So I've just run the adventure yesterday with a party of three players, one of them being a Makashi Duelist. The game went okay and players wanted to turn our one-shot into a small campaign. At the end, they gave me their sheets so I could type in some info and plan for the next game.

That was when I noticed that the Makashi Duelist Tree allows you to buy Improved Parry without having the Parry Talent (from the Feint Talent). Okay, that would be fine if only the Improved Parry Talent would give us a brief description of the actual Parry mechanics.

Considering that not all of us are going to have Talent Trees and that having to look up a Talent that you do not possess gives players some extra work, I'd suggest including Parry's description in Improved Parry or removing the direct link, only allowing a character who actually has Parry to purchase its Improved Form.

Under the shien tree, Improved reflection has the same issue.

I don't really think it's an issue (as any player paying attention will take the requisite talent to make the improved version work), but i agree, that the links should be removed to make parry/reflect required acquisitions before grabbing the improved versions.

There's a couple other (very rare) instances in the other core rulebooks where it's possible to buy an Improved version of a talent without ever buying the base talent. However, it's very expensive XP wise to do so, to the point that odds are the character is going to take the basic talent long before they'd get to the Improved version.

In the case of Makashi Duelist, the fact that Parry is offered for 5, 10, and 15 XP makes it extremely unlikely that a character is going to take Improved Parry without picking up at least one fo those.

The Improved Parry talent does spell out the mechanics: "After taking the Parry incidental..." You can only take the Parry incidental if you have Parry.

If you were somehow to obtain the Improved Parry talent without having taken Parry (or been granted it through a piece of equipment) you wouldn't be able to take advantage of it. However, once you get one rank in Parry you can now take the Parry incidental, and take advantage of those despairs and threat.

The Improved Parry talent does spell out the mechanics: "After taking the Parry incidental..." You can only take the Parry incidental if you have Parry.

If you were somehow to obtain the Improved Parry talent without having taken Parry (or been granted it through a piece of equipment) you wouldn't be able to take advantage of it. However, once you get one rank in Parry you can now take the Parry incidental, and take advantage of those despairs and threat.

This.