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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 6794120" data-attributes="member: 22424">I'd be inclined to agree. But others take a different view, and argue that all those years when he "used to bullseye womp rats" and when he was "the best push pilot in the Outer Rim" mean he must have been higher than 1st. I'd certainly prefer all that be considered background, but I can live with the alternative... provided the PCs also start higher than 1st.Indeed. Which was damn stupid of them, what with the script for "Star Wars" making it clear that he was.They're above average in the general populace, and that's fine. I'm inclined to think that the PCs should be as well. But, IMO, it's a problem if they're above the values possible for PCs. Especially in a Star Wars RPG, where those are exactly the sorts of characters it should be possible to play.He's immensely strong and tough and agile at the start of his career, but he wasn't also hugely smart and wise and charismatic at that same point. Those aspects of his character came later - which can partly be modelled with aging modifiers and partly is a result of him boosting those ability scores later and/or re-assigning some of those point buy stats later on.It's not a question of modelling him as an NPC.Here's the thing: if you sit a bunch of new players down to play a Star Wars game, when they get to discussing characters they'll inevitably start talking in terms of the 'named' characters - Luke Skywalker, or Han Solo, or Boba Fett, or whatever.Now, very likely they'll not be playing those characters, but those characters set the tone. And, equally, it's likely they won't be able to play characters who can match those guys from the start - both Han and Boba Fett are clearly experienced characters so it's not unreasonable for them to have to adventure a bit to grow to that level.But the problem with the stats assigned to Han Solo and Boba Fett in the published books is that the PCs can't grow to match those characters. It doesn't matter how long they play or what deeds their PC achieves, they can never match up.Which, IMO, is a significant weakness in a game intended to model those guys and their adventures. (Amusingly, as discussed up-thread, the d6 Star Wars system does allow for characters who match up extremely well... provided you ignore the actual stats they published for the characters! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> )Obviously, D&D isn't "the Conan RPG", but it does have something of the same sort of expectation, in the form of 1st Ed's Appendix N (Appendix D in 5e) - it's very heavily influenced by Conan, and Elric, and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, and Drizzt. So, again, it's not unreasonable that PCs should be able to match those guys, eventually.Hence my dislike for giving those guys unreachable stats, or too many levels, or multiple game-breaking custom rules just for them (especially if the class was built specifically for them!) - while it's true that those guys may be the best of the best in their respective settings, so too should be max-level PCs in their settings, and in the same way.</blockquote>

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