You're right, everything should just make you better all the time at everything and there should never be any need to make tactical decisions about anything. Everything should be a career skill and every talent should make you awesome at everything you might want to do.

Thanks for lowering yourself once again.

Personally, I don't like the Commodore spec. Having three talents that are better suited for a Mechanic seems like a waste of talent space to me. Andy said it was intentional but doesn't make it right. AoR Specs have a bad habit of having talents that don't fit the 4 class skills they grant and I feel that's not what specialization means.

Actually I feel it is the most perfect talent. Try reading the Honor Harrington, Sorranno Legacy or many of the books where the captain of the ship does a patrol and finds that an inner door is not properly locked or that the life support systems are not woking properly by sniffing the air.

Tank commanders will often hear a strange noise, could that be a bad motivator in the anti-grav pods?

Perhaps on the ground or in a ship the talent could be used to assist the player in noticing a trap because something mechanical is out of place. What is an XZ45 communicator doing on that desk, only imperials use that model.

In reverse the player could hide something in open view. Will anyone actually search the waste tanks for the jedi's lightsaber?

Personally, I don't like the Commodore spec. Having three talents that are better suited for a Mechanic seems like a waste of talent space to me. Andy said it was intentional but doesn't make it right. AoR Specs have a bad habit of having talents that don't fit the 4 class skills they grant and I feel that's not what specialization means.

It's perfect if you want to cross-spec as a Chief Engineer...

Andy did say Commodore was designed to cross-spec well with certain other specs.

Personally, I don't like the Commodore spec. Having three talents that are better suited for a Mechanic seems like a waste of talent space to me. Andy said it was intentional but doesn't make it right. AoR Specs have a bad habit of having talents that don't fit the 4 class skills they grant and I feel that's not what specialization means.

It's perfect if you want to cross-spec as a Chief Engineer...

Andy did say Commodore was designed to cross-spec well with certain other specs.

Yeah I'll be making a Commodore/Engineer Naval officer at some point. Mainly waiting for the career books so I can figure out which signature abilities fit my plans best, and thus which career to start with.

I went for 200 XP of talents in my initial Spec, before branching out.

A more optimized path might be buying the 75Xp or so worth of talents to get to dedication (specializing in one of the 3 or so parts of a tree), thereby bumping your chief characteristic so you are really competent. Then doing it again for a second spec, and so on.

Perhaps it's more likely to do this for second and on specs... cause otherwise you are mired in the spec forever, XP-wise.

(Or maybe people like just picking the cheap talents on a new spec then grazing somewhere else...)

So perhaps it's not necessarily intended for players to take all the various sub-specializations of a spec.

I second the idea that Commodore should have been named Naval Officer. Many linguists will tell you that while words don't have definitions, they do have usages, and when choosing words you need to be - to lean on an overused Star Wars buzz - mindful of what people will do with them in their minds.

Unless you have a poor vocabulary, it's common sense that when you say "Commodore" you're almost guaranteed to make people think of the guy in charge, not just someone who stations on a ship in the fleet who's capable of doing a bunch of things at once and may someday grow up to be a ship's commander. Not only that but the actual rank of Commodore also denotes command of more than one ship in many other situations, and now you have just aimed a spotlight at the less than stellar mass/fleet combat rules. All this could have been avoided by being a bit careful.

I still like these games, but I am slowly beginning to notice a trend towards...not so much sloppiness but "We said this but what we really meant was that." This can cause some serious headaches in a game and IMO a set of games as long delayed and heavily tested as the AOR and EotE shouldn't have these problems. An earlier poster said that you have to betimes separate fluff from rules...and while no game is free of that, if you have to do that too often you're in for some trouble in the long run. Say what you mean or you won't mean what you say.

I think you have to separate the fluff from the rules here. Most AOR groups won't be set on a capital ship, after all.

The Commodore then represents a character who learned their trade in charge of a larger ship, whatever they are doing right now.

This.

Plus, doesn't this go for a lot of the careers in both FFG Star Wars (discounting the F&D Beta as I haven't read this yet)?

Is a doctor really still acting as a doctor? Or is it an adventurer that formerly had a doctor's practice? Or how about a scholar? It is not like the scholar is hanging out in libraries or institutes of learning while the rest of the party are off on a mission?

Unless you have a poor vocabulary, it's common sense that when you say "Commodore" you're almost guaranteed to make people think of the guy in charge,

If we're going to be pedantic about definitions, "commodore" actually refers to a naval officer temporarily in charge of multiple ships, with the expectation that he will lose that rank at the end of the current mission. Commodore was typically a temporary rank. There was a way to make your point without being rude.

If we're going to be pedantic about definitions, "commodore" actually refers to a naval officer temporarily in charge of multiple ships, with the expectation that he will lose that rank at the end of the current mission. Commodore was typically a temporary rank. There was a way to make your point without being rude.

When you have a game that relies on words being properly conveyed, I don't think that any degree of vocabulary rigor is being "pedantic". Words have usages. And case in point, while your definition is spot on and I applaud you for it, it 1) Doesn't modify my statement one bit and 2) Isn't how people are going to see the word "Commodore". Most people see Commodore as "the guy in charge of a group of ships". How long the command lasts isn't really the point. The point is the Spec is mis-named. The fact that other Specs might also be mis-named isn't really the point, though it is a good point.

I second the idea that Commodore should have been named Naval Officer.

Unless you have a poor vocabulary, it's common sense that when you say "Commodore" you're almost guaranteed to make people think of the guy in charge, not just someone who stations on a ship in the fleet who's capable of doing a bunch of things at once and may someday grow up to be a ship's commander.

If you ask me, the word "officer" is just as bad as commodore. It implies this character has higher rank than the rest of the party members and can boss them around.

If you ask me, the word "officer" is just as bad as commodore. It implies this character has higher rank than the rest of the party members and can boss them around.

In a game where you have another two Specs that denote immediate command, one called Squad Leader? We take what we can get.

Well there has always been an implied leadership position in the classic RPG group composition. Whoever serves as the ''face'' has the implied position of leadership. Even if its only viewed as such from outside the group.

Unless you have a poor vocabulary, it's common sense that when you say "Commodore" you're almost guaranteed to make people think of the guy in charge,

If we're going to be pedantic about definitions, "commodore" actually refers to a naval officer temporarily in charge of multiple ships, with the expectation that he will lose that rank at the end of the current mission. Commodore was typically a temporary rank. There was a way to make your point without being rude.

I think that varied from navy to navy though. In the Royal Navy it was a temporary rank but in the US Navy it was permanent I believe. I remember reading an age of sail novel where a royal naval officer is complaining about how backwards the US Navy is, using the fact it has Commodore as a permanent rank as an example, in the period where the USN was defeating the Royal Navy regularly in one on one battles.