Ok:

I have a player (my "party" is a group of two, with me as the GM) who wanted to become a Jedi. He is fairly new to being a tabletop RPG player (though I have run him before EotE with a few games of 13th age, Shadowrun 5th edition, and Rogue Trader). Having said that, I continue:

He REALLY wanted to play a Jedi. I told him, many time, over and over again about how he would become a hunted man, hated by many, and that he had a 100,000 credit bounty on his head as do all Jedi and force users. I told him, he would not start with a lightsaber and he would HAVE to take the force exile career to be force sensitive. I told him i didn't think it would be a good idea, and that anytime he used excessive amounts of the force or ignited a lightsaber there would be a universe of people who would LOVE to turn him in for the bounty reward. The Empire hates him, the people of the universe fear him and that even his party might want a new ship and might turn him in. I told him he could not buy a lightsaber and that he would have to complete 3 full adventures to have the pieces to make his own. But even then, he would HAVE to find another Jedi (in a universe where they were all but extinct) to teach him how to build it and to train him.

I am telling you, this guy REALLY wanted to be a Jedi. The more I went on, the more excited he got about the stories it could tell. It would seem, that my excessive warnings backfired. So, being the "Yes and" type GM I am, I choose, since he wanted it SOOOOO badly, I would allow it.

After a googling of all the various unofficial Jedi options and a reading of them all. I found the one I most liked. It is the one from the d20 radio forums. I would post a link if I could find it again, but I failed. Karma must have upgraded the difficulty dice on me. It is set up much like a career as Jedi and 3 specializations (Guardian, Sentinel and consular i believe).

He selected the Sentinel ( I was impressed, I thought for sure he would go with the lightsaber centered Guardian). Then true to my word, I made him and his party complete 3 full adventures to gather his lightsaber parts (which he kept in a bag that he longingly referred to as his "bag o' saber bits"). I told him that until he found a jedi to teach him the way, he could only invest XP into his force exile or force powers. Each use of force powers when he rolled black pips that I would allow him to use those to fuel his force power, understanding that it would be him tapping into the darkside to use them in fear, anger, revenge or something similar. Every time, he refused with "I WILL NEVER TURN TO THE DARKSIDE!!". again, I was impressed.

Tonight, he found his Jedi Master (no, it is no Yoda, gimme some credit). Now, here is how I decided to do the "building of his lightsaber" and where I am asking advice on what SHOULD have been done.

He had to make a Mechanics roll to construct it, each roll representing an hour of work. The task started off as daunting, and with each attempt he was successful, he could remove a single difficult dice. I also told him the advantage and threat were to effect his strain as per the spending of them according to the rules (each uncanceled threat would add strain, each uncanceled advantage would reduce it). I did this knowing that his untrained mechanic skill would only allow him 2 green dice.

So he worked on it for 9 hours, after which point he was forced into a 6 hour long nap because of strain loss. ZzZzZzZzZz.

The entire build took about 17 hours...and resulting in the Smuggler Scoundrel ALMOST flew off with the ship to go find a planet that wasn't "deserted" where she could find some real adventure. Even going so far as to insinuate that her "friend" was suffering delusions and chasing creatures of fantasy and that "hokie religion" (she was awarded bonus XP for a timly and fun direct movie quote from the original movies....yes, I give XP for that).

My biggest problem (since I was making this up out of whole cloth, as the book doesn't do anything but MENTION Jedi once or twice) is that he was in no danger. While I made him work his "A" double "S" off to get this light-stick in the first place, I did not want him to be confronted with physical danger, I do wish, now that I would have made it possible that he could have destroyed his lightsaber. All he was really in threat of was taking naps as the strain go to much for him...

My question: Where do you think I might have got it wrong? How could I have adjudicated the rules (remember, he was only using 2 green dice to build it) to add the possibility of him bungling so badly that he might have lost the lightsaber.

For the record, if he HAD lost the saber, he would have been met with his Jedi Master saying something like "You are not ready to become a Jedi...perhaps after another 3 adventures to collect your "bag o' saber bits"...

Looking forward to the responses.

I personally would not have let Threat lead to strain. Instead I would have set a time for the task: building a lightsaber takes, for exampple, one month of work. Then I'd let him make the check, with Success determining how well he did with the saber, while Advantage reduced the time taken by a day or two each, while Threat added to the time taken by the same amount. Then I'd just keep track of time while the group went on adventures as usual, with the assumption that the character would spend whatever off-time he had working on the saber "off camera". Once the time determined by the initial roll had passed, he'd have his saber.

Was the Jedi career by me or DarthGM? Either one of us (I'm speaking presumptuously for him) would love to get feedback on how the career has played so well! I didn't design mine with the Rebellion Era in mind, so I know I'd especially appreciate knowing how well it fit into your game.

Anyway, yeah I agree with Krieger22, I'd have had the Threat and Advantage do something pertaining more directly to the task involved. Roll enough threat, and he has to spend extra time at the task (maybe he didn't have the right tool, or he needed to go looking for extra parts because he broke one, or something like that). But months, weeks, hours; the actual time involved doesn't matter to me as much as the narrative in how the saber is built and making sure that the reward (the lightsaber) is appropriate to the cost of getting it (risk, adventure, good RP). And it seems that, for your player, it was. If the nitty-gritties are in how you spend the Advantage/Threat on a mechanics check (or multiple mechanics checks), it would seem you've done well by your player and yourself as a GM.

Maybe if the player sang, "Gonna Need A Montage," you could reduce his time appropriately

First of all: Thank you both for the input. I like the idea you came up with Krieger22. As for you, Awayputurwpn, I will go find the Jedi Career I am using and link it here so you can tell me who's I am using...lol. Give me a few, I want to make sure credit is given where it is due, and I will tell you how the Jedi is working in the Repub era.

Dear Awayputurwpn: I have no idea who made it. I seem to be having trouble finding it. The PDF itself is called JediCareer_v2.4 abd us laidout very nicely and was linked to a dropbox folder. Any chance you could tell who did it from that information, maybe link it? The PDF creator seemed to have forgotten to credit himself...lol.

Anyway, I will continue the search so I can post a link to this thread on those forums, then I will tel you how the Jedi character is turning out.

Holy crap, Awayputurwpn! I think it is your's. Is that possible?

I think you went at it the right way.

Although some kind of environmental challenge might have been interesting (wild animals, a storm, etc.), ruining his masterpiece based on construction rolls alone wouldn't be fun for anyone. A lot of Jedi go find some safe hideyhole when it's time to construct a lightsaber. Luke stays in a cave on Tatooine, for example. It sounds like he's put a lot of effort into it though, and has really been roleplaying a Jedi as well, which is always cool, so don't worry too much about letting him use such a powerful weapon for a while.

If it does start getting out of hand in the future, or you feel like introducing some complications, you could always have something go wrong with the lightsaber, or a particularly clever opponent could even try to tamper with it so it malfunctions. In one of the Clone Wars-era books, Mace Windu ends up with a homing beacon inside his lightsaber, and every time he activates it, Separatist agents close in.

a homing beacon in the lightsaber. nice touch perhaps when he rolls his Obligation that could be my story excuse

@Awayputurwpn:

It is indeed your version of the Jedi. I am going to edit my original post to reflect your d20 radio thread about said Jedi pdf.

GMRicc, how has Awayputurwpn's Jedi Career worked out in your game thus far? Has the jedi (particularly now that he has a lightsaber) been a problem outshining the rest of the group?

GMRicc, how has Awayputurwpn's Jedi Career worked out in your game thus far? Has the jedi (particularly now that he has a lightsaber) been a problem outshining the rest of the group?

I'd like to know this as well. One of my players is in the same boat as GMRicc's--he wants to eventually be a Jedi, and he loves the thought of having a lightsaber. I'm a bit reluctant to give it to him, though, as lightsabers are *extremely* powerful in this game. I think I'll eventually give it to him, but I want to make sure it's not going to completely unbalance the game.