Hey Folks,

Mason here to walk you through the creation of a Human Archaeologist not unlike Indiana Jones in the new Star Wars: Edge of the Empire system. Now this is an alternate build for the Explorer class found in the newly released Enter the Unknown sourcebook from Fantasy Flight Games. We’re going to see exactly what it takes to make this character playable as well as what to do with your next 100 XP.

The Background
So first thing’s first, go ahead and open your Edge of the Empire core rulebook to page 37. What is your character’s background? Personally, I’m a fan of the Outsider background. This person comes from beyond normal society and is a bit odd.  They are completely uninformed of the goings-on of politics and can’t be bothered to catch up.

This character, we’ll call him Indiego Homes, is very obsessed with ancient civilizations and has spent more time nose deep in a datapad than on the playground. When Indiego grows up he becomes an archaeologist to investigate and discover more civilizations. He eventually becomes embroiled with the Empire when he discovers a Holocron. Indiego believes it belongs in a museum, adding the A Higher Calling background to this character, but the Empire has other plans. Now he is on the run with this artifact, looking for more clues to the Jedi culture, and dodging Imperials wherever they appear.

Obligation
Now that we know what his back story is it’s time to roll for his Obligation. The Obligation Chart can be found on page 39 of the core rulebook. I rolled a 76 on my percentile dice, which gives me the Oath obligation. This will be a 5 point Obligation. That means he’s sworn to uphold some type of promise, maybe a certain set of ideals or principles. I’ll say his Oath is more to the Galaxy at large and is “to bring the past to the present.” Anytime Indiego comes across an artifact, or a rumor of an artifact, he sets off to liberate it from its current location and bring it to a museum.

We are also going to take a secondary 5 points Obligation from the Enter the Unknown sourcebook. This chart can be found on page 19. I rolled an 88 which gives him the Sponsorship obligation. This means that he is beholden to a private party for his funding. After doing a quick internet search I came across the Royal Museum of Alderaan. There wasn’t too much info on the museum itself which is perfect. This leaves it free for your GM to adapt and alter however they see fit.

If your game takes place after Alderaan’s destruction, Indiego can still be working for the museum’s owner to bring back pieces of their lost culture. They will spare no expense to recover lost items of Alderaanian decent.

Spending XP
Okay, now that the fluff of Indiego is covered we can now dive into the crunch. Turn to the Human species stat block on page 48 of the core rulebook. All Indiego’s base stats start off at 2 for being Human.

His starting Wound Threshold is 10 + Brawn. His starting Strain Threshold is 10 + Willpower. Starting XP for a human is 110 and his Special Ability is that he starts the game with one rank in two different non-career skills of your choice.  We’ll hold off on deciding where to put these two ranks for a bit.

Let’s turn to the Explorer class on page 69 of the core rulebook. The Explorer starts off with 8 class skills with ranks in 4 of them. Now remember, no skill can be raised more than 2 ranks during character creation. Since we’re going heavy into the Archaeologist specialization and we want him to be kind of cool we’ll put our free ranks in; Cool, Knowledge (Lore), Knowledge (Outer Rim), and Knowledge (Xenology).

Next we’ll pick our specialization. We’re going to use The Archaeologist specialization from the Enter the Unknown sourcebook. With the Archaeologist specialization we get access to 4 new skills, with 1 free rank in 2 of them. From here we’re going to select; Knowledge (Education) and Knowledge (Lore). Since we already put one rank in Knowledge (Lore) from the class ranks this will bring us to rank 2 in Knowledge (Lore).

As it stands Indiego is a knowledge machine but not real great in a fight. So let’s take those 2 free ranks we received for being a Human and place one in Ranged (Light) and one in Brawl. Once complete your Skills should look like this:

The frame-work for Indiego is now complete. Now we get to start spending some of that XP. First, make sure to upgrade your Characteristics as high as you can. After character creation is finished you will be unable to spend XP to improve them any more. So we’re going to bump up our Intellect by 2. This will cost us 30 XP to raise the stat to 3 (10 x the number you’re raising to) and then another 40 XP to raise it to 4 giving us a total cost of 70 XP spent. This will leave us with another 40 XP not used.  Next, we’ll raise his Agility by 1. Since this is going from 2 to 3 it will cost us 30 XP. Leaving us now with only 10 XP left. This is what our new Characteristics should look like:

Okay, we’re now going to cash in 5 of the Obligation from earlier to get an extra 5 XP, bringing our current total to 15 XP. We’re then going to take those points and purchase 3 talents from the Archaeologist tree found in the Enter the Unknown sourcebook.

The Hard Headed talent allows Indiego to make a daunting (4 Difficulty dice) Discipline check to shake off a staggering or disorienting effect. This will come in handy with Indiego’s rough and tumble way of archeology. To help soak up some of the damage he’s going to be taking we’ll give him Grit. Grit allows him to gain +1 to his Strain Threshold. Now no matter how rough and tumble he may be, Indiego is still an archaeologist, and the Researcher talent will always be helpful. With Research he can remove one Setback dice per rank of this talent from any knowledge checks made. In addition his research time is cut in half. This can prove crucial to finding your next lead or clue.

Each of these talents goes for 5 XP a piece bringing us down to 0 XP leftover.

After everything is said and done this is what Indiego’s skills should look like:

The Gear

When first making a character you’ll be given only 500 credits to play with. That’s not a lot. 500 credits only gets you a couple of low-end blasters. So we’re going to cash in those 5 points from the Sponsorship obligation we took earlier for 1,000 credits. This brings our new total to 1,500 credits.

In addition to staying with the credit limit we also need to stay within our Encumbrance threshold. To figure out encumbrance threshold you simply add 5 to your Brawn rating. Indiego’s Brawn is 2, so that brings our total to 7.

Our first purchase is going to be a good blaster. Indiego will take the Heavy Blaster Pistol on page 160 of the core rulebook. It’s got good stopping power and falls neatly in our budget at 700 credits. The Heavy Blaster Pistol has an encumbrance of 2 and has 3 hard points, making it highly customizable. For armor we’ll get Heavy Clothing. They are cheap, at 50 credits, but don’t add to the encumbrance value since he’ll be wearing them.

For the rest of our gear we’re going to jump back to the Enter the Unknown sourcebook. On page 48 we find an important tool to any Archaeologist, the Excavator’s Precision Tool Kit. This tool kit, while pricy at 500 credits and 5 encumbrance, has everything any Archaeologist could need. It has spades, brushes, a stout knife, and plenty of other goodies detailed on page 52.

To help with this heavy tool kit we’re going to purchase a Surveyor’s Bag. At 50 credits this handy bag allows us to increase our encumbrance threshold by 2, brining the new total to 9. We’ll also pick up 3 Stimpacks for emergencies because you never know what you may run into. Now that all our tools are bought we are left with 175 credits for incidentals. Indiego Homes is ready to go exploring! Below is a copy of Indiego for you to download and use for your own game.

Indiego Homes

Where to go from here?

Character development from this point on will depend greatly on the type of campaign your Game Master is running. If the game tends to be more combat heavy I would recommend staying to the left of the Archaeologist tree. On that side you can pick up such talents as Durable, Rank 2 in Hard Headed, and Pin. Of course you’ll need to beef up your Ranged (Light) skill to keep up with your new abilities.

If you want to stay more book-smart I would stick to the right side of the Archaeologist tree. On that side you can take advantage of Knowledge Specialization, take a second rank in Researcher, and eventually Museum Worthy. Along with those you’ll need to spend points to upgrade your knowledge skills.

That’s going to wrap it up for this installment of the Character Workshop. If you have a character concept that you’d like to see fleshed out please feel free to comment below. It can be from almost any movie, book, cartoon, or comic that you’d like and in whatever system you’d prefer.