So Let's Talk Advancing Intermediate or Advanced Starting Characters

By Genghis12, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

So we don't yet have any canon "go-by's" yet or an equivalent "Dawn of Defiance" 1-20 super-campaign to judge just exactly what it takes to produce a given character of a given experience level.

What do people feel is a reasonable starting experience methodology for non-beginning characters.

I started with seeming reasonable that a simple basis might be to assume one 10-xp adventure per month for one's "hard adventuring" days. Call it 100 xp per year of "doing adventurously heroic crap." This would actually seem to mimic an active gaming group as matched with typical Star Wars adventure experiences which for 10xp reasonably would last several weeks or so. Add in some hyperspace travel time between locations, and you might get a month easy.

But, then this would produce a Boba Fett who at, say, 32 would be based on 1600 experience points. I can certainly see him doing experience-point-worthy adventuring nearly every day of his life from Attack of the Clones through Return of the Jedi, and well beyond. Right now, this seems a bit much, though.

But maybe not, he got an early start, and he is one of the deadliest men in the galaxy. It looks like a character will need on the order of hundreds of experience points to gain multiple levels in some skills, and add a few trees of talents to any depth level.

Another clear downside is that this method obviously breaks down with the longer-lived characters like Yoda. D20 never quite had such a problem with a hard cap which places Darth Sidious who had lived for decades at the same experience level as Yoda who lived for centuries, and both, perhaps as equally experienced as Dark Empire Ood Bnar who lived for millennia (albeit some 4,000 of those not really doing anything heroic).

What basis are people using to create their venerable Jedi Master mentors and the old gun bounty hunter teachers who pass their tride and true blaster down to the PCs?

Any thoughts for artificially-advancing significant characters who will have a major role in campaigns, and will likely need to have some sort of basis for stats in case they become involved in dice-able action on occasion.

I'm thinking 500 xp build for a lower-mid experienced

1000 xp for a seasoned adventurer

1500 for a high-level adventurer

2000 xp for nearing top-of-career sage expert

Beyond that, I guess what's the point to putting stats down, just use the person for dramatic effect as needed, faking roles to suit the action.

What do people think about this?

Given that it's 10-30 per session, counting progress and motivation bonuses…

500 points is an awful lot. 17-50 sessions (IME, about 20 sessions). And note that XP don't go up as you do… so it's pretty much linear.

Further, a whole tree is only 300 points plus entry cost.

Maxing a skill is either 75 or 100 experience from no skill at all; less for ones you already have.

I think your breakpoints way too high. Maybe 200-300 points per breakpoint.

As for feel, the first 100 additional exp. makes a HUGE difference in the feel.