OK, so... I asked this in OggDudes Generator thread, and I am sorry.... but I am clearly having mental blocks on how this works.

I'm sure its not an issue with the Generator, and and issue with me understand it.

The Rulebook says you cannot gain more additional Obligation than your starting Obligation.

So if you have 5 Starting Obligation (As per the size of the group), you can only select ONE of the two +5 Obligation (+5XP and +1000 Creds) Options.

Correct?

If you have 10 Starting Obligation, (As per the size of the group) you can select ONE of the +10 Obligation options (+10XP and +2500 Creds)

Correct?

If you have a starting size of 5, and you take 5 obligation, you can select NO options. The options are for going OVER your starting value. Additionally, you can only benefit from going over your starting value BY your starting value.

Starting Size: 5, Total obligation: 5. This means no options available

Starting Size: 5, Total obligation : 10. You have access to +5 or +1000

Starting Size: 5, Total Obligation: 25. You have access to +5 or +1000 (you can only take advantage of 5 of that extra 20 obligation)

Starting Size: 10, Total Obligation: 10. No options

Starting Size: 10, Total Obligation: 15. Access to +5 or+1000 (5 over starting)

Starting Size: 10, Total Obligation: 20. Access to +5, +10, +1000, and/or +2500 totally 10 (10 over starting)

Starting Size: 10, Total Obligation: 50. Access to all four again (only 10 of the extra 40 counts)

Think of it as the opposite way that duty works. You gain duty benefits if you take LESS duty that your starting value. However... you can never take less than 0 duty, right? So you're limited in your duty benefits by your starting size. In other words, if starting size for duty is 10, and you decide to take 0 duty, you benefit from 10 duty not taken. But you can't go under 0, so you're limited to that 10.

Now, reverse this for obligation. In order to keep obligation and duty symmetrical, you can only take advantage of extra obligation equally starting size. If starting size for obligation is 10, your maximum benefit will be at 20 (10 over starting size).

OK, so.... lets assume I am playing in a group of 4 players.

RAW - Everyone starts with 10 Obligation.

Meaning anyone can take ANY of the Additional Obligations.

However, they can take BOTH the +5 Obligation options, OR... ONE of the +10s?

Since they cannot exceed the starting Obligation value of 10?

If I was playing in a group of 2 players, and we (as RAW) start with 20 Obligation each, I could take BOTH +10 Obligation options, which would total an additional 20 (So 40 Obligation in total).

OR, I could take a +10 option AND BOTH +5 options?

(And In all cases, the Obligation could be lumped into a single Obligation, or spread over multiple, so long as my overall total was 20 or 40 in the examples above?)

I dont get why I am finding this so hard to understant! Im not a dolt! I Promise!

You can't take more Obligation than you start with. So if you start at 10 Obligation, the benefits you pick can't add more than 10 more Obligation.

It’s a completely non-intuitive process, until such time as you have successfully warped your brain around the way the developers wanted things to work.

And even then it’s non-intuitive, but you’ve just learned the hard way how to make things work.

OggDude’s program functions correctly from the perspective of the FFG SWRPG developers. Which is the problem you are facing, because OggDude doesn’t give you a wall of text to explain how you’re supposed to use this very non-intuitive process.

There’s only so much that OggDude could do to help fix this problem. He can’t change the underlying mechanics in the game.

No no no.. dont get me wrong, this is in no way any criticism of OggDude, no sir, no way, no how, Nu-uh.

OggDude has created a great program.

But it highlighted that fact I didnt get the Obligation system whatsoever.

OK, so.... lets assume I am playing in a group of 4 players.

RAW - Everyone starts with 10 Obligation.

Meaning anyone can take ANY of the Additional Obligations.

However, they can take BOTH the +5 Obligation options, OR... ONE of the +10s?

Since they cannot exceed the starting Obligation value of 10?

The benefits have to be "paid" for by buying obligation over the starting size, but also limited by the starting size. If starting size is 10, you benefit from buying obligation in excess of 10, but only up to an additional 10 (for 20 total).

And yes, if you have 10 extra obligation to use, you can buy both 5 options, or one 10 option. You can't buy a particular option more than once.

If I was playing in a group of 2 players, and we (as RAW) start with 20 Obligation each, I could take BOTH +10 Obligation options, which would total an additional 20 (So 40 Obligation in total).

OR, I could take a +10 option AND BOTH +5 options?

Yeah, exactly. You would have +20 extra obligation to play with, so you could buy up to 20 more and get goodies for it. If you bought 20 more than you need (40 over), then you could get both +10's, a +10 and two +5's, or any combination that adds up to no more than +20.

(And In all cases, the Obligation could be lumped into a single Obligation, or spread over multiple, so long as my overall total was 20 or 40 in the examples above?)

I dont get why I am finding this so hard to understant! Im not a dolt! I Promise!

Yup, it's only your total obligation that matters, not how they're spread out amongst individual obligations.

It’s a completely non-intuitive process, until such time as you have successfully warped your brain around the way the developers wanted things to work.

And even then it’s non-intuitive, but you’ve just learned the hard way how to make things work.

OggDude’s program functions correctly from the perspective of the FFG SWRPG developers. Which is the problem you are facing, because OggDude doesn’t give you a wall of text to explain how you’re supposed to use this very non-intuitive process.

There’s only so much that OggDude could do to help fix this problem. He can’t change the underlying mechanics in the game.

I think the reason that it seems counter-intuitive is because the baseline for how you get mechanical benefits is actually from the perspective of duty, not obligation. With duty, it's very straightforward: If your starting duty size is 20, and you decide to only take 10, you have 10 left over to buy options. If you decide to take no Duty, then you have 20 to play with. You don't even have to think about limiting the bonus because it's obvious that you can't have negative Duty (that is, you can't go below 0).

But for obligation, you get benefits for buying more of it, not less. So what they're really saying is that, in order to make the same benefits available for obligation as they do for duty, and not to make obligation more powerful in this regard than duty, the additional amount of obligation you can buy for benefits has to be limited in the same way that it's limited for duty. And that limitation is that you can't buy more of it than your original starting size (just like duty, only in reverse). The real problem is that the reasoning behind this limitation isn't as readily apparent as it is for duty.

OK, so I'll give this a crack.

There are a few rules that you must apply, and I think they are VERY simple.

1) A character's starting Obligation depends on the number of players that you have in your team. There is chart 2.2 Starting Obligation on page 40 which explains this. If you have 2 players, starting obligation is 20; 3 players, 15; 4 or 5 players, 10; and 6 or more players 5.

2) You can never start with more than twice your Obligation.

Now for Ogg Dude's page:

A) You first select what the Group's starting Obligation would be.

B) Then, in the Obligation selection area, you select up to twice the level of the starting Obligation.

C) This can be:

+5 Obligation = +1000cr

+5 Obligation = +5XP

+10 Obligation = +2500cr

+10 Obligation = +10XP

D) As aforementioned, you spend this up to twice your group's starting character Obligation and it may be any combination thereof.

E) The only other rule is that you may not have two of the same Obligation.

So if you have a +15 obligation can you use it for a +10xp and a +5xp? Or you can only choose one xp option and one credit option?

To be fair a GM can raise or lower the start Obligation values, the chart is recommendations for starting values based on group size.

I actually think the disconnect sits within ogg dudes program, which actually uses RAW in thier most confusing way. In Ogs program you can only take a benefit after you have added in the additional obligation to cover it, and as long as it isn't more than the original value.

After doing this you then select the bonus you get for this addtional obligation.

What our brains seem to think is that we should list the starting obligation and then choose a benefit that increases the obligation total. In theory it works like this but in reality you take the addtional obligation before getting the bonus. Simples