Wanted to get some people's opinions on increasing characteristics at character creation.

We just did the beginner box and are looking to start a campaign.

Looking at the creation rules where it says that you can only spend XP to increase characteristics at character creation but not after.

In my opinion, this encourages players, to some degree, to spend as much XP as possible on characteristics at creation. It seems that it would be optimal in the long run, and by not doing it they would feel like they were hamstringing themselves in the long run. I just don't want people to have character creation regrets.

Some ideas my wife and I came up with were to limit the amount of increases for players, so that they don't have to make the choice (such as only one increase of 2=>3).

The other idea was to say, you can spend XP on characteristics throughout the game and the limit on how much you can spend total is the amount of XP you had at character creation. This would allow players to not feel like they left anything on the table while still imposing the same restrictions they would have had at creation.

Do others do anything for this? What do people think of these 2 plans? Are there other suggestions?

You're observation about encouraging to raise base characteristics is correct, although several have said that they have done without and gotten along just fine. Higher characteristics means more ability dice rolled early in early game, which is better chance at success even when doing unskilled tasks.

I would probably not do either plan, however.

Plan 1 isn't going to limit much other than limit players who want to specialize in a certain area (which the game doesn't discourage), and will really hurt droids, who are kind of designed to heavily specialize.

Plan 2, right off the bat, should not be considered, because the Dedication talent is intended to raise characteristics after character creation. You'd be voiding it's purpose.

I wouldn't add any rules if you're just starting out, and just play RAW, then adjust later if you feel it's not working exactly for the group. If you think raising characteristics is important, then discuss it with them.

Dedication bonuses raise characteristics and are in most talent trees. Many are only 75 xp to achieve with the talents purchased along the way being quite useful. My advice would be to just play the game. It works.

Appreciate the advice. I just know the people I play with and they will either

A.) put all their starting XP into characteristics because that is optimal and not have much variety to their characters to start and possibly sour on the game.

or

B.) constantly be going, "Man, I should have upped X characteristic at creation"

I feel like this could be a common problem.

Plan 1 isn't going to limit much other than limit players who want to specialize in a certain area (which the game doesn't discourage), and will really hurt droids, who are kind of designed to heavily specialize.

Plan 2, right off the bat, should not be considered, because the Dedication talent is intended to raise characteristics after character creation. You'd be voiding it's purpose.

Droids would obviously be an exception or they would be pretty terrible. Plan 1 could also just be up only 1 stat.

Plan 2 wouldn't preclude using those talents in addition, it would just allow players to get the stats they could have gotten at character creation without hamstringing them with a boring character at the start.

I think whatever we do we'll discuss it to make sure everyone is doing the same thing.

If they sour, just respec them once they realize their mistake. Or, set up some demo dice pools for them to see how they are going to perform with their builds before they commit and compare the difference so they can see it in dice results. 75 xp for a Dedication Bonus is only a few sessions.

With extra XP from Obligation, most species can have characteristic distributions of: 4/3/2/2/2/2 with a bit of extra XP left for more skills or talents; or 3/3/3/3/2/2 with all XP used. When my current group started out they were tempted by the former, but they kept waffling over where to put the 4. Eventually they all settled for the second option and haven't looked back. If you're reasonable with XP in the first couple of sessions, that will be plenty to round out the basic character concepts.

That said, once you and they know how the game works (which kind of requires going through a campaign to at least 2-300 earned XP), you'll feel more comfortable with a different range. Even with a characteristic of 1, once you get to 4 skill ranks you'll be quite decent with success, you just won't have as much narrative room in the Advantage and Triumph department.

I din't even know what min maxing was when I saw the eote rules and figured out that I should spend the points I had on characteristics. I just figured the game was written to make you do that so that's what I did. It wasn't an issue for us but one thing I've learned here is that there are lots of game tables and different expectations at nearly all of them. Even if everyone jumps up and down screaming how you're killing puppies with your house rules, just do what seems right to you at your table. Now that I've disclaimered, here's my opinion. Ignore it AT THE PERIL OF PUPPIES EVERYWHERE!!!

There are some fairly strict limits just based on the points you're given. The costs sorta force you to spread them out, too. If you limit characteristic raises during character generation further, you're probably limiting your players' choices to the point where variation between the characters in similar roles disappears. Your limited choices will be focused on your primary role and that's that. Any ranged combat character will just spend his increases on Agility and everything else is the same.

You might be addressing that a little by allowing people to spend xp on characteristics but the long-term balance changes, you'd need to rework any published info to compensate (if you use any), the Dedication talent loses any of its wow factor, and the puppies will suffer!

The idea of shuffling around "starting Xp" to prevent the drive of minmaxing without llayers feeling cheated is something a previous GM did with great successes with World of Darkness.

Explanation: in WoD, you are given a set number of starting points to start your character's stats and skills. But the development scheem is similar to that of Edge of the Empire: the cost of increasing to a new stat is basically [number of the new rank] x multiplier.

That obviously push people to put all their starting points in a few key skills, as a single 4th level skill/stats cost as kuch as 4x 1st level skills.

But that leaves you with ultra-specialized characters.

His idea is that if you spend the Xp to "buy back" a starting free point (ex: 1 point in firearm" you can reinvest that point wherever you like.

In the end, it did not really mattered all THAT much. But it certainly discourage start up character minmaxing.

I.dont see why you couldnt do the same with this game's xp. As long as thr amount paid in XP for your characteristics never go above your starting XP.

That doesn't invalidate "dedication" either. Dedication is basically a free +1 for just 25 xp. When you use it to get to 5th or 6th characteristic, thats a 25/35 xp discount.

Spending as much xp on characteristics at the start is part of the design. The Devs planned on players doing that. So I would not worry about it. Characters will quickly acquire talents in the first couple sessions.

They get plenty of variety through the skill ranks, species abilities and thematic variation that characters come up with... A Wookiee Politico, a Wookie Doctor, a Wookiee Marauder and a Wookiee Heavy are all very very different yet are only 2 careers and a single species.

The game is set up so that early level play doesn't really require much in the way of skills or talents. Thus a starting PC with all his xp in characteristics is fine and encouraged by the design philosophy of the game. Since you aren't penalized in anyway for not being skilled at something there is no reason to focus on skills and talents at game start unless that's what the player really wants to do.

As for the idea that there wouldn't be much variety if you sunk all your xp into characteristics, not really true. Between free skills gained from some races, career, and specialization you will see plenty of variety between the various PCs. It is highly unlikely that even two people playing the exact same race and the exact same career/specialization are going to end up with the exact same character. You can build a lot of variety by just using the mixture of race/career/specialization to come away with very different and skilled PC's.

As others have said, the game was designed with the intent that the PCs will be spending the majority of their starting XP budget on characteristics.

Doing so gives the PCs a broad degree of basic competency in a number of fields from the get-go, as 3 ability dice is generally enough to have a solid chance of beating an Average difficulty, which in the early going should be the general default used to determine the difficulty for most tasks.

Also, XP awards tend to average between 15 to 20 XP per session, so not having a lot of talents right out the gate is something that won't be a problem after a couple of sessions, same with fleshing out ranks in skills that you'd really like to have for your PC but couldn't get right away.

Thats all fair and nice, but what if one of my player wants to start the game with a few talents, should he feel shafted because he did not follow "conventional wisdom"? Or how the game is " intended" to ve played?

Personally, i would hate telling a player who picked up a few talents "oh, you shouldn't take any of them, its more optimal to buy characteristic points".

It's hardly a big deal, and it prevents from forcing players in certain behaviors as the first thing they experience from the game.

That sounds more like a lack of patience than a game design flaw imo.

I find it's pretty common for a character to be left with 10-20 XP left over after buying characteristics, depending on the species and if they take bonus XP. That's enough to grab a few extra skill ranks or a couple of talents.

Thats all fair and nice, but what if one of my player wants to start the game with a few talents, should he feel shafted because he did not follow "conventional wisdom"? Or how the game is " intended" to ve played?

It’s all up to your players and you — as the GM.

IMO, the primary purpose of the game is to have fun, and if you’re not having fun, then why are you playing the game?

So, if some players want to spend more XP on talents and skills than attributes, that doesn’t have to be a problem.

You can tune and tweak the adventure (if necessary), so as to better accommodate what they’re capable of, and in fact you should be doing that no matter what. So, that’s not really a major change on your part.

And as I’ve said before, failure doesn’t have to mean “failure”. It can mean that you don’t succeed at this particular task in the time frame specified, but what unexpected thing happens when you reach the end of that time frame?

Some of the best moments I can remember in any game was where we “failed” to do one thing, and then there were certain consequences that had to be dealt with, and then that path turned out to be totally awesome!

It all depends on you and your players, and if you approach the game with the right mindset, and with the goal of trying to collectively create an awesome story together — and have fun while you’re doing it.

Thats all fair and nice, but what if one of my player wants to start the game with a few talents, should he feel shafted because he did not follow "conventional wisdom"? Or how the game is " intended" to ve played?

Personally, i would hate telling a player who picked up a few talents "oh, you shouldn't take any of them, its more optimal to buy characteristic points".

It's hardly a big deal, and it prevents from forcing players in certain behaviors as the first thing they experience from the game.

If you explain the game philosophy to the player at the very beginning and that's what they choose to do they have no one to blame but themselves. Look, you can't approach character creation in this game the same way you do in other games. Players and GM alike need to accept that it's different. In the same way that I do not design D&D characters like I design World of Darkness characters, I don't design Star Wars characters like I design L5R characters.

So the player has a basic choice, either wait a few sessions to buy talents and skills or not. If he doesn't though he has no one to blame for feeling "shafted" but himself. It's your game, so run it how you like but in my personal opinion I don't believe in changing the rules just because a players feelings might get hurt because they decided to make a character against the design philosophy of the game itself. I don't feel bad when adults make educated choices on character design. It's one thing if you as the GM decide not to tell him what the design philosophy is and he kinda misses out. It's another to sit down, tell the player how the Devs made the game and then let them make their own educated choices. So long as the player himself knows in advance that the intent was for him to buy up characteristics in the beginning then if he decides not to then ..... that's on him.

This game is full of choices, do you honestly intend to make all your decisions as a GM based on the players not feeling shafted by choices they made? Do as you want of course but whats the point of asking for our opinion if all you're going to do is find a reason not to go with the general wisdom of how the game was designed?

So I feel like this has gone off the rails a little bit.

It is interesting to see that most people agree that maxing out characteristics is the "optimal" path. By optimal I mean making your character more successful in checks, not necessarily the most interesting.

I will note that in general, I am usually very against house rules. The reason this stuck out at me was that when I started to make a character I was looking at the skills and talents and going, "Oh cool, if I do this and this it would be a really unique schtick." Then realizing that by doing that I am hamstringing my character, which everyone seems to agree on.

I find that in RPGs, the first couple of sessions tend to define characters, and this is very much shaped by the abilities they use. Adam's character is the guy who does X in combat! With maxing out characteristics, it feels like characters are more relegated to, Adam's character is the guy who has a heavy blaster, or the guy with the Computer skill, which to me is less interesting.

Whether or not you agree with whether that is more or less fun, I was looking to see if there was a way to go the direction I was looking for while not imbalancing the game too much. This is my primary concern. Will my suggestions make the game run less smoothly or be out of balance with the campaign? Do other people have better suggestions for accomplishing my 2 goals of being able to purchase more skills and talents at creation without permanently strapping characters with low characteristics?

It was pointed out that capping characteristic upgrades will under-power the characters, so I'm pretty convinced that is out without modifying adventures appropriately.

I haven't seen a good reason for the other option of allowing characteristic upgrades later (capped at starting character XP) other than making Dedication talents slightly less special which I'm not too worried about. I'm not really concerned with just the fact that it's not RAW, really just the actual impact it will have.

As I see it, at every step of the way, the players will have a character they could have had by following the standard rules, so it should never be unbalanced, other than being slightly under-powered in the beginning due to not having maxed out characteristics which will get caught up at some point. They will also never have to remove an ability they had so they won't really be cheating in that they are cherry picking abilities for specific situations.

So to me, this has convinced me that the second option I presented is a great one for my group, but please let me know if you think that there are other concerns I am not seeing.

Also I should say that I find it funny that in the Force and Destiny forums there are a bunch of people saying, "I give my players 4 free characteristic upgrades so they can spend their points on force powers and be crazy jedi!" with a bunch of players agreeing with them. I guess this is why there are different systems.

Keep in mind that spending all of your XP on characteristics may not actually be optimal if you're planning on heavily specializing. What good does it do to raise your Presence when you're the tank and the party already has a face? Was that XP worth the boost for the occasional social check you end up making or would it have been a better decision to spend those points on skills and talents that fit your character's intended role?

In my experience, some players will want to specialize from the beginning while others may want to diversify. Neither approach is wrong, both work under this system, and in both cases the characters are "optimized" for what the player intends. I think that Kael pretty much nailed it. As long as the players know the deal during character creation, neither approach "shafts" anyone.

I find that in RPGs, the first couple of sessions tend to define characters, and this is very much shaped by the abilities they use. Adam's character is the guy who does X in combat!

IOW, the first sessions are less definitive than you might be used to, and further sessions continue to refine, and redefine.

It is interesting to see that most people agree that maxing out characteristics is the "optimal" path. By optimal I mean making your character more successful in checks, not necessarily the most interesting.

You can make an "optimal" character with out focusing on characteristics.The games difficulty curve isn't as steep as in other games, and the price for "failure" isn't as harsh. Since you can win while failing and lose will succeeding being "optimal" isn't that hard. The problem ultimately is a matter of perception. People who don't feel spend on characteristics at the beginning perceive themselves as less powerful than those who do. And something I've noticed in these discussions is that people are attempting to mitigate bad player decisions due to mostly impatience. Doesn't make sense to me personally but overall I don't think the difference in power is too bad. If I recall the last time this came up correctly, someone did the numbers on the differences in success between someone who didn't buy up characteristics and someone who did and in the long run the differences in success wasn't that large.

Thus "optimal" is kinda relative and I think the issue is bigger in most people heads than it is in actual play.

Whether or not you agree with whether that is more or less fun, I was looking to see if there was a way to go the direction I was looking for while not imbalancing the game too much. This is my primary concern. Will my suggestions make the game run less smoothly or be out of balance with the campaign?

It screws with the math used to balance the game. Everything is priced on the idea that characteristics are only upgraded at Char gen and through the Dedication talent. You would also eventually have to reconsider all the NPC templates as they were built on the idea that Characteristics are for the most part static. For some people not being able to use the NPCs out of the box so to speak makes things less smooth.

Do other people have better suggestions for accomplishing my 2 goals of being able to purchase more skills and talents at creation without permanently strapping characters with low characteristics?

You could allow 1 respec if people aren't happy. It saves you the trouble of having to rethink the math of the game and lets them consider how they want to actually play the character. Though honestly I would impress upon them that skills and talents aren't all that important in the early game. Most of the time a player is going to find that he is depending on a handful of skills that come from the same Characteristic. If you consider the concept at the outset you can kinda see where you need to buy a 3 or a 4 which in the long run is more beneficial than skills at the beginning. For instance if ranged combat is your thing you are going to go a lot further with an 3 or 4 in Agility than you would by raising your combat skills. If you're playing the party face you'll go a lot further with a Presence or a Cunning at 3 or 4 than you would by raising the related skills at the start. So looking at the long term game for the character, spending on skills isn't going to get you as far as you first think it will. I mean the players can always raise their skills at the start, but this game wasn't built using that kind of logic. The early challenges are spread out more along Characteristic lines than pure skill lines. Very different from other games that tend to focus more on individual skill based challenges.

Also I should say that I find it funny that in the Force and Destiny forums there are a bunch of people saying, "I give my players 4 free characteristic upgrades so they can spend their points on force powers and be crazy jedi!" with a bunch of players agreeing with them. I guess this is why there are different systems.

Haven't seen that thread but I would have to say the systems themselves aren't different. There was a thread that did discuss giving out separate XP for Force powers but it was pointed out that doing so would screw with game balance, especially if you mix non Force users in. In general though, between all 3 forums, when this topic comes up most people say that the system was made for you to build Characteristics first and the rest over time.

I can see how 'free point buying' can throw off the game difficulty in a bad way, but I am incapable of adequately explaining anything, ever, even if you held a gun to my head. It basically boils down to a low level cap (6 or 7) compared to other games, a low er difficulty cap (5), and the way the dice are skewed (for success). Higher buying price for Dedication (which rises every time) means difficulty stays relatively static for much longer. After a few sessions or one adventure or so, characters will start focusing skills and talents to reduce difficulty and tackle challenges better, with the occasional Dedication buy. Overall, promotes a longer game life.

All the same, there have been some on here that have said they or a fellow player they know didn't bother buying characteristics, and have played fine (a whole thread about it a while back, as I recall).

There are a few solutions that have been put forward before: A, allow all players to remake their characters once if they aren't satisfied after a few sessions, B, Knight Level play - after spending starting XP (whatever their species gives plus whatever bonuses they take), give them 150 XP to buy into talents and skills and 9000+ credits for gear, or C, both of the above.

This thread again? Seriously, I dont understand why new GM dont like that their players spend most their XP in their characteristic and try to house rules it every month.

Play by the rules, let your player do what they want with their build first and then come back if really something dont seem good.

It screws with the math used to balance the game. Everything is priced on the idea that characteristics are only upgraded at Char gen and through the Dedication talent. You would also eventually have to reconsider all the NPC templates as they were built on the idea that Characteristics are for the most part static. For some people not being able to use the NPCs out of the box so to speak makes things less smooth.

I disagree with this. With the suggestion I made, the characters would literally at every point in the game be playing with a character that could have been made through the standard rules, therefore, it couldn't be unbalanced.