Saga Organizations not finished?

[Bellberith]

I read through the organizations in the force unleashed book and it seems rather unfinished to me. I am DMing a game and it gives me absolutely 0 idea on how much income, how many soldiers, the kind of equipment they have, and the strength of those soldiers.

One of my players took the natural leader feat and i am wondering if any of you guys went ahead and finished the rules with some homebrew or know where i can find some myself if i dont have to make them from scratch.

[Mando Knight]

There aren't hard and fast rules for those because it's too loose of a system to have them. Furthermore, a new organization shouldn't be at its full scale right away... if it's a level 10 character with 18 Charisma, that's a Scale 9 (planetary) organization, which is too big to have sprung up overnight, especially if the player took Natural Leader on a whim rather than having built up the skeleton of the organization before taking the feat. Natural Leader isn't Wealth on steroids.

The number of guys a full-size organization of a given scale is also a bit hard to enumerate: the Empire, at scale 19, has literally trillions of loyal lackeys and well over a thousand top-of-the-line Star Destroyers, with millions more of support ships and older models.

Similarly, the income and member type/strength of an organization is not based entirely on its scale: the Hutt and Black Sun criminal empires have wealth far beyond that of a basic paramilitary of the same operation scale, but are mostly a (relative) handful of smugglers and thieves along with a large number of tough but unskilled thugs acting as enforcers for the few high-level criminal masterminds whereas the paramilitary would have more highly-trained specialist soldiers and the general grunts would be of a higher skill level than the thugs.

The actual amount of money is arbitrary because it's too much to handle at the larger scales. House Organa (scale 9) likely has a few billion credits' worth of assets in just outfitting their starships and security forces, let alone their estates and businesses on Alderaan and abroad. The size and type of the organization should give you a rough idea of the assets available to them (a scale 9 might have a few corvettes and a small fleet of freighters and starfighters, while scale 10 might add on a larger frigate or cruiser as their flagship).

The specifics are for the GM to devise based on the circumstances. If you need more information, give us the scale and type of organization and the founder's level, and we should be able to help devise a rough outline as to what the organization will look like when it's at full strength.

[Bellberith]

There aren't hard and fast rules for those because it's too loose of a system to have them. Furthermore, a new organization shouldn't be at its full scale right away... if it's a level 10 character with 18 Charisma, that's a Scale 9 (planetary) organization, which is too big to have sprung up overnight, especially if the player took Natural Leader on a whim rather than having built up the skeleton of the organization before taking the feat. Natural Leader isn't Wealth on steroids.

The number of guys a full-size organization of a given scale is also a bit hard to enumerate: the Empire, at scale 19, has literally trillions of loyal lackeys and well over a thousand top-of-the-line Star Destroyers, with millions more of support ships and older models.

Similarly, the income and member type/strength of an organization is not based entirely on its scale: the Hutt and Black Sun criminal empires have wealth far beyond that of a basic paramilitary of the same operation scale, but are mostly a (relative) handful of smugglers and thieves along with a large number of tough but unskilled thugs acting as enforcers for the few high-level criminal masterminds whereas the paramilitary would have more highly-trained specialist soldiers and the general grunts would be of a higher skill level than the thugs.

The actual amount of money is arbitrary because it's too much to handle at the larger scales. House Organa (scale 9) likely has a few billion credits' worth of assets in just outfitting their starships and security forces, let alone their estates and businesses on Alderaan and abroad. The size and type of the organization should give you a rough idea of the assets available to them (a scale 9 might have a few corvettes and a small fleet of freighters and starfighters, while scale 10 might add on a larger frigate or cruiser as their flagship).

The specifics are for the GM to devise based on the circumstances. If you need more information, give us the scale and type of organization and the founder's level, and we should be able to help devise a rough outline as to what the organization will look like when it's at full strength.


He will be level 9 with a 16 charisma so the organization scale would be 7.

[Mando Knight]

OK, and what kind of organization? Is he looking to found his own mercenary band, a criminal empire, or something else?

[Bellberith]

OK, and what kind of organization? Is he looking to found his own mercenary band, a criminal empire, or something else?

He wants a peace-keeping squad. eventually he wants a galactic peace-keeping organization. by "keeping the peace" it pretty much means beating all aggressors into submission. He is a force user with a lightsaber.

[Mando Knight]

Alright, so what era is this, and how much of his organization does he expect to be Force Users (and does he plan on training them himself)?

What I see so far, going down the list of things in TFU:

What are the Organization's Goals? To bring criminals to justice by beating them up.

Who is a Member of the Organization? Presumably the party, but is he looking more for police and detectives, or for mercenaries and bounty hunters?

Who Runs the Organization? Obviously the player who took the feat, but is the rest of his party part of a ruling council? Consider giving the player an NPC adjutant who handles the day-to-day operations and brings a "starter pack" of resources, such as the leader of a small-time vigilante crew looking to step up their game and become part of something bigger.

Where Does the Organization Operate? As a scale 7 organization, they should quickly build up a power base roughly equivalent to being a major faction in a large city. (This being Star Wars, that would be like being the police commissioner of a city the size of the state of New York) If the player would rather run across the Galaxy fighting crime rather than trying to clean up Space-Gotham, that's fine too... but Scale 7 means they can't influence a whole lot of the Galaxy at once, and are limited to roughly a single corvette or frigate, or if they have an actual base in addition to their ship, it's just something the size of a light freighter.

What Does the Organization Do on a Regular Basis? How frequently do they act? Do they focus on gathering information on criminal bases so they can muster forces and attack, or do they patrol their city, looking for thugs to beat up?

Who Supports the Organization, and Who Works Against It? Obviously criminal enterprises that encounter the group will work against it, but do the local (legitimate) political entities support its operation or see it as a vigilante group as dangerous as the criminals it fights? How about the Republic or Empire at large? The people? What do the existing major Force traditions (that is, the Jedi in most eras, and the Sith in some) think about this lightsaber-wielding vigilante with a company of enforcers?

Type: It sounds like he's aiming for paramilitary (focusing on attacking criminals with extreme prejudice, rather than bringing them in for the legal system to deal with) rather than Enforcer (which would focus more on due process and prefers lethal action generally as a last resort)

Scale: 7 due to the Natural Leader feat, but don't be afraid to let the organization grow beyond that as you have them work to further the group's goals (but do make the players work for it: the Bat-Family would be a scale 6-ish faction, but it's only in conjunction with the rest of the Justice League that Batman's crime-fighting organization could be considered scale 8 or 9).

Organization Score Criteria: Work with the founder on these. They should focus primarily on things that help further the organization's goals and influence, rather than just being a laundry list of the founder's traits. TFU recommends you pick up to 10 positive criteria, and after that you should "buy off" additional positive criteria with negative ones.

Titles, Benefits, and Duties: Also work with the player(s) on these. Players don't get the whole list of sample benefits from Table 4-3, they get one per rank.

Minions: Nonheroic levels generally run from 1-8, most characters after that are skilled and important enough to have Heroic levels. Most minions in a scale 7 faction led by a level 9 player character should have 3-4 nonheroic levels, as well as a few specialists of up to NH8 and some Important Guys with up to about 6 or 7 Heroic levels instead of Non-Heroic levels.

[Bellberith]

Alright, so what era is this, and how much of his organization does he expect to be Force Users (and does he plan on training them himself)?

What I see so far, going down the list of things in TFU:

What are the Organization's Goals? To bring criminals to justice by beating them up.

Who is a Member of the Organization? Presumably the party, but is he looking more for police and detectives, or for mercenaries and bounty hunters?

Who Runs the Organization? Obviously the player who took the feat, but is the rest of his party part of a ruling council? Consider giving the player an NPC adjutant who handles the day-to-day operations and brings a "starter pack" of resources, such as the leader of a small-time vigilante crew looking to step up their game and become part of something bigger.

Where Does the Organization Operate? As a scale 7 organization, they should quickly build up a power base roughly equivalent to being a major faction in a large city. (This being Star Wars, that would be like being the police commissioner of a city the size of the state of New York) If the player would rather run across the Galaxy fighting crime rather than trying to clean up Space-Gotham, that's fine too... but Scale 7 means they can't influence a whole lot of the Galaxy at once, and are limited to roughly a single corvette or frigate, or if they have an actual base in addition to their ship, it's just something the size of a light freighter.

What Does the Organization Do on a Regular Basis? How frequently do they act? Do they focus on gathering information on criminal bases so they can muster forces and attack, or do they patrol their city, looking for thugs to beat up?

Who Supports the Organization, and Who Works Against It? Obviously criminal enterprises that encounter the group will work against it, but do the local (legitimate) political entities support its operation or see it as a vigilante group as dangerous as the criminals it fights? How about the Republic or Empire at large? The people? What do the existing major Force traditions (that is, the Jedi in most eras, and the Sith in some) think about this lightsaber-wielding vigilante with a company of enforcers?

Type: It sounds like he's aiming for paramilitary (focusing on attacking criminals with extreme prejudice, rather than bringing them in for the legal system to deal with) rather than Enforcer (which would focus more on due process and prefers lethal action generally as a last resort)

Scale: 7 due to the Natural Leader feat, but don't be afraid to let the organization grow beyond that as you have them work to further the group's goals (but do make the players work for it: the Bat-Family would be a scale 6-ish faction, but it's only in conjunction with the rest of the Justice League that Batman's crime-fighting organization could be considered scale 8 or 9).

Organization Score Criteria: Work with the founder on these. They should focus primarily on things that help further the organization's goals and influence, rather than just being a laundry list of the founder's traits. TFU recommends you pick up to 10 positive criteria, and after that you should "buy off" additional positive criteria with negative ones.

Titles, Benefits, and Duties: Also work with the player(s) on these. Players don't get the whole list of sample benefits from Table 4-3, they get one per rank.

Minions: Nonheroic levels generally run from 1-8, most characters after that are skilled and important enough to have Heroic levels. Most minions in a scale 7 faction led by a level 9 player character should have 3-4 nonheroic levels, as well as a few specialists of up to NH8 and some Important Guys with up to about 6 or 7 Heroic levels instead of Non-Heroic levels.

The players runs this himself, the party actually isnt involved at all. Yes, it is paramilitary type. KotOR era.... that might be important.

As for the minions, how many of them?

The frequency of the actions the organization takes will increase as he gets members probably.

[Mando Knight]

The number of minions depends on how mobile his organization is: by its Scale, it can't be big enough to impose significant influence on more than one city-sized population at a time. If he entrenches himself into a city and makes his organization its protector, he could eventually have a few thousand recruits patrolling the city. On the other hand, if he prefers to remain mobile and the organization obtains a small capital ship for its use, then the organization is essentially just the crew and troops in that ship. Ships acceptable for the role would be the Republic's Foray and Hammerhead-class frigates, or the Mandalorian Shaadlar-type troopship and Jehavey'ir-type assault frigate.

One suggestion for his recruits would be disillusioned/retired military units from one of the major factions of the time, since they're already built: use the low-level CL1 or 2 troops as the main grunts, and the CL6 officers lead them into battle, or make a decent lieutenant to help the player run his organization.