Ok I am looking at buying the dark forces pack off of steam, does anyone know if you are able to edit levels and such if you buy the games in steam or dies that work just fine??

Yeah you can do all that. It's pretty much the same game as far as I remember, but with a slightly different exe.

My CDs were scratched but I was able to at least pull the stock exe from it. I bought it off steam and replaced the exe with the original and now it's just like having the original LEC version and I don't need steam running to play it.

Yes you can edit levels. You cannot use the patcher without replacing the original EXE.