Never mind.

Comment: regarding the skills vs. Talents discussion a big part of why I wanted custom specs was so that I could choose 4 career skills (minus a repeat that a starting character could get 2 ranks in) spec ops had stealth and vigilance perception and brawl... skills that Jason Bourne should have but other than brawl commando doesn't have, well rounded was there for the same reason

Here's a revised spy:Agent that is more skillful and shooty, with slightly more emphasis on speed (I got rid of the enduring so there wouldn't be quite as much synergy between it and spec ops, multiple copies of enduring really add up) got rid of mental fortress so it wouldn't have that in common with spy:slicer, so it has even more of a place/less overlap with the rest of the spy career.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/efj0i4d2xgmwnri/SpyAgent11.pdf

Here's a significantly revised spec ops: got rid of pressure point and quick strike so there wouldn't be as much synergy, traded out a grit for a rapid recovery (made the second row from the top mostly about speed), I think it has more of a place in soldier now (speed/mobility/stealth/brawling which were rather lacking from the soldier career), the deadly accuracy does overlap with sharpshooter slightly but the sharpshooter is likely to apply them to ranged light and ranged heavy and a cross specing sharpshooter would likely apply this copy to brawling.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/69g91gsz6dggs8j/SoldierSpecOps6.pdf

so @mouthymerc, does this address your concerns, are they still too good? I am honestly trying to limit the power level

so @mouthymerc, does this address your concerns, are they still too good? I am honestly trying to limit the power level

Better but only slightly. It still looks like your building these to meet your concept instead of their individual concepts. The synergy between them is too good. I look at spec ops and see things that seem out of place. Sidestep, Superior Reflexes, and Defensive Stance on what is supposed to be a tough Soldier character. These talents are usually reserved for nimble character types like thieves and infiltrators where they will not be getting many ranks of Toughened or Enduring. And vice versa, Agent has a rank of Toughened when it should be more about evasion and undercover. Agent suffers from having too much crammed into it. Smooth talker with hide in plain sight with shooty stuff with the odd other talents thrown in ( Like Shortcut and Intense Focus). Intense Focus is usually reserved for more cerebral characters. Again it seems more like you are trying to account for every little thing on screen with a talent than creating a cohesive concept.

We may yet see an "agent" in an upcoming spy career book. Something with some blending ability mixed with some shooty ability but definitely more focused than this. Same with spec ops. I could easily see the scout spec falling under the soldier career as well much like pilot is seen in both smuggler and ace. But a spec ops character would generally combine different specs within the soldier career.

Personally I would just build my "Bourne" with a combination of soldier/commando with infiltrator as a second spec. Given time I could delve into sharpshooter.

The concept I have for spec ops rather than Bourne is the guy who sneaks up behind a sentry and chokes them out without them making any noise, he's a tough mobile brawler who when things don't go as plan quickly can quickly pull out a pistol and start firing. Not quite as tough as a commando but a bit quicker to partially make up for it, and another difference is the skill set. I thought that defensive stance and superior reflexes are appropriate to tough mobile brawler (if i recall correctly the quartermaster has superior refelexes and my concept of a quartermaster is more beefy than fast, unrelated to the disussion about spec ops but quartermaster I think also has the intense focus talent, and a quartermaster strikes me as more "shrewd" than cerebral) but I can see your point with sidestep. Regarding the cherry picking of talents I can see the inclusion of deadly accuracy as being a fair example of that for both the agent and spec ops, I actually think that pressure point is more thematically appropriate to my concept of spec ops than deadly accuracy. What is your opinion of yanking deadly accuracy from both and inserting pressure point into spec ops.

Also what do you think of giving spec ops 2 defensive stance but no sidestep and giving agent 2 sidestep but no defensive stance?

About agent my concept of agent is "James Bond early in his career" a smooth clever shoot spy... and I don't think agent is too far off topic from that, short cut is related to being clever and fast and breaking in (bypass security), and that's related to trying, to blend in after you have gained access to some place secure. So the left side of the tree is pretty close to my concept of agent (independent of Bourne). Intense focus is more about being shrewd/clever than cerebral, but a spy can be a Chessmaster that plays people rather than playing the game. In that vein I'm thinking of putting careful planning or utility belt in (after removing deadly accuracy and sliding clever solution and soft spot to the right and intense focus up one), what do you think about that? Even the doctor had 1 toughened so I don't think leaving the 1 toughened in agent is an issue but I could put a grit in place of it. You're thoughts about this?

@mouthymerc: Ok there have been substantial revisions to both custom specs http://www.mediafire.com/view/2l27gun68alz547/SpyAgent12.pdf

http://www.mediafire.com/view/nc5s5qyecearqa1/SoldierSpecOps7.pdf

Please let me know the degree to which these address your concerns in terms of identity vs. collection of talents I'd like to have and in terms of power level, I think both of them got a cut in terms of power level, so I think there is less of "so why wouldn't I want to do this syndrome" and I think that there is less synergy now.

BTW is your screen name a reference to dead pool? I'm a fan of peter parker (the real peter parker, peter parker was a hero), I used to say I was a fan of spider man, but I stopped reading those because of doc oct

Frankly, I don't think you need the Talent Trees to do most of what you need. If you want to reflect "Lateral" thinking, you don't need a Talent tree or specialization to justify many of the things you want him to do. He's an assassin with great agent/spy skills. The rest you can just throw together with proper roleplaying and investment of xp into skills. I'm not very keen on custom specs, but making a Jason Bourne is possible while staying within the pre-existing canon specs.

Incidentally, I think tapping the EoTE Career/Specializations would help. Bounty Hunter Assassin, for example, since Bourne was (movie and book-wise) a contract assassin fits very well with the concept. Throw in Recruit as a generalist thing to improve his toughness overall.

The problem with assassin (and just about every other official spec) is the skill list, for example assassin doesn't have ranged light, if I got to fiddle with the skill list there are a couple of official specs that would be passable. But as long as i'm picking a skill list why not pick some talents to go along with it.

Take a look at the skill list of spec ops (plus the well rounded talent), the bonus career skills for spy agent plus the bonus career skills of demolitionist (official spec from dangerous covenants) and tell me whether or not they are a good fit for a Bourne skill list.

Frankly, I don't think you need the Talent Trees to do most of what you need. If you want to reflect "Lateral" thinking, you don't need a Talent tree or specialization to justify many of the things you want him to do. He's an assassin with great agent/spy skills. The rest you can just throw together with proper roleplaying and investment of xp into skills. I'm not very keen on custom specs, but making a Jason Bourne is possible while staying within the pre-existing canon specs.

Incidentally, I think tapping the EoTE Career/Specializations would help. Bounty Hunter Assassin, for example, since Bourne was (movie and book-wise) a contract assassin fits very well with the concept. Throw in Recruit as a generalist thing to improve his toughness overall.

Yronhand, He doesn't want to role play, he wants it now, thats why he made more than one talent tree, just let him do what he wants.

Bourne isn't awesome because he has great talents (custom or standard trees) and tons of XP. He's awesome because the guy playing him comes up with clever plans to give himself some boost dice to his checks and is really, really good at spending his Advantages and Triumphs in smart and interesting ways.

This just goes to show how perception can vary even among a small group like us. While reviewing these I got looking a little closer at the other specs. Personally (revised opinion here) I can see a Bourne character being done with the spy career and the specs infiltrator and scout with Recruit thrown in to round out the skills and toughness. The two specs speak to me of Bourne's ability to move and strike quickly and escape and evade.

Agent spec

• Don't see the need for Bypass Security or Shortcut.
• The spy career already has the slicer spec in the case of Bypass Security. seems more like a cherry picked talent so one doesn't have to go into slicer. Also I do not recall Bourne being that accomplished at bypassing security but my memory may slipping in my old age.
• Shortcut seems out of place since neither the spy career not the agent spec give access to any skill that would take advantage of such a talent (Athletics, Pilot, or Survival).
• I think you should focus on the social aspect with some gunplay. I would not be surprised to see something like that in a spy career book much like we see the big game hunter in explorer, the marshal in colonist and the gunslinger in smuggler. A combat oriented spec for a relatively non-combat oriented career.

Spec ops

• This one seems more like some type of martial artist rather than a spec ops.
• I think scout fulfills this already.
• While I can see a point to the agent spec, this one has less purpose to me.
• personally when I think of spec ops I think of the green berets going in to help the locals fight back like in Vietnam. I think a little scout mixed with some leadership/ambush ability would be a better way to focus this spec.

I hate to say it again, but I still feel you are trying to build Bourne rather than two new specs. This is why I have not interest in building any specs because even I would cherry pick talents for them. It is also why I prefer building NPCs because they do not have to follow any of the PCs rules.

You know... I hadn't considered this before but starting as a hired gun:demolitionist would provide a pretty good skill set for Bourne, has ranged light, brawl, pilot(planetary), computers, mechanics, cool, skulduggery, vigilance, discipline, athletics, resilience, melee...

And the talents aren't terrible either, 1 toughened, an enduring, 3 grit, rapid reaction, time to go, improvised explosive device... you kind of have to work to avoid most of the big boom talents but it's not bad.

And the hired gun signature ability last one standing could explain how Bourne wipes the floor with multiple opponents.

Then going to infiltrator, who doesn't have brawl (or ranged light) let's all of the melee or brawl talents apply to brawl. You'd pick up deception and streetwise which are nice. Then going assassin to pick up ranged heavy and stealth makes for a decent skill list.

Sounds reasonable.

So what would you guys think of a house rule that lets you swap out one skill from career (not one of the bonus from your srarting spec) for one that fits your character concept better at the time of character creation. In my case I would drop melee in favor of perception or stealth but an otherwise raw character creation?

I say do what you want, but would argue again, the career skills are set up for the careers. If you want a skill that isn't part of the career skills spend the extra xp and get it. To me, what you just asked is not house rule, I was going to say it is something else...but...you do what you want to do.

I say do what you want, but would argue again, the career skills are set up for the careers. If you want a skill that isn't part of the career skills spend the extra xp and get it. To me, what you just asked is not house rule, I was going to say it is something else...but...you do what you want to do.

I get your point, I guess it stems from picking a career and spec for mechanical benefits (e.g. skill list) rather than one that thematically fits the theme of the character, it could be argued that Jason Bourne is a "hired gun" (assassin or special forces or spy is more accurate) but he certainly isn't well described as a demolitionist

I say do what you want, but would argue again, the career skills are set up for the careers. If you want a skill that isn't part of the career skills spend the extra xp and get it. To me, what you just asked is not house rule, I was going to say it is something else...but...you do what you want to do.

I get your point, I guess it stems from picking a career and spec for mechanical benefits (e.g. skill list) rather than one that thematically fits the theme of the character, it could be argued that Jason Bourne is a "hired gun" (assassin or special forces or spy is more accurate) but he certainly isn't well described as a demolitionist

Yes and no, I am an aircraft mechanic, I was not trained as an aircraft electrician but I can wire and troubleshoot with those guys, was I trained at it? No I learned on my own how to do it by research and asking to be taught. I feel the same could be said of Bourne, did he learn things that weren't part of his career? Yes but it took the time to learn it. Hence the extra cost of the XP.

you know what humans get 1 free rank in 2 out of career skills, I could drop one in perception and the other in stealth.

David Webb is a mentally unstable killing machine with amnesia and ptsd.

Jason Bourne was a frenchman David killed for betraying his merc group that was fighting illegally on the border of Vietnam.

The book character is very different from the Movie character and while a good fighter he is hardly a mary sue. By his very nature he is flawed to the point of being barely able to function.

David Webb is a mentally unstable killing machine with amnesia and ptsd.

Jason Bourne was a frenchman David killed for betraying his merc group that was fighting illegally on the border of Vietnam.

The book character is very different from the Movie character and while a good fighter he is hardly a mary sue. By his very nature he is flawed to the point of being barely able to function.

I thought the real Jason Bourne was Australian? Not French.

So after reading through this, it seemed like a fun discussion and I decided to take a stab at it. I'm not really answering your question of whether your custom specs are overpowered, instead I wanted to try creating Bourne using RAW. So here it is...

The first part of the process is figuring out how to represent the mechanical aspect of a “Bourne” character, in other words HOW he does what he does (we’ll get to the why in a little bit).

I started by going through the short Wikipedia background on the Bourne character from the movies and combing that with my own knowledge from watching all three movies multiple times. Then I went back through the two and-a-half pages of this thread and took into consideration what you wanted to see in the character. That resulted in this list of skills, which I think represents things we see from Bourne in the films.

• Hand-to-hand combat
• Firearms
• Explosives
• Driving
• Multilingual
• Stealth
• Adaptability/creativity
• Perception
• Improvised weapons
• First-aid/emergency, improvised medicine
• Superior reflexes
• Toughness
• Blend into a crowd and fade away
• Composure in high-stress situations

That’s obviously an extremely long and daunting list to try and fit onto a starting character. So the next step is to narrow all these skills down to the most important, which leaves us with three distinct categories. (In order of importance)

1. Creativity/adaptability
2. Hand-to-hand combat
3. Stealth

Why are these the most important? I’ll go through each of the three explaining why I think they fit the character and then getting into how they translate mechanically into game terms.

Creativity/Adaptability - The one thing that stands out more than anything else from the movies is Bourne’s insane ability to think on his feet. The Waterloo Station scene in the third movie is one of my favorites of the trilogy. Maneuvering the journalist through the station to avoid not just agents, but the field of view of every freaking security camera, in real time, is good enough. But what makes the entire scene is his use of a pre-paid phone he bought at the front entrance and then reverse-pickpocketed into the reporter’s jacket. The panicked CIA director frantically asking, “Where did he get another phone?!” makes me laugh every time I watch it.

In game terms that entire scene can be broken down to Bourne using his naturally high cunning stat to roll a bunch of highly-successful perception and skullduggery checks. I think you can make a decent argument for knowledge (warfare) coming into play (he knew how they’d move/where they’d be and what they’d look like because of his knowledge of CIA tactics), but narratively I think it makes sense to say he’s keeping an eye on where the agents are (perception) after using skullduggery to buy the phone and get it into the pocket. If your Bourne character has a high intelligence stat (we’ll get to that later) then his innate knowledge of CIA tactics in that situation (assuming a successful skill check in game terms) could manifest itself in the form of a boost die to all checks for the encounter.

Hand-to-hand combat – This is the staple of Bourne’s fighting style in all three movies. Yes, he’s very, very good with a gun, but most of his work (both before and after his memory loss) was done in close-quarters with hand-to-hand fighting.

In game terms I think it’s easy to see this translates to brawn and brawl. Important to note – I don’t think melee should be a huge focus at first because although we see Bourne proficiently use weapons like knives, most of his close-quarters fighting is done with his bare hands and mastery of martial arts. We’ll come back to how this translates game-wise.

Stealth – Bourne was trained as an assassin, someone who not only kills, but does so without being seen. This also covers his ability to elude pursuers and blend into crowds. This is a straightforward transition into game terms with the stealth skill.

So now I want to give you two possible ways to mechanically build the character. Option No. 1 is the more traditional path of using high agility and brawn stats to make him a brawling, ranged (light) machine and superior athlete who can use athletics, coordination and piloting checks to re-enact the daring chase scenes from the movies. It’s a good option, but going back to the three main skill categories, I think the best way to define Bourne is through his incredible creativity and adaptability to any situation.

Which leads us to Option No. 2: Focus character creation into the cunning and intellect characteristics and then fill in the skills afterwards. This allows you to capture the flavor of who and what Jason Bourne is much better, at least in my opinion. This is where the power of the FFG narrative system comes into play. It’s based on players narrating how they want to do something and then using the dice and skill checks to see how well they narrated. With that in mind, I think it makes perfect sense to sit down with the GM, talk about how you want to play this character and why you want to play him this way and then agree that it makes sense to use skullduggery checks much more frequently in combat. To me, skullduggery is the “creativity” skill, which, as I’ve already mentioned, is how I think Bourne is best represented.

To give you an example of how this would work, let’s translate the scene where Jason fights Desh in the apartment into a combat encounter in the game. When Jason uses the book to make his punches more effective, I think it’s very reasonable to argue that’s using skullduggery. So let’s say your Brawn is 2 and your Cunning is 4 (same as the Bourne character I created). Instead of rolling a brawl check at 2 yellow die and 1 green die, you can roll a skullduggery check at 3 yellow die and 1 green die. See the difference? This way you don’t have to come up with a completely new tree or new game mechanic, you can just repurpose a skill at the GM’s discretion (which a good GM should have no problem allowing). Obviously you can’t reasonably use skullduggery as a replacement for every Brawl check, but this is where I’d also talk to the GM (and a good one should do this anyway) about giving you opportunities to use this play style. So to use the book example again – that’s only possible in-game if the GM does a good job describing the room and a lot of the seemingly mundane items in it. If he tells you there’s a pot of water still boiling on the stove, you should immediately think “that’s perfect thing to throw in someone’s face when combat breaks out!”

Here’s the option No. 2 Jason Bourne I created.

I’ll walk you though how I got here with only 150 “earned” XP.

1. Start by using 100 of your 110 starting XP (assuming you’re playing as a human) to bump your Cunning to 4 and your Intellect to 3.
2. Take the Spy (Infiltrator) career spec
3. Take either +10 obligation or -10 duty to get +10 additional XP
4. Take free ranks in deception, perception, stealth, knowledge (warfare) and 2 ranks in skullduggery
5. Use the human’s special ability – 1 rank in 2 non-career skills to take ranks in both brawl and ranged (light)
6. Use the 20 XP you have left to buy into the recruit spec, adding athletics, discipline, survival and vigilance as career skills

((END OF CHARACTER CREATION XP))

1. Buy the “basic combat training” talent – now you have Brawl and Ranged (light) as career skills (5xp)
2. Buy into the Scout spec (20xp)
3. 2 more ranks of brawl (25xp)
4. 2 more ranks of ranged (light) (25 xp)
5. 1 more rank in skullduggery (15xp)
6. 2 ranks in stealth (25xp)
7. 1 more rank in perception (10xp)
8. 2 ranks in piloting (planetary) (15xp)
9. stalker talent (5xp)
10. quick strike (5xp)

((150 “KNIGHT LEVEL” XP USED))

1. short cut (5xp)
2. disorient talnet (10xp)
3. short cut (second rank) (15xp)
4. Frenzied attack (5xp)
5. Defensive Stance (5xp)
6. Dodge (5xp)
7. Grit (2 ranks) (10xp)
8. Soft spot (10xp)
9. Rapid Recovery (5xp)
10. 1 rank in survival (5xp)
11. 1 rank in medicine (5x)

** these last 11 items are things that I would add using earned XP once you start playing. They’re all pretty cheap and assuming you’re getting 15-20 XP a session, you should be able to get all 11 in four to six sessions. Buying just one rank in something like medicine gives you that chance for a triumph which you can narrate into an awesome result.

Overall this game is about having fun (duh)! So if after all this you still don’t feel like you’re getting the experience of playing Jason Bourne, then just disregard the rules completely and make the character exactly how you want! Don’t even worry about trees or XP or career skills. Just pick the characteristics and skill ranks and then cherry pick talents you want and start with a complete character in session one. I 100% believe this game is about telling stories, but all these people here whining about you not wanting to “enjoy the process” should realize you could play a really fun campaign with a so-called “marry sue.” That’s because it’s all about the story!! Go with the memory loss idea, have the GM make up your entire backstory and not tell you a thing! Then you can spend the 5 or 6 session (shorter) campaign it sounds like you want to play figuring out who your character is while getting the awesome feeling of being the deadliest assassin in the galaxy. Heck, you don’t even need to know what your obligation is! Have the GM create it and then it will start to become pretty obvious what it is when guys suddenly start showing up and trying to kill you! (While you dispatch them with ease, of course)

Hope this helped! I had fun writing it!

Curious the update on this character if ever user

Curious the update on this character if ever user

I'm the GM but I have the Jacen Baurne character ready to go (at multiple levels of xp) just in case I ever get to play, I went with demolitionist as the starting spec. BTW I let one of my players take the custom spec ops specialization (not sure it was a version posted in this thread, it was a version without much in the way ranged attack/defense specific talents) and it hasn't been game breaking/imbalanced. The player started in enforcer and cross spec'd into spec ops. I started them off at knight level play and the characters are around 400 xp now. The character in question was styled after a cybernetic street samurai from shadow run, he uses a highly tricked out vibró sword that looks like a katana. He ggenerally gets enough damage/advantage/triumph to take out 2 or 3 minions on each attack with his vibró blade. But your milage may very, because I think that PCs should out class most NPCs, my players (7 characters) can generally chew through 20 or so minions in about two rounds. As for the other "combat monsters" in the party, one is a Marshall/sharp shooter duros named Thad Bane, I'm sure you've heard of his infamous uncle, there's a tricked out gadgeteer/sharpshooter "murder droid" (the attitude of the character is why it's a murder droid; those two are in a friendly competition to be the better ranged combatant), then there's a mechanic/doctor droid who basically has the kryptonite knife (pressure point) to take down superman (high wounds and soak) characters, and the second tier is a finger/recruit/quarter master whose got a penchant for rivals but is now focusing on the merchant side of things. The not so personal combat focused characterso include a twi'lek scoundrel/pilot/rigger and a scoundrel face type character whose put a lot of xp into various skills.

Which version of the spec ops? Saw 2 or 3

Checking my email to my player the file is named SoldierSpecOps7.pdf

In post 31 of this thread, there's a fIle wit that name (no guarantee it's the same one, i'm on vacation and using my smart phone sor it'seems a little hard for mexample to check right now). But the right half of the tree should be melee specific (excepting toughnessx2,grit,jump up), left column is ranged (counting quick draw as a ranged talent) plus dedication, second column from left is the well rounded/utility/multi-purpose talents.