Tabletop Game / Star Wars: Roleplaying Game

38 books, 4 beginner games, one great galaxy.

"You've taken your first step into a larger world."

— Obi-Wan Kenobi

Star Wars Roleplaying Game is the third major incarnation of the Star Wars Tabletop RPGs, published by Fantasy Flight Games to succeed West End Games' Star Wars d6 and the Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars d20. It currently consists of three sets, all based on the same Game System set by default around the same time (between A New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back), but each with different narrative and gameplay focus:

• Edge of the Empire (2013, beta since 2012): Pirates, criminals, exiles, and other scum eking a dangerous existence on the fringes of the Galactic Empire. Details the Bounty Hunter, Colonist, Explorer, Hired Gun, Smuggler, and Technician careers.
• Age of Rebellion (2014): From the trenches to space, from behind enemy lines to a potential ally's tastefully appointed office, the Rebel Alliance's fight against the Empire can take you all over the galaxy. Details the Ace, Commander, Diplomat, Engineer, Soldier, and Spy careers.
• Force and Destiny (2015, beta in 2014): The last Jedi to escape Order 66 (or perhaps their students), untrained Force-sensitives, wild talents from undiscovered cultures—all have to find a way to survive with the Empire outlawing the Jedi and the Force. Details the Consular, Guardian, Mystic, Seeker, Sentinel, and Warrior careers.

While each core rulebook has three specializations available per career, each career received a dedicated sourcebook that adds an additional three specializations. Each game line is cross-compatible with the others, allowing players and Game Masters to use material in all three without converting anything. In addition, the rules allow players to purchase new specializations for their characters outside their starting career, including those across game lines, and some books contain universal specializations that count as in-career for everybody.

This makes it possible for a Mercenary Soldier (Hired Gun, from Edge of the Empire) to eventually throw in with the Rebel Alliance and pick up the Sharpshooter (Soldier) specialization from Age of Rebellion, or even learn some social graces and choose a different kind of specialization like Ambassador (Diplomat). Later still, they could unlock their Force potential with a universal specialization and pursue any of the specializations from Force and Destiny: the arcane Seer (Mystic), a daring Navigator (Seeker), or a lightsaber-wielding Shii-Cho Knight (Warrior).

After the last line-specific book was released (Cyphers and Masks, the Spy career sourcebook for Age of Rebellion) FFG changed focus to universal sourcebooks that could work with all three lines. Some of them were era-specific, such as books focused on the Clone Wars (Rise of the Separatists and Collapse of the Republic) or the period between the Origial Trilogy and the Prequel Trilogy (Dawn of Rebellion), and they added new careers and specializations as well. Others were compendiums of useful stat blocks (Allies and Adversaries, Gadgets and Gear, and Starships and Speeders) that had additional resources not provided in previous books, like iconic weapons or new player species.

Fantasy Flight Games has since restructured and no longer publishes or develops the game internally. Instead, a sibling company within Asmodee, EDGE studio, who translated the previous books in the game line, will be doing so. They have said the books will be entirely compatible with FFG's game, so it is not a new edition.

The Dice

The game uses a unique set of dice with symbols on them rather than numbers. A conversion table for using a standard set of numbered polyhedral dice is provided in the books and an official roller app is available if you want to cut costs:

• The Force Die (white d12) is rolled by each player at the start of the game to determine how many Destiny points they contribute to the pool for the session. Destiny points let players (and the Game Master) enhance their rolls or introduce unexpected details to the plot. Force Dice are also used by Jedi players to represent their use of the Force. Seven of the twelve faces have one or two black pips, representing the Dark Side, and Five have one or two white pips each for the Light Side. There are more doubled-up Light Side pips, meaning rolling the Dark Side is more likely, but if you roll the Light Side you are more likely to have more pips. This is the only custom die without any blank faces.
• Proficiency Dice (yellow d12) are rolled when a character has matching levels of attribute and skill for what they are attempting (i.e. if you have a Brawn of 3 and a Brawling of 3 you get to roll 3 Proficiency Dice when you use the Brawling skill). Talents that upgrade an Ability Die allow you to switch them to Proficiency Dice. Proficiency dice have a Critical Success face called a "Triumph", and faces with Success and Advantage, sometimes paired and sometimes doubled, as well as blank faces.
• Ability Dice (green d8) are rolled for a character that has unmatched skill or attribute levels. For example, a character with Brawn 3 but Brawling 2 would roll 2 Proficiency die for the matched Brawn and Brawling levels and one Ability die for the unmatched Brawn level. These dice have Success, Advantage, and blank faces.
• Difficulty Dice (purple d8) represent the Difficulty of a skill roll. They only have Failure, Threat, and blank faces.
• Challenge Dice (red d12) represent a particularly difficult circumstances or notable enemy proficiencies in an opposed roll. A Challenge Die upgrades and replaces a Difficulty die and additionally has a Critical Failure face called "Despair".
• Boost Dice (blue d6) represent advantageous external factors influencing a skill check. They only have Success, Advantage, and blank faces.
• Setback Dice (black d6) represent external factors hindering the success of a skill check. They only have Failure, Threat, and blank faces.
• A set of standard ten-sided Percentile Dice is also required, most notably for the Critical Hit chart, but also for the various character morality systems found in each line. Percentile dice were not included with the custom dice sets sold by FFG but are included in the die-roller app.

All dice applying to a skill check (including Force Dice, if the character is using a Force power) are rolled simultaneously, then the Successes, Advantages, Failures, and Threats are totaled up. If Successes outnumber Failures, then the skill check succeeds; otherwise, it fails. Additionally, if the Advantages outweigh the Threats, the situation as a whole improves for the character somehow. Having more Threat means the situation worsens—the players and the GM are encouraged to come up with creative explanations for either case. It is perfectly possible for a skill check to succeed but leave the PC worse off in the long run because of the Threat rolled, but on the other hand a failed skill check can also bring about unexpected benefits.

The Game System used for this game has been released separately as a Universal System, called Genesys.

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A list of all sourcebooks based on their game line:

Edge of the Empire

• Beyond the Rim: An adventure in which the PCs seek a lost treasure from the Clone Wars.
• Dangerous Covenants: A career sourcebook for Hired Guns.
• Enter the Unknown: A career sourcebook for Explorers.
• Far Horizons: A career sourcebook for Colonists.
• Fly Casual: A career sourcebook for Smugglers.
• The Jewel of Yavin: An adventure taking place (at least partially) on Cloud City.
• Lords of Nal Hutta: A location sourcebook for Hutt space.
• Mask of the Pirate Queen: An adventure that sees the PCs pitted against the Veiled Sorority, a menacing group of space pirates.
• No Disintegrations: A career sourcebook for Bounty Hunters.
• Special Modifications: A career sourcebook for Technicians.
• Suns of Fortune: A location sourcebook for the Corellian sector.

Age of Rebellion

• Cyphers and Masks: A career sourcebook for Spies.
• Desperate Allies: A career sourcebook for Diplomats.
• Forged in Battle: A career sourcebook for Soldiers.
• Friends Like These: An adventure in which the PCs seek out unconventional help to defend a vital rebel base from attack.
• Fully Operational: A career sourcebook for Engineers.
• Lead by Example: A career sourcebook for Commanders.
• Onslaught at Arda I: An adventure that sees the PCs tasked with helping a rebel base evacuate and find a new home.
• Stay on Target: A career sourcebook for Aces.
• Strongholds of Resistance: A location sourcebook for rebel bases and safe worlds.

Force and Destiny

• Chronicles of the Gatekeeper: An adventure in which the PCs travel to the distant jungle-covered world of Arbooine.
• Disciples of Harmony: A career sourcebook for Consulars.
• Endless Vigil: A career sourcebook for Sentinels.
• Ghosts of Dathomir: An adventure that sees the PCs in a race against an Inquisitor-trained dark sider to recover a powerful Nightsister artifact.
• Keeping the Peace: A career sourcebook for Guardians.
• Knights of Fate: A career sourcebook for Warriors.
• Nexus of Power: A location sourcebook for vergences and other worlds strong in the Force.
• Savage Spirits: A career sourcebook for Seekers.
• Unlimited Power: A career sourcebook for Mystics.

Universal Sourcebooks

• Allies and Adversaries: An essential collection of NPC stat blocks.
• Collapse of the Republic: An era sourcebook for the end of the Clone Wars. Also contains two new careers (Clone Soldier and Jedi) as well as new universal specializations.
• Dawn of Rebellion: An era sourcebook for the rise of the Empire. Also contains new universal specializations.
• Gadgets and Gear: An essential collection of stats for weapons, armor, and other equipment.
• Rise of the Separatists: An era sourcebook for the beginning of the Clone Wars. Also contains two new careers (Clone Soldier and Jedi) as well as new universal specializations.
• Starships and Speeders: An essential collection of vehicle stat blocks.

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The game contains examples of following tropes:

• Abnormal Ammo: The Force and Destiny beta featured cortosis-jacketed rounds, said to be a favorite of bounty hunters going after Jedi. For those unfamiliar with the Star Wars Legends, cortosis is a metal that can block lightsabers, meaning any attempt to deflect a cortosis-jacketed round will meet with problems.
  • In Strongholds of Resistance, a source book for Age of Rebellion, characters get access to Verpine shatter weapons, also from Legends.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Vibro weapons are back and have the Pierce weapon quality to varying degrees, allowing them to ignore points of soak. The vibrorapier from Fly Casual deserves special mention for having Pierce 5 without any modifications, which means it can bypass the heaviest unmodified armor in the game off the shelf. (Lightsabers, of course, do better than that, with the Breach ability—which is equal to Pierce 10—but they're lightsabers, thus not available off the shelf.)
• Ace Custom: In an almost literal example, the Rigger is an Ace who can designate a signature vehicle and get bonuses for modifying and customizing it. The Technician's Modder specialization shares some of Rigger's talents, although not to the same extent. Several of the career sourcebooks also include rules for building custom equipment important to or associated with that career (though anyone can make them, certain specializations are more suited to making certain equipment), which (if the Force or dice are with them) can end up significantly more powerful than equipment of a similar type:
  • The Guardian rulebook, Keeping the Peace, includes rules for making armor. (The Guardian has the Armorer as a career specialization.)
  • The Sentinel rulebook, Endless Vigil, includes rules for making lightsabers. (The Sentinel has the Artisan as a career specialization.)
  • The Technican rulebook, Special Modifications, includes rules to make weapons (except for lightsabers), droids, cybernetic implants, and specialist equipment. (The Technician has Droid Tech, Cyber Tech, Outlaw Tech, and Modder as career specializations.)
  • The Engineer rulebook, Fully Operational, includes rules for making starships. (The Engineer career has Shipwright as a career specialization.)
  • The Mystic rulebook, Unlimited Power, includes rules for the Jedi-forbidden art of alchemy, which covers both the RPG classic potion-making and "enchanting" items by imbuing them with the Force. (The Mystic career has Alchemist as a career specialization.)
  • In the additional rules found in the Force and Destiny GM's kit, players who construct their own lightsabers from the ground up get a say in how the hilt looks and possibly a free modification, depending on the roll.
• Action Initiative: This system has two skills for PCs and NPCs to use when rolling initiative: Cool, for if the character could have reasonably expected the encounter, and Vigilance, for if the character could not have foreseen it. Initiative outcomes determine the order of PC and NPC slots in the order, with the players able to decide which PCs go in which PC slot at the top of each round and the GM doing the same for NPCs.
  • This can allow players to be tactical with some abilities, such as buffs that end on their next turn. They can activate that ability in the first PC slot of the first round and then take the last PC slot of the second round, in order to maximize the ability's effect. Of course, the GM can do that with NPCs, too.
  • It's also worth mentioning that different characters might end up using different skills for initiative, even in the same encounter. For example, if the Bounty Hunter starts a barfight while the Smuggler is making a deal with a Hutt, the Bounty Hunter rolls Cool (he started it, after all) while the Smuggler is as surprised as everyone else and rolls Vigilance.
• Actually Four Mooks: Minion groups serve as this mechanically, though not narratively. Minions are NPCs who are generally non-threatening alone but progressively more dangerous in greater numbers, with shared skills increasing in rank (from 0) for each Minion added after the first one. But your GM will still describe the Minion group as "four stormtroopers" narratively. (At least, if they aren't also trying to get you killed.)
• Adventure Archaeologist: The Explorer's Archaeologist specialization, complete with an illustration of a Duros who might as well be named Corellia Jones.
• Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Averted. Force users suffer no penalties to their Force powers or talents no matter how heavy their armor is.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: Anything with the Pierce quality will ignore some of the target's damage resistance. Breach, a more powerful version, is capable of damaging vehicles and starships.
• Badass Normal: This game does an excellent job at balancing Force sensitive characters with non-Force sensitive characters, thanks in large part to Force users progressing in the same manner as normal folks. This means that Force users have to choose between spending XP on mundane skills and talents or on buying and upgrading their Force powers, which might give non-Force users an advantage in the early game.
  • Empowered Badass Normal: Any non-force user (except for Droids) can buy into the Force-Sensitive Exile, Force-Sensitive Emergent, Force-Sensitive Outcast, or Nightsister trees to become a Force-user.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: Certain Force talents have a symbol on them that means simply having the talent is enough to give the character Conflict.^note Only one such talent is found in the Force and Destiny core rulebook, but at least one such new talent can be found in the various sourcebooks for other Careers. Similarly, some Force powers can only be activated by using the dark side (specifically, the black pips on the Force die), such as Harm.
• Bare-Fisted Monk: The Bounty Hunter's Martial Artist and the Warrior's Steel Hand Adept are essentially this. The Guardian's Warden can function like this in a lesser degree. Although many of their talents can be used with other kinds of melee weapons, the Martial Artist has two that specifically call for being completely unarmed, and the Steel Hand Adept has more, while also fitting the concept slightly better.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: The Martial Artist's and Steel Hand Adept's "Unarmed Parry" talent allows them to use the Parry talent while unarmed and at a reduced strain cost, regardless of their opponent's melee weaponry.
• Boring, but Practical: The Colossus specialization for the Warrior, which focuses almost entirely on soaking up or negating damage, to the point that the left column of the talent tree goes Toughened (increasing wound points)->Toughened->Toughened->Toughened->Improved Toughened (allowing you to heal wounds equal to your ranks in Toughened once per session).
• Bottomless Magazines: Averted when it comes to slugthrowers, missile launchers, and any weapon with the Limited Ammo quality. Played straight with blasters, until a Despair result causes your trusty DL-44 to run out of ammo in the middle of a firefight. Fortunately, there are extra reload items that can be almost universally applied, and several specializations have a talent called Extra Reloads, which allows the character to ignore this result. (Of course, that doesn't mean the Despair result goes away—it just means you can't run out of ammo from it. The GM might think of something worse...)
• Bounty Hunter: As might be expected in a Star Wars game, it's one of the careers available in Edge Of The Empire. Their specializations include Gadgeteers, adept at upgrading and modifying their weapons and armor; Assassins that inflict high damage and severe critical hits; and Survivalists able to track and operate in harsh wilderness. Three more are added in No Disintegrations: Martial Artist, trained in close combat, both armed and unarmed; Operators, pilots specializing in chasing and disabling (but not destroying) enemy ships; and Skip Tracer, detectives skilled at tracking through the urban jungle, socializing, and negotiating.
• Break Them by Talking: The Scathing Tirade talent allows characters to inflict strain on a target via social skills. This can be explained narratively as anything from cowing a group of pirates with tales of your might to telling Mara Jade that her outfit doesn't match.
• Breakable Weapons: Weapons and items can be damaged by steps, making them less and less effective until they're broken and can't be used at all. This normally happens as a result of threats or a Despair on a roll, but weapons with the Sunder quality can inflict damage to a weapon deliberately.
• Canon Discontinuity: Edge of the Empire was released not long before Disney rebooted the Star Wars Expanded Universe, but FFG continues to draw heavily from Legends materials. Generally this means that the fluff in the books doesn't represent current canon, but the developers make reference to new canon material in the newer books, and the Lucasfilm Story Group has been said to be involved in the development process. However, in the case of the latter, all indications are that approval comes in a Broad Strokes form, and Lucasfilm doesn't necessarily vet every little detail.
• Canon Foreigner: As expected for a licensed RPG, the books borrow heavily from a variety of Star Wars sources (including the expanded universe and Legends), meaning many characters, items, and locations from the books, comics, and other games make appearances in the RPG. Some notable examples include Doctor Aphra in Allies & Adversaries and the Starhawk-class battleship in Starships & Speeders. So far, though, nothing from the RPG has crossed into canon. (Unless you count the Raider-class corvette in Friends Like These.)
• Cast from Hit Points: Many active talents require a character takes strain to activate them, usually 2 or 3 points of it. As implied, strain isn't exactly hit points—characters also have wound points—but you if you run out of strain, you do lose consciousness. The lowest strain threshold can be is generally 10, meaning you could activate these talents up to a minimum of five times. However, you can also take strain from rolling Threat in combat, which can lead to your character getting KO'd after activating a particularly impressive ability.
  • Of course, you can reduce your strain by rolling Advantage or making a Resilience check after the end of an encounter, which can prolong your "casting" ability. In that case it depends on how much the Random Number God likes you on a given night. Some specializations also have a talent that allow a character to recover more or even full strain at the end of an encounter, representing their serenity, bottomless confidence, or sheer cussed stubbornness.
  • The "Channel Agony" talent is a more traditional example. Allowing Force users to inflict wounds on themselves to generate dark side points on Force checks.
  • Similarly, "Power From Pain" is a conflict-generating talent that allows a Colossus to gain Force rating equal to the number of critical injuries they currently suffer from.
• The Charmer: A specialization for the Smuggler career.
• Character Class System: Each core book has six careers, which determine your career skills, and each career has three specializations, which add bonus career skills. In addition, each specialization gives you access to a particular talent tree. While you can buy ranks in skills outside of your career skills, and can learn specializations outside of your Career specs (which broadens what skills are considered Career skills), you do both at a cost penalty, and you can't gain access to any other careers' powerful signature abilities.
  • Universal specializations can be bought without penalties, but the Force-related ones don't add career skills (instead, if you don't have a Force rating, you gain one immediately upon buying the specialization), and they can't be used to unlock signature abilities.
• Character Development: The books encourage using this as a narrative tool when cross classing. Since a character wouldn't just decide to pick up a new skill set, or instantly learn it overnight.
• Combat Medic: The Soldier's Medic specialization.
• Cool Teacher: Teacher is a possible specialization, potentially allowing a character to become this. They have utility both off and on the battlefield, with a number of neat tricks to pull.
  • Both the Force and Destiny core book and the Disciples of Harmony splatbook (where the Teacher specialization is found) recommend Game Masters use this archetype when designing mentors for Force users. Which makes sense, considering the wealth of Cool Teacher characters in the game's source material.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Generally avoided; numerous talent trees address the same basic character function or concept but come at it from different angles, having few abilities in common (such as the Rigger vs. the Modder). Sometimes the difference is "this talent tree is for Force-sensitives; that talent tree is not". But even when the two trees are largely similar, such as with the Doctor (Colonist) and Medic (Soldier) trees, a character can skip right over having to buy non-ranked talents they already have from other sources. That said, if a character only gets specializations that fit into a narrow focus, they will end up very, very good at one thing—and not much else.
• Critical Existence Failure: When it comes to your wound and strain thresholds, you receive no penalties until you've exceeded one or both of them, at which point you fall unconscious (or are otherwise incapacitated) and take a critical injury. However, you can receive critical injuries before you exceed your threshold, at which point you may suffer debilitating effects like upgrading the difficulty of checks made using certain characteristics. Character death is treated as a critical injury result, albeit a very high one: you're not likely to get it unless you've already accumulated a number of other critical injuries or you get hit with a particularly nasty weapon.
• Critical Hit: Called "critical injuries," the most common way to receive them is if your opponent rolls enough Advantage or a Triumph to activate their weapon's critical rating. Even worse, critical injuries are cumulative, meaning the more you take the more likely you are to get a worse one next time. This can happen at the personal or vehicle scale.
  • Personal scale critical injuries range from taking a point of strain or dropping whatever you're holding to losing a limb or dying.
  • Vehicle scale Critical Hits run the gamut of the vehicle taking system strain, getting knocked off-course, losing shields, suffering a hull breach, and being vaporized.
• Damage Reduction: Your character's soak is determined by a combination of their Brawn and whatever armor they're currently wearing. If you're hit by an attack, you reduce the damage by an amount equal to your soak rating, to a minimum of 0. Vehicles have this too, though it's called "armor" and it can only be increased with attachments and modifications.
• Death Glare: The Warden's "Baleful Gaze" talent allows them to shoot enemies one so mean it actually makes the Warden more susceptible to the dark side.
• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: As mentioned in the Abnormal Ammo entry, the beta book for Force and Destiny featured slugthrower rounds that had cortosis alloy jackets. Since cortosis is resistant to lightsabers, these rounds can't be blocked by the Reflect talent, which allows more of the attack's damage through to the target. The flavor text explained that they're must-have weapons for bounty hunters hired to go after Jedi, though they're also very expensive and hard to come by.
• Determinator: The lore for the Warrior's Colossus specialization describes its users as such. Being impossibly tenacious and unyielding combatants, capable of fighting through the most daunting odds and enduring unimaginable pain. In-game this is reflected by the spec's numerous bonuses to toughness and endurance.
• Deus ex Machina / Diabolus ex Machina: One of the uses for Destiny Points. See Luck Manipulation Mechanic.
• Demolitions Expert: The Hired Gun's aptly named "Demolitionist" skill tree focus on increasing the effectiveness of explosive weaponry. With talents that make it easier to trigger blasts, increase their damage, and even allow the user to prevent certain character from being hurt by them.
• Double Weapon: The double-bladed lightsaber (a.k.a. saberstaff) is back, and there's a double-bladed vibrosword as well. They both have the Linked quality, letting a wielder who scores enough advantages get two hits in a single attack.
• Dramatic Ammo Depletion: Since the goal of the narrative dice system is to simulate the cinematic nature of the universe instead of replicate realistic tactical situations, there's no ammunition tracking in the game. (Unless the weapon has the Limited Ammo quality.) Instead, the GM can use a Despair on a ranged attack roll to declare your weapon has run out of ammunition. This can be avoided if your character has the "Spare Clip" talent; otherwise, you'll need to switch to a different weapon, use an extra reload if you have one, or get creative.
• Dual Wielding and Guns Akimbo: The rules for for dual-wielding one-handed weapons are simple. Essentially, you take an additional difficulty die on your attack roll, but if you hit, you may use two Advantages to hit the same target with the second weapon, potentially doubling your damage output.
  • The Fly Casual sourcebook for Smugglers includes the Gunslinger specialization; aside from a high-tier talent they have, there are no other rules in the game for targeting two enemies at once.
  • In Force and Destiny, each "Form" of lightsaber combat has its own specialization tree. There isn't one for Jar'Kai, which focuses on dual wielding—yet, anyway.
• Early Game Hell: Starting Force-users have an extra set of abilities, in the form of Force powers, to spend their starting points on and therefore will not be as skilled as their allies. Starting Force-users generally don't get a lightsaber either, they have to find them in play. And finally, with a starting Force rating of 1 it's more than likely that you'll have to draw on the Dark Side—with its accompanying costs in strain, Conflict, and Destiny Points—to make any Force power work. This is compensated for by eventually becoming more powerful than other characters once you get further through your talent trees and upgrade your Force powers enough.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: In the earliest releases for the game line, they not only don't include statistics for canonical characters like Vader or Luke, but even seem to quietly discourage providing statistics for such characters—at one point all but saying an encounter with Darth Vader should be "you lose"—presumably due to the ancient GM's rule of thumb that if you give a character statistics, your players will try to kill it. Starting with Dawn of Rebellion, however, books that include NPCs have started to give statistics to named canon characters.
  • Technically, the habit of including canon NPCs in books started with the adventure The Jewel of Yavin, which included Cloud City as a setting and Lando Calrissian as its baron administrator. However, a sidebar took special pains to explain how the version of Lando presented in the book was only intended for that particular role, and that his statistics could be changed (or be completely different) if a GM wanted to use him as a rebellion general in a separate adventure. While the newer books still generally support this idea (especially the sourcebook Allies & Adversaries) they don't have as explicit a statement about it.
• Enlightenment Superpowers: Aside from the Force being, as ever, largely this, the Ascetic (Consular) specialization's focus is self discipline, meditation, and learning to do without unlocking wondrous powers, granting them abilities such as upgrading any skill check, shaking off Force powers, and adding Force dice to soak. The Hermit (Seeker), Sage (Consular), and Seer (Mystic) specializations might also count, the first relying on withdrawing (at least partially) from and surviving without society to contemplate the Force, the second involves studying the world and the Force in equal intensity, and the third being about using the Force to unlock greater wisdom and even powerful visions. (Notably, all three specializations are the only specializations that offer two Force rating increases in a single spec.)
• Evil Weapon: Lightsabers with corrupted kyber crystals have shades of this, as they add a dark side point to any Force power check made while wielding them, and also the Vicious quality. Light side paragons (PCs who reach Morality 71 or higher) can make a Discipline check to purge the corruption.
• Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Several items that belong to major characters in the Star Wars universe are given entries in various sourcebooks, but their listed price is simply "Not For Sale". It's technically possible to obtain them by locating the character and stealing the item, but good luck obtaining something like Darth Vader's Armor.
• Expy: Like many RPG supplements focusing on urban adventuring, Endless Vigil takes the opportunity of its setting to include a few pieces of art that wouldn't be out of place in a Batman comic—save that they feature Jedi and Star Wars species instead of the Dark Knight.
• Firing One-Handed: There's no penalty for firing a Ranged (Light) weapon one-handed, even if you're holding something (even another Ranged (Light) weapon or a Brawl or Melee weapon) in your other hand, unless you're trying to use both at once. Despite being Ranged (Heavy), the blaster carbine can be used one-handed as well, though you can't dual-wield with it.
• Gadgeteer Genius: This is reflected in a whole mess of careers and specializations, but especially the Gadgeteer (Bounty Hunter) specialization and most of the Technician (Edge of the Empire) and Engineer (Age of Rebellion) careers.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: The Shien Expert specialization has a branch of its talent tree representing a variant more focused on raw physical power, Djem So; rather than using Cunning, the talents in that branch rely on Brawn. Similarly, the Juyo Berserker specialization might be the most difficult tree in the game to fill in, and further splits at one point, allowing one to follow a quick path to "Juyo Savagery" or a longer yet gentler path to Vaapad Balance, Juyo being a dangerous lightsaber form relying on aggression and Vaapad being Mace Windu's slightly more refined and controlled variant.
  • The Force Die has the majority of its faces (7) covered with Dark Side points, six of which are singular, while three of the remaining five faces have two Light Side points. This means that while you're more likely to roll Dark Side results, rolling Light Side results generally gives you more points to utilize for Force abilities. Which fits into the lore that the Dark Side is "quicker, easier, more seductive", but that the Light Side is more powerful overall.
  • In Knights of Fate, the final career sourcebook for Force and Destiny, the last chapter of the book includes a history of lightsaber combat which also attempts to explain why and how different forms are able to use statistics other than Brawn with different forms of lightsaber combat (Presence with Form II, Intellect with Form III). It's up to the reader how good a job it does.
  • Many specializations tell stories even with the generic ranked talents they include. The Surgeon talent, for example, simply increases the number of wounds healed by Medicine checks, and is found in several specializations: Cyber Tech (specializing in cyborg implants), Doctor, Healer, Medic...and Interrogator.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • The Last Jedi and The Empire Strikes Back imply that actual training with the Force isn't all that important when it comes to moving huge boulders or X-wings around. Instead what matters is believing you can do something with the Force. In game, for obvious balance reasons, it doesn't matter how much you believe; beginning characters are stuck straining to move lightsabers and blasters around until they can increase their Force rating enough to handle larger objects - though due to balancing problems, a mid-level force-sensitive character could telekinetically move a star destroyer, while a high-level one could move the Death Star.
  • The effortless deflections of dozens of blaster bolts shown by the Jedi in the movies is not really possible in the game. The Reflect talent does allow you to negate some of the damage from a blaster bolt, but you would have to master multiple Lightsaber talent trees in order to buy enough levels of Reflect to completely negate a single bolt from a low-end blaster pistol. You'll also suffer strain with each Reflected bolt, so it's not "effortless" even for a master of Reflect. Reflecting vehicle-scale weapons is effectively impossible, as they do 10 times as much damage as regular blasters, and there aren't enough levels of Reflect to buy across all of the available Lightsaber talent trees to negate that much damage.
    • The Peerless Deflection signature ability, for the Jedi career introduced in Rise of the Separatists (though the ability is printed in the companion book Collapse of the Republic, somewhat mitigates this—with the right upgrades and supporting talents, a Jedi can protect an entire party if they stay close enough for up to four rounds, twice per session, at the cost of 1 strain per round, if all they do is deflect, while also requiring fewer ranks in Parry and Reflect. It still costs strain and destiny points, so it's not "effortless", and it still can't do much against vehicle-scale weapons. It's also at the end of a talent tree and therefore rather expensive to get to and upgrade.
• Gladiator Games: Comes up in the Friends Like These adventure, with Mandalorians, even. One could also consider the "Grand Dinner" modular encounter in Lords of Nal Hutta to be this, albeit with a distinctly Huttese flavor.
• Girl with Psycho Weapon: Jerserra, from Ghosts of Dathomir, is a Dathomirian woman with an Inquisitor's spinning double-bladed lightsaber. She's an incredibly powerful adversary, and some of the artwork will leave you questioning her sanity.
• Good Cop/Bad Cop: Invoked by the "Good Cop" and "Bad Cop" talents, which allow the user to spend advantages from failed social checks to upgrade their allies' subsequent social checks. While these talents can be found in many talent trees, multiples of both can be found in the Marshal specialization.
• Good Guns, Bad Guns: Disruptor weapons are described as cruel, agonizing firearms that are broadly considered illegal across the galaxy. When compared with more common blaster weapons, they don't have a stun setting and have the Vicious quality, which automatically increases critical injury results when they're rolled. They also have higher damage and lower critical ratings.
• Good Is Not Soft: Played up with many of the specializations across the game books, as several of them provide abilities that increase a PC's killing power, even if they're considered a paragon of virtue and justice. Special mention goes to a few in particular:
  • The Enforcer (Hired Gun) understands that violence gets results, and that even the threat of violence is sometimes enough.
  • The Vanguard (Soldier) excels at moving fast, getting close, and striking first to preemptively eliminate threats.
  • The Colossus (Warrior) can take and dish out a ridiculous amount of punishment, in a somewhat more literal example of this trope.
  • The Executioner (Seeker) embodies the ideals of an apex predator, acting in a way that is both preemptive and direct.
• Guns Are Worthless: Averted hard. Guns are the main mode of combat in Star Wars generally, and that remains true in this game as well. And while the movies et al. show lightsabers as mostly neutralizing the threat of guns, the mechanics of the RPG make that virtually impossible. (See Gameplay and Story Segregation above for more information.)
• Guns vs. Swords: The standard Star Wars tension of "an elegant weapon" vs "a good blaster at your side" is present, but they each have their uses, and many PCs will likely find themselves carrying one of each. In fact, it's possible to use each of them at once.
  • Firing guns at Engaged range increases the difficulty of hitting the target, while Brawl, Melee, and Lightsaber attacks are always the same base difficulty. In addition, the damage of an attack with any kind of melee weapon is increased by your character's Brawn (unless it's a lightsaber).
  • Meanwhile, ranged weapons generally have a higher (though static) base damage than their melee counterparts (unless it's a lightsaber). The difficulty to hit is based on the range of the target, so if you survive the initial attack at Engaged range, it's just a single maneuver to step out of range for an Easy difficulty shot.
  • As a note, your character's defense rating can be different for ranged and melee attacks, which can give one type of weapon a distinct advantage over the other when dealing with certain foes.
• The Gunslinger: The name of a specialization found in the Smuggler career.
• Hand Cannon: The Czerka Arms C-10 "Dragoneye Reaper" heavy blaster pistol. It has an oversized barrel and does more damage than a typical heavy blaster pistol.
• Heroic Willpower: The Heroic Fortitude ability allows the user to ignore critical injuries affecting Brawn or Agility for the rest of the battle. The Soldier career's "Unmatched Heroism" signature ability allows them to ignore all critical injuries for the rest of the battle. ("Instant death" is on the critical injury table.) The Force power Endure allows for similar resilience, but as it is not a signature ability and accessible to anyone, requires some leveling to reach that point.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: The most obvious Star Wars example is averted in Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion: lightsabers are incredibly expensive and are at the highest rarity level so you won't be getting them anytime soon. Played straight in that player characters are able to use various kinds of vibro weapons, which when combined with a high Brawn rating and weapon attachments such as a monomolecular edge, players can still be very, very deadly, if not to Jedi levels.
  • Can still be averted even in Force and Destiny. Starter lightsabers, while formidable, are usually only awarded at the end of a major quest, meaning PCs will be using other weapons (and putting ranks into those skills) up until that point. Even then, only one talent allows lightsabers to reflect blaster bolts back at the target, and it's not found in all the lightsaber trees, limiting the weapon to melee effectiveness. At Engaged range, if the lightsaber-wielding PC misses, the stormtrooper can just step back out of Engaged and shoot the PC with a lower difficulty than the PC had in the melee. Played straight once the PCs have invested plenty of XP in their lightsaber talent trees.
• Hired Guns: A possible career in Edge Of The Empire. Their specializations include Bodyguards, able to boost the defense of allies; Marauders, skilled at melee combat; and Mercenary Soldiers that provide all-around combat skill and leadership. Enforcers, adept at intimidation and moving through the underworld; Demolitionists, explosives experts; and Heavies, who use the biggest (barely-)portable guns, are added in Dangerous Covenants.
• Hollywood Hacking: Made possible with the Computers skill and many Slicer talents. Cyphers and Masks, the Spy sourcebook, includes numerous extra options for slicing computers, including full-fledged slicing encounters.
• Homemade Inventions: The "Contraption" talent allows the user to create a single-use device capable of solving a problem currently facing the character, with whatever happens to be at hand. The Technician career's "Inventive Creation" Signature Ability lets a PC build any device with a Rarity of 5 or lower (which can be increased with upgrades) that will last until the end of the encounter, at which point it immediately breaks.
• Item Crafting: Mostly figures into supplementary books (see Ace Custom, above). Players can craft weapons and armor with Mechanics skill checks, spending Advantage and Triumph to grant the item additional bonuses and perks. Disadvantage and Despair adds flaws and mistakes though. Several specializations, talents, and at least one Force power include ways for characters to use the Force to temporarily or permanently enhanced crafted items. With a high enough Force rating items can become extremely powerful using the custom crafting rules.
• Jack of All Stats: Humans start with balanced stats in all six characteristics.
  • This can be a criticism of high-XP games, where characters can become indistinct if players put their XP into a broader and broader selection of skills and talents so that they're never completely useless in any one situation. Combat can be the most obvious example, with every character being able to handle every type of weapon, at least a little bit. This is especially true if the GM tends to focus on particular scenarios, which often leads players to give themselves ranks in skills that come up most often. The different careers and specializations help somewhat, especially as adding more talent trees has an increasing XP cost.
• Karma Meter: Force and Destiny features a Morality score that represents the character's standing with the Light and Dark Side of the Force and is swayed to either side by performing virtuous or evil acts, frequently tied in to a character's emotional strengths and weaknesses. It's not simply cosmetic, either, as being a paragon (over 70) or dark-sider (under 30) has mechanical benefits and drawbacks, but only with Force abilities; players can have a Morality score (i.e. it can be used with Age of Rebellion and Edge of the Empire) without being Force-users, but there's little mechanical point to it.
• Linear Bounty Hunters, Quadratic Jedi: This is mostly downplayed throughout the game, but there are shades of this at the extreme ends of experience point totals. Since beginner Force-using PCs have to purchase Force powers through earned XP and are unlikely to begin with lightsabers, non-Force users have something of an edge in the early game as they have more XP to put into skills, talents, and extra specializations. The gap closes fairly quickly and stays closed for a long time, keeping Force users and non-Force users in balance for most of the game. The quadratic part comes into play more strongly with abilities that let the force users cheaply add their force rating into the dice pools of certain skills - not very relevant if it's just a single additional die, extremely powerful if it's four of them that suddenly get applied to every social skill and put the face character out of a job. Additionally, some of the force powers published during Edge of the Empire were balanced around the assumption players would never advance past two force dice.
  • Signature Abilities mitigate this somewhat, allowing non-Force users to accomplish profound (if still mundane) feats. But these are limited to being used once per session and cost Destiny Points to attempt... and anyone who started with a Force and Destiny career (and thus begins the game with Force sensitivity) gets them, too - if they can spare the XP.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: Light side Destiny Points can be flipped by the players to upgrade their own skill checks, upgrade the difficulty of enemy skill checks, remember a small item they forgot to bring with them, or already know an NPC in a given scene (subject to GM discretion, of course) among other things. Be warned, though: the GM can flip dark side Destiny Points to make things harder for the player or easier for the NPCs. In many games, this back-and-forth leads to a vibrant Luck Manipulation Economy.
  • This is the Gambler (Smuggler specialization) skill tree's specialty, and the Hotshot, a high-risk high-reward flavored Ace specialization, has a couple of talents in this vein as well.
  • Curiously, the Juyo Berserker perhaps has the most direct use of the Destiny Point pool, with the tree splitting into two branches, one that gives combat bonuses based on light side points in the pool, one that gives combat bonuses based on dark side points in the pool.
  • The total number of points in the Destiny pool and the initial balance of Light side to Dark side Destiny Points is itself determined by random die rolls at the beginning of each play session. It's therefore possible for the pool to start off all Light side or all Dark, and for the number of Destiny Points to be as few as the number of players or up to twice as many. A group that generates a pool of twice as many Dark side Destiny points as there are players with no Light side points is probably in for a rough night.
• Made of Indestructium: Anything made or imbued with cortosis, which in the Legends continuity was resistant to lightsabers, is immune to certain rules that could otherwise damage or bypass them—cortosis weapons ignore other weapons' Sunder quality, for example (and yes, lightsabers have the Sunder quality). One of the novels re-introduced cortosis into the canon continuity, and while useless until refined, cortosis is, in fact, very very tough towards normal attacks and resistant to lightsabers nearly as described in the game book.
  • Also, vehicle or starship armor when characters with most personal weaponry try to take them on, or larger ships when significantly smaller trips try to damage them.
• Magikarp Power: Force-users have a rougher time in the early game compared to those who don't have it. Other characters only have to split XP two ways, between skills and specializations/talents. Having a third way to spend XP, in Force powers, can slow their progression relative to other characters. However, once they hit their stride, even having a single fully-upgraded Force power can change the course of, potentially, every encounter. (If signature abilities were not already as powerful as they were, they might count, as their upgrades take them from merely powerful to almost game-breaking.)
• Mega Manning: One of the talents at the finish of the Teacher tree lets them copy a talent or Force power from any character in an encounter (allies or enemies) and use it at the same level until the end of the encounter. Only works once a session, to prevent endlessly copying allies' abilities without needing to buy them.
• More Dakka: Two weapon qualities equate to this, Linked and Auto-fire. Linked weapons allow you to hit a single target multiple times (up to the weapon's Linked rating) with enough advantages. Auto-fire lets you do the same thing but with the option to hit multiple targets, though you have to declare it before your skill check and roll against a higher difficulty. (Unless you have a specific talent.)
• Mr. Fixit: The Technician career from Edge of the Empire and the Engineer career from Age of Rebellion heavily feature the Mechanics skill, which is useful for repairing just about anything that's damaged or broken. The Artisan (Sentinel) from Force and Destiny also applies, crossed over with Techno Wizard.
• Mythology Gag: Fully one-third of the career rulebooks are named for lines from the Star Wars movies that link to the career, at least in concept (such as "Fly Casual", for Smugglers, "Stay on Target" for Aces, and "Unlimited Power" for Mystics.) A number of talents and actions also utilize famous lines from the movies, like the talents "The Force Is My Ally" and "Aggressive Negotiations", where others function identically to certain feats from KotOR; "Toughened", for example, serves the same purpose as "Toughness" did in that it increases a character's Hit Points.
• Nemean Skinning: The "Hunter's Trophy Armor" in No Disintegrations is made of skinned animal pelts, with claws, horns, and the like.
• No Campaign for the Wicked: All of the books are generally written with the assumption that a PC will be a light-side Force user, a rebel against the Empire, or a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. Only a couple of sidebars spread out across the entire game system mention playing an "evil" campaign. However, the rules for playing a dark-sider are well-established in Force and Destiny,, it's easy enough to take the rules for rebels in Age of Rebellion and turn them around to use for Imperial characters, and all you have to do to be a complete Jerkass in Edge of the Empire is not have a heart of gold. It helps that all of the Careers and Specializations are archetypal, meaning they could be applied to any number of PC builds. (For example, the Vanguard is simply a specialization of the Soldier that closes the distance to the enemy, distracts foes, and takes hits. It's very easy to play such as either a brave selfless soldier looking to protect his comrades, or as a kill-crazy Blood Knight who likes to charge in because they prefer the brutality of close combat.)
• No Range Like Point-Blank Range: Averted. When using a ranged weapon at Engaged range (i.e., the range required for a melee attack) you suffer an increase in difficulty to hit your target, without any added benefits. The "Point-Blank" talent lets you add damage if you succeed at such an attack (at Engaged or Short range) but doesn't make hitting your target any easier.
• No Saving Throw: It's generally accepted that certain Force powers (like Influence) should just work when applied to NPCs of little or no consequence, such as Minions and some Rivals, and should only trigger an opposed check when they're used against important Rivals or any Nemesis. It's also accepted that any Player Character who's targeted by such a Force power should always be able to make an opposed check to resist, since PCs should always be considered "strong willed."
• No-Sell: The Force Endure power in the Knights of Fate sourcebook allows a PC to ignore the effects of Critical Injuries, up to and including death, for a short time.
• No Stat Atrophy: Surprisingly subverted. While there are no rules on aging (and if anything, the source material proves that you only become more badass with age) there is a critical injury result that can permanently decrease one of your characteristics by 1.
• Non-Combat EXP: The books generally support awarding XP in one of two ways: either by encounters completed, which don't necessarily require combat, or as a function of time played, such as 5 XP per hour (provided the hour was spent productively). Notably, the adversary stat blocks don't contain XP awards for overcoming the listed foe, through combat or otherwise.
• Official Game Variant:
  • As with all tabletop RPGs, house rules are generally encouraged and Rule Zero always applies. But one house rule suggested explicitly in the Special Modifications sourcebook: the addition of a Cybernetics skill, for any group with a dedicated cyberneticist in their midst. The given reasoning is that neither Mechanics nor Medicine quite cover cybernetic modifications on their own, and for some GMs it might be preferable to have a single skill that can address all aspects.
  • The devs have said they don't believe the canonical Star Wars characters fit neatly into the careers and specializations on offer in the books. Therefore, they suggest stats for such characters be tweaked depending on their role in the story, such as Luke being a Colonist in A New Hope,^note representing his background as a moisture farmer at the start of the film an Ace or Commander in The Empire Strikes Back,^note representing his ongoing role in the Rebel Alliance and any one of a number of careers in Return of the Jedi.^note representing his aspirations to be a Jedi Knight
• One Size Fits All: Played straight, as no distinction is made between equipment based on your character's size, gender, or number of limbs—padded armor for a human costs the same and has the same qualities as padded armor for a Hutt. (Though it's possible to buy Hutt-specific armor.) You can assume that most armor-makers have learned how to design for the radically different body types in the Star Wars universe.
• Parrying Bullets: This is Star Wars, so get Force sensitive, pick yourself up a lightsaber, and knock those blaster bolts around. But in order to avoid confusion, know that the talent allowing you to do this is called "Reflect"—the talent called "Parry" lets you block blows from melee attacks. (And doesn't require a lightsaber.)
• Party of Representatives: Pretty much guaranteed to happen in the players' party, since there are 94 species to choose from spread across all the books, not counting reprints and sub-species (such as Corellian humans and the many varieties of Niktos).
• Point Build System: Character creation and development revolves around spending XP to buy skills and talents. You can also spend XP to buy additional Specializations, which is the way to multi-class in this system. The game tracks two different values of XP: total, which only goes up as you're awarded XP, and available, which is the amount of XP you have to spend on skills, talents, or additional Specializations, and goes down as you spend it.
  • Force users also use XP to purchase Force powers.
• Poisoned Weapons: An option for bladed weapons.
• Private Investigator: The Investigator and the Skip Tracer can both be this. The Investigator is a Sentinel specialization, meaning they are a Force-using character type, while the Skip Tracer is under Bounty Hunter, and can either be this or more of a Loan Shark enforcer; the Skip Tracer even has a talent called Hard-Boiled.
• Purposely Overpowered: In the Edge Of The Empire and Age Of Rebellion books lightsabers were an Awesome, but Impractical Infinity +1 Sword—one of the most powerful weapons in the game, but hard to find, dangerous just to possess, and with no way of gaining the skills necessary to use it correctly (though a house rule allowing characters to use the Brawl skill is suggested). Though still powerful after being toned down to more balanced levels in Force and Destiny they're still high on the power curve, with high damage, and low critical thresholds, while ignoring all soak, and all this before attachments and mods are factored in. But then...they're lightsabers.
  • Each career's signature abilities, meant to represent a character's mastery of some aspect of their career, such as a Colonist reducing the difficulty of all their skills checks for a time, or a Hired Gun instantly killing all the minions in an encounter. They're only available after reaching the end of a career skill tree, and only one can be taken.
  • Force Powers become obscene at later ranks, with Jedi sending entire groups of enemies flying with Move, automatically generating success or advantage on physical checks with Enhance, and making others unable to see them or objects with Misdirect. These come at a steep XP cost, though. In addition, while it's difficult to take a character to such levels of power, and the game's default setting is the relatively "low-magic" time frame of the original trilogy, it's entirely possible with the rules as written to take powers to the levels seen in the Old Republic games and books, such as Battlemind influencing conflicts on a planetary scale. But again: it's the Force.
• Quick Draw: There are two talents with this name. "Quick Draw," which lets you draw or holster a weapon as an incidental, and "Improved Quick Draw," which lets you do so twice.
• Random Number God:
  • The custom dice take some getting used to, with the symbols used for some of the results being rather abstract. The Force dice are simple white or black pips and fairly easy to read. Threat looks somewhat like the Imperial symbol, so that's appropriate. Successes are explosions, and Triumph is a cool Jedi-like sign, both not too bad, though some players have found it difficult to remember that explosions are good. Nobody seems to know what the Advantage symbol is supposed to be, though (laurels? A pair of headphones?) or why something that looks like caltrops are Failures. Or why Despair, the worst result you can get, is a triangle in a circle. Many players also refer to the dice by color rather than their name in the rules. "Hand me a yellow and two greens" is more common than "I need a Proficiency die and two Ability dice."
  • The Advantage symbol, combined with the Triumph symbol, forms the symbol of the Jedi Order, while the Despair symbol strongly resembles that of the Old Sith Empire. The failure symbol is a bit more tricky; perhaps because it looks like a Sith holocron.
  • The dice mechanics also mean that the GM of these games needs to be ready to improvise at all times. Results like rolling no net successes (and so failing at whatever the character was attempting to do) but a lot of Advantage, and a Triumph (indicating something very good has happened to the character) are not only possible but not at all uncommon with experienced player characters rolling lots of dice on their checks.
  • It also means that assembling all the dice for a roll, picking what talents should apply, rolling, deciding whether other talents should change the results, and finally interpreting the results tends to take much longer than in systems that use fewer dice and a more simple "success or fail" mechanic.
• Rank Up: The Duty mechanic for Age of Rebellion tracks how much you do for the Alliance, and every time the group's total reaches 100, they get a group promotion or reward.
• "Reason You Suck" Speech: The Scathing Tirade skill lets players do one, making a coercion check to inflict strain on the target and nearby enemies as they tear into them.
• Resignations Not Accepted: Obligation, the unique mechanic for Edge of the Empire, can have elements than this, as no matter how many debts you pay off or favors you return, you can never reduce your obligation to 0 without, in effect, changing the game you're playing.
• Resting Recovery: Characters can make Cool or Discipline checks after encounters to recover strain, but to recover everything you'll need a proper rest. There are also exhaustion/fatigue rules the GM can use if the PCs have gone too long without resting by asking them to pass increasingly difficult Resilience checks to avoid the consequences.
• Restraining Bolt: An actual item. When attached to a droid, it must follow your orders and can't do anything to remove it. PC droids and particularly willful NPC droids have a chance to resist, though overcoming a restraining bolt requires a Daunting Discipline check.
• Return to Shooter: The "Improved Reflect" talent lets you do this with blaster bolts, provided your attacker generated enough threat or a Despair on their check.
• Reverse Grip: The Shien reverse grip attachment for lightsabers adds an advantage to attacks made using the Shien technique, as popularized by its most famous practitioner: Ahsoka Tano.
• Right Makes Might: Averted. The Force die, which controls a Force user's ability to tap into the Force, has an equal number of dark and light pips on it. There are more sides with dark pips, but the light pips are usually doubled up. This means that, while you're more likely to roll dark pips and either not use the Force or take strain (and a Morality hit in Force and Destiny) to convert them, when you roll light pips they're more likely to give you the points you need to use some of the more intense Force powers.
  • This was done specifically because FFG wanted to allow players to be dark-siders if they wanted to. It also applies to benefits for falling to the dark side or being a light side paragon: falling to the dark side increases your strain threshold, but staying in the light increases your wound threshold.
  • It also fits well with Yoda's statement that the Dark Side isn't stronger, just "quicker, easier, more seductive."
• Robot Master: This is the realm of the Droid Tech (Technician) and Droid Specialist (Engineer) specializations.
• Rule of Cool: The point of the narrative dice system. While there are some recommended uses of Advantage, Threat, Triumph, or Despair, particularly in combat situations, it's left up to the table how to interpret the results, which will often lead to Rule of Cool rulings.
• Schrödinger's Canon: Understandably, as this incarnation of the roleplaying game began around the time the Star Wars franchise was sold to Disney and was rebooted, the information used here is a combination of Legends material and new canon material. It is officially considered Legends, and as such, info from new canon is instead renamed or squeezes around Legends material. However, Pablo Hidalgo from the Lucasfilm Story Group has gone on record to say that the information in the RPG are not thoroughly looked through and filtered by the group, meaning that information here might contradict upcoming information in new canon at some point.
  • For example, the Journeyman Protectors shown in Rebels were brought into the game, but was renamed to the Concord Dawn Protectorate in order to differentiate from the original Journeyman Protectors the new canon is based off of.
  • Another example is that that the "True Mandalorian" faction (otherwise known as the faction that supported Mandalorians following the Supercommando Codex and the honor code) is renamed to "Old Mandalorian", now including the Concord Dawn Protectorate.
  • Lothal and its Jedi Temple are locations in "Nexus of Power" which also says that the temple is the site of a vergence in the Force. A Siege of Lasan is also mentioned (and there was an Apprehension of Lasan in Legends), having been massacred by Imperial Security Bureau agents wielding T-7 disruptors.
  • Sabine can be seen in an illustration for "Friends Like These", as well as Ezra in an illustration for "Forged In Battle". "Forged In Battle" also features an illustration of rebel soldiers in similar attire to that of Phoenix Squadron. Ezra and Sabine can both be seen in "Endless Vigil", as well as Ezra next to Kanan in "Disciples Of Harmony". Ketsu can also be seen in "No Disintegrations".
  • Picaroon and Gorc from the Dark Forces Saga can also be seen in "Disciples Of Harmony".
  • The "Dawn of Rebellion" supplement features Kanan on the cover, and almost all art in the book is based on the show (with some from Rogue One), on top of every member of the Ghost cell getting stats, as well as other characters from the show.
• Scratch Damage: Averted. If an attack is successful but the damage doesn't overcome the target's soak (or armor, in vehicle combat) then the target receives no damage. This can be frustrating when you would otherwise be able to inflict a critical injury, since the rules state that the target has to take damage from an attack in order to suffer a critical.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: The Entrepreneur specialization has abilities that allow them to ignore obligation, upgrade social checks, and automatically pass knowledge checks by spending money.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: One of the Smuggler's signature abilities, "Narrow Escape", allows them to immediately get out of whatever situation they find themselves in. This does not resolve the problem, but does let them avoid it. (Noteworthy: the rules as written only refer to the Smuggler with the ability being affected by it; other party members could theoretically be left behind.)
• Secret Art: Just about anything relating to Force powers and Lightsabers were this up until Force and Destiny made Force-using careers and lightsaber crafting available.
• Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: A high-level use of the Force Influence power.
• Set Swords to "Stun": The damping emitter is an attachment for lightsabers, allowing the blade to be switched to a low-power "stun" mode at the cost of lower damage, a higher critical rating, and losing the Breach quality.
• The Sheriff: The Marshal (Colonist) specialization embodies this trope.
• Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: A weapon's listed range is its maximum effective range, past which it's impossible to hit or do damage to a target. However, there are no penalties for using long-range weapons at shorter ranges. (Except if you're at Engaged range; see No Range Like Point-Blank Range above.) This means it's entirely possible to get into a gunfight in an elevator using sniper rifles.
  • Note, however, that weapons with the Blast quality can end up being an exception. While there's still no penalty for using them at Short range, if the space is enclosed, the GM is explicitly allowed to rule that everyone inside gets hit with the Blast damage, regardless of whether the attack generated advantages or not.
• Showdown at High Noon: Fly Casual, the Smuggler sourcebook, has rules for how to play out a Wild West-style showdown. Appropriately enough, that's the same book that introduces the Gunslinger specialization.
• The Six Stats: The stats include Brawn (which covers both physical strength and endurance), Agility, Intellect, Willpower, Cunning and Presence. Notably, the six careers for each game line correspond roughly to one of the six stats (it's more obvious in Force and Destiny, where each career has a specialization for lightsaber combat that relies heavily on one of the stats)—and in some cases it's even possible to puzzle out that each of the six specializations for each career relies more heavily on one stat, thematically if not mechanically, than the others.
• Spikes of Villainy: Not inherently villainous (although they are described as being favored by criminals and bounty hunters), the Guardian sourcebook allows characters to upgrade their armor with spikes or blades. They deal damage to targets that come into contact, and can be further upgraded to help in intimidating others.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: The Conjure Force power allows the user to create ghostly melee/brawl weapons and simple tools.
• Staff of Authority: The Staff of Office item, which also doubles as a melee weapon.
• Swiss-Army Superpower: The Utility Belt talent allows it's user to produce a previously undocumented item or weapon from a tool belt or satchel. This can be just about anything that the GM will reasonably let the player get away with.
• Sword and Gun: Possible using the Dual Wielding rules, but it can end up only looking cool while you miss a lot. But if your sword is a lightsaber, maybe it's worth it.
  • If you're using a lightsaber and a blaster, that can actually be pretty effective: you can attack with your blaster and then use the lightsaber to reflect away the return fire.
• Sword Fight: The Guardian's signature ability "Fated Duel" plays it straight, locking the initiating character and another in a three-round duel, in which no other character can intervene.
• Techno Wizard: The Slicer (Technician) embodies this trope, though the Artisan (Sentinel) is a literal example.
• This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: The Guardian's "Fated Duel" signature ability locks a chosen enemy into a duel with them, which neither allies or enemies can interfere with.
• To Be Lawful or Good: The game itself has no alignment system, allowing players to fall into this dilemma without much in the way of guidance towards a particular choice outside of their own character's motivations. But specifically in Force and Destiny, when it comes to Morality, the Force doesn't care about the law, only about being a good person. As such, many light side paragons may struggle with this, when doing the right thing would put them on the opposite side of the law, or when doing the lawful thing might cause them Conflict.
• Took a Level in Badass: The in-universe purpose of the "Recruit" universal specialization. It provides access to weapon skills and talents to non-combat characters like Colonists or Explorers, representing the Alliance's basic training, though combat characters can benefit from it as well. Similarly, the Imperial Academy Cadet universal specialization, from Dawn of Rebellion, is about turning characters into an Officer and a Gentleman sort of badass.
  • Any Force user who goes from Force Rating 1 to Force Rating 2 will suddenly find their Force powers much more potent. With a higher chance for success, and the chance of opening up higher-level results, other characters will start viewing the Force user this way.
• Treasure Chest Cavity: The "Cybernetic Cavity" implant puts one somewhere on the PC.
• Universal Ammunition: The extra reload item functions as this, able to serve narratively as a reload for any kind of weapon. Up to your GM if they require you to designate which weapon it reloads before you have to use it.
• Unorthodox Holstering and Unorthodox Sheathing: Cybernetic implants allow you to holster your gun or sheathe a blade inside a body part or its prosthetic replacement. Shadow sheaths also make it harder to find the weapon using a scanner.
• Utility Party Member: Downplayed, since each career has many different kinds of specializations with different focuses, and you can buy specializations outside your career if you need to. But there are a fair number of specializations that don't have any combat skills whatsoever that shine when it comes to technical or social challenges.
• With Friends Like These...: One of the pre-made adventures is even named this, as players must gather an unlikely alliance of Rebels, Mandalorians, and Zygerrians to fend off an Imperial assault on a hidden Rebel shipyard. The situation is further complicated by various tensions between those groups.

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