I know it is dumb, but I don't have the F&D Beta, so I can only imagine that each career in F&D has got a Force Rating 1...

Is it right?

Thank you for your time

Yes but note it is each carrier not each specialisation so moving into the trees from else where DOES NOT give you a force rating.

I was a bit curious about a related point though.

The talent trees of the universal version of the force sensitive characters did not have Dedication and instead gave a Force Rating when the first one was selected.

From what I have seen, the talent trees of the FaD careers have both Dedication & Force Rating and grant a Force Rating at creation.

Where is the counter-balance? If anyone wanted to be a force user why would they now not choose a FaD career if available?

I'm AFB, so I'm going off of my own fuzzy memory. So if I get a fact wrong, I apologize.

The Sage and the Seer have 2 ranks in Force Rating with no Dedication talent. The talent trees themselves do not grant the force rating (as was the case with the Exile and Emergent), it is the careers that do.

The balancing factor you are looking for is that there are only 6 career skills with each career in Force and Destiny. The specializations still have 4. Also, a starting character in Force and Destiny may only choose 3 free ranks from their career.

Finally, I don't see the Emergent or Exile as inferior to Force and Destiny specializations. They're simply different flavors. The Exile and Emergent are additions to whatever else your character going on. So I am a mechanic who is also force sensitive. I am a dancer, who can also sense the emotions of my client. Whereas Force and Destiny clearly have their central focus their abilities. It's all in what you want to emphasize for your character.

Yes but note it is each carrier not each specialisation so moving into the trees from else where DOES NOT give you a force rating.

I'm AFB, so I'm going off of my own fuzzy memory. So if I get a fact wrong, I apologize.

The Sage and the Seer have 2 ranks in Force Rating with no Dedication talent. The talent trees themselves do not grant the force rating (as was the case with the Exile and Emergent), it is the careers that do.

The balancing factor you are looking for is that there are only 6 career skills with each career in Force and Destiny. The specializations still have 4. Also, a starting character in Force and Destiny may only choose 3 free ranks from their career.

Finally, I don't see the Emergent or Exile as inferior to Force and Destiny specializations. They're simply different flavors. The Exile and Emergent are additions to whatever else your character going on. So I am a mechanic who is also force sensitive. I am a dancer, who can also sense the emotions of my client. Whereas Force and Destiny clearly have their central focus their abilities. It's all in what you want to emphasize for your character.

The Emergent and Exile are still interesting from my point of view: in an AoR campaign there is a gand Soldier Commando/Emergent that has got a Force Rating 2 and he is actually a Jedi thanks to our GM, while my Spy Infiltrator/Emergent is right behind him, and he falls easily in anger during stressful encounters, but he still tries to make the right choice, for example aiding the gand building a Jedi Temple in the Outer Rim, or giving orphan children home with the help of the gand.

I was a bit curious about a related point though.

The talent trees of the universal version of the force sensitive characters did not have Dedication and instead gave a Force Rating when the first one was selected.

From what I have seen, the talent trees of the FaD careers have both Dedication & Force Rating and grant a Force Rating at creation.

Where is the counter-balance? If anyone wanted to be a force user why would they now not choose a FaD career if available?

1) Existing characters can't really change careers, so you'd have to start over with a new character.

2) It's a bit of po-tay-to, po-tah-to in regards to XP expenditure. If you want to be a powerful Force user, like Force Rating 3 and moving X-Wings around with the power of your mind, then you go with something like Consular: Sage. If you want to be a deadly rifleman or a cunning blockade runner, Sage is probably a very poor choice, but the Emergent & Exile can help your Bounty Hunter or Smuggler character get to where he wants to go much easier while also providing you the means of becoming Force Sensitive.

I'm AFB, so I'm going off of my own fuzzy memory. So if I get a fact wrong, I apologize.

The Sage and the Seer have 2 ranks in Force Rating with no Dedication talent. The talent trees themselves do not grant the force rating (as was the case with the Exile and Emergent), it is the careers that do.

The balancing factor you are looking for is that there are only 6 career skills with each career in Force and Destiny. The specializations still have 4. Also, a starting character in Force and Destiny may only choose 3 free ranks from their career.

Finally, I don't see the Emergent or Exile as inferior to Force and Destiny specializations. They're simply different flavors. The Exile and Emergent are additions to whatever else your character going on. So I am a mechanic who is also force sensitive. I am a dancer, who can also sense the emotions of my client. Whereas Force and Destiny clearly have their central focus their abilities. It's all in what you want to emphasize for your character.

Thank you Kaosoe.

Really? I thought they all had at least one FR boost in each tree. That's good to know.

Yes, that lack of 2 career skills makes excellent narrative and mechanical sense. That was the counter-balance I was looking for. (Sorry, I couldn't help it.) So they are more focused on the force so they have less breadth of knowledge.

@awayputurwpn - I would have thought that the Ace Starfighter Pilot and one of the Lightsaber combat specializations would have covered the standard combat pretty well. Any reason why you would go the other way around?

Really? I thought they all had at least one FR boost in each tree. That's good to know.

It's worth mentioning that all but one of the Lightsaber trees do not have a force rating talent at the end of it.

the exception of Niman Disciple. The lightsaber trees can potentially be scary, so it makes sense that the mechanical and narrative balance is at the expense of your own Force training.

Really? I thought they all had at least one FR boost in each tree. That's good to know.

It's worth mentioning that all but one of the Lightsaber trees do not have a force rating talent at the end of it.

the exception of Niman Disciple. The lightsaber trees can potentially be scary, so it makes sense that the mechanical and narrative balance is at the expense of your own Force training.

Then characters with lightsaber specialisation may have got a limited Force Rating and their force powers may not have been as effective as the ones of a sage.

And maybe the Niman Disciple is something right in the middle?

Obviously players may still purchase one more specialisation with the usual rule.

I'm very curious about F&D careers and force powers, I can't wait for it

As far as the Lightsaber Form specs, each of them except Niman Disciple has either Improved Parry or Improved Reflect, with Soresu Defender being the only spec to get bot of them.

Improved Parry can be quite devastating once the character gets their hands on even a basic lightsaber, particularly in a one-on-one fight if the PC has the Sense power, Control Upgrade to upgrade difficulty of incoming attacks, and the Strength Upgrade to upgrade the attacker's difficulty twice.

I've had the chance to witness a Soresu Defender with the Defensive Circle talent be able to trigger Improved Parry and Improved Reflect on each attack sent against them simply because they were adding multiple setback dice to the attacker's difficulty each round. Yeah, they burned through a lot of strain doing so, but given they could negate up to 5 points of any ranged attack before applying their soak, and then send that shot right back... it could get pretty nasty for the shooter if they were using something like a blaster rifle and generated a lot of successes.

So in that respect, it makes sense from a balance perspective that the LS Form specs don't get a chance to increase your Force Rating, with the exception of Niman Disciple, which notably lacks Improved Parry or Improved Reflect.

@awayputurwpn - I would have thought that the Ace Starfighter Pilot and one of the Lightsaber combat specializations would have covered the standard combat pretty well. Any reason why you would go the other way around?

Yeah, that combo is perfectly serviceable! It really just depends on what you want out of the character. My Smuggler: Scoundrel/Force Sensitive Emergent is gonna play way differently than, say, a Warrior: Starfighter Ace/Ataru Striker, just based on talents & skill ranks alone, not to mention the inherent flavor of the specializations & careers.

@awayputurwpn - I would have thought that the Ace Starfighter Pilot and one of the Lightsaber combat specializations would have covered the standard combat pretty well. Any reason why you would go the other way around?

Yeah, that combo is perfectly serviceable! It really just depends on what you want out of the character. My Smuggler: Scoundrel/Force Sensitive Emergent is gonna play way differently than, say, a Warrior: Starfighter Ace/Ataru Striker, just based on talents & skill ranks alone, not to mention the inherent flavor of the specializations & careers.

I would never disagree with good character building through background and narrative fore-thought. I was thinking about balance between players more than anything else.

But from what Kaosoe mentioned I think it is good.

I would never disagree with good character building through background and narrative fore-thought. I was thinking about balance between players more than anything else.

But from what Kaosoe mentioned I think it is good.

Thing is, each specialization has its own niche, and each one is better at "something" than all the other specializations. A party of four heroes at 300 XP can be wildly different from each other; one might still be rolling only 1-2 Ability (Green) dice for every combat skill, but their Charm & Deception pools are off the charts. Or one might be decapitating one foe after the next with his 12-damage vibro-ax and a +70 crit modifier, but have all the social graces of a jar of Sullustan jam.

So yeah...balance is not so big an issue in this game, as far as I have experienced. Just because my Soldier: Commando can get down & dirty with a Gundark doesn't mean he's all that great at vaping TIE fighters while at the helm of a rusting old G9 Rigger, or convincing an enemy operative to capitulate under interrogation, or deflecting blaster bolts with a lightsaber. And there are, of course, always ways to make your character more or less effective (for example, a +100XP character with three specializations will have spent half, or more, of his XP just buying specializations, and so he might have a lot of catching up to do with the other PCs in terms of talents and skill ranks), and that's mostly down to how shrewdly you are spending your XP. Even so, I've put PCs of widely varying XP levels in a game together, and the game was still fun and everyone had a blast.

It's true that there are some things that one can only do with a Force Rating, but once you have that Force ability, you risk exposure and capture by your friendly local Inquisitor. Using the Force, or a lightsaber, in any sort of conspicuous way is a great way to get you tagged and branded as a traitor to the Empire and hunted from one end of the galaxy to the other. Not that this sort of thing can't be fun—it's the basis for tons of great adventures—but it does create a sort of balance. Kinda like the difference between trying to sneak a pistol onboard a weaponless station vs. trying to bring a heavy blaster rifle onboard the same station, except on a whole new level

Not to mention the lure of the dark side as a very effective, and flavorful, balance to the power of the Force.

Game Balance does not only refer to combat Awayputurwpn.

I meant more as a cost to value ratio for player expenditures, and that is always important. I completely agree on the lack of equivalence between players in a certain aspect of their abilities and skills. Heck, it has been that way for most systems since Top Secret and a few of the other systems that really let you build a character just the way you want to. Point system or non. I always like to see how systems handle this. Some very well, others not so much.

Thank you for giving me a glimpse into the FaD side. I prefer to keep my mind clear of Betas, I find that I muddle too many variants of rules in my head. I suppose it comes from designing other systems. "Wait, did I use that idea I had or the other ten?"