How to Make a Character for the Star Wars Fantasy Flight Games RPG

Hey everyone so I am back and with something to help folks out.  Now recently someone asked for some help figuring out the Fantasy Flgiht Games version of the Star Wars RPG.  And the rules in the book can be a bit confusing at first until you get used to using it.

First off I will always recommend to everyone OggDude’s character generator.  It’s a fantastic piece of work and worth picking up.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/89135-another-character-generator/

PART 1:  Read the Book

This goes with out saying but take time and read the book, spending extra time on the character creation parts of it…though if you’re the GM you should read all of the book.  Now for the purposes of things we will be using the first book Edge of the Empire and I will go over stuff from Age of Rebellion, and Force & Destiny (I have just the Beta book though).  Just keep in mind that everything I am going over is in the books.

PART 2:  Character Creation

Now ignore how the dice work and such for now, that is a bridge to pass later.  Now the book has you go through a 10 step process for creating characters and we are going to go over that process in detail here.

STEP 1:  Character Backgrounds (page 36)

Now apparently the game writers want you to build your character’s background or history first.  This would be who they are, where they come from and what has brought them to where they join the game.  The game book goes over what these options are as they act as a general guideline for building a character.

Ignore this step.  Most veteran tabletop gamers save their background for last.  Simply put, when we make our characters we often get all the logistical parts done first, namely all the math.  We roll our attributes, spend our points, choose our classes, pick our skills, and set up the powers we have.

Once we have gotten all of the logistical parts done we then move on to the background, the story behind the character because we now know what we are playing and how we have an idea of how we want them to progress.

STEP 2:  Obligation (page 38)

Again this is a step you don’t want to do first.  Instead you want to go to this step when you reach Step 8.  You see this figures a bit into the character’s background and helps to determine what can stress them out.

There are two ways of picking an Obligation.  You can roll 2d10 (as a percentile roll) and consult the table that is there (Table 2-1, page 39)

 

Now what an obligation is is something that you are obligated to deal with.  For example it can be an addiction to a substance, or maybe its that you have a bounty on your head, or perhaps you owe credits to some criminals or someone else.

An obligation is a means of the GM creating adventure hooks, or causing stress for the players.

DUTY (page 46):  Now in Age of Rebellion you instead have Duty but it works much the same.  Now Duty is more of a drive that the character has.  Examples include Combat Victory, Intelligence, and Political Support.

So a character who has the Duty, Combat Victory, will seek out missions or take actions that will put them into conflict with the Empire where they will want to take on the best of their enemies whenever possible, as well as using good tactics and the best firepower they can get.

MORALITY (page 32 Beta book):  Now this is something a bit different than Obligations and Duty.  Here the character has two emotions that they waver between that they choose (a Strength and a Weakness).  For example a character with the strength of “Bravery” has a weakness of “Anger”.  This is a morality scale that the Skywalkers typically have.

There is a scale here as well ranging from 1 to 100.  Characters start with a  score of 50.  Also the benefits for increasing/decreasing Morality is different than taking extra Obligations/Duties.

Here you have only a few choices of what you can take if you choose to augment your Morality score by 20tps.

Now triggering Morality is different than triggering Obligation or Duty.  What the GM should do is roll percentiles (2d10) first for those who have Obligation or Duty.  If none of those come up on the roll the GM should then roll 1d10 for Morality.  And if you have been reading the book you know what happens when you do this.

Additionally there are the problems of Conflict that a character can run into as the game progresses, increasing or decreasing based upon things.  There are also thresholds for Light and Dark Side Morality for a character.  Once your Morality drops to a certain mark you are a Dark Side Force user.  But if morality improves to a certain mark then you are redemmed back into the Light Side.

However Obligations can be optional if the GM does not wish to use them for the sake of ease or if you just don’t want the hassle of dealing with them.

STEP 3:  Selecting a Species (page 43)

This is the step you should start at instead.  Selecting a species is fairly easy and the way how this system works is that the species gives you your base ability scores, how your Wound & Strain Threshold are figured, starting XP, and any special abilities that they may possess.

All the books offer a different array of races/species to choose from though they may have some commonalities (like all have Humans).

Now don’t go spending that XP there right away.  You may want to improve one or two of the character’s attributes right away, but save some of that XP to buy up skills and/or talents.

STEP 4 & 5:  Choosing a Career and Specializations (page 53)

Each book offers a different array of Careers which essentially work like Classes.  You can only choose 1 career and you cannot change it.  Once you select a career you get access to its class skills.  After that you can choose 1 specialization that is apart of that class.

The chosen specialization also grants an extra selection of skills that are added to your career list.  Now you do get an array of free ranks for your skills.  All careers allow for 4 ranks in 4 career skills of your choice (that’s just 1 per skill).  After that you get 2 free ranks in your specialization’s skills.

So with these free ranks, plus the possibility of free ranks from your species then you don’t have to spend xp on skills if you don’t want to.

Now aside from the free specialization you can also spend XP on getting another specialization.  Now this second or third specialization (you can only have three, unless the GM allows for more) can be from your chosen career at a low cost…or you can pick a specialization from another career if you want but at a higher cost.  And in some cases there is a Universal Specialization you can take as well.  This is typically a Force user one.  Now they offer no skills, but give the character a Force Rating.

A Force Rating determines how many Force Dice a Force using character can roll.  For the Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion games this rating will typically always be 1.  You can also choose to take this universal specialization in the place of your free specialization from yoru class, but you loose out on the free extra skill advances.

Force Exile:  This is the specialization found in the Edge of the Empire book.

Force-Sensitive Emergent:  This is the specialization found in the Age of Rebellion book.

No such universal specializations are present in the Force & Destiny Beta book.

STEP 6:  Invest Experience Points (page 92)

Here we have the rules for how to spend not only your starting XP, but XP that you gain as the game progresses.  While the book goes into detail about stuff, Table 2-4 gives you an easy to read chart on how to spend stuff.

STEP 7:  Determining Derived Attributes (page 94)

Ok so by this point you have spent all of your XP on Ability scores, skills and talents.  Now you go to the point were you deal with your derived stats:  Wound Threshold, Strain Threshold, Defense, and Soak value.

The book does a good job of outlining what these attributes do.

·         Wounds:  Any damage your character takes is taken out of the character’s Wound Threshold.

·         Strain:  This is basically a measure of the character’s mental strength or ability to sustain psychological or mental stress.  When a character’s obligation comes up it reduces Strain for example.

·         Defense:  In all likely hood no starting character will have a Defense score.  Body armor, shields, using cover and so on all grant defense.  This adds to the character’s Soak value.

·         Soak:  Now here we have the score that is used to reduce damage.  So when you take damage you apply your Soak against it unless the attack has an ability that negates or bypasses soak.

STEP 8:  Determine Motivations (page 94)

Now the book does outline what motivations are but to sum it up a character’s motivation is “why do you do what you do”.  Motivations exist in all of the books.  The GM shouldn’t feel like they need keep characters focused on motivations from one book or another.  If a player has a good reason to use a motivation from another book, let them use it.

But when do you use motivation?  You use them if you’re at a loss on a course of action.  You look at your motivation and how it applies to a situation.  Generally a character who stays true to their motivations will often get rewarded at the end of a game session.

STEP 9:  Gear and Appearance (page 97)

So there isn’t a lot too this.  You have “X” amount of credits to buy your starting gear with.  Then there is of course your character’s physical description.  Its all very straight forward at this point.

  

STEP 10:  Selecting a Ship (page 99)

This isn’t a ship per person, but rather it’s a ship for the group to use.  Now the GM doesn’t have to give the group a ship right out the gate.  A good starting adventure can involve getting a ship.

PART 3:  Lets make a Character

But this is not making a character.  And the best way to learn is to actually do it.  So let’s go through the steps as I would do it and make a character.  We will be using the Edge of the Empire book for this.

Ok so to start lets be Human (page 48).

Our stats are:

2		2		2		2		2		2
Brawn		Agility		Intellect		Cunning		Willpower		Presence

Now let’s jump over to careers.

Our options are Bounty Hunter, Colonist, Explorer, Hired Gun, Smuggler, and Technician.

Well let’s say that I like the idea of a Boba Fett type character, someone who wears armor and is the shoot first ask questions later.  Now looking that over and having a basic idea in mind after looking over the various careers I decide that the character’s starting specialization will be Gadgeteer.

Now that we have settled on this we have to pick out what career skills will each get a +1 increase, including our bonus career skills.

Now on a character sheet you will want all of your skills listed since you can roll any of your skills, you will just be really good at some over others.  But lets say that I chose the follow:

·         Athletics

·         Perception

·         Ranged Heavy

·         Streetwise

And then I choose these two for the bonus skills:

·         Mechanics

·         Ranged Light

So what gaining a rank does is clarified in the book, but I will just clarify it right now.

So your dice pool for your skills is based upon the attribute for the skill.  So Athletics uses Brawn.  Right now Brawn is at 2.  So with that in mind it improves a single die.

Thus a green ability die t becomes a yellow proficiency die À.

Now with these out of the way I get to choose 2 skills (as a human) that are non-class skills to apply 1 increase to.

·         Stealth

·         Underworld

Next up is the 110xp that humans have to spend.

·         Brawn is increased from 2 to 3 = 30xp

·         Agility is increased to 3 as well = 30xp

·         Cunning is increased to 3 too = 30xp

Total spent so far is 90xp

Our stats now are:

3		3		2		3		2		2
Brawn		Agility		Intellect		Cunning		Willpower		Presence

Our skills are sitting at:

Athletics (Brawn)		Àtt
Mechanics (Intellect)		Àt
Perception (Cunning)		Àtt
Ranged (Heavy) (Agility)		Àtt
Ranged (Light) (Agility)		Àtt
Streetwise (Cunning)		Àtt
Stealth (Agility)		Àtt
Underworld (Intellect)		Àt

So far for all of these skills I get to roll 1 À proficiency die, and then 1-2 ability dice t.

Now after all this I have 20xp left.  I can either improve other skills or buy some talents.  How about we buy some talents.

·         Toughened

·         Jury Rigged

And with 5pts left we can buy 1 class skill up.  Now I’d like my character be good at intimidating opponents too so that will mean 5xp goes to buying 1 À proficiency die in Coercion.

Our Stats now stand at:

Our stats now are:

3		3		2		3		2		2
Brawn		Agility		Intellect		Cunning		Willpower		Presence

Our skills are sitting at:

Athletics (Brawn)		Àtt
Coercion (Cunning)		Àtt
Mechanics (Intellect)		Àt
Perception (Cunning)		Àtt
Ranged (Heavy) (Agility)		Àtt
Ranged (Light) (Agility)		Àtt
Streetwise (Cunning)		Àtt
Stealth (Agility)		Àtt
Underworld (Intellect)		Àt

And out Talents are:

·         Toughened

·         Jury Rigged

With this done we now go back to Backgrounds.  Now I’ve been thinking of this character as a Mandalorian, but what background would suit him?

·         The Outsider

After this we have to figure out what brought him to this place.

·         Opportunity Knocks.

Now Force & Destiny adds in something new, Attitude Toward the Force.  So for purposes of covering things our character will look at it as an “Ancient Religion”.

So at this stage we will now choose our obligation.  After a bit of thought I settled on Betrayal.  And this will play into the characters overall background/history.

But I also want some extra points by which I can deck him out in some gear and to that end 2,500 extra credits is a good amount to go with, and to get that I choose to take Oath.

We will now move onto Motivations. 

·         Ambition - Freedom

And that about does it.  What’s left to do is pick out the character’s equipment.

In the end here is what we got, now keep in mind that the pic below is made using OggDude's character generator, with a character sheet saved as a PDF, then selecting all of the PDF and copying it, and then opening up paint and pasting it there...then saving what was done.  Yes its a long explanation, but that's how I did it in case anyone wants to know.  Now if the pic is too small for you to read stuff just save the picture and open it up and it should open up in its proper size.

Hopefully you all found this helpful in getting going in playing Star Wars.

Rummaging through boxes and found some old game books!

So I have a lot of crap, particularly comic books.  (One day I'll show just how many I have to everyone.)  Yesterday I took to going through all the boxes I have in storage at my mom's house (I live in a 2 bedroom apartment with my wife and kids...only so much room).  I was looking for 3 specific books that I knew I had but wasn't sure where they had gotten to.

Aside from cleaning out 2 boxes of stuff that I didn't need as they were essentially just papers I had no need for with anymore; I came across some RPG books of mine.

So many of you likely will recognize these books.

1. Street Samurai Catalog:  This was a book I had for Shadowrun from back in the late 1990 (like 98 or so) and have had it ever since.
2. AD&D 2nd Edition:  Yep still got the PHB for this, and I looked at the rules, first thing that came to mind when I glanced through - Well this is unplayable.  I know that's not the case but there is one other reason to never play it again, Thaco.
3. Rifts & Rifts Conversion Book:  Now I liked Rifts years ago (again late 1990's until 2002-2003), but then Palladium went crazy on anyone who posted conversions, creations, house rules on line.  They threatened and bullied a lot of people back then (something they could never get away with these days).  But it ended my enjoyment for their system...not that it was a great system to begin with as it had its share of flaws too.  I even had 6-7 books back then and now just 2 that I was never able to sell.
4. Star Wars (West End Games Edition):  This was the book that introduced me to Star Wars as a tabletop RPG.  I still have 3-4 other books for this, including the Live Action Role Play rule book.

Now I do have a few other books that I didn't take pictures of - Vampire the Masquerade 2nd Edition PHB, Advanced PHB, and three other source books for it.  Yes in high school and for a while after I got done with the Army I did play Vampire the Masquerade.  My sister played the game too and we had mutual friends who played too.  And yes we did LARP.  In hindsight The LARPing was ridiculous, it was fun at times - don't get me wrong, but ultimately LARPing takes away a lot of the fun of just sitting around a table and using your imagination.

So after going through every single box, where do I find the 3 books I was looking for?  The very last one...and I do mean that literally.

Dragon Ball Z: The Anime Adventure Game

Yep I got all 3 books, including the hard to find/rare 3rd Book.

Now the game had a lot of flaws, didn't use the complete Fuzion system by R. Talsorian games.  (Though the core rule book did have a note for "Champions" players.)

I specifically was looking for these books for several reasons.  First I am a DBZ fan.  Second I've had talks with my game group about the system and it made me want to find the books and reread the rules.  Third I am thinking of writing up some new rules and borrowing parts of this game system to create my own home made DBZ game system.

But I am happy that I found them and that I did in fact have the 3rd book.

So it leaves me wondering, has anyone else out there had such an occurrence where you were digging through boxes and found some old game books of yours that you either didn't know you still had, or that you were pretty sure you had - but just didn't know for certain until you found them?

Leave your stories in the comments section!