The Master Artisan talent allows you to once per round, suffer 2 strain to decrease the difficulty of your next Mechanics check by 1, to a minimum of Easy.

Does this mean that you can suffer 8 strain over 4 rounds to decrease the difficulty of a Formidable (5 purple) check to Easy (1 purple)?

Inquiring minds want to know.

If this is allowed, then this talent is amaaaazing.

If this is not allowed, perhaps a rewording is in order?

Seems like it may be the case. It's worded like that for Master Doctor, of Shadows, Slicer, Starhopper, Pilot, and Leader. Obviously, for a majority of the situations you'd use the other ones, you'll likely be more under time pressures for them, whereas Artisan would more likely be used for the Modding system, but I guess that's just how people are supposed to more reliably get over the massive difficulty increases from the number of mod options for an Ilum crystal.

I'm pretty sure it's meant to only reduce it once. The activation only requires an incidental, so I'd read that as once. If it could be built up over time, it would have taken a maneuver, and the full talent text would probably read something like "for each Master Artisan Maneuver taken, suffer two strain and reduce the next Mechanics check by one, to a minimum of one."

Most of the Master talents that allow a reduction of the difficultly are meant to be "use it once just before you make the related check."

The bit with the difficulty is that the reduction provided won't go below Easy (1 purple).

Much like the old debate with Pierce and the assumption of automatic damage (which was pretty solidly clarified as not being the case), if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

I just sent a question in since I couldn't find anything in the forums about asking about them and I've just realized one of my players looks to be gunning for one of these "Master" talents soon - better safe than sorry.

Will post whenever I get a response.

And the results are in:

These talents only apply on one skill check that you're doing that round. So you cannot perform it multiple rounds to stack the effect.

Hope this helps,

Sam Stewart

I must admit, while I'm fine with that for balance purposes, it does still sort of suck for when you've got to mod that Lightsaber crystal.

Edit: This question/response was in regards to how ALL of the similar "Master" talents work, not just "Master Artisan".