I have one player who thumbed his nose at the idea and invested heavily into his talent tree to start (he actually bought all the way down to Dedication).

The group has earned 125xp so far, but he's been pretty much a badass all the way through. It sure doesn't feel like he's missed out or made a mistake in any way.

I guess I'd say he's weaker at the general stuff, but within his role he feels much stronger for it.

What Talent tree was he in?

I have one player who thumbed his nose at the idea and invested heavily into his talent tree to start (he actually bought all the way down to Dedication).

The group has earned 125xp so far, but he's been pretty much a badass all the way through. It sure doesn't feel like he's missed out or made a mistake in any way.

I guess I'd say he's weaker at the general stuff, but within his role he feels much stronger for it.

During character creation, id say;

Characteristics>Talent>Skills>Specializations

If you intend to be particularly skilled at one role id recommend getting a primary skill to 4 or if you are a Droid possibly a 5(though Id never put a 5 in Brawn or Agility). If you want to be more well rounded invest towards as many 3's as possible.

Early talents tend to be more useful for 5 and 10 points than spending 10 points on getting a career skill from 1-2(since you most likely already chose 1-2 ranks in the 6-8 skills you wanted most, more if you were a Droid.

Investing too heavily into talents or skills initially is a short term gain over the long term benefits of higher characteristics and will become more and more apparent as play progresses.

I would only recommend investing in a second out of career specialization during character creation if it had 2 or 3 skills you wanted to select for free during character creation outside your career specialization.

I have one player who thumbed his nose at the idea and invested heavily into his talent tree to start (he actually bought all the way down to Dedication).

The group has earned 125xp so far, but he's been pretty much a badass all the way through. It sure doesn't feel like he's missed out or made a mistake in any way.

I guess I'd say he's weaker at the general stuff, but within his role he feels much stronger for it.

Depending on the spec this is viable. Take BH Gadgeteer. Start with a Klatooinian and maybe just jump his WP to 2 for 20 points, which would leave you with 80 or 90 depending. Then run the column down to Dedication for 75 xp. You can pick with skills and racial Range(H) 2, jump that to 3 with the remaining 15xp if you had the Obligation bonus of 10 xp. Jury Rig the first auto fire weapon you find. Dump the dedication into Ag and have a YYYG dice pool with auto fire triggering on 1 advantage. That's pretty tough right out the gate.

Background, in my opinion, should trump the math.

You know, you'd be hard pressed to find someone who is more "Character over Mechanics" than I, but even I have a hard time advocating not dumping as much as you can into your attributes while you can. With smart construction, you should be able to have an assortment of skills to match your background - and the stats will come quick enough once the points start flowing in.

So yeah, in this one instance mechanics > concept any day of the week.

How dare somebody suggest role playing in a RPG.

With that said... I split the difference with Gand from a "using his background" point of view. The math says I should have bumped his Presence from a 1 to a 2 then picked up FSE. Thing is, background wise, he was being trained by a Findsman mentor before being sent out on his own to make a name for himself. It just didn't feel right going that route.

So, finding himself being more active in social situations has made for some interesting RP opportunities and has guided his use of XP expenditures. While less than optimal, we sure do have fun at our table watching Gand trying to be a smooth talker with the lady behind the bar.

I really, really hate games that make you choose, "cool abilities now or jack all now and overwhelming power down the road"? At character creation you have to choose between raising your characteristics and having just gobs of dice much later when you've also bought abilities, or having abilities now and no good way to raise your characteristics without trying to buy esoteric bottom-of-the-tree talents.

This is, however, the only current Star Wars game so I'll keep playing it until something better comes out, but I really hate having to make that choice. Start out small and grow bigger? Sure, I'm fine with that, but start off small now or forever be stunted? We hates that, precious.

I really, really hate games that make you choose, "cool abilities now or jack all now and overwhelming power down the road"? At character creation you have to choose between raising your characteristics and having just gobs of dice much later when you've also bought abilities, or having abilities now and no good way to raise your characteristics without trying to buy esoteric bottom-of-the-tree talents.

This is, however, the only current Star Wars game so I'll keep playing it until something better comes out, but I really hate having to make that choice. Start out small and grow bigger? Sure, I'm fine with that, but start off small now or forever be stunted? We hates that, precious.

It's not that you're necessarily stunted forever; it's more a question of efficiency. You can build up your dice pools with skill ranks, but it's more efficient to first build them up with characteristics. YMMV, but it's the way the game is tailored.

It's not even really about having "cool abilities now," since talents don't really make or break a character. They add some nice flavor, and a starting character can easily have a few nice talents to start out with. No biggie. But if you take a bunch of talents to start, you're STILL going to suck at most things because you're only rolling 2 dice for every important task.

I happen to like that you can build a character that is very effective right out of the gate, rather than having to stink it up for 2-3 character levels before you get good at something. But I also like that you are given a lot of choice as to how effective you are.

TL;DR, it's not so bad a dichotomy (dilemma?) as you're making it out to be. Moar dice = good. Moar talents = good, but really only when you have all those dice to back them up.

This is, however, the only current Star Wars game so I'll keep playing it until something better comes out, but I really hate having to make that choice. Start out small and grow bigger? Sure, I'm fine with that, but start off small now or forever be stunted? We hates that, precious.

There is no better Anyway, I don't see how this is different from all previous SW games. If you don't like it, all you have to do is agree at your table to up the starting XP...problem solved.

You pay more for Characteristics at character creation than you do during play (at least buying them up to 3+) especially buying that 4th point.

You can buy 1 die for 40xp, or spend it on talents and buy it later for 25xp after two or three sessions.