Star Wars: Edge of the Empire house rules

From Smith family

Some house rules I use

Character generation

By-the-book starting characters are pretty pathetic and undifferentiated. This is mainly because everyone spends all their starting XP on attribute increases, leaving very little for skills and talents. I now give all starting PCs a big chunk of additional XP to spend before play, but this additional XP can't be spent on attributes. Increases range from 50XP in a six-player game to 150XP in a two-player game.

Character advancement

Talent trees

I can't see any real reason for the limited links in the talent trees. I play it that every talent is connected to all horizontally and vertically adjacent talents. You still need to climb the ladder to get to the most expensive ones, but you can make choices.

(The argument given for the limited choices is that "no self-respecting Slicer wouldn't start off buying this list of Talents." That may be true, but I think that should be a choice of the player, not the designer.)

Skill use

Sw:EotE apportions skills somewhat differently from many other RPGs. This clarifies what skill does what.

Perception and Vigilance

Perception should probably be renamed Investigate or Scrutinise: it's an active, concious examination of an object or scene. Vigilance is the passive perception of your surroundings. In published adventures, many Perception checks should be replaced with Vigilance checks.

Cool and Discipline

Cool is about how you present yourself to the world ("putting on a brave face"), while Discipline is about controlling your emotions. Both can be used for fear checks, but the effects of using Cool to overcome fear will typically last for a much shorter time than using Discipline.
Cool is also the skill to use when trying to read the emotions and motivations of someone else.

Piloting (Space) and Piloting (Planetary)

If the movement is happening near the ground (or water, or somesuch), it's Planetary. If the movement is happening in mostly free space, it's Space.

Obligation and Motivation as Aspects

Some of the Obligations (such as Bounty or Favour) are easy to work into an ongoing game. Others (such as Oath and Duty) and all the Motivations are difficult for the GM to incorporate into play. (I'm not a fan of the stress reduction mechanic, and judging people when passing out XP is too divisive.)

Instead, I treat Obligations and Motivations similarly to Aspects in Fate, in that they can be Compelled by the GM or players. The Compel takes the form of one of:

  • You have ____ obligation/motivation and are in ____ situation, so it makes sense that, unfortunately, ____ would happen to you. Damn your luck.
  • You have ____ obligation/motivation in ____ situation, so it makes sense that you’d decide to ____. This goes wrong when ____ happens.

For instance,

  • "You have the Dutybound obligation and are trying to get help from that organisation, so it makes sense that, unfortunately, the official you're dealing with questions your loyalty. Damn your luck."
  • "You have the 'droid rights motivation while a droid is being pushed around by the bar partrons, so it makes sense that you'd decide to stop them. This goes wrong when they start preparing for a fight."

If the player accepts the Compel, flip a Destiny token from Dark to Light. If the player doesn't want to be subject to the Compel, they can flip a Destiny token from Light to Dark and the proposed event doesn't happen.

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