Character Creation and Backgrounds

Whoa, wait, what? My character is not particularly interested in Lightsabers at the moment. No skill to use them, and not really planning on taking a Lightsaber Spec in the foreseeable future... This is awfully restrictive to "non-Jedi confirming" concepts. May need to re-roll...

Well... you might get what you need as soon as we start the adventure as part of the equipment given by the GM, just talk it out without the need to re-roll. Shoot a PM.

Well, there are at least 2 other PCs not starting with Lightsaber Skills/Specs who might want more specifics of how this is gonna work.

But at the very least, I'll probably want to reconsider my Morality selection (currently went with creds) if I can't buy things specific to my build.

I’d also like a bit of clarification. Unless you’re using a spec that lets you sub Brawn for something else for Lightsaber checks, anyone using Brawn for combat is going to be way more effective with a Vibroweapon than any Lightsaber weapon short of an actual Lightsaber.

As far as custom equipment goes . . . https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FalQ7_c38QI

Would it be alright, Arina if we sent you a Life Day gift list of the things that might make sense for our characters to have from our perspectives? I get the requirement of having a training saber since dad would make us but what about things we'd just find on the ground?

Edit:

I added Ian up, changed a couple things. I made his character sheet public. I am curious what the XP progression will be like since what I'm going for will probably be broke until we're about 50xp in. Not a request for more, just curious if I should do further tweaking.

I think we need to hear a bit more about what our perspective is, exactly.

I'm starting to think we're very sheltered, raised in almost complete isolation, in caves, and what we know about the real world and how great blasters and vibro-axes are is what "dad" taught us.

We need to take into consideration that we were raised in caves for hiding purposes, but it wouldn’t be weird for us to have received the concealing robes and materials to get swords and build training sabers from who knows what storage the Jedi Defender ship had. It’s big enough to hold those materials and we have been 12 years in hiding, but it would be possible to have received equipment from the outside through smugglers passing by who deal with our ‘dad’.

Just saying... we can even receive more in the firsts steps of the campaing from stuff he had hidden in the ship for a long time without our knowledge. Sure clarification is needed but we can wait and see what our GM has in store which I hope will be super fun.

I would really just want a different set of clothes. Not special armored clothes or anything, just a different outfit or two. I will gladly give up useful items for things of cosmetic effect only. Stims for clothes?

But getting back to character background . . . whose character is exceptionally straight-laced so we can discuss the pranks that might have been pulled.

That is it exactly. Currently you would not have had a single opportunity to pick up anything else. However, that is about to change...

You can give me a wishlist if you like. You will come into contact with some basic items quite quickly. Rarer items will take much longer.

One argument my character would have been making to the Master for years is that our group should be familiar and somewhat proficient with non-Jedi weapons, because once our training is complete, and we go out into the world, and all we have and know how to use is Lightsabers, we're going to draw attention really fast and this whole endeavor might be an awefully short one.

I was thinking of picking up Brawl as a back-up combat skill but the fact that it's based on Brawn has so far deterred me. The game is set up to encourage specialization in a lot of ways and while there's a lot of cannon martial arts in Star Wars (well, I guess not anymore but before Disney they were cannon) that rely on Agility there's no current way to do that in this system.

And I don't think adding a talent in to offer Agility based martial arts would help either since at least some of us are going to be clumsy oafs with puny muscles and so they'd get screwed either way. I -also- thought of allowing Lightsaber to be used unarmed and just reduce the damage to regular Brawl damage but that opens up a can of worms too since it makes the Lightsaber trees more valuable at that point, so I can't say I would want that either.

I do admit to snerking a bit when I imagine an old Nautolan saying, "And now, Younglings, we start your first day down the path of the ancient Jedi art of wrasslin'."

I confirmed with the DM, any F&D specialization is allowed. So I’m going Seeker/Executioner.

Edit: I forgot about Arbiter, another favorite of mine. Might go for a more Face type with that. Looks like we have a decent number of fighters, social skills might be more needed.

Is a blaster rifle and padded armor considered basic?

@emsquared: I saw your earlier post about being pidgeoned into playing a jedi. Please remember the main premise is that you are fledgling jedis at the moment and about to become padawans, so yes, you're a little pidgeon holed at the beginning. However, where you go from here is completely up to you. You will start with a training lightsabre as you have all been training with them. Other weapons might be picked up later.

With regards to your second query, blaster rifles might be a little tricky, maybe if you make it to some kind of settlement or interstellar trabsport hub.

Credits can purchase almost everything

Just because our mentor wants to carry on the stereotypical Jedi-tradition doesn't mean that's where his students talents and interests are guaranteed to lie. I'm not saying I want to play a Darkside User - I don't, but it seemed like we had more than enough interest in the stereotypical Jedi department so I wanted to do something that brought some diversity to the group, to the rp, and that also interested me conceptually and mechanically. It just feels weird to essentially be penalized - to not be able to outfit myself with the tools where my PCs mechanical skills are - for that.

Similar to as others have said, is it really so antithetical to the campaign premise that we were just able to come across trade caravans now and again ,which seems like it would be all it would take to allow us the narrative positioning to use basic character creation rules as they were designed?

Or moving in from that, is it OK if I take the 2,500 creds, or 5 XP/1000 cred split, Morality option so I can purchase gear that facilitates my character concept when I get the chance? Seems like caring around that much creds would be harder to explain than bartering with the occasional caravan.

If I'm actually the only one that cares about this, which is as I see it a part of being able to tell my PCs own story, I can give it a rest. I just don't see what the problem is with doing character creation fully as normal.

It seems unlikely that Master Selak would allow contact with trading caravans who can take word of our existenceto wherever.

But if you really want a blaster rifle, maybe you found one on the desicated corpse of a decades-long-dead bounty hunter or scout we discovered while exploring the caverns we live in, and Selak either let you keep it, or you managed to hide it from him.

The problem is with doing character creation fully as normal is that we're not creating normal characters. We're creating actual Jedi Padawans, and us being very fish out of water seems to be a core element of the premise.

As an aside does anyone have a link to a pdf of any of the non-core books? I am not able to access any of the non-core specializations.

And, really, we should start talking about how our characters are going to play off each other just so we're established beforehand. The concept is that we've lived our entire lives together so I'd like to figure out who Ian's best friend is who he's punched and who is the best friend that he's punched.

Based on the below excerpt from the Game page, it seemed like broader concepts were welcome.

I have *coughs* all of them. Just shoot me a PM Cep and I'll give you a link to my Drive where I keep them.