I'll be starting in a new campaign soon and I'm wanting a character that's a vibrosword duelist that's also sneaky. How would you build a starting character based on that description? The only caveat I have is no droid characters.

From a purely mechanical standpoint I'd go with a human, rodian, or wookie with the assassin specialty and plans to go into maruder later. At least a three in Agility and Brawn, presence and willpower would be useful for init though in a group that won't be as important with the way init is handled in this system. If you go human you can actually do maruder first and get a level of stealth for free from their out of career bonus skills at creation. Brawn is obviously first priority for a melee fighter but if you go with assassin then agility can be really important not just for stealth but for the talent that lets you spend a destiny to add agility to damage.

Remeber that you can't spend XP on Characteristics after character creation, but can spend XP on Talents and Skills after character creation. So if you're on the fence about whether to raise a particular Characteristic, and you have the XP, I'd suggest going ahead and pulling the trigger, because it's your only chance. On the other hand, if you think you have a set of Characteristics you can be happy with, don't hesitate to use your remaining XP for skills and talents.

You said duellist so I assume Presence might be important?

Human Assassin with 3 in agility, brawn and presence, use up your bonus career skill options for 1 in both Melee and Stealth, the core career skills in maybe athletics, perception, streetwise and vigilance with off career skill choices in Cool and Deception or Charm spending the remaining 20pts to upgrade Melee and Stealth to 2 apiece.

Obligation increase to have enough money for whatever weapon (Vibro sword is 750) you want to wield.

The real question is how do you picture your character?

Gallandro, Han's nemesis and fastest gunslinger from the books (Han Solo at Stars End I think was one) had a particular style just like Boba Fett has his reputation, what's your character's particular mo?

Well, as far as what I was picturing, I'm thinking a guy whose ranged game is mostly one or two pistols, but prefers to go close up with the vibrosword. I'm wanting someone who acts quickly if not first in a lot of instances. I think eventually the GM is going to move us into Jedi (this is going to be a long-term campaign) so once we get there I'm wanting someone with some background in wielding a sword to build some lightsaber butt kicking off of.

Well, as far as what I was picturing, I'm thinking a guy whose ranged game is mostly one or two pistols, but prefers to go close up with the vibrosword. I'm wanting someone who acts quickly if not first in a lot of instances. I think eventually the GM is going to move us into Jedi (this is going to be a long-term campaign) so once we get there I'm wanting someone with some background in wielding a sword to build some lightsaber butt kicking off of.

Wielding a sword won't help with a lightsaber, they use two different skills (Melee for swords, and Lightsaber for, well, you know).

Well, as far as what I was picturing, I'm thinking a guy whose ranged game is mostly one or two pistols, but prefers to go close up with the vibrosword. I'm wanting someone who acts quickly if not first in a lot of instances. I think eventually the GM is going to move us into Jedi (this is going to be a long-term campaign) so once we get there I'm wanting someone with some background in wielding a sword to build some lightsaber butt kicking off of.

Wielding a sword won't help with a lightsaber, they use two different skills (Melee for swords, and Lightsaber for, well, you know).

Mechanically it won't but thematically it will.

I'm kinda counting on the skill necessary for a lightsaber, once it shows up, to look like this: Lightsaber (Agility). That's why I'm wanting at least a 3 and preferably a 4 in Agility. I'd actually prefer to dump XP into Agility than Brawn and try to make up for a slightly lower Brawn with Talents and things like a monomolecular edge or balanced hilt on the vibrosword.

Lightsabers as they stand use either Agility or Brawn, so there may be 2 skills eventually, one for each stat. Or they may work off something else entirely such as Force.

I'd start as Hired Gun - Marauder rather than BH - Assassin, it seems to be a slightly better skill set and tree for what you're trying to achieve. Play human and you can pick up Stealth as a free non-career skill if you don't want to wait until you can afford the second tree.

Right now I'm looking at going Human and bumping my Agility up to 4 and my Willpower up to 3. That would leave me with 10 points to spend. With my two extra Human skills I'm going to get Discipline and Ranged (Light). Then I'll spend my career skill points on Brawl, Perception, Ranged (Heavy), and Vigilance. My specialization points are going to be spent on Melee and Stealth. With my remaining ten XP I'm going to take Melee up to 2.

Down the road of course I'm going to spend a good deal of my XP on talents, with an eye to maybe pick up Marauder.

mauraders are good for Melee, however Melee benefits most from Brawn