To fore-ground this: so far I have enjoyed the new system, and I don't find anything "wrong" with it.

How do people go about enhancing the "heroic" feeling of starting characters? Are there suggestions for starting characters that you make to help enhance character success? Are there certain types of enemies that GMs use to give the players a sense of success?

The PCs that were available to us in the first game I played in, I noticed the GM didn't use any starting XP to increase stats. Because of this, most dice pools were limited to 2 ability/prof dice, which made failure a fairly common result.

for the Game demos I will be running, I went a different route and spent most of the PC XP on characteristics, leaving the PCs largely unskilled, but with larger ability dice pools. Is something that is recomended so far?

Also, I find minions to be much tought than even I am used to. Saga and the d20 starwars has left me with the impression that an average minion should die from a typical blaster pistol at "1st" level. In EotE, a Heavy Blaster deals 7 damage, and an average minion has soak 3 and WP 5-6, meaning that you have to really succeed on the to-hit to kill even one minion. Combined with the above low dice pools, we found combat really drug on.

I'm looking to begin game demos, so I want to get a sense of what others are doing beyond some strategies that I've already seen and tried.

Thanks all.

Majesticmoose said:

Personally, I don' think there's quite as much of a "heroic feeling" when a character starts out in Edge of the Empire. Many posters here and on other forums have likened EotE to being "Firefly set in the SW 'verse." The PCs are better than the average person (who probably has a 2 in all their Characteristics and at best one rank in the skill they use to make a living), but they're not the "big screen heroes" that Saga Edition encouraged.

As for building PCs, there's really not a universally accepted method. There are some that say spending your starting XP on talents or skills is a waste, and that it all should be spent on boosting your Characteristics. And there are others that feel you should devote a large portion of your starting XP on skills, as they'll eventually eclipse your Characteristics anyway. And I'm sure they'll chime in with their reasons and validations at some point.

But there are folks like myself that prefer a more balanced approach, typically of spending around half your starting XP on Characteristics, a quarter of it on talents,and the rest on skills, typically buying a single rank in skills that are useful but didn't come as part of your starting career and specialization. It may not be the most mathematically viable option, but I've come to find it produces a solid character with some fun options rather than some bloke who only rolls lots of dice.

Thanks for the view point. I've tried the skill heavy as a player, and I'm interested to see the characteristic heavy from a GM POV. talents…

I find a lack of talents that truly differentiate characters from one career toanother, one specialization to another. Bodyguard stands out as a major exception, most talents seem to provide too insignificant a bonus to make a meaningful contribution at character creation.

I say that because after character creation, when you ahve 1-3 adventures under your belt talents can really make a character shine, but off the line so to speak, they seem… not so good.

But then that could just be the nature of non-linear character creation. Whitewolf has it's fair share of the same thing. I'm just concerned that PCs might actually find minions to be too difficult in the long run in an adventure. My group nearly was defeated by 3 minions and a henchmen. I eben had the "combat" character (pregenerated PCs here) and I failed to hit on every shot, even when spending destiny.

Now, I understand that those are the breaks, but I place myself in a new player's shoes and I think that maybe there is a "better" or more advisable build baseline for starting characters.

Again, Appreciated.

Majesticmoose said:

My players focussed upon Attributes. They had the heroic feeling, because I threw only minions at them. And the minions weren't terribly bright.

Keep it moving. Give them things to divide their attention. Let the bad guys pound relatively harmlessly on the brick. Encourage them to narrate the distraction factor.

J. had a roll where he got a net 1 advantage, no successes (despite my Red-shifting the badguys with Destiny). He declared that he was distracting them so C. could have a better shot.

They loaded under fire, and took off… while being shot at.