Is there a talent to switch Brawl from Brawn to Agility?

No.

Not currently. The closest thing to something like that are the various Lightsaber Form Technique talents in Force and Destiny that let the character use a different Characteristic for the Lightsaber skill (which now defaults to Brawn).

The rules generally stick with "Skill X is tied to Specific Characteristic Y" but you can always ask your GM if you can substitute Agility for Brawn when making Brawl attacks. As a GM, I probably wouldn't be too keen to allow it without some kind of trade-off involved, but the way this game is structured Agility isn't the "god stat" that Dexterity was in the d20 Star Wars games.

Selonians can use their tail attack with Agility. Not sure if that helps any though.

Is there a talent to switch Brawl from Brawn to Agility?

You could build your own tree...take the Marauder and switch out the heavy damage stuff for things like dodge and quick strike and having the option to do strain damage, and then plunk that Talent candy down at the 20XP level.

If you want to go hand-to-hand with Agility instead of Brawn, then I think the best thing to do is make a new Skill.

For example, you could make the Echani Arts into the Echani combat skill. It uses Agility instead of Brawn, but otherwise it is Brawl. Since no Career or Specialization has Echani as a Career Skill, you would have to pay +5 for each rank which would go a good way toward balancing it against Brawl.

I personally would prefer a talent granting a martial arts form, not a new skill.

You could also consider that with a friendly GM, why not allow this without a new skill or talent? The RAW has skills paired with characteristics, but I've been using this as just a suggestion for most uses and haven't run into any troubles changing it.

But, I would still prefer some sort of martial arts form (via a talent) which specifically grants the Agility use.

I'm hoping that from the FnD info, there'll be some mechanics easily liftable and house-ruleable into other melee combat styles. A vibrosword duelist should be able to parry just as much as some rave party escapee with a glow stick. It would be nice to see some sort of Martial Artist talent tree with some talents allowing for multiple strikes (like, but more balanced than, autofire) and such, to emulate the whole 'quick series of strikes' sort of thing.

Here's to hoping...

My advice would be to ask your GM if you can use Agility based on your character having martial art training.

Just an idea: Perhaps your GM would allow you a point of melee Defense if you buy into a custom talent for your martial arts training. I'm completely making something up here; it's just a thought.

There is precedent for martial arts in Star Wars from SpecForce operators going back to the good old WEG d6 game.

You could build your own tree...take the Marauder and switch out the heavy damage stuff for things like dodge and quick strike and having the option to do strain damage, and then plunk that Talent candy down at the 20XP level.

I like this, but Marauder's a very effective specialisation all by itself. If a player took Marauder and a new Martial Artist spec they could become a problem.

I'd be pretty quick to 'nope' it from the get go for two reasons:

Agility is a very potent stat as it is that ties into a lot of skills

You still need to hit things hard enough to do damage, that's true of all martial arts in that they rely on both hitting accurately, often and with a great deal of strength behind it, even the wrestling and judo arts require quite a bit heft to manhandle people around.

About the closest you get to hollywood mallninja pressure points is the one in the Doctor career

If you do allow a change to use agility there would have to be a disadvantage to it. I would say for damage they should only get base weapon damage plus accuracy from their roll. Or only let them use it for stun purposes, like the shock glove or the new prod stick from Far horizons. With the new attachment from FOD beta it could help with that.

Remember that points in the Brawl skill represent training in martial arts.

Also, no matter how agile you are, you need to be strong in order to hurt someone when you land a hit. That is why there are weight classes in MMA.

Personally, unless you are also going to tie damage to Agility, it seems kind of pointless, but I think that would be too much on one attribute. I think that characters that are less tied to brawn for their ability are well represented by more ranks in the actual skill, rather than a switch in base Attributes. Also Brawn is not so much about being strong as it is just being very fit. Since Brawn is tied to both strength and overall fitness, a good Brawn attribute could be representative of both Arnold or Bruce.

You could build your own tree...take the Marauder and switch out the heavy damage stuff for things like dodge and quick strike and having the option to do strain damage, and then plunk that Talent candy down at the 20XP level.

I like this, but Marauder's a very effective specialisation all by itself. If a player took Marauder and a new Martial Artist spec they could become a problem.

Sure, but I wasn't going for balance perfection. That'd be impossible without lots of play tests. I'm not even advocating doing what I posted, because I don't think switching Agility for Brawn is a good idea. But *if* somebody wanted to do it, at least with a new tree they have to dig through the tree to get what they want rather than just buy a single talent or hand-wave it.

Is there a talent to switch Brawl from Brawn to Agility?

No and there likely never will be (with the single exception for Lightsaber combat) unless you convince an exceptionally short sighted GM to let you do it. Agility is already tied to many useful skills and allowing it to be a substitute for Brawn in combat will only make it an uber-stat, which is something that S. Stuart is on record (somewhere) of wanting to avoid. I agree with this approach as well. Bruce Lee was small and agile but also incredibly strong and tough, just describe your PC as such and be done with it.

Well what would make sense to me is the damage being based on the Brawn and the agility doing to attack roll.

Selonian Racial trait lets them use their agility to attack with one specific natural weapon. It is in Suns of Fortune.

On 9/6/2014 at 9:11 AM, Donovan Morningfire said:

Not currently. The closest thing to something like that are the various Lightsaber Form Technique talents in Force and Destiny that let the character use a different Characteristic for the Lightsaber skill (which now defaults to Brawn).

The rules generally stick with "Skill X is tied to Specific Characteristic Y" but you can always ask your GM if you can substitute Agility for Brawn when making Brawl attacks. As a GM, I probably wouldn't be too keen to allow it without some kind of trade-off involved, but the way this game is structured Agility isn't the "god stat" that Dexterity was in the d20 Star Wars games.

I know this responding to a really old post, but with all th specs out now I don't think we're going to get a tree with a substitution for brawl or melee. Would you reskin Ataru to get a martial art that swaps agility for brawn or would you just take out a 10pt talent from Martial Arts, Steel Hand, or other melee/brawl tree and put this if you were to do one? Considering lightsabers are already more powerful I don't think its overpowered to allow brawl or melee with a talent cost.

2 hours ago, Kilcannon said:

I know this responding to a really old post, but with all th specs out now I don't think we're going to get a tree with a substitution for brawl or melee. Would you reskin Ataru to get a martial art that swaps agility for brawn or would you just take out a 10pt talent from Martial Arts, Steel Hand, or other melee/brawl tree and put this if you were to do one? Considering lightsabers are already more powerful I don't think its overpowered to allow brawl or melee with a talent cost.

Nope, because both Martial Artist and Steel Hand Adept have a talent that lets you add ranks in an Agility-based skill (Coordination) to damage, which I feel does a good enough job of covering the "lightning fast and highly-coordinated martial artist" aspect quite well.

On 9/16/2014 at 1:13 PM, Rakaydos said:

Selonian Racial trait lets them use their agility to attack with one specific natural weapon. It is in Suns of Fortune.

It's important to note that while a Selonian uses Agility for this attack roll, the base damage of the attack is still based on Brawn, which makes it a 'less than great' ability (If you have enough brawn that the attack does decent damage, using Agility on the attack roll is unlikely to be a large improvement), though I suppose the other weapon properties aren't bad...

Also, note that per the description, Selonians have to use Agility for this attack role, even if their Brawn is higher...

Echani in CSG can do it.

However, damage is still calculated with Brawn, and they're 1 Brawn, so it's not all that great.

1 hour ago, Ominovin said:

It's important to note that while a Selonian uses Agility for this attack roll, the base damage of the attack is still based on Brawn, which makes it a 'less than great' ability (If you have enough brawn that the attack does decent damage, using Agility on the attack roll is unlikely to be a large improvement), though I suppose the other weapon properties aren't bad...

Also, note that per the description, Selonians have to use Agility for this attack role, even if their Brawn is higher...

But only for that specific weapon- if they carry a shock glove, they arnt going to be using agility on it.

On 9/13/2018 at 7:57 PM, Rakaydos said:

But only for that specific weapon- if they carry a shock glove, they arnt going to be using agility on it.

Yes, i was specifically referring to the tail attack.

On 9/8/2014 at 12:29 PM, FuriousGreg said:

No and there likely never will be (with the single exception for Lightsaber combat) unless you convince an exceptionally short sighted GM to let you do it. Agility is already tied to many useful skills and allowing it to be a substitute for Brawn in combat will only make it an uber-stat, which is something that S. Stuart is on record (somewhere) of wanting to avoid. I agree with this approach as well. Bruce Lee was small and agile but also incredibly strong and tough, just describe your PC as such and be done with it.

Why is it a balance issue for Brawl to use Agility, but not a balance issue for Ataru to do that for a much more potent weapon like a lightsaber or for that matter any of the other lightsaber forms that substitute a trait.

For the record I'm a GM not a player just looking for ideas others might have done or will do. Also many of my lightsaber players I have in my games is picking a form and based on the the stat substitute make use of that being their high skill for their character concept. Example of a scoundrel sneaky Jedi picking Shien to make most of his cunning.

Not sure why substituting for brawl is any more powerful then the forms for lightsabers