Starting Jedi

[Naaman]

[garhkal]

[Jedi Skyler]

Bottom line, if you want to hamper the Jedi because you don't have a player capable of running him without being a power-mad Emperor wannabe: TAKE AWAY HIS LIGHTSABER.

Unless you're playing a specialized game where you have Grey Paladins or something, where they're not usually restricted to a lightsaber as their primary weapon, when you take away this weapon, you've severely hampered them in combat. Sure, with Concentration, they can boost their abilities in any other skill, and Concentration is a staple skill; it's MEANT to help a Jedi focus on what they're doing so they can do it better. But it doesn't always work. Case in point: I'm currently playing a character on another site who came across a Jedi in our travels, and has learned some of the ways of the Force from him.

Two important things here: First, my character has indeed learned LSC, although he doesn't have his own lightsaber. His Master has just been taken away from him, and not only does he not have a lightsaber, he only has some of the components with which to build one. He's already looked into the crystals, which are now illegal, and the places where they can be normally and most easily found are interdicted by the Empire. He's also looked into synthesizing them, and has found that the equipment required costs WAY more than he has. Ergo, he's not getting a lightsaber anytime soon without a miracle.

Second, the party is currently in their ship, evading fire from a group of hostile fighters. My character is in one of the turrets, and I've been routinely using Concentration and Starship Gunnery to fire at them. Thing is, I haven't scored a single hit. His SG score is a measly 2D, and once I was able to get him sufficiently calmed to successfully USE Concentration, my rolls still weren't enough to hit the starfighters.

Bottom line is, even with the "Maxi-big, the Force," you're not guaranteed imminent success. You might have enough Force skill dice to successfully hit the Concentration roll every time, but if you're dealing with skills that you haven't yet developed, you might be dealing with constant failure as well.

[Naaman]

I love playing Jedi, but for the game to be fun, the character needs to be able to succeed at the skills that are part of his concept (Force skills).

Affect mind IS more powerful than persuasion, but its wayyyy harder to pull off and not usually worth trying until you reach at least 6 or 7D in ALL 3 skills. Hence, in my 17 years of playing I've used the power three times, and it worked only once.

If the power couple be used at the somewhat lower levels of play, I wouldn't feel the need to revamp every aspect of Force use in the rules.

My bottom line opinion is simply this: There needs to be more diversity among Jedi PCs in the skill selection and useability of those skills. d20, unfortunately, does a much better job of facilitating this, but D6 feels overall more like Star Wars. So, I spend hours upon hours looming for ways to "bring balance to the Force" within the rules that allows someone to be exactly what they envision from session one, building in power as they play, but not feeling like their character is gimped purely because of the potential for greater power later (when many campaigns don't last nearly long enough for a Jedi character to ever be fully realized).

[DougRed4]

[garhkal]

Did every one else get effectively 17d on top of their 18d attributes? Or was this something for 'jedi knights' only?
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Jamfke]

Fact is, the rules were written to emulate the original films. Jedi were all but gone in the galaxy, so the rules were made out to keep any Force wielding characters limited. If you intend to have a Jedi Knight as a starting character, then you must treat them differently than a normal starting character.

Jedi Knights are better than the average character in terms of skill use and their powers. They're also virtual war machines when it comes to lightsaber combat, so they will outshine the other normal characters in that area.

The thing is, if you are playing your campaign in the Prequel era, your Force users should be powerful. They should be better than the average non Force using characters, because that's the way they were. Therefore, you must give them better starting dice than a normal character to reflect this. Just because the RAW says something, it doesn't make it the end-all be-all for the game.

If all of the players are okay with the way things are handled, then there is no problem. If/when I run a game in the Prequel era, I usually give the players the same amount of starting dice because I want them to be competent from the get-go. My recent Dark Side campaign started with each character receiving 16 skill dice. Most of the players decided upon playing Force users, while a couple chose to go with regular characters. The ratio of mundane skills to Force skills was pretty even, and so far they are keeping pace with each other nicely.
_________________
Check out some of my games at DriveThruRPG!
Role Players Direct

[DougRed4]

Thanks, Jamfke, I see things much the same way.

[Tupteq]

Personally, I wouldn't do that. This may cause that game will become a theater of one actor (and few extra). Jedi Knight is above average, but if one player is above average, then why not the rest of group? His company could be: a staged smuggler, veteran scout and experienced noble negotiator (also proficient with aggressive negotiations), not a bunch of amateurs.

I'm pretty sure my players wouldn't accept such unbalanced group. The worst thing that may happen is that other players may feel useless, because 'favored' character may do all what they can, but better. Such situation has happened to me (as a player) few times and it was very frustrating. And even if your players say "ok, we don't see the problem", the truth may be different (after few sessions they may be frustrated by 'mr.diing-all-better'). And Jedi restrictions really don't change anything, in the worst case it may divide PCs to one, who does all the things except killing, and the rest doing nothing, but bad things.

Of course, it's your game and your players, maybe it will be different in your case, but I wanted to share with you my bed feelings about this (based on my experience).

[Jamfke]

[garhkal]

[Quetzacotl]

It depends entirely on the play stile of people.

Unfortunately, most people look on stats and get cranky and feel it being unfair that another player gets more startin D then they do, even so the character is supposed to be stronger based on the background of the gameworld.

I mean, some of you do give out different CP based on how the players roleplay and the like, so y do you are so strongly against giving a Jedi more points at the beginning? (I don't know which of you do, but based on what I read in this forum, some of you do that)

The Problem is, that the Starting characters should be more or less the same in strength. But if a Jedi Plaer want's that his character can even remotely use the Force, he becomes FAR weaker then all the other characters.
When he gets to use LSC and is able to activate it successfull most of the times, we're already at a phase in game where the other characters are so much powerful that the Jedi NEEDS those bonus points.

The Beauty of the SW D6 Force powers is, that they don't make other powers completely redundent from the very beginning! (Unless you play with some of the houseruled or converted Force Powers seen on d6holocron wiki)
They mostly enable you to do things that you otherwise couldn't to to begin with and even when they do something you could do normally it is very very hard that only at the very end of the game you can do it (I mean look at the relationship modifiers, if you don't know someone and he is another race, you get +30 to the difficulty.. on average, you need 9D(!) to counter that effect.).

Personally, I think Jedi Characters SHOULD get more points. Let them create a character like anyone else and then give them maybe 4-5D that they can put freely in the force skills (with maybe 2D or 3D max in one skill). Houserule LSC and simply remove Concentration from the game and everything is fine. The Jedi is not completely worthless but he also won't overpower the others. And he won't do that for a LONG time to come, because the powers that could make him extremely strong have high difficulty levels and are subjeted to the distance and relatiohship modifiers that nearly make it impossible to use several powers (Like the Mind Control power... seriously, who needs to use those powers on someone they know and are friends with? You mostly use them on someone you don't know or havn't even heard of, so the diffictuly modifier is at least +15, mostly more, which, on average, needs 4D+ to counter).

[garhkal]

[Jamfke]

I don't understand the inherent Jedi hate going on in this thread by some people.

Again I'll state, it really depends on the type of game you are running. If running a Prequel era game, there is absolutely nothing wrong with a starting Jedi character receiving more points to start with. To ensure a measure of balance within the group, however, you need to give the mundanes an equal share of starting points. I don't see how this can be considered power-mongering, nor does it make the Jedi any less special.
_________________
Check out some of my games at DriveThruRPG!
Role Players Direct

[DougRed4]