling of Ezra and Kanan was him just about literally toying with them. Also from Rebels, the Grand Inquisitor generally stuck to one-on-one bouts with Kanan, with Ezra typically being a minor nuisance at best for any fights he got directly involved in.

Like SuffAdvMo suggested, a sensible Inquisitor is going to want to stack the deck in their favor before a combat as much as possible, up to and including having serious Imperial reinforcements on hand if dealing with multiple targets at once. If anything, if dealing with six Jedi types, a smart Inquisitor is going to want to try and split them up as much as possible before engaging. Think along the lines of a slasher movie villain, who takes out their targets one at a time, whittling down the field until there's only one or two harried/freaked out opponents left. The system was designed to ensure that combats are always dangerous, not only for the PCs but also for the bad guys, so as to largely prevent the "hopeless boss fight" scenario that can crop up in other systems.

I second him trying to take them out one by one.

Have them all be infiltrating a <plot location> and start to pair off the better explore. Inquisitor could be hiding a lightsaber in the blaster rifle somehow and once they are separated, could try to take out the first of the Jedi. After being discovered the sole survivor, he can use Deception to make them thing there was a rogue Force user that attacked them both and the Jedi sacrificed his/her life to save the "not an" Inquisitor.

You said the inquisitor was tested their strength levels beforehand, so maybe try it on the most powerful of the Jedi first. Even if the attempt fails, there are always more inquisitors.

Thank you for all the responses. I'm going to have the inquisitor split the group up to save local town folk we have been building up. This really helped spur on some creative ideas on how to make this first encounter with an inquisitor really interesting.

17 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Like SuffAdvMo suggested...

You can just call me 'Moron' for short if you want a shorter name to type 😄

3 hours ago, SufficientlyAdvancedMoronics said:

You can just call me 'Moron' for short if you want a shorter name to type 😄

Nah, that comes across as unnecessarily insulting, especially if read by a third party.

Maybe SadMo?

28 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Nah, that comes across as unnecessarily insulting, especially if read by a third party.

Maybe SadMo?

It's my handle in a few sites/applications, and some people just shorten it to SAM if that works for you?

The only way one character is going to be able to stand up to a PC party is if they have maxed out the peerless interception signature ability, have a fr of 5+, and a bunch of ranks in parry and reflect... and that's a 4 round window of time.

On 11/15/2020 at 12:41 AM, EliasWindrider said:

The only way one character is going to be able to stand up to a PC party is if they have maxed out the peerless interception signature ability, have a fr of 5+, and a bunch of ranks in parry and reflect... and that's a 4 round window of time.

That depends on the player group. Not all RPG Groups are consisting of Min/Maxed Power Gamers with 1000+ earned XP plus everybody´ s a fighter.

We got a group of 4 around 300 earned XP that barely escaped a single battle droid because the only real fighter was injured at the very beginning of the fight.

I need to admit that this was a non-force-user party though.

1 hour ago, dreenan said:

That depends on the player group. Not all RPG Groups are consisting of Min/Maxed Power Gamers with 1000+ earned XP plus everybody´ s a fighter.

We got a group of 4 around 300 earned XP that barely escaped a single battle droid because the only real fighter was injured at the very beginning of the fight.

I need to admit that this was a non-force-user party though.

Well, he was refering to the part as "six Jedi", so I assume they're not pushovers with barely more than starting XP.

10 hours ago, dreenan said:

That depends on the player group. Not all RPG Groups are consisting of Min/Maxed Power Gamers with 1000+ earned XP plus everybody´ s a fighter.

We got a group of 4 around 300 earned XP that barely escaped a single battle droid because the only real fighter was injured at the very beginning of the fight.

I need to admit that this was a non-force-user party though.

9 hours ago, micheldebruyn said:

Well, he was refering to the part as "six Jedi", so I assume they're not pushovers with barely more than starting XP.

@dreenan you're missing the current context that @micheldebruyn mentioned.

Yes, well, without knowing the level of the Jedi it is still just an assumption.

6 hours ago, dreenan said:

Yes, well, without knowing the level of the Jedi it is still just an assumption.

Plus, in all fairness, the term "Jedi" gets thrown around quite a bit in SWRPGs, and is often shorthand for Force user, especially amongst newer players and GMs. Back in ye olden days, Jedi was pretty much the only term used for Force users of most any stripe, thanks in no small part to WEG assuming that the term equaled "someone trained to use the Force." Especially as the Sith weren't a codified concept at that time (late 80's to early 90's). I've had PCs that called themselves "Jedi" that had less of a clue of where not to point the business end of a lightsaber than Luke did while in Ben's hut in ANH, simply because at the time we all operated under the idea that "if you're a Force user, in this setting you generally get called a Jedi."

In addition, just because a PC in this system is built using one of the Lightsaber Form specs (or a permissive GM that let you start in the Jedi career when outside of Old Republic era), has ranks in Lightsaber, and a lightsaber doesn't mean that PC is going to be a dominating combatant. After all, a single rank in Lightsaber, a training lightsaber, and only the basic abilities of a couple Force powers is a very different combatant than one with 3+ ranks in Lightsaber, a proper lightsaber with a fairly well upgraded crystal, and upgraded Force powers.

On 11/18/2020 at 10:27 PM, dreenan said:

Yes, well, without knowing the level of the Jedi it is still just an assumption.

Given the set up I had assumed clone wars survivors that were either knights or mature padawans as of order 66 and they are now the mechanical equivalent of knights.

You are correct that may not be a good assumption but it is what's most consistent with what the OP told us.

As for weg, 2nd edition revised and expanded had a plant like alien force users as a character template.... so I don't buy the Jedi == force user argument... maybe that was the assumption in @Donovan Morningfire 's gaming circle but it wasn't in mine. And there was a tales of the jedi companion book that talked about sith and probably Krath but I'm don't remember that bit.

15 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

Given the set up I had assumed clone wars survivors that were either knights or mature padawans as of order 66 and they are now the mechanical equivalent of knights.

You are correct that may not be a good assumption but it is what's most consistent with what the OP told us.

As for weg, 2nd edition revised and expanded had a plant like alien force users as a character template.... so I don't buy the Jedi == force user argument... maybe that was the assumption in @Donovan Morningfire 's gaming circle but it wasn't in mine. And there was a tales of the jedi companion book that talked about sith and probably Krath but I'm don't remember that bit.

You might want to re-read the chapters on the Force in the old WEG books. Given that when the 1st edition came out, a large swath of folks came to equate the term "Jedi" with "someone that is trained in and able to use the Force." The term got applied to Yoda long before he ever picked up a lightsaber, and was even applied to Palps in some circles.

And apparently I have a much broader circle of gamers whom I've known and interacted with over the years, as there were plenty well outside my usual gaming circle that operated under the idea that Jedi was the default term for any sort of Force user (thus why terms such as "dark Jedi" came about in books and comics), again not helped by any non-Jedi Force-using templates being largely one note appearances that were never really expanded on by WEG for the most part.

If you want to act all smug and superior that your close-knit circle never once ever used "Jedi" as a short-hand term for "some that uses the Force," knock yourself out on what is undoubtedly a bald-faced lie.

1 hour ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

You might want to re-read the chapters on the Force in the old WEG books. Given that when the 1st edition came out, a large swath of folks came to equate the term "Jedi" with "someone that is trained in and able to use the Force." The term got applied to Yoda long before he ever picked up a lightsaber, and was even applied to Palps in some circles.

And apparently I have a much broader circle of gamers whom I've known and interacted with over the years, as there were plenty well outside my usual gaming circle that operated under the idea that Jedi was the default term for any sort of Force user (thus why terms such as "dark Jedi" came about in books and comics), again not helped by any non-Jedi Force-using templates being largely one note appearances that were never really expanded on by WEG for the most part.

If you want to act all smug and superior that your close-knit circle never once ever used "Jedi" as a short-hand term for "some that uses the Force," knock yourself out on what is undoubtedly a bald-faced lie.

Yoda was introduced by obiwan as "the jedi master who instructed me" so using him as an example to make your point doesn't float.

Humor intended... my face has a beard but the the hair on the top of my head is thin enough to be called bald.... and no it isn't a lie.

1st edition weg was a little before my time, I started playing weg starwars in probably 1990 or 1991 (freshman or sophomore year in highschool). I *started* with the 2nd edition revised and expanded and never owned a copy of first edition. My high school gaming group was a small circle and the plant like alien force user that was clearly stated to not be a jedi in second edition revised and expanded may be responsible for starting us down the right path. Whatever the reason my highschool gaming group never called a non jedi force sensitive a jedi in my presence. My college campaign was a non-force sensitive (edge like) campaign... so it never came up. I took a break from gaming until about 2004 or 2005 when I restarted with wotc RCR which had force adapts and darkside marauders in it... so... yeah... I've never called a non jedi force user a jedi and never heard anyone in my gaming group do it either.

Dark jedi was short for fallen to the darkside jedi in my circles.