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DougRed4
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 Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 6:42 pm Post subject: Young Jedi Template |
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My Google Fu did not quickly find another thread on this topic, so I'm wondering what you all think of the Young Jedi template.
One of my gaming groups, that meets every two weeks, had decided to move to a sci-fi game. After lots of discussion, we decided to go with Star Wars, being as generic sci-fi games are hard to sustain. Then the GM picked WEG d6, and subsequently discovered the REUP, so it looks like we're using that as our rules.
Our game will be set between RotJ and TFA, and I've been granted the ability to play the sole Jedi: Breha Padme Organa, the daughter of Han and Leia.
I've always thought of the d6 template of the Young Jedi as quite weak. 1D in each of the Force abilities is pretty wimpy, though the DEX and PER are quite good.
The plan is that she will be quite young (20 or 21 years old), but I suspect that she will be nowhere near as competent with the Force as Luke was in ANH. Not that she needs to be uber powerful. I just wonder if she'll even be able to do much more than make a spoon wiggle on a table with those miniscule Force ratings.
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 7:02 pm Post subject: |
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Well, depends on what sort of character you're going for. For a human Force user, the Young Jedi actually has the strongest starting position for building a Jedi, at the cost of being relatively weak in the non-FS attributes and skills.
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Naaman
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| Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 7:43 pm Post subject: |
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The peripheral issue of whether the character creation rules are well balanced is relevant to the discussion.
A lot of us on here think that a starting PC who is force sensitive is best served to take 0D in force skills and learn them along the way, rather than take the substantial hit to starting attribute dice (a whopping 3D) in exchange for literally unusable force skills early on.
I would ask your GM what they envision for power levels, how accessible will a tutor/mentor be for your character, and at what rate does he expect for the characters to progress.
As some one who has played many human Jedi in D6, I can tell you that 3D is the absolute minimum you should be thinking about as far as usable force skills, and at that level, they are not quite reliable enough to be the basis for a character concept (consider that a "blaster slinger" character will start with between 4D and 6D in his primary skill, and around 4D-5D in other important skills; the Young Jedi MIGHT get one skill at 4D and then has to deal with a max of 2D to 3D in the skills that are supposed to define the character concept).
Once you hit 4D in your force skills, you will see that they are actually usable with a reasonable rate of success.
If your GM is not familiar with the system, I'd try running a few scenarios that he thinks should be reasonable difficulty for a single starting PC and see if the Young Jedi, as presented in the template (and getting the 7D skill dice added in) is able to do what he thinks a starting PC should be able to do. After that, try to tweak the starting skill dice so that the character is actually playable, and not merely a liability to the rest of the party... offering nothing other than moral compass until after you've earned 200-250 character points.
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Whill
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| Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:59 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | I've always thought of the d6 template of the Young Jedi as quite weak. 1D in each of the Force abilities is pretty wimpy, though the DEX and PER are quite good.
The plan is that she will be quite young (20 or 21 years old), but I suspect that she will be nowhere near as competent with the Force as Luke was in ANH. Not that she needs to be uber powerful. I just wonder if she'll even be able to do much more than make a spoon wiggle on a table with those miniscule Force ratings. |
Doug, 1D in Force skills is wimpy, but remember that per RAW you can allocate starting skill dice to any of them, up to 2D to each. Of course making them start at 3D each takes skill dice away from non-Force skills, so making a low level Force PC that can do much anything with the Force can't do much else well.
And yeah, everything Naaman said. A lot of us feel they really nerfed starting Force characters by equating the first 1D of each Force skills to an attribute die. If the Force was its own attribute, then all three Force skills would only cost 1D in attributes, and this template would have 2D more in attribute dice for normal attributes. Or, the PCA could have the same normal attribute allocation with 3D in the Force attribute and thus the three Force skills starting out at 3D before skill dice allocation.
I have a compromise in that I have a Force attribute with only Sense and Control as defaulting. Alter is an advanced Force skill that not all Force users have. That allows for characters like Chirrut Îmwe who are clearly meant to be Force-sensitive but do not have access to powers like Telekineses. And for characters that do have Alter in my game, it still doesn't take attribute dice like RAW.
If sticking with RAW, I think the the Young Jedi is a good template for a younger character, like a teenager who wouldn't need to have high Str or the galactic experience that brings higher Kno, Mec, and Tec. Maybe lower the character age to 16, which is still age of responsibility (legal adulthood) in many human cultures, like Alderaan.
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shootingwomprats
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| Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 9:33 pm Post subject: |
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Something you may wish to consider. If you want to make your Force-user at least semi-competent and keep thing balanced, give everyone in the party an additional 9D in skill dice.
This will give the Force-user an average of 4D in the three Force skills. You may wish to cap the Force-user at 5D in Force skill. For the non-Force-users, cap them at one skill no higher than 8D and two at no higher than 7D.
This should give you some balance and allow the Force-user to ... well use the Force semi-competently.
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Naaman
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| Posted: Mon Jul 05, 2021 9:53 pm Post subject: |
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| shootingwomprats wrote: | Something you may wish to consider. If you want to make your Force-user at least semi-competent and keep thing balanced, give everyone in the party an additional 9D in skill dice.
This will give the Force-user an average of 4D in the three Force skills. You may wish to cap the Force-user at 5D in Force skill. For the non-Force-users, cap them at one skill no higher than 8D and two at no higher than 7D.
This should give you some balance and allow the Force-user to ... well use the Force semi-competently. |
In the spirit of absolute fairness (based on RAW), I see your point here.
I'd offer that (in my opinion, of course) the RAW is broken and should be addressed by making force skills essentially free (force sensitives are much more highly restricted in how they behave, so game balance is achieved by restraint, rather than restricting total power level potential).
FWIW, our group did it like this for years and years, and it has never been a problem (even doing it like this, almost noone would play a Jedi simply because they don't want to deal with the restrictions that come with the Jedi code; it really works itself out... in my experience).
EDIT:
Not that force skills should be entirely free, but rather, once a character becomes force sensitive, use a story factor (during play) or a background explanation (during character creation) to come up with how the character learned the skills. They'd get the first 1D for free, and then spend CP to raise them.
Nevertheless, if done during play, make the individual skills inaccessible until the GM provides a story reason (such as providing a Jedi master to impart knowledge of each skill to the player at whatever pace he sees fit).
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Last edited by Naaman on Tue Jul 06, 2021 3:59 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 2:37 am Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Well, depends on what sort of character you're going for. For a human Force user, the Young Jedi actually has the strongest starting position for building a Jedi, at the cost of being relatively weak in the non-FS attributes and skills. |
Exactly. Placing 2d on each force attribute, out of the 7d starting, gives you a 3d ability for most of your powers.
| Namman wrote: | I would ask your GM what they envision for power levels, how accessible will a tutor/mentor be for your character, and at what rate does he expect for the characters to progress.
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Very True Nam.. How your DM sees you training, ALONG with how swiftly you gain CP, is how you can gain power...
| Namman wrote: | | I'd offer that (in my opinion, of course) the RAW is broken and should be addressed by making force skills essentially free (force sensitives are much more highly restricted in how they behave, so game balance is achieved by restraint, rather than restricting total power level potential). |
That's assuming your DM Actually uses those 'behavior restrictions..
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Naaman
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 11:30 am Post subject: |
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My take on the behavioral restrictions: tie CP rewards to how well the character "behaves". If he behaves as a Jedi should, this is rewarded by the character learning to trust in his feelings and the Force, and thus increase in power (CP to spend on Force skills).
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shootingwomprats
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| Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:00 pm Post subject: |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | My take on the behavioral restrictions: tie CP rewards to how well the character "behaves". If he behaves as a Jedi should, this is rewarded by the character learning to trust in his feelings and the Force, and thus increase in power (CP to spend on Force skills). |
Exactly, tie this to a Story Factor.
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Whill
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| Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:25 pm Post subject: |
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| shootingwomprats wrote: | | CRMcNeill wrote: | | My take on the behavioral restrictions: tie CP rewards to how well the character "behaves". If he behaves as a Jedi should, this is rewarded by the character learning to trust in his feelings and the Force, and thus increase in power (CP to spend on Force skills). |
Exactly, tie this to a Story Factor. |
Actually what CRM is referring to is already built right into RAW for all characters. All characters, including Jedi, should be playing their character appropriately. If a Jedi character is not playing the role well, then they get less CP bonuses for roleplaying, and perhaps even CP penalties. And there are also DSP rules if they they are behaving particularly bad.
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Raven Redstar
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| Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 2:23 pm Post subject: |
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Great discussion here!
I hope that you are able to make a character that you enjoy playing Doug!
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Naaman
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| Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 3:56 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: | | shootingwomprats wrote: | | CRMcNeill wrote: | | My take on the behavioral restrictions: tie CP rewards to how well the character "behaves". If he behaves as a Jedi should, this is rewarded by the character learning to trust in his feelings and the Force, and thus increase in power (CP to spend on Force skills). |
Exactly, tie this to a Story Factor. |
Actually what CRM is referring to is already built right into RAW for all characters. All characters, including Jedi, should be playing their character appropriately. If a Jedi character is not playing the role well, then they get less CP bonuses for roleplaying, and perhaps even CP penalties. And there are also DSP rules if they they are behaving particularly bad. |
I agree. Unless CRM is saying that a Jedi character should get more CP than others as a roleplaying reward (?) Which would be one way to balance it out.
Factor in that by RAW, unless he has a mentor, it costs 2 CP per pip to raise a force skill, and any CP bonus is essentially eclipsed.
The way I see it, the game designers either wanted to discourage force sensitive characters (which they overwhelmingly succeeded in, in my experience), or they just "overdid it" when trying to balance out force users.
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Whill
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| Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:13 pm Post subject: |
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There are a lot of Force templates so I don't think the game designers were trying to discourage Force users. As has been pointed out elsewhere, high level Force users can way overpower the other PCs in RAW, so the game designers' solution seems to have been to seriously nerf them at first. Not all campaigns even get to those levels. And even if they do, that only balances them out in the middle, so they are still unbalanced before and after that time period.
A better solution is to start Force users out better than RAW and keep advancement slow. The Force attribute makes that possible. (And I also start all PCs better than RAW, so PCs are more capable right off the bat, Force users or not.)
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CRMcNeill
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| Posted: Tue Jul 06, 2021 7:42 pm Post subject: |
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| Naaman wrote: | | Whill wrote: | | Actually what CRM is referring to is already built right into RAW for all characters. All characters, including Jedi, should be playing their character appropriately. If a Jedi character is not playing the role well, then they get less CP bonuses for roleplaying, and perhaps even CP penalties. And there are also DSP rules if they they are behaving particularly bad. |
I agree. Unless CRM is saying that a Jedi character should get more CP than others as a roleplaying reward (?) Which would be one way to balance it out. |
No. My argument is that players who try to run Jedi as spellcasters with laser swords should actually get less CP than others, and only earn similar amounts if they roleplay as though the character is trying to adhere to the Jedi code. I rather like Zahn's take from the Hand of Thrawn duology, where Luke actually backs away from actively using the Force in favor of "listening" to it. As a GM, I'd award more CP to a Jedi who primarily used his Sense abilities, and only used his Control and Alter abilities when absolutely necessary. Basically, the Jedi improves his power best by minimizing active usage of it, in favor of listening and trusting in it.
The only buff I'd give to a Jedi PC is incorporating the Force Attribute.
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