Even though my intellect is only 3

I have been seeing a lot of posts lately that consider Characteristics of 2 (and even 3) to be "low" which seems off to me, as I see a 2 as being average and a 3 as being notably above average.

The big problem with the scale is that 2 is "average" and therefore 1 is everything from "slightly below average" to "not worth mentioning. It's a skewed curve.

I disagree. How many flavors of bad do you need?

For NPCs or things a PC clearly chooses not to focus on? More than 1 would be nice.

Even though my intellect is only 3

I have been seeing a lot of posts lately that consider Characteristics of 2 (and even 3) to be "low" which seems off to me, as I see a 2 as being average and a 3 as being notably above average.

The big problem with the scale is that 2 is "average" and therefore 1 is everything from "slightly below average" to "not worth mentioning. It's a skewed curve.

I disagree. How many flavors of bad do you need?

For NPCs or things a PC clearly chooses not to focus on? More than 1 would be nice.

So, you need what? A 0 statistic? What's stopping you?

I hadn't spent a lot of time assessing the system when I first made my character, so I didn't spend any XP in characteristics at the start, and my GM hasn't permitted me to do a respec of my character now that I'm more familiar with the system, so my best stat is a 3, and I have a 1 in Brawn, with 2s everywhere else. I'm playing a Caamasi Jedi Initiate (Ways of the Force), with a starting Specialization of Explorer--Scout to reflect my having grown up on a farm.

Bought up a rank in a couple of Knowledge skills to benefit from the Caamasi's racial bonus, picked up the first ranks of Move and Influence, got Sense and the first defensive control upgrade, and purchased Sense Force from WotF, then bought up a few of the 5 point talents in Scout and JI, and bought a rank of the now-career Discipline, then I went straight down the middle-left of the tree to get to Force Rating. Since picking that up, I've invested more heavily in Influence (control on the right side, magnitude, control), and a rank in Charm, since I've found that I'm using that a lot more than anything else I've been doing. Then I picked up the right-handed control in Sense (thoughts), which I figured would work well with the Charm and Influence track I've taken. No ranks whatsoever in any combat skills, though I've had surprising luck in that regarding, scoring a hit on almost every shot I've taken with my holdout blaster (usually set to stun), and the canons on our starship (since I picked it, Intense Focus has been an enormous boon).

I had originally intended to go more heavily into Move, since what I like most about the Jedi is their ability to get out of otherwise impossible situations, which largely depends upon their mastery of control (and having a lightsaber), but I found that my character was working to avoid or resolve conflicts with words whenever possible, so I decided to delay that a bit. My plan is to make my way across the bottom of JI to Dedication, putting points in Move down the right side (with 1 into Strength so I can lift Sil 1 objects), and I may start investing in Enhance as well, since another member of the group has displayed talent in that regard. Whether I go after Dedication directly, or spend some points in Move first is going to depend on how things develop, and I'm still not sure whether I want to bump my Presence to a 3, or my Willpower to a 4 when I get to the first Dedication...I think it will depend on whether I feel like I'm succeeding on my Influence checks often enough when compared with Charm. I'd like to get some points into some skills, but with how spread out I am, I don't know when I'll manage that.

After I've gotten that stuff paid for, my plan is to jump into either FSEx or FSEm and get down to Force Rating quickly. Also, depending on how things develop--how much combat we're in, how successful I am in those fights, whether we run into any Force users/Jedi/Dark Jedi/servants of the Empire/get caught in any truly dangerous situations/what my GM does, I may sideline some stuff to move through the other half of Jedi Initiate to make, and become skilled with, a lightsaber, as well as spending points to get the related skill up to 3 ranks I think.

Up to this point, I had felt somewhat useless for a while, since I didn't have more than a rank in anything but Survival, no combat skills or talents, most of my characteristics at average, a poor soak (with heavy cloths I have a 2), and a low wound threshold (10), and not even enough investment in the Force stuff to do anything significant with it. We got a lot of XP at the end of the last session with which I made the purchases further down Influence and Sense, and I'm hoping that will pay off. The only truly noteworthy stuff I've done thus far have been getting lucky on tough Charm checks (like rolling YGB vs. RRRP and inexplicably coming out successful, albeit with a ton of threat), and the lucky blaster shots I've made. The wookie in the group has been dicing stuff up and taking a lot of hits, while the doctor has been patching us up and acquitting himself well in combat; the gunner (don't know what class he's in) has been doing some impressive stuff in combat, as has the bounty hunter, and both the gunner and the pilot have done some truly fancy flying.

I'd been feeling a little frustrated up until the last session, since I'd been either useless, or failing skill checks even in the few skills I had invested in, and badly (completely missed an encounter thanks to royally failing an Athletics check and going unconscious from the fall, for example), but I had a series of successful social interactions that have made me feel better about the character, and governed the decisions I made with the XP we received, negotiating a stand-down between my group, a group who'd come to have a "word" with us, and a third party neither of us knew, but who outgunned us and seemed poised to start firing away, then convinced the third party to not kill the second group, despite their having arrived with hostile intent toward my crew. I then returned a prisoner we'd taken (and who I had spared from some rough treatment in the session before) to the first hostile group, and later negotiated with that first group to give us the codes to their ship in exchange for not allowing my crewmates to either kill them or leave them stranded on a hostile world without a means of egress nor outside communication. If I'm being overly vague, it's to avoid spoilers, as some of this runs through a published adventure.

Anyway, threading that needle--keeping enemies alive, and mostly hale and hearty, while obtaining some grudging cooperation from them, and generally talking everybody into more or less getting along--has left me feeling pretty happy with my character. Hopefully the new investments I've made will pay off and improve that my skill in that role. Still looking forward to eventually embodying some of the classic Jedi ideals/abilities, but that's a lot of XP away.

Getting back to the original question, if you look at how most trees are arranged, you'll normally see at least two dominant "paths" through the trees. These paths don't always go straight down, or connect talents to the left and right, but rather they group talents on one side of the tree or another (or sometimes go down the sides, then come up the middle). The designers did this on purpose to give a lot of trees an active, or offensive, path, as well as a more passive, or defensive path, depending on how a player might want to "specialize" within a specialization. Not all trees are like this, but for the ones that are, you can optimize certain types of talents by understanding the design of the hierarchy of the tree.

To give some examples:

• The Politico tree is divided into passive, defensive talents (left two columns) and active, offensive talents (right two columns). On the left, talents like Inspiring Rhetoric helps the party, while "right-side" talents such as Scathing Tirade hurts the enemy.
• The Pilot tree has active talents on the left that benefit a pilot actively attacking an enemy, while the talent path on the right is mostly geared toward defensive flying.
• The Scout tree has some generally useful talents on the first two rows, but then splits the tree into four different areas, with healing down the left and combat down the right, with sub-paths for awareness (boosts to Perception and Vigilance), and defense/knowledge (Toughened, Familiar Suns, Stealth and Coordination boosts).
• The Marauder tree is all designed to hurt things, so there's more connections between sections. However, it gives a couple of ways to accomplish the same thing, while allowing this mixing and matching. Going down the left side, you gain more defense up front with bonuses to wound and soak, while getting damage gains on the backend. Down the right, you get more damage gains up front (Feral Strength, Lethal Blows, Heroic Fortitude), but less defensive abilities (Knockdown, Toughened). But it's much easier in this tree to cross between "sides".
• The Scientist tree is pretty weird. It is mainly centered around "theoretical" passive knowledge abilities, going down the left side, with just a couple of up front "applied" active talents on the right (Tinkerer, Hidden Storage). To get more of these "applied", or active, talents, you have to go all the way down the left side, then across the bottom to the right, then come back up from the bottom right. So, it is very expensive for a scientist to obtain "active" abilities, except for a few at the start.

Anyway, you get the idea. If you take advantage of how a lot of these trees are arranged, and if your character concept coincides with the way the designers were thinking when they created the trees, you can get a good combination of complementary talents in a particular area at regular XP intervals. If your character concept doesn't fit this pattern, you may find yourself spending a lot more XP than you may want to, or spending XP up front on new trees when the types of talents you want in your original tree start getting too expensive, or force you to first buy talents that you don't really want.

Kshatriya

The big problem with the scale is that 2 is "average" and therefore 1 is everything from "slightly below average" to "not worth mentioning. It's a skewed curve.

Minimum 1 for PCs and other "adventure worthy" characters seems fine to me. If you want to introduce an NPC who is truly dumb/clueless/clumsy/meek/scrawny/obnoxious invent a trait that gives them Setback dice to all rolls involving that characteristic.

I have rarely ever spent money in the talent tree till some of my skills are up to snuff to the point that I am not a failure at all rolls. After that I just pick talents based on how my character has evolved and run with it.

Well, if a person didn't try to max out their characteristics before they started playing, then Dedication is really pretty useless. +1? That's it? That's a heck of a lot of xp for one more dice when there are plenty more abilities that'll give you a +1 to a roll.

The game really should allow characteristics to be bought up after play starts. "But people shouldn't be able to get tougher or smarter, etc." This is a sci-fi/fantasy game. What part of the guy shooting lightning from his hands or the lizard with super scent and combat bonuses from being lizardy screamed reality to you? Not to mention, people can train themselves to be stronger, smarter, etc., it's just that most people look at the work involved in getting to that point and don't want to put in that work.

Anyway, if you weren't brilliant enough to game the system and ignore abilities upon character creation, then there's jack all point in driving down for dedication sooner, if ever.

Yeah, it's +1.

[Excited response] But it's +1 to every skill associated with it. It's also +1 Soak and Encumbrance Threshold, if you choose to increase Brawn. If you're ignoring that crappy rule, it can also be +1 Wound Threshold or +1 Strain Threshold.

[Daytime TV response] It's +1 versatility.

Well, if a person didn't try to max out their characteristics before they started playing...

Then they did not built their character as per the explicit suggestions in the CRB.

The game really should allow characteristics to be bought up after play starts.

So, let me get this straight... You think that when people chose to actively go against game design and don't build there character as suggested then the rules should be changed so they can spend XP on their character to get it to fit their wishes in the long run anyway?

Might I suggest a different approach? Just build the character in the way the CRB tells you to and all of this indignation would not be necessary. You don't need to be an experienced player to know how to best build a character since it is spelled out in the CRB (in a boxed text even) and I have 5 inexperienced players at my table that had no problem building a good character at all. It always seems that somehow people want to deviate from the system and then blame the system for this deviation...

Well, if a person didn't try to max out their characteristics before they started playing, then Dedication is really pretty useless. +1? That's it? That's a heck of a lot of xp for one more dice when there are plenty more abilities that'll give you a +1 to a roll.

The game really should allow characteristics to be bought up after play starts. "But people shouldn't be able to get tougher or smarter, etc." This is a sci-fi/fantasy game. What part of the guy shooting lightning from his hands or the lizard with super scent and combat bonuses from being lizardy screamed reality to you? Not to mention, people can train themselves to be stronger, smarter, etc., it's just that most people look at the work involved in getting to that point and don't want to put in that work.

Anyway, if you weren't brilliant enough to game the system and ignore abilities upon character creation, then there's jack all point in driving down for dedication sooner, if ever.

You're not just getting "+1" by boosting a characteristic. You're boosting the character's maximum potential to get yellow dice, which means better odds for being successful, and also increased odds to get triumphs. And this means you get this applied to every skill tied to the characteristic. Not to mention certain characteristics play into aspects of characters, like Brawn affecting Wound Threshold when increased during chargen, Willpower affecting Strain Threshold during chargen, and Brawn's continued effect on the number of cybernetic enhancements (unless you're a droid), Soak, and encumbrance threshold.

That's a LOT of stuff to toss out the window. And really, there's no simple way of just making characteristics upgradeable after creation without completely throwing balance out the window. You'd basically be setting up the system to have a majority of players to make their priority be becoming 6's in 2-3 characteristics at a time, then stats, with talents probably being the last thing players would want to touch.