1. The talent trees how do they work?

Lets say you are a Hired Gun with the mercenary soldier tree.

Can you start anywhere on the 5 point talents?

Can you take all the 5 point talents?

If I want confidence there is a line from the 5 point second wind and the 10 point second wind connected to command do you have to take both second winds to qualify to take it?

2. Attributes and skills.

In general play how important is it to raise the attribute vs the skill. Attributes seem to cover a wide range of skills or have solid on skill related functions, but is the extra bang from skills more important?

The section on increasing attributes is a bit unclear to me. Can you improve a attribute to 5(6 in play) or by 5(6 in play). And if its to, that's for every race? So a bothan can boost their brawn as high as a wookie?

3. Force Sensitive Exile

Can you take this specialization as your career specialization or do you need to take a career specialization and then this?

I'm kind of assuming the latter. so lets say Hired gun, mercenary again now add Force sensitive exile. 20 XP to get that specialization. At that point you have 1 FP and access to the Exile talent tree

If you want powers Sense, influence and move are 10 each t get the basic effect. If I want sense to help with defense I might spend another 10 in control.

Now Move if you want to upgrade your control so you can use it to attack do you need both r5 point ranges, or just one. Unlike in my previous question both force abilities are above the control talent, as opposed to one above and one to the side. It might not seem like much but it gives a different feel to the tree. and honestly I find this book hard to navigate.

That is all the questions I can remember, I had a few others but oh well.

1. You can taken anything you like on the 5 point line provided you have the points, any time you like.

2. Raising attributes happens mostly at creation and is critical. Talents and Skills are attractive at creation but when you understand how dice pools work you'll hate yourself and respec if you skimp on attributes at creation. Eventually anyone could raise the Brawn up to 6 if they like or any other attribute, but it requires a lot of effort in obtaining Dedication talents, one per tree, and potentially hyper focusing on a single attribute at creation.

3. You have to select a career, then you could spend xp to get FSE.

You only need the one range upgrade purchased to advance to the damaging control upgrade.

1. The talent trees how do they work?

Lets say you are a Hired Gun with the mercenary soldier tree.

Can you start anywhere on the 5 point talents?

Yes. See p. 93.

Can you take all the 5 point talents?

Yes. See p. 93.

If I want confidence there is a line from the 5 point second wind and the 10 point second wind connected to command do you have to take both second winds to qualify to take it?

No. You just need a straight line that starts at the 5-point line and goes through any path to what you want. Again, see p. 93.

In general play how important is it to raise the attribute vs the skill. Attributes seem to cover a wide range of skills or have solid on skill related functions, but is the extra bang from skills more important?

Attributes are in some ways more important because they're harder to raise - you raise them at chargen, or with Dedication, and that is it, period. Skills can be raised at any time. But a lot of times you'll want to start with high attributes in the things you want to be good at, and raise the skills tied to those attributes that you want, to get more Yellow dice in those dice pools.

The section on increasing attributes is a bit unclear to me. Can you improve a attribute to 5(6 in play) or by 5(6 in play).

6 is the natural attribute cap for everyone. 7 is the cap using cybernetics. So you can raise an attribute from 4 to 5 in play with 1 Dedication, or 2 to 5 with 3 Dedication.

And if its to, that's for every race? So a bothan can boost their brawn as high as a wookie?

Yes and yes.

3. Force Sensitive Exile

Can you take this specialization as your career specialization or do you need to take a career specialization and then this?

The latter.

Now Move if you want to upgrade your control so you can use it to attack do you need both r5 point ranges, or just one. Unlike in my previous question both force abilities are above the control talent, as opposed to one above and one to the side. It might not seem like much but it gives a different feel to the tree. and honestly I find this book hard to navigate.

Just one. See p. 279.

Thanks for the quick answers. I don't know how my eyes read past some of this stuff, so thanks for the page references as well.

So since attributes only get improved by dedication and it only appears once per specialization in order to improve multiple attributes or the same attribute multiple times you have to pick up anohter specialization and work your way to the bottom for each attribute increase? That seems insanely expensive and with the highest/lowest pool generation you can't really slack on these. Though I guess the attribute dies aren't terrible to roll or anything, they just leave out triumph results and are a bit less prone to awesome results.

Something odd to me at least is that many of the classes/specializations don't have any combat skills. I would think everyone out their on the edge or fringes of society would have some basic self defense skills.

6 is the natural attribute cap for everyone. 7 is the cap using cybernetics. So you can raise an attribute from 4 to 5 in play with 1 Dedication, or 2 to 5 with 3 Dedication.

I was under the impresion that 6 was the cap regardless of implants.

@OP Part of the reason for limiting combat skills is because combat isn't the only solution and the game tries to encourage creativity outside of gunning down everything that moves. To that end you get lots of non combat roles. While the characters may live on the Edge of the Empire, sometimes being quick with a datapad, you word, or a getaway vehicle can get you just as far.

Plus you don't XP for killing stuff. So so why bother if you can avoid it. Cobat can be pretty scary in this game.

For a Bothan to buy a 5 Brawn would cost 140 XP (20+30+40+50). They start with 100 XP and can get +10 for an increased Obligation. So they can't actually afford it.

Taking a 2 to a 5 costs 120 XP, so only species that start with 110 XP can actually do it (and, then, only by using all of their XP).

Thanks for the quick answers. I don't know how my eyes read past some of this stuff, so thanks for the page references as well.

So since attributes only get improved by dedication and it only appears once per specialization in order to improve multiple attributes or the same attribute multiple times you have to pick up anohter specialization and work your way to the bottom for each attribute increase? That seems insanely expensive and with the highest/lowest pool generation you can't really slack on these. Though I guess the attribute dies aren't terrible to roll or anything, they just leave out triumph results and are a bit less prone to awesome results.

Something odd to me at least is that many of the classes/specializations don't have any combat skills. I would think everyone out their on the edge or fringes of society would have some basic self defense skills.

Skills only bring the possibility of a Triumph. The proficiency dice have essentially the same chance of generating a success, so really the yellow dice only bring Triumph to the table. A person with an agility of 4 rolling 4 greens has essentially the same chance of success as someone with a 4 agility and a skill. The person with the skill will simply have the added potential benefits of the Triumph possibly. So you don't need skill to be successful at combat, just the raw attribute will do.

So since attributes only get improved by dedication and it only appears once per specialization in order to improve multiple attributes or the same attribute multiple times you have to pick up anohter specialization and work your way to the bottom for each attribute increase?

Correct.

Something odd to me at least is that many of the classes/specializations don't have any combat skills. I would think everyone out their on the edge or fringes of society would have some basic self defense skills.

You can have Rank 0 in a Skill and still just roll green dice equal to the Attribute on the test. Any character can accomplish any test. For, say, very specialized droids, don't dare knock GGGGG as a dice pool. It's extremely effective evens without Proficiency dice.

Alternatively, you can buy non-Class skills, at a higher price.

The fringe is not an active war zone, unlike AoR, hence why some Careers/Specs have zero combat skills at all. AoR is quite different as the focus is on being a member of a militarized Rebellion.

Look at Firefly. Among the cost you had 2 people who were ex-soldiers (Mal and Zoe), one experienced pilot who probably was never military (Wash), one courtesan (Inara), one mercenary (Jayne), an engineer (Hayley) and a doctor (Simon). The latter 3-4 probably had no real combat skills, but definitely contributed to combat scenes in an effective way even if they were best represented by Smuggler/Pilot, Colonist/Politico, Technician/Mechanic, and Colonist/Doctor.

The fringe is not an active war zone, unlike AoR, hence why some Careers/Specs have zero combat skills at all. AoR is quite different as the focus is on being a member of a militarized Rebellion.

This is going to vary from game to game. My first EotE game was based upon a group of misfits hanging out on a smuggler's light freighter and trying to get by through whatever came their way. It's a pretty common theme in EotE. Several of these characters had few (or no) combat skills and did just fine. My second (and current) game is based on a group of Guild bounty hunters (set in 2 BBY when the Guild was still strong) working together to bring down prey even though they have to split the earnings. All of these characters have combat skills, ranging from just Ranged (Light) to a couple of characters that have at least a few ranks in every combat skill (except Lightsaber).

Sure, but I mean Edge's game themes as a whole, as presented by the text, are much more Firefly and The Han Solo Adventures than, say, Battlestar Galactica.

I guess I'll just say my impression of virtually lawless areas is such that knowing how to handle yourself would be the norm for people who intend to prosper. And yes mechanically just having a decent stat would cover it, 3 characteristic dice is virtually as good as 2 skill+1 characteristic. It just seems off thematically that even a slicer wouldn't have some basic training. A lot of people learn basic self defense in safe areas, in a place where getting jumped is fairly regular it would seem insane not to pick up some skills.

Any spec can buy combat skills, they just cost more.

It just seems off thematically that even a slicer wouldn't have some basic training.

Basic training from what exactly? The premise of this game is not that everyone starts off in the military. In fact a lot of the premise is "you were mostly an above-board person, til Something Bad happened, and now you need to make your life on the Fringe." You pick up what you pick up. And yes, you can buy combat skills, just not as cheaply, and can buy into those specs to get them at a discount.

Look at the old West. A lot of the archetypes carry over. We have a ton of gunslingers, but there were also doctors and coach-drivers and politicians who were great at their jobs but lousy at shooting guns.

And in all seriousness, the difference between pools of GGG and YGG is not statistically different enough to make a distinguishable disparity in roll results. That said there is a plain difference in results between GGG and YYY.

Yeah I get that. Like I said its just a thematic issue on my part. I'd see some combat training as the part of pretty much every spec out in lawless societies. I suspect most people in places like that have some combat training by the time they are 12. So to me it seem off thematically to only put combat skills on 2 classes and a couple extra specs. Not a huge issue a lot of racial skills can go to thar, you can just pay more, pick up another spec etc. Just seem weird to me.

I think you're confusing hard lessons learned via the school of hard knocks with training. Training is just that, formalized instruction. Nothing wrong with grabbing skill to protect one self but if you're stepping out of your actual role I think that is both thematically and mechanically reflected in it simply costing a little more xp.

Yeah I get that. Like I said its just a thematic issue on my part. I'd see some combat training as the part of pretty much every spec out in lawless societies. I suspect most people in places like that have some combat training by the time they are 12.

Many of the locales in Edge of the Empire are far from lawless, and many characters are 'honest citizens' at the start of play.

A lot of people learn basic self defense in safe areas, in a place where getting jumped is fairly regular it would seem insane not to pick up some skills.

The flaw in the assumption here is that every game session will have some combat. It took a while for me to wean myself from this assumption, coming from D&D and Saga and other similar games. But in this game *all* the skills get play-time, and you can easily have entire sessions with no combat where the tension, chaos, fun, and stakes are just as high.

If you're concerned about it, a quick fix is to make the non-combat PCs human, and use at least one of their free non-career skill ranks in a combat skill. Another is to buy a combat specialization tree with the first XP the character earns and build from there. But I think after you get a few sessions in you'll see that having a combat skill is not as important as you think. It's not that this game handles combat poorly, it's that it opens up other options in ways few games have accomplished.

If you're concerned about it, a quick fix is to make the non-combat PCs human, and use at least one of their free non-career skill ranks in a combat skill.

As of Dangerous Covenants, Klatooinians do this better than Humans.

6 is the natural attribute cap for everyone. 7 is the cap using cybernetics. So you can raise an attribute from 4 to 5 in play with 1 Dedication, or 2 to 5 with 3 Dedication.

I was under the impresion that 6 was the cap regardless of implants.

No, the cap with cybernetic implants is indeed 7.

Well if 7 is indeed the cap my PCs are about to get attacked my cybernetic Rancor of doom.

Basic training from what exactly?

In the Radio Drama, Luke says he learned how to use a blaster in "survival school".

Well if 7 is indeed the cap my PCs are about to get attacked my cybernetic Rancor of doom.

Remember that NPCs explicitly do not need to follow the same rules for talent acquisition or stat caps that PCs do.

Basic training from what exactly?

In the Radio Drama, Luke says he learned how to use a blaster in "survival school".

Exactly, he specced out of Moisture Farmer into something else......