SW:SE Jedi build advice

**Dodoroq** · 2016-04-08, 06:59 AM (ISO 8601)

Hey all,
I was wondering if I could get some advice here on a build for game we are planning in a (near) future. I am completely new to SW:SE, haven't played a single game in this system, but familiar with the rules (like to read the rules of any system, and played 25+ years in tens of different systems).

Our game will (probably) be set in KotOR era and (probably) going for a light side or at least not dark side. We will be starting at lvl 4-8 (GM decision still before us). It seems that some house rules may be in place, like Skill Focus capping at half character level and such, but no details on that either yet. As you can see, there is a lot of tentativeness in the mix.

My motivation is to play a complex character, which is why I start getting ideas early - I like to be well in the role, which also means I should well know my abilities without looking into papers etc. For a complex character this may mean a lot of abilities, so I rather reserve lots of time to accommodate. Also what I am looking for in the game is mostly role-play and difficult moral dilemmas rather than kill count or anything.

Now, what I am looking for is probably a would-be Jedi with different background, sort of built according to Anakin/Luke story with quite different ending. This means I am looking at Scout 1/Jedi X template most probably. I have already made a roll on abilities and on standard 4d6 drop lowest rolls got highly non-standard 17, 16, 16, 15, 13 and 11 (49-point buy equivalent!), which might mean the powers of the toon would be too much over the top for the rest of the party (which may or may not roll lower). Hence I decided to limit myself somewhat using a background story - still be fun for me and should not steal fun from others.

The story behind is a human girl from Corellia, relatively poor but talented mechanic and pilot. She would be very proud of her origins and anything Corellian, but also anxious to see every corner of the galaxy. She will be bullheaded, proud and fearful of failure, but at the same time willing to lend her hand to anybody and working on being an exemplar Jedi. I am looking forward to playing the strife between good and bad abilities.
As for game abilities, I would like to make her much more a utility character than expert fighter or offensive force wizard. She should be able to defend herself against attacks, but as much without offensive powers as possible.

With this in mind, I came up with the following starting stats and feats etc. (as shown for 4th level):
Human Female Scout 1/Jedi 3
Str 11, Dex 15, Con 13, Int 16, Wis 17, Cha 16
Lvl1: Feats: Force Sensitive, Vehicular Combat (Human Bonus); Skills (max would be 9, starting with 8 assuming taking the Scout level as Young Adult -1 to all stats): Endurance, Knowledge (Galactic Lore), Knowledge (Physical Sciences), Knowledge (Technology), Mechanics, Perception, Pilot, Use the Force; Talent: Evasion
Lvl2: Feats: Weapon Proficiency (Lightsaber) ; Skills: Acrobatics; Talents: Deflect
Lvl3: Feats: Force Training, Strong in the Force (Jedi Bonus)
Lvl4: Talents: Block

If starting at lvl 8 she would probably be Scout 1/Jedi 6/Ace Pilot 1 (I am not rushing to Jedi Knight prestige by any means).

Now the questions:
- How does this look to you? What would you change without changing the general idea?
- What Force Powers should I look at? I would rather go for something defensive and utility like Farseeing.
- Is my usage of Young Adult to delay one skill legal? Will I be able to take the skill when I get from Young Adult to Adult and while being Jedi at that moment? (which has lower skill total, so raising the int bonus still means int bonus + Jedi class skills number + human is lower than max current skills).
- What about Shake it Off? If I effectively start with Con 12 when getting the level of Scout and raise to 13 when already a Jedi, will I get the feat retroactively?
- What feats/talents would you recommend for levels 5-8?

Thanks for any input.

**Ivarov** · 2016-04-08, 11:14 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Dodoroq

Hey all, (...)
1- How does this look to you? What would you change without changing the general idea?
2- What Force Powers should I look at? I would rather go for something defensive and utility like Farseeing.
3- Is my usage of Young Adult to delay one skill legal? Will I be able to take the skill when I get from Young Adult to Adult and while being Jedi at that moment? (which has lower skill total, so raising the int bonus still means int bonus + Jedi class skills number + human is lower than max current skills).
4- What about Shake it Off? If I effectively start with Con 12 when getting the level of Scout and raise to 13 when already a Jedi, will I get the feat retroactively?
5- What feats/talents would you recommend for levels 5-8?

Thanks for any input.

Hi, I'm also new to the system but I felt like I could share an idea or two since I'm making a character somewhat similar to yours (morals/defense/utility-wise)

1- It looks cool. I'm not quite the fan of the "strong in the force" mechanics though, unless you plan to have other feats/talents down the road that further increase it's effectiveness (such as the noble talent Skill Boon [galaxy of intrigue]). And unless you build with some force point recover method in mind (talents/feats/force techniques), those are very scarce, not sure if this feat is very relevant (statistically speaking), especially before level 8, when you can reroll the d8. But that's just me, I might be terribly wrong.

2- Supposing you can negotiate with your GM to have any force power from any official book (excluding dark side powers due to your descriptions, and lightsaber forms because I haven't read them yet):

-- To avoid damage/Force effects: Rebuke, Resist Force (against force attacks), Negate Energy(energy sources, can heal you), Force Shield(+SR), Energy Resistance(+DR), Intercept(avoid thrown stuff), Crucitorn(+DT);

-- Assists: Vital Transfer (heal others), Inspire or Valor (almost identical,+WillDEF against fear/mind-affecting), Enlighten (gives your UtF roll to an ally for almost any use), Force Shield (surrounds allies if you spend FP), Detonate (destroy objects);

-- Hinders (penalties on enemies): Force Stun, Force Slam, Blind, Malacia, Morichro, Slow, Stagger, Plant Surge, Force Disarm (quite difficult UtF check due to +10 or +15 disarming bonuses to target's RefDef), Force Whirlwind (similar to Force Grip, marginally less "cruel"), Force Light (if you get swarmed by dark side force users, you become a mobile Holy Hand-Grenade of Antioch), Sever Force (slow down some Sith), Ionize (fry them droids), Shatterpoint (Reduce the DT of the tougher ones/things), MIND STUFF (Thought Bomb, Obscure, Mind Trick, Mind Shard... I'd be careful though, most of them are "cruel" or shortcuts to the dark side, if your GM takes roleplay and intent into account to risk increasing the dark side score...);

-- Utilities (self-use): Cloak(hide), Drain energy(neutralize energy weapons, lightsabers, traps, power supplies, etc), Phase (go through walls), Prescience (increase combat atk and def against 1 target), Technometry (be a Force Hacker?), Move Object (always handy).

Remember you can always choose to apply lesser effects than your DC roll (in case you dont want to cause full damage on an almost-dead foe)

3 and 4 - I don't know. As a GM I wouldn't see the problem, rule-lawyers might not like it... wait for some more experienced input, the guys here are quite good at answering this kind of stuff :)

5 - Depends on what is your more immediate goal... thinking about "support" as much as possible (and nothing related to pilot since I didn't read much of it), consider taking a look at Stand Tall, Brink of Death, Force Regimens, Jedi Familiarity, Adept Negotiator, Battle meditation, Cleanse Mind, Collective Visions, Defensive Acuity, Entreat Aid, Force of Will, Grenade Defense, Recall, Skilled Advisor.

Hope some of it helps.
Cheers!

**Nerd-o-rama** · 2016-04-08, 11:36 AM (ISO 8601)

First of all, worries about intra-party balance are exactly why I don't understand why anyone rolls for stats in a d20 system anymore. Point-buy solves hundreds of problems.

Second: You could avoid messing around with age categories (a non-standard build strategy your GM might raise an eyebrow at) if you swap your Dex and Int, then boost Int from 15 to 16 at level 4 when you get ability score bonuses. It will have the same effect on your skills, and you don't have to worry about any of your other stats.

1) Build-wise that looks pretty good to me. It's a bit spread out, but you have the abilities to support it. Consider taking at least one instance of Starship Tactics at level 6 or 9 (Maneuvers for use in starfighters and airspeeders that work similarly to Force Powers and also key off of Wisdom, see Starships of the Galaxy), but Force Training is more important right now now. Strong in the Force is a decent feat that improves quite a bit once you start rolling multiple dice for Force Points and keeping highest; you might want to delay it in favor of Melee Defense so you can improve your Reflex Defense when dealing with multiple enemies.

2) Ivarov has a pretty good list of Force Powers. Also take a look at defensively-focused Lightsaber Form Powers (Jedi Academy Training Manual) like Circle of Shelter and Barrier of Blades. If you're limited to just the Core Book, though, load up on Negate Energy and Rebuke for defense, and Farseeing, Move Object, and Mind Trick for utility.

3) See above for my advice, but in general, raising your Intelligence modifier will always get you an extra Trained Skill, from the Class Skills of any class you have at that time.

4) Likewise this might not be important, but as far as I know the standard d20 rule is "if you have a feat but don't somehow have the prerequisites, you can't use the feat. If you later gain the prerequisites, you can use the feat".

5) Starship Maneuvers or another Force Training at level 6. Skill Focus: Use the Force, and either Melee Defense or Acrobatic Strike for your Jedi bonus feats (even if you're not on the offensive, get every + to hit you can, you'll thank me later when fighting Gunslingers or Bounty Hunters with 42 Ref Defense). For your Talent, the Force Talents Equilibrium and Damage Reduction 10 are both very good for "tanks", and there's always Force Pilot if you want to free up a skill and a Skill Focus feat. Ace Pilot talent is up to you, but Elusive Dogfighter is probably the best starting point if you expect to be doing a lot of space superiority fighting, with Blind Spot from Starships of the Galaxy being more suited to the "mugging a capital ship" strategy.

**Jayngfet** · 2016-04-09, 12:07 AM (ISO 8601)

Generally speaking for a force user who's not "primarily" a Jedi you'll want to take more initial levels in scout before filling them out with Jedi. Scout is a sorely underappreciated class that has a large number of things that blend well with Jedi builds. I'd say assuming a minimum of level four, you'll want at least two in Scout, then fill the other two in with Jedi.

Scrap Strong in the force, you can take it as another Jedi bonus feat later but try to grab Vehicular Combat with that since it's a bonus feat for all classes. You can do it likewise with your scout bonus and free up your valuable free level feats for stuff that's not on a class bonus list like Starship Tactics or Force Regimes, or additional rounds of Force Training. Otherwise I'd consider grabbing Tech Specialist if you want to really go for a mechanic vibe since it's a really good feat for basically anything due to how multirole it is.

If it were me I'd build your character like this:

Feats

1-Force Sensitivity, Force Training(human bonus)
2-Vehicular Combat
3-Lightsaber Proficiency(jedi bonus), Tech Specialist
4-Strong in the force

Talents

Scout 1- Evasion
Jedi 1- Deflect(you will be shot at far more than you get into a lightsaber duel, and blasters do more damage anyway)

I would say if you have more levels to play with or for some reason don't want tech specialist(despite it being a mechanics bread and butter, and the gateway to like three other high value technical feats), take Starship Tactics. It runs of WIS like your force training so as you level you get better in both.

**emeraldstreak** · 2016-04-09, 08:41 AM (ISO 8601)

Skill Focus: Use the Force is an absolute must.

**Nerd-o-rama** · 2016-04-09, 04:59 PM (ISO 8601)

Agreed. It goes from broken to good to absolutely necessary depending on how high a level you're talking about (since Skills scale at less than half the rate of Defenses, and even utility skills have a habit of targeting Defenses), but you really want to grab it as one of your class bonus feats in the first eight levels or so.

**Friv** · 2016-04-09, 05:05 PM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by emeraldstreak

Skill Focus: Use the Force is an absolute must.

My personal feeling is that taking Skill Focus: Use the Force before Level 6 is basically trolling the GM.

(Or, take it, while also suggesting a house rule to the GM: when you take Skill Focus, it adds an additional half your level, rounding up, to a maximum of +5, instead of adding a flat +5. This will be much, much less unbalanced.)

**Jayngfet** · 2016-04-09, 05:13 PM (ISO 8601)

Skill focus UTF isn't that great without investing a buch of talents like force pilot to replace other skills. Otherwise all it means is being slightly better at a few once per encounters abilities. I've broken games more with skill focus Mechanics and skill focus use computer than I have with UTF.

**Nerd-o-rama** · 2016-04-09, 07:21 PM (ISO 8601)

Well, it all depends what those 1/encounter powers are, and if you're talking about short-circuiting physical and informational obstacles, or if you're talking about short-circuiting combat.

If you run combat like the Star Wars movies show combat, and you have a Skill Focused Jedi vs. a bunch of nonheroics, they're going to steamroll everything except the boss fight (in which case you better force the Jedi to choose between steamrolling the boss and steamrolling a bunch of mooks. although this actually goes for any character with a combat specialty - never count on a solo boss in a d20 system unless it has five times as many HP as the heroes). To counter this, either nerf UtF or get gud at tactics for your NPC bad guys.

If you're not careful about what you allow computer systems to do, or what devices heroes have access to disable, a Skill Focused Techie can steamroll just about anything besides combat that you use as an obstacle. To counter this, think "1970's mainframe computing" and not "everything is wifi-enabled and on the Holonet", or nerf Skill Focus in general.

And then there's Deception and Persuasion, which are at least better than in D&D...

...you know what? Maybe Skills just need to be revamped.

**Jayngfet** · 2016-04-09, 08:50 PM (ISO 8601)

I'd say the proper thing isn't "nerf skills", it's "Get gud at tactics".

As a general rule, there's enough holes in what powers can do that there's always going to be holes in what your force powers can do. Force Lightning does a lot of damage, but it's only to a singular opponent once, and it takes action economy to pull off. Force Thrust does some damage to a number of opponents at short range. Battle Strike adds to existing attacks, but you need to clear those attack rolls as well.

By the time your jedi player is consistently hitting all of those marks they've invested a bunch of feats into fighting enemies and they're so high level a handful of extra mooks to run through powers more won't make a difference either.

Though I discourage builds like this because ultimately they're super limited in what they can do. You can blaze through stormtroopers like tissue paper but you have zero utility or miscellaneous stuff. It's usually better to sacrifice what winds up being four or five points of damage a round for being able to say, not die in space combat.

**RandomLunatic** · 2016-04-09, 09:54 PM (ISO 8601)

The hole you claim doesn't really exist. Force Grip will shut down pretty much any non-beast level-appropriate foe. And even ones a couple levels above you. Move Object does very decent damage to two or possibly more enemies at once, making it an excellent mook sweeper. Mind Trick takes enemies out of the fight completely, and doesn't even require actions to sustain it like Force Grip. And the price of entry is only two feats-Skill Focus and Force Training.

There's counters, of course, but most tend to cost at least a feat or a talent, if not more. Whereas Force powers come bundled several to a single feat. And if even a single defense is lacking, you will be punished for it.

Find me another two-feat combo that will so comprehensively wreck so many enemies. I sure can't name one.

**Nerd-o-rama** · 2016-04-09, 10:03 PM (ISO 8601)

It also comes down to expectations. Force Users, TK-spammers especially, are a revolver full of silver bullets for combat, especially at low levels...but as you say, they can't do much else. They aren't to the level of D&D Wizards where they can just negate every encounter as a habit (sometimes, maybe, but so can techies, Persuasion-mancers, and people with starfighters, depending on the encounter), but if everyone expects to contribute to a fight in the same way, the mechanics just don't support that. If, however, the Force User has a specialty, the person with the heavy blaster rifle and power armor has a specialty, and the bitty alien with the security kit and datapad has a specialty, and everyone is happy with their roles in the larger group dynamic, then it's generally fine.

Force Slam or Force Grip at a +15 before level 6 is still kind of a **** move though.

**Friv** · 2016-04-10, 12:12 AM (ISO 8601)

Originally Posted by Jayngfet

Skill focus UTF isn't that great without investing a buch of talents like force pilot to replace other skills. Otherwise all it means is being slightly better at a few once per encounters abilities. I've broken games more with skill focus Mechanics and skill focus use computer than I have with UTF.

Oh, yes, quite a lot of the Skill Focuses do pretty serious damage to the game balance at low levels. You can do some absurd things with Skill Focus: Persuasion, too.

**Jayngfet** · 2016-04-10, 12:14 AM (ISO 8601)

Personally my opinion of Force Slam is "If most of your enemies are clustered that close with no counter measures, they probably aren't serious anyway".

Though I'm also of the opinion that because your party is better served with either everyone having utility stuff or else one dedicated techie, anyone who can afford to waste those two feats shouldn't have any real problems. My biggest complaint as a techie player was always that the GM had an asinine idea of "balance" that forced characters clearly not meant for combat to fight at the same level as dedicated combat jedi.

Saga Edition is not for dungeon crawling, and it shouldn't be treated like it is. The tank/healer/DPS dynamic does not exist here. You have people who do good damage at varying ranges, and people who put token stuff into combat and would really rather be focusing on flying or mechanics or whatever else. Any problems you get from force slam won't be much worse than an autofire focused soldier who can pump out fire AOE shots that basically instagib every stormtrooper on a miss the moment he gets a decent gun, and that problem is almost as bad with a couple of feats. Or some dude dual wielding ion charger'd stun batons that can knock basically anyone down the condition track in two hits.

But this is fine. Because fundamental Star Wars isn't a setting where you fight half a dozen random mooks, kill them all hyper cleanly, then handle a boss maybe one or two levels higher than you. It's a setting where all your big named opponents are going to be minimum level fifteen and you need every one of your tricks to not die. That's why Boba Fett has three levels on Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader has three levels on Boba Fett.

**Dodoroq** · 2016-04-10, 01:47 AM (ISO 8601)

Thanks for all the input so far. I am currently replying from mobile phone and will definitely send more detailed answer when at PC (and probably a whole handful of connected questions).

**Dodoroq** · 2016-04-11, 08:12 AM (ISO 8601)

Thanks all for the input. Below are my commentaries to some of the suggestions:

Originally Posted by Ivarov

... powers...

Thanks for the list, right now I am probably looking at 5 powers total, so having hard time picking from this extensive list. Other 5 uses (if any depending on starting level) will end up at Starship Tactics (see below). That should give me some option in any situation (starship combat, ground combat).

Originally Posted by Ivarov

Depends on what is your more immediate goal... thinking about "support" as much as possible (and nothing related to pilot since I didn't read much of it), consider taking a look at Stand Tall, Brink of Death, Force Regimens, Jedi Familiarity, Adept Negotiator, Battle meditation, Cleanse Mind, Collective Visions, Defensive Acuity, Entreat Aid, Force of Will, Grenade Defense, Recall, Skilled Advisor.

Just checking them out. Some do not fit, but others look quite interesting. Oh the choices...