Training and leveling up (Star Wars and Jedi specific)

[Methinkus]

So some friends and I started up a Star Wars campaign a little while ago and they are darkside characters in the New Jedi Order Era, their current mission is to find someone who can train the Force user characters or at least some collection of Sith lore that they can use to further their understanding of the force. The problem is this; it will be a little while still before they achieve this goal, and without training they shouldn’t be able to progress to far (otherwise what is the point of their quest, really?) but if I don’t let them level up as force user classes while the others level up without penalty I feel like I am being unfair.

Part of me says “who cares? They knew what they were doing when they chose to start sith characters in this era, I told them what I had planned!” but at the same time I want to be fair and I don’t want some of the characters to be outclassed too badly. So my plan as of right now is to allow them to go up two levels as force using characters but after that there just isn’t much more they can learn “by doing” and will have to wait to level up or take levels of another class until they find a mentor or collection of training techniques. Any advice here would be helpful.

I also noticed a flaw in the basic premise of this mission as I go over this problem; I never required any other classes to go through training in order to level up. I can rationalize this by saying that the Padawan to Master Jedi relationship is such a major part of both all force using classes – the force adept needs training as well, it says so in the book – that I should be able to make the players understand where I am coming from when I have to tell them that they can only progress so far as force users without formal instruction. Once again any thoughts would be appreciated

 

[freedoms_edge]

Okay - First off, don't worry, like you said, they knew what they were getting into. The simple plan would be to only allow them to pick up a force level every second level without training. So you are effectively forcing them to multiclass. This solves the problem of keeping them at the same level as the other characters, as well as stopping them from becoming pure evil, which I always find is a problem as it takes a superb player to play an evil character well, and there aren't that many superb players out there.

If you are still worried about where they would get there training from, simply give them a holocron to study from. The character within the holocron has no influence on the outside world, and you can then control what they can and cannot be taught. Another idea with the holocrons is to set a level limt on each one, say the first one they find can only take them up to 5th level, the second only up to 8th, and so on so forth.

A final option is this. I don't know how much you know about the history of the books in the Star Wars universe, but there is a place called the Shadow Academy, where Dark Jedi are trained. You could have your characters trained over the holonet by a Dark Jedi from the shadow academy who they have met somewhere. Again, this gives you complete control on what they can & cannot learn.

Hope my suggestions are some use to you, but remember, these are only my suggestions.