Star Wars Edge of the Empire character creation and dice advice

Those who know me know I can get obsessive, so of course I looked up the probability of the die rolls for Star Wars Edge of the Empire.

It seems adding more ability dice can increase the probability of positive results faster than converting them to proficiency dice. Of course you will never have a triumph until you convert to proficiency dice but triumphs are few and far between so far.

Many players emphasize increasing characteristics over skills or talents in the creation phase. It does seem like a solid plan. During character creation you cannot bring a skill above level 2 nor can you bring a characteristic above level 5. Skills cost 5x the level you are going to, so 15 exp total to move up to level 2 (from 0). Each ability affects a different set of skills, and every player is assumed to have a level 0 in each skill. So any player can try any skill at their base characteristic level.

This chart shows how many skills are affected.

Characteristic	# skills affected	Cost to rank all skills to level 2 (career skills)
Brawn	4	60
Agility	6	90
Presence	4	60
Intelligence	5	75
Cunning	5	75
Willpower	3	45

Since each race has different stats it would cost 90 exp to up a level 3 stat to it’s max of 5, or 150 for a 1 stat.

With that in mind a Wookiee who increased their brawn to level 5 could have 5 ability dice on 4 brawn skills right away giving a 90% success rate on a basic threat. But if they upped those skills to level 2 it would cost 60 giving them 2 proficiency dice and one ability dice giving an 83% probability of success on a basic threat action. It really is a significant difference.

Of course there are downsides to just increasing the stat. In my example it uses all the Wookiee’s starting experience. While increasing the specific skills leaves the player another 30 experience to upgrade with. Also the player may not care about all 4 of those skills and don’t forget the free starting skill upgrades. I also found talents look to be an even bigger benefit. Pumping into a given attribute tends to make a character a one trick pony and can leave you out of certain chapters of the game. A brawling Wookiee really doesn’t advance the story line much.

The deciding factor could be that you can only increase characteristics at creation or with special skill tree purchases. During the game it is quicker and easier to increase skills and special abilities.

Personally if I get a chance to re-roll my character I think I will try to focus on characteristics. I also think I will go with an agility based pilot character as this is something our group is missing. I'm still happy with my Wookiee Hired gun, but I wouldn't be me if I didn't obsessively second guess my decisions.

Until next time, keep those game nights rolling.