Talents

[CRMcNeill]

[garhkal]

I know they don't. Hell the last three tables i ran (origins 19), of the 20 players on the table, only three had specialties..
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[Whill]

[Naaman]

[garhkal]

[Whill]

[Naaman]

[Naaman]

[garhkal]

[Naaman]

I don't even use templates, TBH. Although, it's not really about "Jedi" or "non-Jedi." But rather that the essence of the concept itself should be able to be expressed at the start of play.

Some concepts require more tweaking (from RAW) than others.

The fact that not all skills and attributes are of equal value in-game makes solving this (perceived) problem more an art than a science.

Take the failed Jedi as an example. The concept is that he is a veteran of the Clone Wars (remembering "Skywalker and Kenobi and all that crew"), but at some point got lost along the way. The fact that he "failed" indicates that he attempted to become a Jedi, that he made some progress.

He starts with a DSP, but gets nothing in return for it. The background suggests that the failed Jedi (by virtue of the character concept) would be a mentor to a Young Jedi template, or even the Minor Jedi.

However, the Young Jedi knows more about the force than the failed Jedi does, having all three of C/S/A, while the failed Jedi has only C/S (thus, breaking the concept). Not only that, but the failed Jedi lacks enough skill with the force to teach anyone at all (need 3D in a skill to teach it, and you need to have a higher skill than the student. All templates start with 1D in force skills, so noone can teach anyone else). Per RAW, there is no way to make the template have more than the 1D starting skill dice in force skills (since at character creation, attribute dice are used to allocate force skill dice, and all 18 have already been spent).

So, if I were king of WEG (and had all the retrospect that I have now), I'd go back in time and give the failed Jedi the same DSP, but I would also add some kind of burden to having DSPs in general, with a trade-off that makes the failed Jedi actually capable of being a mentor upon the start of play.

Example:
The failed Jedi would start with 0 force points, but would start with 3D in all three of C/S/A (thus making him a potential mentor for other force users).

The failed Jedi would also get some kind of penalty until he atones (and starting with no FP means he has to actually earn the atonement through game play). The penalty might be something like paying a CP penalty when attempting to raise skills or forcing a willpower check to overcome laziness or bitterness when faced with a conflict of interest, etc (things that the rules themselves do not [but I wish they did] address, but that a GM would instead have to come up with for the sake of character immersion--that is, a good GM can find ways to balance characters without always resorting to the ever convenient mathematical balance... in fact, in my old group, NO ONE ever played a Jedi except for me because they did not want to deal with the moral restrictions on such characters, so the rules themselves, for us, worked out fine, despite giving away the force skills for free at creation [effectively a 21-D starting character]).

I might also have also re-written the rules for dark side points such that having them imposes some kind of burden on the character which encourages players to either atone or go further down the path of the dark side.
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[Whill]

For campaigns that care about film canon, PCs should not be as capable as Anakin because he wouldn't be the Chosen One if there were others like him. However, there is nothing that says groups should care about canon.

As far as character concept, it includes a character arc. Characters shouldn't be static unless they are minor characters in the story, which hopefully no PCs are (unless the player wants that). So the concept includes a starting and ending point. I don't think I am really disagreeing with you a lot, but I would not say that "the concept should be essentially complete at the start of play." The character arc starting point should be complete at the start of play, with the potential to achieve the character arcs' ending point by the end of the campaign.

However I am a strong believer in character balance so the PCs should start out equally skilled as the system defines it (same attribute and skill dice totals). What level those PCs start out at shouldn't be limited by RAW because everyone could agree on a higher starting point for each campaign. The other concern with this is not starting too capable so that with skill advancement so the game won't reach the skill bloat levels where the game breaks down.
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[garhkal]

[Naaman]

[Naaman]

[Whill]

Naaman, in my game PCs start out better than RAW (Humans have 12D in skill dice instead of 7D), but it is obvious that wouldn't be good enough for you and you would never be happy with me as a GM. In my mind, Anakin properly statted out in D6 form is already into game-breaking range for PCs. It isn't a problem because Anakin is an NPC. I'm a good GM but I'm not nearly skilled enough to manage PCs that powerful.

I'm really curious, have you ever had a GM that let your PC start out as powerful as Anakin Skywalker? If not even close, how have you ever enjoyed the game without that?
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