Edit: First time posting on this board, so I don't know if this is where this is allowed to go. If not, please forgive my ignorance.

My friends and I finished the beginner game and now we're all creating characters (with a custom campaign) using the beta ruleset (and updates). I love the Bounty Hunter personally and am thinking either Gadgeteer or Assassin. Now I also want to try the Exiled Jedi, because well the powers seem awesome. For the group through, we need a pilot.

I can do the pilot thing no problem and just stack skills that require agility. My question is, would you wait until later to take the exiled Jedi and drop all the XP into bumping up the main stat (agility) since you can only do this during character creation? It seems like this would be the benefit over the long haul, and give me more dice to roll for everything from ranged weapons to piloting - or would you say screw that and drop points into Jedi tree. Our plan at the moment is to play this for now, and if we can, adapt the character when the core rulebook drops (pending there aren't too many differences). If we have to we'll just start from scratch.

On a side note, I think it's sad the Rodian is the only species with 3 agility, Twi'leks should be up there as well (based on all that dancing they do).

Yarrr Im A Pirate said:

There was a thread somewhere that was discussing the utility of starting character builds that heavily favored buying up attributes. I think everyone was able to agree that it at least wasn't a bad idea, and its fine if it works for your characterl the discussion largely seemed to devolve into just how good the strategy actually was. I couldn't find the thread on a scan of the forum, and the search tool is usually useless.

From an optimization standpoint (and that seems to be what you're asking about), Agi is probably one of your better bets because combat, especially vehicular combat, is so heavily Agi dependent, I don't think you could go wrong with dumping every XP you can into your Agi stat to get it as high as possible. I think you can get a Rodian up to Agi 5, if you spend 90 creation XP to buy Agi 4 then 5, which just destroys the comparable efficacy of skill rank purchases at creation . Rely on later XP to buy up your skills and the Force Exile spec.

-WJL

tri-spec = fail at all

a Force exile is splitting up his XP into FIVE talent tree's (Career, Force -senstive Exile, Sense, infulence, move). all your initial XP is going to boost your starting Agi, and maybe a rank of pilot and gunnery.

Then you are going to spend 10 XP to become force sensitive

so 100 XP is being used, just to get your character started. The rest is going to be split up increasing your rating, and gaining talents.

I wouldn't do it, unless we were running a campaign where everyone was doing it.

Read the force section again. You don't have to buy in to force power trees, they are not specializations. They just require force rating 1.

Lunatic Pathos said:

Each Force power must be purchased for 10 xp (pg 178 Beta, don't think that has changed). So not only must you purchase the spec, but the powers you want as well.

It sounds like your best bet at character creation is to put as much points as you can into attributes, and any remaining put into skill ranks or talents. It also looks like you should stick with just your starting specialization at character creation. It's unfortunate, though. I wanted a Force-Sensitive character (a kid Slicer who can read minds and has some basic Move powers) too, but you just don't get enough points to start with at character creation. Looks like we'll just have to save all the XP we get for a few game sessions and then begin to delve into the Force-Sensitive Exile specialization and the Force trees.

Yeah, the power costs 10 but it gives you a power. Its not like specializations where you have to pay to open it up without really getting anything. So its 30 points to get Exile, 10 to start on one power. That sounds about right to me. You're brand new, one power is fine, especially since you can probably unlock a new one after one session. Personally I would probably get Exile and a talent, no powers, and learn Powers later. Hell, Luke doesn't get any till the second movie, just a talent or twoin the first one.

In the errata, they changed the Force Sensitive Exile to what they now call a Universal Specialization. So now it only costs 20 as your second spec. You don't need to pay the +10 out of Career fee to pick it up anymore.

Even better. Could easily get a 4, a 3, 3 2s, and a 1, force exile, a power, and maybe a couple cheap talents depending on species. That sounds totally reasonable.