Risha's Letters Engine tune-up Audila Dubrillion

I have a question for all the Jedi roleplayers out there. Do you find developing your character's backstory to be difficult? I ask because it seems to me that much of the background information has been filled in already. Clearly your character was taken into the Order at a very young age where they were taught the same tenants of the Code as everyone else by masters possessing (more or less) similar temperaments and perspectives. There they remained until shuttling to Tython for the Trials. That's pretty vague. I could see having a hard time using that to get inside my character's head and make decisions for him. I'm not criticizing; not at all. Nor am I trying to disparage the Force-using stories when compared to the others. Quite the opposite, in fact. Having finished my smuggler, I'm looking to create either a knight or a consular next but ran into trouble when I tried to define who my character was. So I'd figured I'd ask y'all for inspiration. So let's hear about your Jedi. Who are they? What challenges did you run into during their creation? How'd you overcome those challenges? I'd be interested to know.

Trace Daro. Picked because it sounded like Ace Daring -- something exemplary of the rakish camp at the heart of the smuggler's adventures.

The Scoundrel is a stealthy, positionally-dependent melee class regardless of which tree you select. The Scrapper tree revolves around a few, hard-hitting burst abilities while improving your stealth technique. Solo, expect to use sudden, overwhelming damage to remove a target from the field alongside a wide range of crowd control to maintain your positional advantage. In groups, be prepared to provide long-term, pre-fight crowd control, excellent add management, and plenty of damage to the primary target. The downsides being extended periods of time off-target (melee classes are particularly vulnerable to knockbacks, highly-mobile targets, and anything else that requires you to re-close the distance). The Dirty Fighting tree focuses almost wholly on damage-over-time. I've not tried this tree, but I would imagine that DoT mechanics would yield steadier damage (even you're knocked away from the target, your bleeds keep ticking) but a slower build-up (Vital Shot, Wounding Shot, and Hemorrhaging Blast all require time to work; the "T" in "DoT"). My understanding is that you're still stealthy, still melee, and still positionally-dependent -- you just back-load your damage (Cold Blooded) vs. front-loading it.

I like to optimize my companions for the content I'm tackling -- setting AoE abilities to fire when I know I'm facing a group, turning them off for single-targets or CC-sensitive situations, etc -- but this is a clunky and tedious activity at present. I like that Risha (for example) comes with both a single-target stance and an AoE stance, but simply toggling that mode doesn't bring the associated abilities (e.g. Gas Canister) online. I have to do that manually; a difficult task while under fire. A streamlined alternative would be to rig her AoE stance to bring its related abilities online by default with those same abilities deactivating once she returns to single-target mode. In this way, I can easily optimize her to take out that pack of Imperials standing between me and my objective, and then neatly pivot to eliminate the single champion that comes out to defend that objective with minimal fuss. I enjoy having the ability to alter my companions' tactics, I just wish I could do so on the fly.

I'll get to the main thrust of your point in a second, but first I'd like to point out that I just suggested that I thought the Council was right when they wrote the Code. And I think this because I cannot call to mind a single Jedi that followed the Code and fell. Are there some who violated its tenets and did not fall? Sure. But every last one that fell broke it in some way. To me, that's an important data point. As to your argument that the Council's judgement can be clouded where the Force is ever clear, I couldn't agree more. Where I take issue is your assertion that the Council determines what makes an action light or dark. They aren't making that decision. They're not out there with you, looking over your shoulder, adding and taking away points as you make your choices... But the Force is. Therefore, I'm left with no choice to assume that bedding that Twi'lek earned you DS points not because the Council thought it wrong, but because it ran counter to the will of the Force.

I'm curious to know why people so often make this assumption. It's always been my understanding that the Code was arrived-upon by venerable and experienced Jedi Masters meditating upon the will of the Force. "Man-imposed?" I'm skeptical. It's much more likely these guidelines are in fact "Force-determined" and merely "man-written." Sure, they could have misinterpreted what they saw, but millennia after millennia of successful application would seem to belie that. The fact that following the Code in the game awards LS points while deviating awards DS would seem to support this theory. And might I suggest we refrain from personal attacks lest our "attachments" to our arguments show. Gotta keep those DS points at bay.

Indeed. Unconditional love is loving someone or something, not for what they can give you, but merely because you wish them to be happy. One must desire this happiness even when the object of your love does things counter to your interests -- saying something hurtful, leaving you for another relationship, dying... It's a very rare thing. It's a very hard thing. But it's this deep and abiding love of all living things that give the Jedi their purpose. Its "near enemy" is attachment. This attachment is what leads people to say "my relationship," "my wife," "my home," "my food." Those are all natural responses, but they indicate an attachment to something outside the Force. And if the Force requires you to give those up to make someone else happy? To be "loving?" How many who have developed such an attachment could readily obey? I guess a precious few. Here's an amusing example: The Jedi must let go of their sweets so that they can be free from this coconut of a world and wander the beautiful beaches of the Force.

I think this argument is suffering from a cultural bias. If I'm understanding you correctly (and I apologize I'm not), then you (alongside many others) are interpreting this using the western definition of love, i.e. romantic love. I don't think this definition fits. Eastern cultures, by comparison, tend to have many different words for many different kinds of love. There is romantic love, true, but there is also universal love -- a love for everything that lives simply because it lives. This love is calm, abiding, and most importantly (for the Jedi) without attachment. Given his phrasing stated "love everyone, including their enemies," and given the Jedi Order grew largely from eastern monasticism, I'd guess Lucas' words align much closer to this interpretation. Which would preclude this quote from supporting the idea that romance shouldn't give DS points.