Thought that since the Beta boards are now a sub-forum and not seeing a lot of traffic these days, folks might be interested in a (not so little) project that Ben "Agent 66/Cyril" Erickson and myself compiled a while back.

http://gsa.thegamernation.org/2012/10/31/star-wars-edge-of-the-empire-the-unofficial-species-menagerie-2-0/

Doubtless that many of these species will get official write-ups down the line by FFG, and will probably look very different than what we came up with, but in the mean time, we hope you'll find these a useful resource, either used as-is or as launching points for your own takes on these species.

Most impressive. My only exposure so far to characters is the basic game, but this still gave me a feel for how races will be handled independent of class considerations (which was tough to discern from the starting characters). Excellent, extensive resource here.

Rykaar said:

Thanks.

Yeah, I figure this will be a lot more useful for more folks once the actual corebook gets released. But in the meantime, it could be used by those with just the Beginner Box to get a rough idea how species are generally treated. Or at least how a couple of RPG veterans see species being treated based on what we saw in the Beta.

Also kinda hoping this might nudge a few folks with their own excellent homemade contributions over in the Beta sub-forum to start new threads over here as well.

*facepalm*

This is what I get for not looking past the first page. I just posted a thread looking for custom species, and the Jawa in particular. I see you've got one here, so my eternal thanks!

As a bonus, Noghri (the favored race of one of my table top guys) is also in here. Excellent stuff!

WildKnight said:

You know, I saw your "custom species" post, and went looking for this thread, figuring it'd fallen off of the front page

And glad we could be of help.

Greetings Mr. Morningfire!

After reading through Shadows of a Black Sun , I noticed that they had a Falleen NPC on pg. 28.

There, they give the race's phermone ability's in-game function (which they call "Allelochemical Transmitters"). I thought that you might like to update your Unofficial Species Menagerie using that information when you had the chance.

BTW: I'm thrilled that you put out that article! My GM is going to let me play a Duros when the Corerulebook comes out!

Cheers!

salamar_dree said:

Yeah, I saw that. There's only one problem… the Falleens' "special ability" is something that can be done in the rules anyway, spending 1 Threat to inflict a point of Strain on the target. The only difference is the Falleen has a description of why it happens. Literally, that's the only difference.

Ah, my apologies!

I've only played the Beginner Game and the Shadows of a Black Sun , so I didn't realize that (maybe I should go back and look more closely at gribble 's Beta book reference documents…).

No problem.

I know the Beta, Beginner's Box, and module have "spend Threat to inflict strain" listed as a combat usage of Threat on the charts denoting FFG's suggestions on how to spend Advantage and Threat, but a lot of folks, self included, have taken that chart as suggestions for both in and out of combat.

Still, does give me an idea of how I might tweak the Falleen's current pheromones ability, and maybe even the Zeltron's as well.

My group loves this guide and have found it incredibly useful 2/3s of them are using species from that list for the core in july

Darth Uruk said:

Awesome!

Yea, my group has a Chiss and a Kubaz that are using these stats as well!

Two of the other people are playing races in-book (Twi'lek and Gand,) but my last guy is playing a Taung. I created the race myself, but I used these stat entries as a guideline for how I made them! These are amazing.

I plan on playing a Jawa the first chance I get.

Nice job love it.

I am working on adding your work to my builder and have a few questions...

1) For the Whiphid, the bonus talent is listed as Expert Hunter. I do not see that talent anywhere. I have found 'Hunter' and 'Expert Tracker'. Can you clarify which talent you intended to give them.

2) For the Defel, you have created the protective goggles. What would you consider their rarity and encumbrance to be? My first thought would be a rarity of 1 or 2 with encumbrance 0. I figure they should be easy enough to obtain... like the electrobinoculars or macrobinoculars, and as light and unobtrusive as the scanner goggles.

3) Also regarding the goggles... do you feel a PC should buy them, or be given them at creation? I compare this to the Ammonia Breather a Gand with lungs is given. Although a player can choose not to have lungs with the Gand, all Defel have the light-sensitivity.

And as others have stated elsewhere, this is an excellent piece of work you guys put together. Thanks for doing it, and allowing me to add it to the builder. I have also added notations in my thanks to those named in the credits of your document. Keep the credit going where it's due.

Bren_Waynero,
Thanks for the complement, and I'd be glad to answer these as best I can.

1) Yeah, my bad. It should be Expert Tracker.

2) That was more Cyril's doing, but I agree with your assessment of Encumbrance being zero. Rarity it'd put at 3, since these are pretty specific to the Defel, and thus probably not quite as common to find.

3) Seeing as how a Defel without these would be suffering setback dice on everything, I'd say they'd pretty much need the goggles to be a functional part of a group. In that light, I feel they should be included as starting gear for free, much like the ammonia breather for Gands with lungs.

Thank you for the quick responses. Time for another question.

For the Shistavanen (and Squib) the SA 'Uncanny Tracker' ('Tech Savvy') grants Survival (Mechanics) as a career skill. Do you feel that this skill should be included as an option for both the initial career and specialization starting skills? Or is the intention simply to have it be cheaper to gain ranks after creation? And if it should be included in the free choices, should a player be allowed to choose it as both a career and specialization, gaining two ranks? I think this would be okay, if a player wanted to emphasize the racial heritage more and use his free ranks in it rather than the other options available.

I have been quite happy for people to use most species in this work, though there are some which I do not allow (inc. Noghri).

E

For the Shistavanen (and Squib) the SA 'Uncanny Tracker' ('Tech Savvy') grants Survival (Mechanics) as a career skill. Do you feel that this skill should be included as an option for both the initial career and specialization starting skills? Or is the intention simply to have it be cheaper to gain ranks after creation? And if it should be included in the free choices, should a player be allowed to choose it as both a career and specialization, gaining two ranks? I think this would be okay, if a player wanted to emphasize the racial heritage more and use his free ranks in it rather than the other options available.

From what i recall, the intent was that was simply cheaper to pick up, and that a character would still be limited by their initial career & spec.

So for the Squib, if they chose Colonist/Scholar as their starting career/spec, they'd have to choose their six bonus skill ranks from those offered by the Colonist career and Scholar specialization. They'd simply get a discount when spending XP, either as part of character creation or from adventuring if they wanted to buy a rank or two in Mechanics. Same deal with Shistavanens. So that particular species ability was more of an incentive for players to buy at least one rank in that given skill as it'd be fairly cheap to do so.

I probably wasn't looking for it hard enough, but I thought I'd ask here. I'm starting an EotE game with some friends of mine, and one of them insisted on being a Jawa (and who was I to stop him, eh?). Jawa have Sillouhette 0, indicating their small stature, but what does that mean in game terms? Obviously they can fit in tighter spaces, use smaller objects as cover, etc, but is there anywhere it says what if any difference there is on combat checks against them or what have you? The only place I could find any reference to different sillouhettes fighting was in the starships section of the rulebook. Can anyone help me out here?

I probably wasn't looking for it hard enough, but I thought I'd ask here. I'm starting an EotE game with some friends of mine, and one of them insisted on being a Jawa (and who was I to stop him, eh?). Jawa have Sillouhette 0, indicating their small stature, but what does that mean in game terms? Obviously they can fit in tighter spaces, use smaller objects as cover, etc, but is there anywhere it says what if any difference there is on combat checks against them or what have you? The only place I could find any reference to different sillouhettes fighting was in the starships section of the rulebook. Can anyone help me out here?

Starship fighting is actually important with regard to creatures with a silhouette of 0. If an X-Wing tries to shoot a Jawa, it's really really difficult (I imagine about as difficult as hitting that Wamp Rat sized weak spot on the Death Star). Silhouette accounts for this.

It's also important when dealing with the Move Force Power. By default the Move power can only lift objects of silhouette 0. This would include Jawas (although further upgrades would be required to move a Jawa fast enough to cause wounds).

But as for person-to-person combat? I'm not sure. Because none of the Species in the Core Rulebook are exceptionally small, I imagine why this was not included.

You'd have to be careful creating house rules for this. Maybe you could treat Jawas as if they are by default prone, where melee attacks against them get a boost but ranged get a setback. And then perhaps the effect is doubled if Jawas actually do go prone. I'm not sure if this would really work.

Whatever the rule, it should be simple and logical and not get in the way of the story

I looked it up again. I was right, I wasn't looking hard enough. It's exactly the same rules as ship combat (one size different is no penalties). So unless we end up against wampas or banthas or something similar sized at some point, it's not going to come into play, apparently.

Pg 212. Size Differences. Comes into play when silhouettes are two points or more in difference.

Yeah, there's really not much of a mechanical effect regarding Silhouette 0 creatures such as Jawas, Ewoks, Squibs, or Astromechs.

Although, since most vehicles start at Silhouette 2 and go up from there, that means that being Silhouette 0 makes it harder for bad guys using vehicle weapons to blast you. Which given the damage being tossed around, that's pretty handy.

I think Ben and I each listed the various Silhouette 0 species as having a starting Wound Threshold of less than 10 before adding Brawn, as a way of making them a bit on the squishy side of things, and not in the fun way

My group took a close look at the Noghri and came up with the following:

1. While the Wookiepedia entry keeps focusing on their hand to hand skills and barely mentions melee weapons, the Thrawn trilogy has a lot more armed and trained Noghri, with ceremonial knives and everything. This lead to our group thinking that the Noghri should be able to choose between 1 point in Brawl OR 1 point in Melee
2. At 1.4-1.7 meters, this seems like an odd choice to be SIL 0- certainly shorter than a human, but much taller than a Jawa.

On an entirely seperate note I've been working on a Python driven Character Builder, while still a long way off, may I incorperate the GSA's Menagerie into it?

My group took a close look at the Noghri and came up with the following:

1. While the Wookiepedia entry keeps focusing on their hand to hand skills and barely mentions melee weapons, the Thrawn trilogy has a lot more armed and trained Noghri, with ceremonial knives and everything. This lead to our group thinking that the Noghri should be able to choose between 1 point in Brawl OR 1 point in Melee
2. At 1.4-1.7 meters, this seems like an odd choice to be SIL 0- certainly shorter than a human, but much taller than a Jawa.

On an entirely seperate note I've been working on a Python driven Character Builder, while still a long way off, may I incorperate the GSA's Menagerie into it?

For some reason, I'd always figured Noghri to be a lot shorter. In retrospect, I probably should remove the Silhouette 0 from there.

As for bonus skills, I'm sticking with Brawl only, simply due to the very heavy emphasis on martial arts that the Noghri have. The melee thing could just simply be a case of those particular Noghri picking up a rank in Melee, something pretty easy for a PC to do if they take the Hired Gun career or the Assassin specialization.

As for including the species, by all means go ahead. As long as a note for the source of the unofficial species is included, I'm good.