So while everyone is talking about the new races that just dropped, I thought I'd gush over the signature abilities:

Appropriately, the Colonist’s two signature abilities play to some of this career’s greatest strengths, and the Colonists who take them become even better at drawing upon the knowledge and skills that allow them to thrive on some of the galaxy’s wildest and most dangerous planets.

“The first is called Insightful Revelation. As befits the career with the Scholar specialization, Insightful Revelation allows characters to really put their Knowledge skills to use; a character with Insightful Revelation can make a single check to reveal vital information about his or her situation that he or she couldn’t normally uncover.

“This is great deal more potent than a normal Knowledge skill check, because it’s specifically intended to reveal relevant information that would otherwise be outside your character’s frame of reference. In complex negotiations with a Hutt Crime Lord? Use Insightful Revelation to find out that his new slave is actually a Rebel agent, and make a deal with her instead. Captured by the Empire? Turns out the lieutenant heading up your prison detail is secretly Force-sensitive, and desperate to hide it from his superiors. Who knew? Well, you did, thanks to Insightful Revelation.

And. . . .

“Playing alongside these sudden epiphanies, we have Unmatched Expertise. Perhaps more than any other characters, Colonists such as Doctors, Scholars, and Performers are defined by their jobs and specializations. Accordingly, it’s appropriate that Unmatched Expertise rewards them for their dedication and helps make them the very best at what they do.

“Specifically, Unmatched Expertise allows the most talented Colonists to decrease the difficulty of all career skill checks by one for an entire encounter. Nobody out-talks a Politico, out-medics a Doctor, or out-deals an Entrepreneur!”

I wonder how much say does the player have in Insightful Revelation? Using their example, could the player go "Well, that Imperial is force sensitive" out of the blue, or is that too much power to put in the hands of the players? Could I go "That customs agent? I hear he's dyslexic - so I give my importation forms to him, so he'll miss the discrepancies in the cargo manifest!"

Unmatched Expertise sounds insanely powerful! The ability to run a con so outrageous that the GM should be piling on the setback dice (that all vanish, thanks to the talents) to someone so un-gullible it's not funny ("You want to sell Jabba 400 tons of sand? Okay, but I have to warn you that the difficulty is going to be -" player deploys Unmatched Expertise "-distressingly easy. . . . "

Man, I'd love to see the upgrades for these guys!

How about out shoots a Politico? They can make Range(H) a career skill so technically they'd be able to drop the difficulty on a HBR by one for an encounter. That's my kinda character, a machine gun wielding preacher.....

I can see it now.

Colonist: My lord Jabba we come baring 400 tons of sand from the ocean floors of Dac to pay our debt to you. If you have a great pit, greater that that of Carkoon dug at a place of your choosing than pour this sand into the bottom within two centuries you will own the only large lake and beachfront property on Tatooine.

Oh my... Is Insightful Revelation a form of "Sherlock Scan"?

"Here is a gentleman of the medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured: He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan."

I'm not sure if I'd have my player get to decide what said insightful revelation is, so much as have them decide to deploy the talent, and as the GM (with much more information) I can decide what might be a fun, or fitting use of the talent, with player input. Then the player can decide how to use this information. Of course, this is also a great talent for those EU scholars that want to bring a nice bit of fan knowledge to their character in the game. Uses like some of those listed above...I might not allow that, if its just being used as a skeleton key to overcome any and all obstacles.

I like the idea of the player getting to make suggestions, and the GM can tweak or veto it if it's too outrageous or messes with the plot too much.

That's actually one of my favorite parts of the narrative dice system. After my players roll, unless I have something very specific planned, I prompt them to suggest how to use their advantages, triumphs, and sometimes extra successes. This lets me harness their creativity and not solely rely on my own, and has led to many a memorable moment as my players have gotten used to being part of the storytelling.

As GM, I still have the final call, but my permissive nature allows them to pull off a lot of fun stuff, and that makes it easier for them to accept when I think something would go too far.

Yeah, the Revelation is probably best as a collaborative effort. "Oooh, that Imperial? He's really X" "Oh, wait - I got it! That imperial is really X+Y, and he's off in a corner all by himself. . . ."

I am intrigued by the awesome narrative possibilities of both of them. Already I am imagining dozens of cool little vignettes with the various Colonist careers being socially awesome with these.

Though I'm sure there is going to be a Politico gone Marauder in someone's campaign who uses Unmatched Expertise to drop the difficulty of their Melee attacks for an entire encounter. Or the Colonist who ends up grabbing Sharpshooter from AoR or Merc Soldier from within Edge then proceeds to pop Unmatched Expertise for their Ranged skill of choice while True Aiming everything.

Sometimes I hate RPG players so much.

Senator Nukem and Doctor Punchface while amusing, wouldn't actually benefit hugely from Unmatched Expertise.

Combat difficulties are almost pointlessly low anyway.

I can see Insightful Revelation been a cause of frustration, with it been amazing or worthless depending on GM.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_upcoming.asp

On the boat.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_upcoming.asp

On the boat.

Hey - they updated it since this morning! Good news.

Well, things seem to take about 6 weeks from Boat to distribution, and then 10 days after that to arrive in stores. . . so - the Magic 8 Ball says just after Labor Day!

Maybe unmatched expertise is limited to career (not specialisation) skills only?

Or only Intelligence and Presence-based skills?

If it can buff combat skills... I'm not sure it'd matter too much. It may piss off Bounty Hunter / Hired Gun players, I suppose.

Maybe unmatched expertise is limited to career (not specialisation) skills only?

Or only Intelligence and Presence-based skills?

If it can buff combat skills... I'm not sure it'd matter too much. It may piss off Bounty Hunter / Hired Gun players, I suppose.

This was one of the first things I thought of when I read the description: do they mean A) the 8 base career skills, B) the base career skills plus skills from the Colonist specializations (as listed, not including Well-Rounded) or C) all career skills for that character? There's a pretty big difference.

That being said, I don't think it's that big of a deal either way. Reducing the difficulty by one is cool, but far from gamebreaking. And in the case of opposed checks, the NPCs are likely to have upgraded difficulty pools from Characteristic + skill, so they might not be able to decrease the difficulty if all the difficulty dice have been upgraded. Someone like Jabba, with high Willpower/Cunning/Presence, good skills and a few ranks of Nobody's Fool won't be pulled in by someone's sand-selling scheme anytime soon.

Insightful Revelation sounds like great fun. Players get to influence the adventure through Advantage and Triumph already, so I doubt this will break anything. It might force me to do some on-the-spot improvising if someone suddenly puts a Rebel agent I didn't know about in the dungeon I didn't include in the floor plans, but that's life as a GM for you.

I'm worried that the Knowledge one will be like an XP-sink version of 'Familiar Suns'. 'This talent allows you to do all the stuff the skill already lets you do'.

Feels a bit like the Explorer 'Sudden Discovery' one, which could be anywhere from overpowered to completely useless, depending on the GM.

I'm intrigued by Insightful Revelations, but I don't think it's going to quite be a "Sherlock Scan" where you take a look at the person and know all sorts of details about them. More like you spend your 2 Destiny Points and introduce a sudden fact about the targeted individual, and introduction of said fact gives the player some form of advantage over that person when interacting with them, either by upgrading the PC's own dice pool or downgrading the difficulty of opposed checks they make against the target.

Granted, I could see this being used in some very silly ways, so I'm hoping there's some degree of GM control that says "Sorry, but that revelation is much too silly for the game I'm running, so here's your Destiny Point(s) back." After all, it'd be horrible if a PC were to have an "insightful revelation" about a big-league Hutt crime lord being deathly afraid of cheese, or that Lord Vader secretly pines for the care-free days of being a little slave boy living with his mommy.

With Unmatched Expertise, I'm reminded of the claims of Last One Standing being "too overpowered" simply because we knew next-to-nothing about it. Though I wonder if the initial ability is simply limited to the eight skills that are part and parcel of the Colonist career, with upgrades to expand the skill repertoire to those skills gained as career skills through other means (specializations and talents like Insight and Well-Rounded).

I didn't honestly think too much on the new super talents.. I thought they were cool, but as GM without anyone to "run" for me to play, the actual talents of the players do very little to excite me. My politico player was another story all together. She got very excited reading the description for Insightful Revelation. I believe the exact words out of her mouth were "I just became Kevin Spacy in House of Cards". Sounds like fun times are coming.