Hadn't left, just didn't have time to go through the commentary while preparing for the char-gen setting we had yesterday. And besides, discussion was over, I had made a decision.

As for those "over inflated characteristics", here are the end results of yesterday's char-gen (using the 160/160 rule and allowing Force Purchase for double the price of raising a characteristic), the ChP notes being they would have paid if they'd used my 8ChP idea... :

3,3,3,3,2,2 and Force 2 (6ChP)

4,4,2,2,2,2 and Force 1 (6ChP)

3,3,2,2,2,2 and Force 3 (8ChP)

3,1,3,3,3,3 and Force 3 (6ChP) (3rd force point paid for via Force Rating talent as Pathfinder)

2,1,3,3,4,2 and Force 2 (6ChP)

3,3,3,3,3,2 and Force 1 (5ChP)

Stats of their previous characters (calculated the characters XP range from 1,055 to 1,110, so my apologies about being wrong on them having exceed 1k XP by now).

4,4,3,3,2,2 and no Force - 3x Dedication

5,5,2,2,2,2 and Force 2 - 3x Dedication

4,4,3,3,2,2 and Force 2 - 3x Dedicaton (One of those 4's is from a Cyber Brain Implant)

6,3,3,2,2,1 and no Force - 2x Dedication

4,4,4,2,2,1 and Force 2 - 2x Dedication

4,4,3,2,2,2 and Force 2 - 2x Dedication

Also, they're going from having skills averaging at 5 and as high as 8 to having skill ratings maxxed at 2.

All in all, despite the emphatic insistence that i was going to see something much more, these are much weaker than the characters they're giving up without having dropped to actual newb-characters. Albeit mostly weaker due to the lack of skills and talents. The only real difference here is the potential to reach Force 3 (or Force 4 for the one individual) since I've currently limited them to a single Force Specialization.

I had a lot of fun with it, told each of them we were going to play an alternate-universe version of their current characters and that this time they had a secret. Each of them thinks they are the only one in the group with "Force" with the exception that they all know there is one other member of their crew that also has Force because they've seen things "Move"ing.

...Also, they're going from having skills averaging at 5 and as high as 8 to having skill ratings maxxed at 2...

I'm not sure what conversion process you were using before, but you do realize that without cybernetics, characteristics are capped at 6 and skills at 5? If they traded skill ranks of 8 for starting characteristics of 4's, 5's and 6's, you've went from one incarnation of busting the rules to another. I am sorry if you've found our adive contrary or not helpful, but I think you'll find little support for your house rules on this forum. It's not that I am trying to say what you can or can't do. I just don't agree with anything you've done. Nonetheless, have fun storming the castle, and may the force be with you.

Its Your Game. Enjoy. That's The Most Important Thing. If You're Having FuN, What Else matters

As others have said its your game. But your characters are seriously broken. You have gone so far outside the bounds I would be surprised if you have any ability to challenge the characters. The reason FFG capped characteristics at 6 with cyberware and skills at five is the dice math breaks down beyond that. You have taken the game so far outside the realm of what the mechanics can handle...

Good luck but I think you are going to have a lot of problems.

@Domingo: Your reading skills are lacking... they gave up skill rankings of 5 (amongst the entire party there's a single 8, and 5x 6's in skills) and Characteristics as high as 6 (a single 6, 2x 5's and 9x 4's) for skill rankings of 2-max and characteristics as high as 4 (3x 4's amongst 6 players).

Something to realize. We didn't buy "Beta" to test it, we bought it to play Star Wars (hence us not hanging out on this forum). While I realize there is an errata, we never really considered looking at it since nothing was broken (or if it was, and it was something we even ran into, we likely houseruled it right away and forgot it was a houserule). And there is no rule in the Beta game that caps skills at 5, nor should there be in my opinion since you're paying 30, 35 and 40xp for +1 to a dice pool. There are far better ways to spend the XP.

As someone who's been running this game for nearly 2 years now, I can assure anyone that the game mechanics are not broken using the core un-errata'd Beta rules, but you wouldn't know that unless you went played it the way we have, you're just making false assumptions based on what you believe.

As a matter of fact, the only problem I've had using the rulebook as-is, is that melee tends to go to whomever whens initiative, which we countered by allowing the opponent (assuming it's not a sucker-punch) to chose whether to defend with the Average (3) difficulty die, or replace that pool with a pool of difficulty/challenge dice equal to their ability/proficiency pool; which still gives the attacker the advantage, but prolongs the fights and makes it more cinematic.

All that being said... YES, we realize there are new rules, and as is obvious by my even coming here, we're trying to convert to the new system. However, I don't want them to feel like they have to start as newbs, and whoever says that the current stats they made for their characters is "broken" has no idea about the game mechanics (or like Dominic, just didn't bother to actually look at them). Yeah, they have a couple more 3's and a couple fewer 2's, and a force rating that lets them use force powers more easily out of char-gen.... but nothing they wouldn't have a few hundred XP into the game, and with my limitation on Force Rating talents (max of 1 since they can only have their starting Force-Based specialization, ever...), something that balances out very early into the game and leaves them in the dust when they, again, reach the 1k-ish mark in XP and other people who chose a Force class are on their 3rd or 4th Specialization tree.

@Domingo: Your reading skills are lacking... they gave up skill rankings of 5 (amongst the entire party there's a single 8, and 5x 6's in skills) and Characteristics as high as 6 (a single 6, 2x 5's and 9x 4's) for skill rankings of 2-max and characteristics as high as 4 (3x 4's amongst 6 players).

Something to realize. We didn't buy "Beta" to test it, we bought it to play Star Wars (hence us not hanging out on this forum). While I realize there is an errata, we never really considered looking at it since nothing was broken (or if it was, and it was something we even ran into, we likely houseruled it right away and forgot it was a houserule). And there is no rule in the Beta game that caps skills at 5, nor should there be in my opinion since you're paying 30, 35 and 40xp for +1 to a dice pool. There are far better ways to spend the XP.

As someone who's been running this game for nearly 2 years now, I can assure anyone that the game mechanics are not broken using the core un-errata'd Beta rules, but you wouldn't know that unless you went played it the way we have, you're just making false assumptions based on what you believe.

As a matter of fact, the only problem I've had using the rulebook as-is, is that melee tends to go to whomever whens initiative, which we countered by allowing the opponent (assuming it's not a sucker-punch) to chose whether to defend with the Average (3) difficulty die, or replace that pool with a pool of difficulty/challenge dice equal to their ability/proficiency pool; which still gives the attacker the advantage, but prolongs the fights and makes it more cinematic.

All that being said... YES, we realize there are new rules, and as is obvious by my even coming here, we're trying to convert to the new system. However, I don't want them to feel like they have to start as newbs, and whoever says that the current stats they made for their characters is "broken" has no idea about the game mechanics (or like Dominic, just didn't bother to actually look at them). Yeah, they have a couple more 3's and a couple fewer 2's, and a force rating that lets them use force powers more easily out of char-gen.... but nothing they wouldn't have a few hundred XP into the game, and with my limitation on Force Rating talents (max of 1 since they can only have their starting Force-Based specialization, ever...), something that balances out very early into the game and leaves them in the dust when they, again, reach the 1k-ish mark in XP and other people who chose a Force class are on their 3rd or 4th Specialization tree.

We never said they have to start as newbs. what we have told you is do character generation per the rules. After you finish that pile on however much XP you want and use that XP as if you have been playing all along. This will lead to non broken characters that are more powerful. The way you did it creates broken characters because you have made characteristics TOO cheap. Dedication is at the bottom of the talent trees for a a reason. It is VERY powerful.

Also Force rating is ALSO very powerful and you have made it WAY TOO Cheap by not running it correctly.

I understand your intentions. But your methods are off and VERY broken.

The way Knight level play works is you build the character as a starting character all the way to completion. Then you add 150 XP and give 9K credits. The reason you complete character gen with the normal process is because having extra XP at character gen completely hoses the balance and makes dedication talent worth less.

As to your problems with Melee I am pretty sure there are many changes you missed out on that fix that problem. Like the Adversary talent for bad guys. and other talents and gear that improve your defenses.

...Also, they're going from having skills averaging at 5 and as high as 8 to having skill ratings maxxed at 2...

I'm not sure what conversion process you were using before, but you do realize that without cybernetics, characteristics are capped at 6 and skills at 5? If they traded skill ranks of 8 for starting characteristics of 4's, 5's and 6's, you've went from one incarnation of busting the rules to another. I am sorry if you've found our adive contrary or not helpful, but I think you'll find little support for your house rules on this forum. It's not that I am trying to say what you can or can't do. I just don't agree with anything you've done. Nonetheless, have fun storming the castle, and may the force be with you.

I just checked, there is no rule that limits skills to rating 5. The closest thing to a rule would be the line: "Few individuals actually attain the fifth rank of a skill." That's not a limitation of 5.

@Daeglan: Sorry, but you are just wrong. It's great that you have an opinion, but it's just an opinion. Maybe it is "too cheap" for your games, but not for mine. Nothing is broken except your sense in thinking that games not like yours are. I know they're a couple of characteristics higher than using the pre-described manner. That's quite intentional of course, and in no way broken. They have -at most- +2 characteristics than any other character starting out, and half of those simply have +1 Force and the same characteristics as a regular newb.

I realize that it goes against your principles/rules, whatever, but you aren't actually looking at the actual numbers, or throwing any actual evidence via numbers to show there's anything broken here. You're just claiming "BROKE" and assuming that not only are you right, but that I should just accept your claim withing analyzing it. Except, I have analyzed it on top of my experience with the game. You are simply wrong.

The system didn't remove the inherent "weakness" of characters, out of 6 characters, there's 2 characters with a Characteristic of 1, and a total of 15 characteristics (2.5 per player) with a score of 2. There are 2 scores that are 4. The rest are 3.

As for Force, a score of 1 is pointless IF, like our game, you make using Dark Force a bad thing (which the Motivator mechanics in the Force and Destiny book do). Now, these characters have a force score of 2 instead of 1, which still means that 35 to 40% of rolls will result in nothing but dark force (5 of 12 have light force), but a chance for some dependency on Light force.

Mechanically, it's solid. Calling it broke just makes it obvious you aren't actually thinking about it.

Gryphynx, your rules - and the play experiences that likely result from them - deviate so far from the baseline of the game that I can't offer you any meaningful feedback. I'm not really willing to put the time in to learn your system sufficiently to judge how your proposed change will alter the game further, and I have a feeling that most others here are unwilling to put in that kind of time either. That said, there are a few here that love running numbers, so they may go for it even if they don't play it your way. Regardless, have fun.

It has to do with the statistics of die results. Your numbers completely throw those numbers out of wack. Your whole power curve is thoroughly screwed up. And because you were using a beta with out any of the fixes you have likely done a ton of houserules to fix problems in other ways than the developers intended. YOu are already house ruling a system you just picked up. The consequences to doing that are often far reaching when you do not fully understand the rules. And trust me you do not understand this ruleset with the fixes to the problems that were in the beta. I strongly suggest you step back. Slow down and at least give the rules a try as they were intended. Go ahead and use the knightlevel rules. But at the very least try the rules as designed before you go mucking around in the engine. Do you go making massive changes to your car engine before you take it for a test drive?

Daeglan, show me then. Saying something is broken doesn't make it broken.

I took 1k xp players, started them from scratch with +2 to characteristics (paid for via XP rather than a straight boost that would have allowed a stat of 6 pretty easily) or +1 Force (their choice), and a bonus 160xp.

That's not broke any more so than characters who have already attained 2 levels of dedication or a level of Force Rating.

The objective being, of course, to learn the system again, 1 talent/tree at a time in-game without having to be newbs.

You and the others can rant as long as they and you want, about broke levels, but unless you actually show how things are skewed, it's just hot air.

And no, I'm not house ruling the system, I'm just letting them start out with a couple of bonus characteristics which doesn't break the system at all. It just gives them a justifiable acceptance for "starting over" after a 2 year run on a game that had no problems for little reason more than it being a game update.

Hi everyone!

Mae, everytime I read you I want that you adopt me as your nephew XD

Also I have the Achievement "You Friended ErikB!" Well don't summon the demon from the veil... XD

Hi Gryp and welcome! Ok let's see...

As I repeated I people will hate me in this forums (sorry mates XD) my main players's character is a 2.430 XP char. He have 5 on 2 stats and 2 skills at Rank 5. Talents that remove 2 Setbacks and a few cool things like 20 Wounds and 18+2 Strain. Parry, Reflect... bla bla bla XD A game started on year 1999.

In general therms, he uses to defeat almost anything BUT the game still suposes a challenge to him. Variability is too enough high to get some emotion at that point. Also he have FR 6 BUT, he only uses the Force "cinematically" when is needed, not always.

As almost anyone said (more or less gentle but remember that everyone here is trying to guide/help you ) when stats are above 6 (sometimes even 5) game generally begins to tremble.

Of course you have to take in consideration things like "universe level of power", game lenght and some other minor things.

Will you players will be capable to face Vader, Palpatine and 12 Royal Guards alone or they "just" will become special forces from the Rebel Alliance?

This will be a 1 or 2 months session play or you will want to share that legacy with your sons someday? XD

Maybe I missed a post, but instead discuss about +1 or +100, can you try to explain "clearly" what are the reasons of that patch/mod? What are the motivations?

Maybe if we can get the "full essence" of your idea, we can aid you so much better, BUT, the main idea in my head is that, why? (Scale of power "saiyan4", game lenght). The first word that comes to my mind also is "unbalanced", but first I would want to know the reasons.

Thanks and take care

PS: In some cases I use the progression system called "pick waht you need"... with A LOT of common sense XD In some cases we don't care about trees, carriers or specs and I let pick what s/he wishes just adding it with justifications like "I trained for 4 months or I have a master that helps me" and other things.

Heya Josep, thanks.

Since you missed some posts, you should know that at this point I'm -not- looking for help or guidance. I gave the players 160xp to spend on anything at all, and 160 points to spend on anything except characteristics. I also let them buy up Force with their characteristic allowance (if they had a Force career/specialization) at double the cost (so 40xp for Force 2 or 100xp for Force 3)

At this point, the only discussion is how "broke" my group's characters are because they got 160xp to spend on characteristics and Force. I know they're not broke, but people who have never spent 160xp on characteristics or bought Force with XP, are convinced they're right.

Hadn't left, just didn't have time to go through the commentary while preparing for the char-gen setting we had yesterday. And besides, discussion was over, I had made a decision.

As for those "over inflated characteristics", here are the end results of yesterday's char-gen (using the 160/160 rule and allowing Force Purchase for double the price of raising a characteristic), the ChP notes being they would have paid if they'd used my 8ChP idea... :

3,3,3,3,2,2 and Force 2 (6ChP)

4,4,2,2,2,2 and Force 1 (6ChP)

3,3,2,2,2,2 and Force 3 (8ChP)

3,1,3,3,3,3 and Force 3 (6ChP) (3rd force point paid for via Force Rating talent as Pathfinder)

2,1,3,3,4,2 and Force 2 (6ChP)

3,3,3,3,3,2 and Force 1 (5ChP)

Stats of their previous characters (calculated the characters XP range from 1,055 to 1,110, so my apologies about being wrong on them having exceed 1k XP by now).

4,4,3,3,2,2 and no Force - 3x Dedication

5,5,2,2,2,2 and Force 2 - 3x Dedication

4,4,3,3,2,2 and Force 2 - 3x Dedicaton (One of those 4's is from a Cyber Brain Implant)

6,3,3,2,2,1 and no Force - 2x Dedication

4,4,4,2,2,1 and Force 2 - 2x Dedication

4,4,3,2,2,2 and Force 2 - 2x Dedication

Also, they're going from having skills averaging at 5 and as high as 8 to having skill ratings maxxed at 2.

All in all, despite the emphatic insistence that i was going to see something much more, these are much weaker than the characters they're giving up without having dropped to actual newb-characters. Albeit mostly weaker due to the lack of skills and talents. The only real difference here is the potential to reach Force 3 (or Force 4 for the one individual) since I've currently limited them to a single Force Specialization.

I had a lot of fun with it, told each of them we were going to play an alternate-universe version of their current characters and that this time they had a secret. Each of them thinks they are the only one in the group with "Force" with the exception that they all know there is one other member of their crew that also has Force because they've seen things "Move"ing.

Ok, let's try this again....your full quote, which I've read.

@Domingo: Your reading skills are lacking... they gave up skill rankings of 5 (amongst the entire party there's a single 8, and 5x 6's in skills) and Characteristics as high as 6 (a single 6, 2x 5's and 9x 4's) for skill rankings of 2-max and characteristics as high as 4 (3x 4's amongst 6 players)...

Exactly how are my reading skills lacking? You mention skills as "high as 8" with no mention of how many players have it. Direct quote from you, so don't get personal insult my reading just because we don't agree with you.

I just checked, there is no rule that limits skills to rating 5. The closest thing to a rule would be the line: "Few individuals actually attain the fifth rank of a skill." That's not a limitation of 5...

Ok, I'll give you that it is not clear in the skills or experience section. The skills section only describes what the attainable skill levels are without explicitly stating the max is 5, so I'll give you the reference. Page 173 under cybernetics, "The combination of purchased increases and the the increases provided by cybernetics can increase a character's skill or characteristic one step above the normal maximum (seven for characterisitcs, six for skills)."

And with that, I'm done with this thread.

Ok, I will help so much better if I know the reason "why" you give those extra points, this will help a lot.

But backing to the dilemna... I would let the commón XP for stats 90-100 based on specie +Obligation extra of +15, no more. After that points give as so much XP as you wish for talents or skills. 100, 200... 1000! But remain the stats XP as they are.

About FR... well, again I would need the reason why you want to do this but...

If do you want to give extra (starting or not) FR give it as a "story prize or sucess" but don't let them buy it.

Maybe they found an ancient ruins and learns the way of the force... if the complete the quest just give them +1 FR, but, don't let them buy it as XP.

Based on no more info I cannot help you so much mate, sorry.

If you wish to expose the reasons, would be a pleasure to help

As I understand the OP, you're referring to the issue of players using all their Character generation XP on attributes.

What I did was simply enforce a rule where you can start at 4 in one characteristic and no higher than three in the rest. This means you can still raise your characteristics and spend all XP on this, but reaching 6 is harder.

Anything above 6 skill/characteristics would be pointless and silly.

If they traded skill ranks of 8 for starting characteristics of 4's, 5's and 6's

...

Exactly how are my reading skills lacking?

Their starting characteristics are obviously not 4's, 5's and 6's. They traded both high skills and high characteristics (not to mention Talents) for low skills and a minor boost to characteristics.

@Josep: Sorry boss, again, not needing advise. I appreciate your attempt to help, but it was a well thought out bonus. The 160xp was not a random number, it was the base 100 plus the cost of raising 2 Characteristics from 2 to 3. I figured they'd make their own decision to either go weak on characteristics for a good Force boost, go average on characteristics for a low Force boost, go all out on a specialist in a characteristic, or for the more generalist spread of more 3's.

Again, their characters are made. I'm not having them remake characters just because someone else thinks their own house rule would be a better idea than my own house rule. Their characters are made.

Then if I have to pick one... I pick the box one! XD (The first one)

But I'm still surious about the reasons. Not for this session and those characters but maybe for future ones

Gryphynx, sounds like you've got it all figured out.

Will you come back and tell us about your experience actually playing with these characters?

Be nice. Disagree with his posts all you want, but please don't make belittling

comments towards or about the poster.

I was not making a belittling comment towards the poster, I made the comment to point out that the dead horse is dead stop kicking it. Most people use these threads to improve their games but it all gets buried when people keep going on and on when the opportunity has turned their back and stopped looking at what is being said.

Guys, He Gave Them 320 Starting XP, And Said They Could Buy Force Rating. This Doesn't Seen That Horrible. It Just Means The Force Is Stronger In His Galaxy. IM Sure The Enemies He Is Going To Have Them Fight Will Have That Strong Of Force Ratings Too.

That's why I was asking for "why's" to understand better his ideas

Gryphynx, sounds like you've got it all figured out.

Will you come back and tell us about your experience actually playing with these characters?

Of course, I'll even post up the characters if you want to see them.

@Josep, I forget that you missed out on the beginning of this thread, so I will re-explain "why?" for you, since you've asked repeatedly, and nicely. I know my players are "Force interested", because of 6 players, 4 were "Exiles" in the last game. One started as an Exile, spending 30 of his 100xp to start as one. 3 took powers (the 4th lost interest because he realized that half the players had "Force"). However, it didn't take long to realize that you could not depend on Force due to the limited chance of drawing Light Force and me punishing Dark Force usage by imposing behavioral adjustments on those that used it. So, for the past few months, i've seen zero usage of force powers (except for "Commit" usage since that's not rolled)... it's just not worth it when you can only have 2 Force max.

However, I'm not dumb either... Force and Destiny gives you the ability to get to Force 7+ pretty easily (albeit at huge xp costs) since you can take multiple specializations to get Force Rating... while I think 2 is far too little in a game where Darkside Force has dire consequences, I think more than 4 is also a really bad idea... so my calculations put everyone between 2 and 4 Force if I let them buy 1 or 2 force now, and limited them to a single force-specialization. Now, they can get to Force 4 (only one of my players can, as only one of them bought both force points he could buy at Char Gen; the rest are limited to Force 3).

My implementation of Darkside Force was to describe things differently for those that were falling to the darkside. One group might see, for example, a kid pointing a toy gun at them in a playful manner... the others might see a small figure dart in their direction with a deadly weapon pointed at them. One group might see the diplomat apologize for a mishap, while the darkside players would see a diplomat sarcastically dismissing the mishap as if it was their fault. The more you drew on the darkside, the more paranoid, fear-prone, and angry my storytelling would make the character.

While I realize that MOST people seem to play by just flipping Destiny Points back and forth, I was more into the story and theme...

This means, btw, that the assumption Force is stronger in my galaxy is only true if other Galaxies aren't using the "Force and Destiny" books. But no, I don't plan to have much Force usage by NPCs. Force is great, but Gunnery and Ranged (Heavy) not to mention skilled diplomats, can utterly destroy Force users without the need to delve into Force.

Thanks for the re-xplain

As I saw in game concept, seems that a powerful Force User (Inquisitor) have FR 3 and a few "only for NPC" abilities.

Your range of power between 2-4 seems ok to me. It's the general FFG essence until now.

I have a few 5 and even 6 or 7 FR NPC's in my games XD. They are really powerful but are considered "monsters" with the Force. My level scale of power is too high in so many fields. My player is trying to confront the "Chaos" or "The Mother" and is looking for the guidance of the Celestials. But he still have problems with mercs and stormtroopers XD

The main char of my player is FR6 with Makashi Finishi and Move maxed out. This can create unwilling situations sometimes but, as I commented before, he uses the Force cinematically and his usual results went from 2 to 4 FP. He doesn't uses to use Dark Side. Also I use a cooperation house rule with Force Users.

Do you plan a long therm game or just a few campaigns and sessions?

Take care!

The first, and the one of the 2 that I most favor currently, is to separate Characteristics from XP entirely. I'm thinking of giving 8 Characteristic Points (ChP). For 1 ChP, you can raise a single attribute once. For an incremental 2 ChP you can raise a single attribute once more (so 3 ChP in total for a +2).

So why not just give them more starting experience then? instead of the 100 (or whatever) go to the knight level and give them 300 or 500?

That sounds like a terrible idea. Attributes for experience is waaaaaaaaay to easy to raise 'em when you have a constant flow of experience coming in.

I guess the question is: what exactly is broken about the game? Everything seems plenty cinematic as it is.