@Dono:

Did you see in my post how I used the example of a Shien/Hunter? I believe that is FaD material. so that's not comparing it to prior material, but using the beta stand alone.

I have shown mathematically how the talent is viable situationally with no extra investment (post #196).

I have shown examples of talents that support the idea of parallel investment (post 200).

I have provided examples of specs within EotE and FaaD that show how these talents that require parallel investment can be dead talents for characters not interested in pursuing them, because they are gateway talents for more potent or signature abilities (post 206).

I have shown viable archtypes for creating characters that focus on improved reflect and how they can at early levels of play create a satisfying experience of redirection, with plenty of room for growth. (post 214).

I have presented this talent from many, many angles. both in a so called "vacuum" and out side of it. The talent is well balanced with any number of abilities in the game, and aside from benefiting greatly from a piece of player agency (destiny point to activate it), it's on par with most other talent powerlevels, given it's impact to the game and it's offensive capability (dealing damage with no action or additional cost requirement is very powerful in this system).

Don't forget that you can find synergy with Force Powers as well as other talents in a spec.

Improved Parry/Reflect works great with Sense. Thematically the two work well together. It is also available to anyone who can purchase Improved Parry, so it is a combo that is effectively "in the same tree."

Don't forget that you can find synergy with Force Powers as well as other talents in a spec.

Improved Parry/Reflect works great with Sense. Thematically the two work well together. It is also available to anyone who can purchase Improved Parry, so it is a combo that is effectively "in the same tree."

While the synergy is there (and I never said that it wasn't ), yeti1069 brings up some very good points that unless a character has a bunch of supplemental abilities that are not found in Shien Expert, then Improved Reflect has very little value in comparison to its sibling talent Improved Parry.

These talents need to be considered both in terms of working with other talents and standing on their own merits within its native specialization, which it seems many people are focusing entirely on the first part and willfully ignoring the second part. A character with just Shien Expert, according to several posters, is better off just skipping Improved Reflect entirely until they've sunk further resoruces in other talents like Dodge or Side Step given the infrequency of generating 3 Threat on 2 difficulty dice (Medium Range) and impossibility of doing so on just 1 difficulty die (Short Range). That or hope they have a PC ally that's willing to burn Strain every round and stay attached to the hip to use Bodyguard for the chance of generating the 3 Threat or Despair.

Daeglan,

It's rather foolish to automatically assume that every Shien Expert PC is going to be wearing armor that provides a defense bonus simply because of the mechanical benefit of doing so. There are players that prefer to go with the role-play angle instead of "what provides the best benefits?" in terms of gear, who may chose to stick with Concealing Robes because they're similar to what the Jedi are known for wearing (as well as offering a decent perk to help keep a low profile). And from what I've seen, a single setback die tends to provide little benefit in this regard, since it tends to either come up blank or generate a failure.

So yeti1069's instances of the likelihood of getting the necessary 3 Threat against a ranged attack at Medium range stands up, since it's quite likely that prior to hitting the "Knight-level" benchmark of 150 XP, a PC won't be wearing armored clothing or armored robes (most PCs that I've seen for FaD tend to very towards the options that provide more starting XP than additional credits).

Thebearisdriving,

Have you tried using any these "experiments" of yours using just Shien Expert. No other specs, no other Force powers, nothing but Shien Expert. If so, how does Improved Reflect stand on its own with no other specs or abilities to jack it up? Guessing you probably didn't see that many Threat on just two difficulty dice. Which means that Improved Reflect by itself in Shien Expert doesn't hold up. Your own post said that a change needed to be made, which backs up what I've been saying all along.

Replacing one or more talents with a rank of Side Step would certainly help, either the Grit talent or Saber Throw, which itself could be shifted over to the Djem So side of the spec to replace Defensive Stance, since Shien Expert doesn't have Improved Parry and thus less of a need to upgrade their defense vs. melee attacks.

Don't forget that you can find synergy with Force Powers as well as other talents in a spec.

Improved Parry/Reflect works great with Sense. Thematically the two work well together. It is also available to anyone who can purchase Improved Parry, so it is a combo that is effectively "in the same tree."

While the synergy is there (and I never said that it wasn't ), yeti1069 brings up some very good points that unless a character has a bunch of supplemental abilities that are not found in Shien Expert, then Improved Reflect has very little value in comparison to its sibling talent Improved Parry.

These talents need to be considered both in terms of working with other talents and standing on their own merits within its native specialization, which it seems many people are focusing entirely on the first part and willfully ignoring the second part. A character with just Shien Expert, according to several posters, is better off just skipping Improved Reflect entirely until they've sunk further resoruces in other talents like Dodge or Side Step given the infrequency of generating 3 Threat on 2 difficulty dice (Medium Range) and impossibility of doing so on just 1 difficulty die (Short Range). That or hope they have a PC ally that's willing to burn Strain every round and stay attached to the hip to use Bodyguard for the chance of generating the 3 Threat or Despair.

My point is that it is splitting hairs over whether the Sense defensive upgrade is "within" the Shien Expert tree or not, since everyone who has access to Improved Reflect also has access to Sense.

It's easy to forget that in addition to all the talents in a tree, interaction with Force Powers should be considered as well.

That said, I'm not saying that the talent is perfect as it stands (or that it shouldn't work on its own), just that the argument that it requires something that is not directly accessible for Shien Experts (or anyone else) doesn't stand.

Doc,

I never said anything about those talents or powers being "inaccessible." In this system there's pretty much no such thing as "inaccessible" as it all boils down to "how much XP are you willing to pay to get it?" whether it be buying additional specializations to access certain talents, including multiple instances of a specific talent, such as Toughened, Durable, Side Step, Dodge, Hard-Headed, Parry, or Reflect.

The fact that under the current set-up, the Shien Expert pretty much has to take abilities that are not an inherent part of the Shien Expert talent tree is part of the issue, unless the player has an overly generous GM that only has bad guys make ranged attacks from Long or Extreme Range most of the time. None of the other LS Form specs are required to take such abilities, be they talents or Force powers, that are outside their specialization in order to improve their chances of having Improved Parry work, as their set-up includes such things already as I detailed earlier in the thread.

But let's take a look at some of the other specializations, ones that having nothing to do with lightsabers. All of the following examples were randomly chosen simply by flipping open the book and looking at whatever specialization I landed upon.

An Aggressor doesn't have to dip into other specializations or Force powers in order to be a terrifying presence in combat; the spec offers multiple ranks of Fearsome and Intimidating as well as offering Coercion as a bonus career skill.

An Advisor doesn't have to dip into other specializations to be good at dealing with people, as Charm, Deception, and Negotiation are all career skills, and it offers ranks in Smooth Talker, Plausible Deniability, Kill with Kindness, and Nobody's Fool to enable them to be masters of social encounters, and can do so without ever so much as looking at Influence or even Sense for the emotion/thought reading.

A Peacekeeper doesn't have to dip into other specializations to be good at leadership (has it as a skill and has talents that bolster Leadership checks), and can use Field Commander just fine without having to buy anything that's not already included in the specialization, and Battle Meditation certainly isn't a requirement to do their thing, and may in fact be deemed a waste of XP that could be better spent elsewhere.

A Healer doesn't have to dip into other specs to be good at healing people, with plenty of ranks of Physician and Surgeon and having Medicine as a bonus career skilll; having the Heal/Harm power certainly helps, but they can get by just fine without it. Dipping into Protector or even AoR's Medic certainly helps their healing prowess (particuarly for the Stimpack Specialization talents), but neither of them are required to allow the Healer to do their thing, namely healing people.

Niman Disciple comes close in that it requires the Move power for two of it's major talents (Draw Closer and Force Assault), but the odds of a PC with this spec not taking Move at all are pretty darn slim. And if they don't want the talents, they can be very easily side-stepped. And even without those talents, as written it's still a pretty effective combat spec that even offers an increase to Force Rating while boosting up your ranks in Parry and Reflect (3 ranks of each), making it a very likely secondary spec for most 'saber-monkey characters in addition to adding ranks of Defensive Training (handy if you've got Improved Parry) as well as Center of Being and Improved Center of Being. Nothing to help against ranged attacks, but since there's no Improved Reflect outside of Shien Expert, not a big deal, and it does fit with the film canon that Niman's not really that great in prolonged combat against multiple foes (if one accepts the notion put forth that the majority of Jedi that died at Geonosis were Niman practitioners).

To reiterate: Why would you think a character with 15 xp invested in a single talent SHOULD be able to reflect bolts at short range?

What 15 XP? You could spend 300 XP and buy the entire Shien tree, and still be awful at using Improved Reflect.

You also still have not answered the question I posed: Would you take Improved Parry on a character that will not be picking up Sense, or moving into a Specialization that offers Dodge or Sidestep?

Don't forget that you can find synergy with Force Powers as well as other talents in a spec.

Improved Parry/Reflect works great with Sense. Thematically the two work well together. It is also available to anyone who can purchase Improved Parry, so it is a combo that is effectively "in the same tree."

Sure. That works well, but a character may not want Sense: perhaps they want their character to be poor at that, or they want to use other talents/powers that utilize Force dice, and don't want to be committing a die to Sense all the time (Enhance, Hawk Bat Swoop, Saber Swarm, the Niman talents, Seek, Misdirection, Battle Meditation, Protect, Bind...all have reasons to not want to lower your Force rating with committed dice to Sense).

Do any of the other specializations require picking up a Force power or going to another specialization? Niman does, but it spells it out--you need Move.

Just checking, is anyone arguing that Shien Expert as a tree is already perfect?

Because I think I seen a disconnect here. One side apparently wants Improved Reflect to be easier to activate, because the Shien Tree sucks. The other side says Improved Reflet is fine, because there's other things than the Shien tree.

So... fix the Shien tree. Turn Row 2 Column 4 parry into a sidestep, and do the same with Row 3 Column 3 Grit. Now in order to take Improved Refect at all, you HAVE to take the ability to upgrde the attacker's roll. Now Improved Reflect is usable within Shien Expert, and still can be improved by going outside, without handing out free, autohit damage for effectively an forced enemy maneuver (2 threat)

Just checking, is anyone arguing that Shien Expert as a tree is already perfect?

Because I think I seen a disconnect here. One side apparently wants Improved Reflect to be easier to activate, because the Shien Tree sucks. The other side says Improved Reflet is fine, because there's other things than the Shien tree.

So... fix the Shien tree. Turn Row 2 Column 4 parry into a sidestep, and do the same with Row 3 Column 3 Grit. Now in order to take Improved Refect at all, you HAVE to take the ability to upgrde the attacker's roll. Now Improved Reflect is usable within Shien Expert, and still can be improved by going outside, without handing out free, autohit damage for effectively an forced enemy maneuver (2 threat)

I think that's a totally reasonable solution, although, I think you mean Reflect, not Parry.

I guess Saber Throw is in here because Anakin/Vader was a Shien expert and threw his lightsaber once, right? I'd be more inclined to have Saber Throw replaced with Sidestep instead of the 10 point Reflect.

Remind me, how is it that a jedi can even put a saber in front of a blaster bolt to deflect it, let alone reflect it at a specific target? Lorewise, I mean?

In the real world, when people dodge arrows or bullets, what they’re really dodging is the aim of the person who is firing the projectile.

They’re not so much dodging the projectile itself, which is likely to be flying at speeds too quick for a human to see, but with these skills they can pay careful attention to the person aiming at them and wait for that split second when they sense the "tell" that the person is firing.

I submit that all similar activities done in the SWRPG most likely works in largely the same way — you’re dodging/parrying/reflecting/side-stepping the aim of the weapon being fired and timing it so that you do so at precisely the moment when it is being fired.

Remind me, how is it that a jedi can even put a saber in front of a blaster bolt to deflect it, let alone reflect it at a specific target? Lorewise, I mean?

Remind me, how is it that a jedi can even put a saber in front of a blaster bolt to deflect it, let alone reflect it at a specific target? Lorewise, I mean?

Qui-Gon's line of how Anakin "appears to have such quick reflexes" in TPM comes to mind, with him explaining the concept of "Jedi Reflexes" as being due to their ability to see things just before they happen, being what amounts to an instinctive if somewhat limited form of precognition.

That's why the Reflect talent is a Force-sensitive talent, because the character is using that limited pre-cog ability to see where the attack is going to go just before it happens. That's generally the lore behind the Sense power and it's defensive Control Upgrade, as well as Foresee's Control Upgrade to give everyone affected by the initiative boost a +2 bonus to their ranged and melee defense in the first round of combat, with those powers reflecting two different ways of "refining" a Force user's limited pre-cog abilities to better protect themselves. It can also be used as a handwave for the Dodge talent, with the Force user reacting/evading the attack at (what to mundanes looks like) the last second.

With Reflect, the character happens to have handy a weapon whose innate properties make it excellent for intercepting an incoming projectile, be it a bullet or packet of energy, but requires a high degree of precision to intercept said projectile without superhuman reflexes... or a limited pre-cognitive ability that shows you where the attack is going to be mere seconds before it happens. The more ranks in Reflect you have, the better you've tuned your limited pre-cog senses to the task of identifying said attacks and your reflexes to allow your body to react in time given the general speed these things are going.

Just checking, is anyone arguing that Shien Expert as a tree is already perfect?

Because I think I seen a disconnect here. One side apparently wants Improved Reflect to be easier to activate, because the Shien Tree sucks. The other side says Improved Reflet is fine, because there's other things than the Shien tree.

So... fix the Shien tree. Turn Row 2 Column 4 parry into a sidestep, and do the same with Row 3 Column 3 Grit. Now in order to take Improved Refect at all, you HAVE to take the ability to upgrde the attacker's roll. Now Improved Reflect is usable within Shien Expert, and still can be improved by going outside, without handing out free, autohit damage for effectively an forced enemy maneuver (2 threat)

I think that's a totally reasonable solution, although, I think you mean Reflect, not Parry.

I guess Saber Throw is in here because Anakin/Vader was a Shien expert and threw his lightsaber once, right? I'd be more inclined to have Saber Throw replaced with Sidestep instead of the 10 point Reflect.

Probably a similar reason why Saber Throw is in the Ataru Striker, due to one scene where Yoda threw his lightsaber into the chest of a Clone Trooper.

Though with Shien, the Saber Throw could be there since it's a favored trick of Starkiller in at least the first Force Unleashed game (never played the second one), and he's been identified as favoring the reverse-grip version of Shien, much as Ahsoka Tano did. And if the section of the AoR book is any indication (which pretty much goes with tFU's version of how the Alliance was formed), then FFG's not adverse to drawing from the Force Unleashed games for material.

I do agree that keeping the 10pt Reflect makese sense, given that one of Shien's big points is blaster deflection. If FFG opts to keep the damage mitigation math for Parry and Reflect as it currently is, then replacing Grit with a rank of Side Step would be a workable option to allow the Shien Expert to actually get some use out of Improved Reflect without having to go cherry picking from external sources.

Improved parry and reflect seems to be the thing that divides the waters the most, FFG are probably going to step very carefully since it's such a "potent" topic. One thing that we all seem to agree on is that it's mechanically lacking a little. The basic talent is less powerful than dodge from a mechanical point of view, just a few ranks of dodge makes you very hard to hit indeed. Parry/Reflect are gate ways to improved reflect/parry which in essence gives you a "free" attack.

Like a lot of posters here I feel that improved reflect/parry belongs in more trees than just the ones they are in now (shi-choo comes to mind), and as I've said before maybe let the supreme version of these talents be what defines their specialist trees. Also, wasn't soresu the "reflect" form?

Improved parry and reflect seems to be the thing that divides the waters the most, FFG are probably going to step very carefully since it's such a "potent" topic. One thing that we all seem to agree on is that it's mechanically lacking a little. The basic talent is less powerful than dodge from a mechanical point of view, just a few ranks of dodge makes you very hard to hit indeed. Parry/Reflect are gate ways to improved reflect/parry which in essence gives you a "free" attack.

Like a lot of posters here I feel that improved reflect/parry belongs in more trees than just the ones they are in now (shi-choo comes to mind), and as I've said before maybe let the supreme version of these talents be what defines their specialist trees. Also, wasn't soresu the "reflect" form?

Good points.

As for Soresu, it was developed from blaster deflection training if I remember the lore correctly, incorporating those same circular motions into parrying/deflecting melee attacks as well to create the "perfect defense" so that when the prime opportunity came to strike (either in melee or with a reflected blaser bolt) the Soresu expert would be able to do so almost on instinct, making the attack while never lowering their defenses. In the RotS novelization, Obi-Wan's mastery of Soresu was why he was chosen to go take out Grievious on Utapau, as his "perfect defense" would completely counter Grievious offense-based style of fighting, which in the films is generally what happened when they squared off initially, before the fight turned into a chase sequence and ending with a brawl and a couple blaster bolts to the gutsac.

I'm quoting wookiepedia here so bear with me:

"Against individual shooters, Form III duelists were encouraged to apply the "deflecting slash". This move served the dual purposes of allowing a Jedi to redirect the momentum generated by deflecting an enemy projectile into a slashing attack at an adjacent target, and allowing the Jedi to advance and close the distance before the attacker could fire off another shot. A careful application can allow a Jedi to redirect the shot back at the attacker"

I think it's from the Jedi code book... I don't have it in front of me, but that makes me think that it should have at least the improved reflect talent. My approach is that if it has reflect or parry it should have the basic improved version as well, it's powerful, yes, but they are lightsabers, they are supposed to be.

@yeti: To answer your question (since I feel you deserve an answer, and I apologize because I still can't quote or copy/paste anything into this browser window).

If a character had no inclination to ever expand out from the shien tree, then yes, the improved reflect would be pretty useless. or at least of minimal utility. But I believe that is a narrow view. I have never met a player that didn't have plans to expand their character, and past about 100xp, most characters branch into a new tree.

I agree with you that the Shien tree should have a sidestep talent (I suggested replacing it with grit in something like 3 of my previous posts). Also, I agree that the talent should have some measure of character agency (spend a destiny point). I can even see using the talent when missed (though not for any discount in resource cost).

But I don't think it's valid to look at the shien tree and think that sense is NOT on it. because it's just as accessible as any other talent. A player may choose not to explore particular abilities, but that is their choice (I have done so in the past with certain talents). A game system can't compensate for everything. But between the FaD force powers, the Hunter spec (which I presented above) dodge options, and the reams of specs in prior compatible core's, I think access is fairly substantial, and if the options that I agree were placed in, then there would be little to dislike.

@Dono: Not trying to provoke or prolong the discussion, but since you asked did I show how the shien tree by itself was viable (paraphrasing here)

I did in post 196 show the math on using the improved reflect with only the base dice. I made a minor mistake as I forgot defensive training only added defensive not deflection, but armor or cover could make up that difference.

This was rough math (I don't claim it to be exact) but for an overall investment of 40 xp and some armor or cover, a character could potentially activate improved reflect 3% of the time at short range, and 8-10% of hits at medium range. And that is something that barely scratches the surface of starting xp.

And I have suggested (several times now) that sidestep inplace of the grit talent would be a solid choice for the shien tree. I also suggested and agree that adding player agency to make the talent more rewarding would be good. I can even get on board using it on a miss (depending. I'd have to see some real math projections on that to make a final up or down).

But I think that limiting the talents effectiveness to one half a spec tree, and saying that it needs mechanical changes under that microcosm, under that paradigm, is a fundamentally poor position to judge the talent's effectiveness. But that is just me. Clearly, this discussion ahs shown it to be an issue of importance.

Personally I'm on board with adding "works with a miss".

Problem is, I don't think it's likely to actually come up.

Overall, if an attack rolls few successes, that means likely they have more advantage. much more. and so any missed attack is really unlikely to generate enough threat to actually matter. Now with despairs it's another matter, as with three challenge dice, you can get a despair on almost a quarter of rolls, which could also be misses. but that could propel this into a new level of powerful talent, as that is reflecting back a lot of attacks, for no action cost.

Letting this apply on a miss seems like a good way to reward people that think the talent is not powerful enough as is.

Yeah, not a fan of letting this talent (or Improved Parry for that matter) apply on a miss, as it starts to make the effects of these two talents a great deal more potent man of the other "Improved" talents out there. It's one thing to get a free hit on a bad guy if you're also taking damage, since it currently takes a lot of ranks in Parry or Reflect to be able to completely negate the damage of a successful attack, but another to get a free hit whether the attack hits or misses.

Particularly since with how the dice pools work, you've either got a miss with lots of Advantage left over, or a hit with Threat, particularly for less-skilled adversaries, namely minion groups that operate in clusters less than 4. And with very capable adversaries, you've often got attacks that hit with some Advantage, or miss with loads of Advantage.

UncleArkie's probably got the right of it that FFG's not likely to be making any drastically sweeping changes to the material. That's what the Alpha playtesting stage is for, and by the time the rules material hits the Beta, it's generally in a pretty well-defined shape; otherwise, it wouldn't be in the Beta. The EotE Beta was a bit different because the Alpha playtesting for that had been fairly small and was for a system that nobody really knew or was fully comfortable with. The AoR Beta didn't change all that much (a few new talents and some stat block adjustments really) since the basic rules were pretty much in place by that point. Now my initial post could have contained some very radical alterations to both talents and specs, but I opted for a more conservative approach, mostly as I generally think the talents (for the most part) work quite well as designed. Time will tell if any of it gets adopted or not.

@yeti: To answer your question (since I feel you deserve an answer, and I apologize because I still can't quote or copy/paste anything into this browser window).

If a character had no inclination to ever expand out from the shien tree, then yes, the improved reflect would be pretty useless. or at least of minimal utility. But I believe that is a narrow view. I have never met a player that didn't have plans to expand their character, and past about 100xp, most characters branch into a new tree.

I agree with you that the Shien tree should have a sidestep talent (I suggested replacing it with grit in something like 3 of my previous posts). Also, I agree that the talent should have some measure of character agency (spend a destiny point). I can even see using the talent when missed (though not for any discount in resource cost).

But I don't think it's valid to look at the shien tree and think that sense is NOT on it. because it's just as accessible as any other talent. A player may choose not to explore particular abilities, but that is their choice (I have done so in the past with certain talents). A game system can't compensate for everything. But between the FaD force powers, the Hunter spec (which I presented above) dodge options, and the reams of specs in prior compatible core's, I think access is fairly substantial, and if the options that I agree were placed in, then there would be little to dislike.

Adding some things to Shien is a good solution. I was merely saying that assuming a particular sort of growth was not appropriate--of course you're not going to stay in one specialization for your entire career, but the specializations you expand to may not have anything that supports Improved Reflect--there are plenty of trees that are attractive, yet don't offer Dodge, Sidestep, or Sixth Sense.

Sure, the Sense power is available, and very good, but it shouldn't be a requirement .

Fair enough. The disconnect here is that I don't see it as a requirement, just a smart idea.

Maybe have the reflect on a miss work with a despair?

The problem with it working on a miss is that Reflect has to activate. If you make it work on a miss, then you need to include the strain cost, which is weird.

The problem with it working on a miss is that Reflect has to activate. If you make it work on a miss, then you need to include the strain cost, which is weird.

Agreed.