To the question of "how can someone -get- to 700xp without becoming game breaking?" I've found the answer is -lots- of skills. Lots and lots of skills.

It takes 75xp to get to rank 5 in a skill and, if the player is ignoring their specialization trees, they can get rank 5 in ten skills while still only having 2s and 3s in their stats.

-This- character is not generally game breaking.

Were the XP applied differently, with more of a focus on specializations, dedication and attributes, they'd be much more of a challenge to the rule system.

Currently, at 300 odd xp, we have most of us doing our good pools are at YYG, some at YYY. Those things we don't specialise in we tend to be GGG or even GG. The one exception is the guy who has something like YYYYG in lightsaber, but then he always min-maxes his characters (grr.... lessons learned from D&D in my opinion), and is god awful at anything else aside from Intimidation. Aside from him no one has a stat above 4 yet, even though most of us have had at least one Dedication choice. I don't even know how you could spend so much on skills and have completed a tree by that time.

Lightsaber's soak negation isn't actually that big a deal, as you can just throw lots of mooks, which just absorb hits. Yes, it does render tanky important characters rather moot, but combat can remain a threat to high level characters quite easily, as the defence mechanics tend to use up resources, and even low level bad guys used in numbers can seriously threaten a character. Four PCs with lightsabers? Well, throw 6 minion groups of Stormtroopers at them and suddenly two groups will be able to shoot at them pretty unhindered. 5 Stormtroopers can create a quite unpleasant dice pool, and throw out a lot of damage. Anything with blaster rifles can flatten many of the party I am playing in in a couple of shots (my character aside, who is the tankiest of the bunch, and so can probably take 4 or so).

• A TIE/LN has two days of supplies and no bathroom. Somehow I don't think destroyers maintain a screen while on stand-by, also I'm fairly sure that rule is a destiny point per use, so unless the party has 30+ dark side points I'm not to sure how you'd manage that. I could see the GM doing that to avoid a vital critical hit to represent a minor shift in fate at the hands of the dark side, but I can't think of a justification for "you keep shooting at the star destroyer, but a brave TIE pilot manages to get in the way of each of them. One at a time. All 54." Also a Victory has a compliment of 24 fighters, meaning they can only soak less than half the shots.

I get what you're saying, but real life fighter aircraft also don't have bathrooms or the ability to stay in flight more than two days, but aircraft carriers still maintain a constant combat air patrol even when they are on standby because otherwise it takes too long to scramble fighters to intercept an incoming bogey. If you ever encounter a carrier vessel without some of its fighter complement out and flying to cover the fleet, something is very wrong.

• A TIE/LN has two days of supplies and no bathroom. Somehow I don't think destroyers maintain a screen while on stand-by, also I'm fairly sure that rule is a destiny point per use, so unless the party has 30+ dark side points I'm not to sure how you'd manage that. I could see the GM doing that to avoid a vital critical hit to represent a minor shift in fate at the hands of the dark side, but I can't think of a justification for "you keep shooting at the star destroyer, but a brave TIE pilot manages to get in the way of each of them. One at a time. All 54." Also a Victory has a compliment of 24 fighters, meaning they can only soak less than half the shots.

I get what you're saying, but real life fighter aircraft also don't have bathrooms or the ability to stay in flight more than two days, but aircraft carriers still maintain a constant combat air patrol even when they are on standby because otherwise it takes too long to scramble fighters to intercept an incoming bogey. If you ever encounter a carrier vessel without some of its fighter complement out and flying to cover the fleet, something is very wrong.

While that's true, CAP is usually less than a full wing of fighters. There are usually 2 or 4 planes up at a time. In Star Wars, it would make sense that there would be a few TIEs on patrol when the SD is on station, but since the SD is hyperdrive capable and TIEs are not, it wouldn't make a lot of sense to have them out when the ship is about to jump.

It also doesn't make sense to have more than a flight out on patrol as it's very boring and tiring for pilots to fly in circles for hours on end only to land, sleep, and do it all again. If they're expecting action, they'll have flights out, but normally, they'd have 2-4 fighters on patrol and another 2-4 in "Ready 5" status. It'd take some time for the rest of the pilots to be scrambled and launching unless the ship were already on a high alert status.

Like I said before, I can see how buying nothing but skills is an easy way to halt character progression, I just haven't found that players like buying skills. They all start with their 6-10 skill ranks, they buy a few here or there, but I found they invariably started looking for other places to spend XP. I have only had a couple players who have ever purchased the 5th rank in a skill, and many who never bothered with a fourth, but I have never had a character who has had more ranks in a skill the in their highest ability. Not that that is the wrong way to play, if it works for you than who cares what I think, I just can't picture it being fun for anyone I've played with or even for me as a GM.

All I can say is that different players are different.

What FFG calls “Knight-level Play” adds 150xp after chargen, which can be spent on skills and talents. And that takes you dangerously close to the levels you’re saying that you’ve had no end of problems with.

This game does break down when you get fistfuls of dice. The designers have said that repeatedly, and they actively worked to create a game that avoids that problem for as long as they could. But it still breaks down once they get there.

There are others on this Forum who have games where PCs have earned over 1000xp, and those characters are still very playable, and I’m convinced that’s because the players have avoided creating the “fistful of dice” problem.

I don't want to tell you how to play your game, that isn't the purpose of my response, but I really need to emphasize how completely and totally sincere I am being:

I have no idea how what you are describing is possible without immense, concerted, continuous effort to avoid any and every useful expenditure of XP. How did you manage to do that?

And I can’t comprehend how you and your players ran out of runway with just 300xp.

Even imagining the most Monty Haul of games, and the most minmaxer of players, I still cannot comprehend how they could get to a seven in their primary attribute, and millions upon millions of credits, with just 300xp to their name.

"Complete a tree" did not mean purchase everything in it, but rather the player found everything they wanted, dedicated or force rating'ed, and then moved on. For the scientist, it was 125xp of talents, 65xp of skills. The rest was force heal and niman disciple.

That certainly matches with the way I’ve “completed” trees on all the characters I’ve played so far.

But how you get to “Game Exhausted” at 300xp from that point, I just can’t understand.

The one and only time I ever did anything that sounds remotely like what you’re describing, was when I was playing the videogame Battlezone as a kid, and I never got off the first level of the game but I still racked up more points than the highest known score that game has ever seen.

Turns out that the game I was playing was broken and was giving out at least 1000x the amount of points that it should have been.

Each jedi either dual wielded or had a double bladed lightsaber, so that was two dead troopers a turn.

Jedi can’t Reflect or Parry area-effect weapons. Flamethrowers, missile tubes, grenade launchers, and the like should be able to take them down pretty quickly.

If you separate out the buzzsaws from the walking meat, you can concentrate fire on the heavy-duty combat types. Or give them special mini-bosses to fight that can tie them up for a relatively long period of time.

I feel like you don't appreciate the irony of your own metaphor. It was the game that was broken. You never did anything wrong, but something endemic to the machine meant the numbers were too high too early.

Jedi can’t Reflect or Parry area-effect weapons. Flamethrowers, missile tubes, grenade launchers, and the like should be able to take them down pretty quickly.

If you separate out the buzzsaws from the walking meat, you can concentrate fire on the heavy-duty combat types. Or give them special mini-bosses to fight that can tie them up for a relatively long period of time.

I thought my explaination made it clear that I didn't have a problem with finding ways to kill players, a GM can always kill a player, always deal almost enough damage. I was looking for ways to maintain balance . I said very early on that throwing 30 troopers at the party felt nether fair, nor fun. Yes I can use missile tubes, but 21 damage at breach 1 ignoring reflect is just a character death every shot (minimum). Other blast weapons just don't carry the damage to break through soak, nor the range. This is what I meant by broken. There are weapons for the early game, that assume soak 2-5 and 10-15 wt, then there are the missile tubes, heavy blaster rifles and lighsabers that are designed for soak 8-12 and wt 20+. Of course, just like with the Gozantis, 7500 credits gets you a tube, but it's 10000 just for superior battle armor and you'll need 7 more soak to match breach 1.

It sounds like the issue isn't with the rules system, then. Until the dice pool is completely full of yellows, things really don't start to get statistically wonky. Further, on a character I'm currently playing, having 7 yellows and 1 green with 4 blues, I -still- occasionally fail on even Hard checks. Blanks and the dual-axis of success provide for the possibility of all kinds of bizarre results.

You just suggested several methods of balancing encounters for your party and, yet, it seems you're concerned with the increasing scale. Now that your players are a known force with these capabilities, it makes sense that their opposition would dust off the missile launchers, break out the walkers and hire hordes of minions. They might invest in different kinds of sensors to detect your stealth character and use AoE weapons to deal with the Jedi...

The options are there to be used and the equipment does scale. The game needs to expand scope in order to continue to challenge the players.

To put it in the context of another game, if all a party of 10th level adventurers ever faces in D&D is goblins, the game is going to get boring real fast. They need to face foes that are a challenge to them, not a challenge to them when they were first starting out.

As I've said before, if the checks they're facing are 2 dice less than their pool, irrespective of what that pool is, they're going to have a much better than even chance of succeeding.

I don't want to tell you how to play your game, that isn't the purpose of my response, but I really need to emphasize how completely and totally sincere I am being:

I have no idea how what you are describing is possible without immense, concerted, continuous effort to avoid any and every useful expenditure of XP. How did you manage to do that?

I would recommend you not pick on the jedi, YYYYG for a combat check is super reasonable, and even if he took it up to a serious level of actual minmaxing, work it into your story, let him play the character he wants to be. If you really want to actively discourage players from doing something, you should talk to him and let him know the parameters of characters you want in your game. Ultimately, as the GM it is your responsibility to control what is and is not possible and until you express your intentions, you should never by angry at a player for subverting them, and if they do, they aren't a good fit for the game. There also isn't anything inherently wrong with "minmaxing," as I've detailed above statistics and roleplay are not mutually exclusive.

"Complete a tree" did not mean purchase everything in it, but rather the player found everything they wanted, dedicated or force rating'ed, and then moved on. For the scientist, it was 125xp of talents, 65xp of skills. The rest was force heal and niman disciple.

Each jedi either dual wielded or had a double bladed lightsaber, so that was two dead troopers a turn. I still wouldn't be fun to pit them up against 36 troopers. That would be 5 rounds minimum with 18 initiatives, assuming maximum results and the worst possible positioning for the troopers. On the opposite end, the troopers could wipe out half the party in one turn if they could all fire, but are can't catch them if they run and don't stand a chance unless they all stick together. That is also more than enough to outright kill half the party turn one. 30 hits for 10 damage will do that. It is a fight where, just like the star destroyers, would be a long, boring slog with the victor obvious from the first round based almost entirely on the circumstances of their meeting.

Purchasing extra specialisation trees, skills, talents, force powers etc. They all build up, especially if you are trying to broaden out your character, rather than hammer harder on your niche. And seeing as aside from the min-maxer we all started with a maximum of 3 in stats, we have only upgraded up to 4s (heck,. I only have 3s, but I don't claim to be the most "efficiency" orientated character builder... in fact I am known for not being). To be fair, we maybe were not the most effective builds, as the system seems to work around the basis that a starting character should have YYG in their "thing" (maybe YYGG), and most of us didn't have that in more than one skill (most of us are now at that level or better in various skills).

As for the jedi (well, we are all Jedi, it is Force and Density game): That doesn't seem to be reasonable pool to me, at least at the point we are at. He has incredibly narrowly focussed his character, to the point he can do 2 things; lightsaber combat, and intimidation. I don't mind powerful things (like if he had that pool in lightsaber, but could do other things too), and I don't necessarily mind efficiency building or whatever, but all his characters are like this, and are built with power in mind, not roleplaying. No realistic person would be so narrowly focussed, and in my mind it just adds to frustration in game when outside the relevant sphere suddenly characters can be incredible liabilities (his characters generally always have weaknesses, sometimes amusing ones, like his 3rd edition WFRP dwarf who could tank and hit like a bus, but could not deal with any stress at all before threatening to keel over).

Note, I am also not the GM in this game, I am a player. I probably would have said no to such a character. It isn't preventing me from having fun, so I don't mind too much, but the kind of attitude that leads to this kind of character does irritate me at times. In my mind this very much comes from 3.5 D&D, which as a system kind of forces players to be excellent at something or not bother with it at all, and encourages that in play as well.

Players can easily kill more than 2 troopers a turn, at least with a double saber, and presuming we are running these stormtroopers as minions. Lightsaber means no soak, so the flat 6 damage kills 1 a turn. Add upgrades and or a very successful hit adding enough damage to take it to 10 and you have 2 dead. Add an extra hit with the double saber, which has the same damage and that is 2-4 troopers dead. Add a crit on top of that and you have 3-5 dead troopers. Even a normal saber can easily manage 2 dead a turn, and on a good hit get 3. And a minion group running about in 2s or 3s is a heck of a lot less of a threat than at full strength of 5.

Not sure where you are getting 30 hits from. From my experience 4 PCs with lightsabers will probably blend 2 minion groups a turn, or reduce 4 to the point where they pose much less of a threat (probably a better idea, as 4 full strength groups shooting at you is probably worse than 2 full strength and 4 weakened ones in a disadvantageous position). Now, if the troopers all get the jump on the PCs then it could be brutal, but that is unlikely.

All three of my games are currently past 300 XP and we aren't even remotely close to ANY of the issues you're talking about, Zamphear. I'm with others in that I don't really see how you're running into these problems. We routinely fail checks and we have lots of Yellows in our pools.

I mean, we focus way more on the narrative and story with our characters, so we're hardly optimized, but still.

You just suggested several methods of balancing encounters for your party and, yet, it seems you're concerned with the increasing scale. Now that your players are a known force with these capabilities, it makes sense that their opposition would dust off the missile launchers, break out the walkers and hire hordes of minions. They might invest in different kinds of sensors to detect your stealth character and use AoE weapons to deal with the Jedi...

I concur with this. If your players have the resources to field a sizable fleet, they're going to draw all kinds of nasty attention to themselves. That could range from Imperial Admirals setting ambushes with Interdictors to pull them out of hyperspace into the teeth of a ready and waiting fleet, to criminal syndicates who want those resources for themselves and also understand the effectiveness of using cheaper, modified ships to hit above their weight class.

As far as pulling out things like missile tubes and grenade launchers go, the point is not to kill your characters, but to force them back onto their heels. If their capabilities are known and they've made themselves targets for the Imperials, they should expect them to employ counters to their known capabilities; fielding heavy explosives forces them to rethink their tactics and find other ways.

Think of it this way: When the rebels destroyed the Death Star, that wasn't the signal that they were ready to take the Empire on toe-to-toe. Far from it; they were in the rough spot they were at the beginning of Empire Strikes Back because that victory at Yavin got the Empire focusing their overwhelming power on them in a big way, putting them on the run. A battalion of stormtroopers isn't the setup for a fight; it's a signal that you need to get out of Dodge and stay a step ahead of the Empire because they're gunning for you in a way you can't answer. Any time they strike a major blow against the Empire, they should need to spend time running and going to ground, which shakes up the gameplay and keeps one set of skills from dominating.

I do think the routine Triumph and Despair can be a little tiresome, as you have to find some good way to use it every time it comes up, which adds pressure. It is not too bad in combat with triumphs, as there are usually effects you can use them up on (crits, weapon qualities etc), but Despairs kind of derail things a little more and outside combat Triumphs are a little harder to adjudicate. Now, Despair tends to be a little more rare, but as characters can increasingly upgrade difficulties for opponents they start to appear more frequently.

Posts are long enough again that I'm gonna go back to bullet pointing:

• I'm not sure what about the things I said made it sound like the issue wasn't with the rules. That isn't me saying your wrong, just that I don't know what part of what I said you are referring to. But I will say that any system in which 5 separate players, 2 who had never played a pnp before, can achieve what I've shown just by browsing around, then that isn't an issue with the group.
• YYYYYYYGBBBBPPP is 6.29 successes on average. Yes you can fail that, just like an 100 in d100 will always fail, or a 1 in d20. I've never heard someone complain about
• Yellows are not considerably better than greens, greens are about 5/8 success and yellows 5/6. Yes they are better, but 4 greens is noticeably better than 2 yellows and a character with 7 greens is still rolling a rather formidable pool.
• You fail to understand my predicament. It is very hard for any character to survive a missile tube shot. Unless everyone spends 10000 credits for rarity 10 cortosis. Even if it is with one success and no advantages, the target still becomes one-thousand tiny pieces. All I get from that is laughing at my players and saying "haha, see the empire is way better than you, dummies." Because I don't have a budget as the gm and can do as I please, it is up to me to understand what within the game is too broken. Hell I could just put them up against an agility 7 guy with jury rigged and a heavy blaster rifle if I wanted them dead. This still isn't balance. It's MAD.
• As I said before, I continually added new foes with better equipment and training, the game was never easy for any of my players, but they pulled through and became stronger for the experience (no pun intended). They still had challenges, fights with groups of dark acolytes and, as I said in my first post, resurrected massassi and sith lords. However, at that point balance seemed to be disappearing.
• The dnd analogy is a false one. The solutions provided are more like saying "if you have a level 10 party, just have them fight 300 goblins," or "if you have a level 10 party, just have them fight goblins with spheres of annihilation."
• It is very difficult to justify difficulty RRRRP checks on a regular basis. Even then, that difficulty has them with more than 2 successes on average. Still each positive die has slightly higher results than each negative die, so as pools increase more and more negative dice are needed.
• Broadening a character is all well and good, but when players roll separately (i.e. most of the time), they start to step on each other's toes. If the party comes to a door who does the computers check to open it when everyone is int 3 mechanics 2? No player feels like they are "in their element," or invaluable or unique. It also means that as the characters gain experience you can't increase the difficulty, as no one will ever be able to succeed on harder checks, just different types of checks.
• I would argue that the game would not have rules for buying 4s or a 5 at character creation if they weren't meant to be factored into the rules. Nor would it make buying ability upgrades so native to starting xp, fitting 3/3/4 or 4/4 or 5 into the starting allotment for most species exactly. I would argue that the game meant for players to do these equally, but failed to properly account for how much more powerful abilities were compared to skills.
• I assume that because he was good at combat with a lightsaber and intimidation that he was a Niman Disciple? For the sake of argument I'll say he was, that would put him at Will 5, lightsaber 4. That should leave him with another 4 stat or two 2 3s or a bunch of skill ranks, plus a ton of xp to throw around, as that's only 70 accounted for. If most of your party rolls 3 or 4 dice on most things, then it is very difficult for me to believe that he is incapable of things like discipline or survival, heck he is probably the best in the party at those even with GGGGG. With vigilance, that is 5 skills he should be good at without having spent any xp except for the 45 on saber and 25 for the dedication. The same goes for other classes, but with other skills.
• Let's look at some movie character so see about that specialization thing. Wilhuff Tarkin certainly wouldn't have brawn or agility above the average human, he would be willful and cunning, but only slightly more intelligent or charismatic than average, relying on coercion and deception to rise through the ranks. Darth Vader would have exceptional brawn, average agility, above average intellect, average cunning, singular willpower, and no charisma. Han Solo would be of average human strength, more agile than most, fairly intelligent, cunning as a fox, of sounder resolve than average, and pretty charming. Real people are similar, we all end up specializing in the fields we work in, and as society advances individuals become more and more specialized. We all have a place or two in which we excel and places we never bother to improve.
• Maybe it's just me, but that sounds like a fun character. A dwarf slayer who is all salt and vinegar, the sullen, pile of muscle type. But he has a soft side and when he drinks, starts laughing and crying, can't keep his mouth shut. Maybe he was a miner all his life and really isn't cut out to be a slayer, he messed up and his honor demanded it, but he's a coward in spite of being such a big guy and having a mean swing.
• It's characters like that, complicated characters with strengths and weaknesses, that are the good characters. If a player becomes a liability within an encounter, that's fun. You have to protect the diplomat against the assassins so that he can make it the peace talk and win over the natives. You have to come up with distractions to keep the wookie gambler from killing someone he thinks cheated. You can't let the mechanic talk because he never learned to lie to people. Everyone is valuable, everyone is interesting, everyone is individual. Like Braendig said a couple pages ago: that's why you split the party. If everyone is a carbon copy without a specialty, you can never have scenarios where the players need to think of a way to deal with something without the guy who normally deals with it.
• That is a "problem" I see attributed to 3.X, and dnd in general, but it really isn't a system problem. Party based game (i.e. almost every pnp) are all designed around creating a party that works well together, and the more people you have, the more it pays to specialize. That is just a fact of life. You can play (most editions of) dnd with 12-14 in every stat and picking up a different class each level, just like you can play eote with 2-3 in every stat and 6 different trees. Neither suits the system better.
• I usually run groups in 1 man screens to cover larger 6 man squads. Yes if it's just one hulking mass of 36 troopers, they can kill 5+ each. The point is that it is still a game of "who can do the most damage first." Players win initiative, half the troopers die turn 1. Troopers win initiative, half the players die turn 1.
• The was exactly what it was. They were noticed, as I said. They clashed with imperial fleets three times, once when ambushed, once when ambushing, and once in a protracted skirmish. Interdictors were used in two of these encounters. First when the Imperials attempted a counterattack during the battle over Mandalor, but forward scouts managed to spot the ship before the imperials figured out their approach vector, so they dropped reinforcements behind the interdictor and blew it up first. The second time had the imperials drop into the system and immediately activate the grav generator, resulting in the protracted skirmish I mentioned. Because the player fleet was faster and had longer sensor range, but was smaller and trapped in the system, it was a fairly interesting scenario. It still ended in a pyrrhic victory for the empire, as they succeeded in foiling the players' play, but couldn't catch them and sustained heavy loses in the process.
• Remember that the resources weren't theirs, but the Alliance's. While they did run into criminal syndicates, they usually achieved diplomatic solutions, though they did battle a cobbled together bounty hunter fleet at one point.
• When it came to personal combat the players were very much aware of their relative position, and like I said, combat wasn't terribly frequent as they spent most of the (late) game exploring in the far reaches, or travelling from world to world incognito to gather allies. There were blocks of 100+ troopers, and tank squadrons, and foes with heavy ordnance. But, just like you describe, these weren't combat encounters, and weren't designed to challenge their fighting capabilities. Again there appears to be a disconnect between creating encounters, and challenging the players in combat. I had them create an avalanche to stop advancing military columns, had then race through a sewer system to avoid a sith alchemy horror, they had to use a dark side artifact to destroy a resurging rakghoul plague. None of those were combats, but they all were challenges that the players new they could overcome. I even had them storm a compound where some troops had missile tubes, but they had to take them out by stealth as they were quite aware that they could face them head on. I don not want to invalidate the way the party spent XP and all of them bought at least one combat talent or skill. All of the above scenarios were places were no number of dice in lightsaber would have solved the problem, but they all became easier as the game went on, facing the same issues I saw with combat. Combat was just one of the many examples of where the game broke and by it i meant literally groups they could fight.
• Of course they couldn't go toe-to-toe with the Empire, but that wasn't their goal, nor was it what the campaign was about. Just like witht he Gozantis, it was hard, fast, infrequent strikes against necessary targets. They were fugitives, and I don't think I ever once said that one type of play dominated, or was even too prevalent.

I'm a little confused, now. Zamphear, what exactly is it you're arguing?

Let's make this simple Zemphere. There are people running games with almost 10 times the XP amount you are describing that aren't having issues. You are also throwing a lot of numbers out there that have no practical application at the table. To be frank, you sound like a Monty Hall DM. You can make up a lot of excuses to justify your position. What really rubs me the wrong way though is the way you insist that you aren't somewhat at fault, and that it's the game that's broken.

When at the same time you have a thread full of people who are telling you about games they are successfully running with 3 or 4 times as much XP as your PCs without a problem.

Part of being a good DM is that sometimes when things aren't working, you're the problem.

Posts are long enough again that I'm gonna go back to bullet pointing:

• [...]
• You fail to understand my predicament. It is very hard for any character to survive a missile tube shot. Unless everyone spends 10000 credits for rarity 10 cortosis. Even if it is with one success and no advantages, the target still becomes one-thousand tiny pieces. All I get from that is laughing at my players and saying "haha, see the empire is way better than you, dummies." Because I don't have a budget as the gm and can do as I please, it is up to me to understand what within the game is too broken. Hell I could just put them up against an agility 7 guy with jury rigged and a heavy blaster rifle if I wanted them dead. This still isn't balance. It's MAD.
• [...]
• I assume that because he was good at combat with a lightsaber and intimidation that he was a Niman Disciple? For the sake of argument I'll say he was, that would put him at Will 5, lightsaber 4. That should leave him with another 4 stat or two 2 3s or a bunch of skill ranks, plus a ton of xp to throw around, as that's only 70 accounted for. If most of your party rolls 3 or 4 dice on most things, then it is very difficult for me to believe that he is incapable of things like discipline or survival, heck he is probably the best in the party at those even with GGGGG. With vigilance, that is 5 skills he should be good at without having spent any xp except for the 45 on saber and 25 for the dedication. The same goes for other classes, but with other skills.
• [...]

As for missile tubes, at "high" levels of XP, combat characters and Jedi should be able to survive one hit from it. Non-combat characters should be able to be revived rather easily with stimpacks after being hit. In neither case, does being dropped "kill" the character.

On the issue of your XP allocation, I'm -thinking- I might be seeing your problem... In order to get Dedication through the Niman Disciple tree, it would cost 85xp, not 25xp. The player would have to go through Nobody's Fool, Niman Technique, Defensive Training, Parry, Sum Djem and only -then- would they get Dedication. To get a 4Y1G pool, they'd need to spend 45xp on LS (1 rank to start, 3 ranks purchased) and an additional 85xp to push through the tree to Dedication. That's 130xp, not 70... Almost twice the XP allocation you're describing... If this is the case, I can understand how it's possible to "break" the game with only 300xp... Cherry-picking abilities from trees without following the paths can certainly cause issues...

• I'm not sure what about the things I said made it sound like the issue wasn't with the rules. That isn't me saying your wrong, just that I don't know what part of what I said you are referring to. But I will say that any system in which 5 separate players, 2 who had never played a pnp before, can achieve what I've shown just by browsing around, then that isn't an issue with the group.
• YYYYYYYGBBBBPPP is 6.29 successes on average. Yes you can fail that, just like an 100 in d100 will always fail, or a 1 in d20. I've never heard someone complain about
• Broadening a character is all well and good, but when players roll separately (i.e. most of the time), they start to step on each other's toes. If the party comes to a door who does the computers check to open it when everyone is int 3 mechanics 2? No player feels like they are "in their element," or invaluable or unique. It also means that as the characters gain experience you can't increase the difficulty, as no one will ever be able to succeed on harder checks, just different types of checks.
• I would argue that the game would not have rules for buying 4s or a 5 at character creation if they weren't meant to be factored into the rules. Nor would it make buying ability upgrades so native to starting xp, fitting 3/3/4 or 4/4 or 5 into the starting allotment for most species exactly. I would argue that the game meant for players to do these equally, but failed to properly account for how much more powerful abilities were compared to skills.
• I assume that because he was good at combat with a lightsaber and intimidation that he was a Niman Disciple? For the sake of argument I'll say he was, that would put him at Will 5, lightsaber 4. That should leave him with another 4 stat or two 2 3s or a bunch of skill ranks, plus a ton of xp to throw around, as that's only 70 accounted for. If most of your party rolls 3 or 4 dice on most things, then it is very difficult for me to believe that he is incapable of things like discipline or survival, heck he is probably the best in the party at those even with GGGGG. With vigilance, that is 5 skills he should be good at without having spent any xp except for the 45 on saber and 25 for the dedication. The same goes for other classes, but with other skills.
• Let's look at some movie character so see about that specialization thing. Wilhuff Tarkin certainly wouldn't have brawn or agility above the average human, he would be willful and cunning, but only slightly more intelligent or charismatic than average, relying on coercion and deception to rise through the ranks. Darth Vader would have exceptional brawn, average agility, above average intellect, average cunning, singular willpower, and no charisma. Han Solo would be of average human strength, more agile than most, fairly intelligent, cunning as a fox, of sounder resolve than average, and pretty charming. Real people are similar, we all end up specializing in the fields we work in, and as society advances individuals become more and more specialized. We all have a place or two in which we excel and places we never bother to improve.
• Maybe it's just me, but that sounds like a fun character. A dwarf slayer who is all salt and vinegar, the sullen, pile of muscle type. But he has a soft side and when he drinks, starts laughing and crying, can't keep his mouth shut. Maybe he was a miner all his life and really isn't cut out to be a slayer, he messed up and his honor demanded it, but he's a coward in spite of being such a big guy and having a mean swing.
• It's characters like that, complicated characters with strengths and weaknesses, that are the good characters. If a player becomes a liability within an encounter, that's fun. You have to protect the diplomat against the assassins so that he can make it the peace talk and win over the natives. You have to come up with distractions to keep the wookie gambler from killing someone he thinks cheated. You can't let the mechanic talk because he never learned to lie to people. Everyone is valuable, everyone is interesting, everyone is individual. Like Braendig said a couple pages ago: that's why you split the party. If everyone is a carbon copy without a specialty, you can never have scenarios where the players need to think of a way to deal with something without the guy who normally deals with it.
• That is a "problem" I see attributed to 3.X, and dnd in general, but it really isn't a system problem. Party based game (i.e. almost every pnp) are all designed around creating a party that works well together, and the more people you have, the more it pays to specialize. That is just a fact of life. You can play (most editions of) dnd with 12-14 in every stat and picking up a different class each level, just like you can play eote with 2-3 in every stat and 6 different trees. Neither suits the system better.
• I usually run groups in 1 man screens to cover larger 6 man squads. Yes if it's just one hulking mass of 36 troopers, they can kill 5+ each. The point is that it is still a game of "who can do the most damage first." Players win initiative, half the troopers die turn 1. Troopers win initiative, half the players die turn 1.

1) Playing with 5 experienced RPGers, one of whom is prone to making broken characters in every game I have not come across this.

2) How have they got 8 in a stat? The Max is 6. Ok, there can be ways to break this, but even then, at 300xp?

3) People still have their areas, and by the time a back up character has YYG in a secondary thing, the character whose primary job that is will likely have 4 or 5 dice, with 3 or 4 yellow, and various other bonuses. They will still be much better at the task, just we won't get stalled by "We don't have our x character at this location at the moment, so I guess that is us stuck here until they get here." Yes, people have their roles, but that doesn't mean other characters can't have a shot at those areas, and that still doesn't invalidate "this is Pete's job" or whatever.

4) Buying 4 is not the problem... As I said, it does seem to presume that a starting character will have 3 or 4 in their relevant area. 5 is getting pretty hyper specialised for a starting character, and while permitted by the rules is a bit single minded.

5) Yes, he has 5 in Will, which, yes to be fair makes him good in any Will based roll. That his is only stat above 2, and he didn't even raise his stat with a 1. The rest of his xp was spent on skills and talents from his tree, and the fact he bought a second out of career specilism tree at character creation.

6) Your examples actually all strengthen my argument. Han Solo isn't just a good shot, a good pilot. He is also athletically compentant, if not noticably stronger than the average. He is pretty strong willed and clearly quite smart, if not massively brainy. He probably has 4 in agility, and 3 in most of his other stats (all aside from Brawn I would say, or if you really want to "big **** hero" him up, you could give him 5 in Agility and then 4 in a couple of his other stats, and 3 in all the others). He has a high level of blaster skill and piloting, but also several other skills at compentant levels, and a little skills at lower levels.

People have those things that they are better at, but 1) heroes are generally broadly compentant, rather than hyperspecialised (hyperspecialised characters are usually the ones the heroes consult, rather than the heroes themselves), and 2) people tend to good a number of things. Yes, people vary in ability, but they don't usually do 1 thing well to the exclusion of all else, and truthfully, even in those areas people are weaker, most people are average at them, rather than outright bad.

7) The character was alright. No justification was given for the choices, except that he wanted to do lots of damage and soak lots of damage. When we noticed the flaw with the character though the rest of the players decided that the shame that caused him to become a slayer must have been because he fainted in battle.

8) Not sure what that means... "1 man screens". If they are used as 5 man minion groups, as intended, then each player can take on a minion group each, or gang up on some, depending on what suits the situation, or simply their whim. Lightsaber wielders, with the damage they can throw out (namely by ignoring soak), will quite quickly whittle groups like this down. Even in ranged combat you can probably get 2 guys with a decent shot, which again makes the returning pools much less brutal (though I suspect you would have to reduce the necessary numbers). The points of minions is to be enough of a threat to force the players to consider them (which a 5 dice pool on blasters will do), but fall down quickly enough that they don't drag things on too much. With ranged combats there is probably less necessity for so many numbers, as a few rivals thrown in can spice things up a bit. However, lower end rivals don't hold up do well as chaff in the face of lightsabers, which is the root of my suggestion of using more minions for lightsaber heavy parties.

I GMed our game Sunday afternoon with a bunch of 700+ exp characters and for the first time I really started to feel like it was getting hard to balance the fights. We have four PC's. A disgustingly powerful Marauder/Heavy/Demolitionist, A saberstaff wielding Jedi with lots of enhance and I think sense (whichever one it it that upgrades the first two icoming attacks twice,) a Sage/Niman Disciple getting pretty tricked out and over 100 exp sunk into the Heal power, and a Politico who can scathe people practically to death (almost literally.)

I love these characters, and it's been a great game, but fights are getting hard for me as a GM. If I throw to many minions the Marauder will pull out her ultimate Minion begone superpower, and there's only so often I feel comfortable using swarms of rivals/nemesisis. Perhaps some of it is a lack of creativity on my part, but I'm getting tired of coming up with new and unique ways to challenge the group without making every NPC super uber. I also am running into the problem that our soaks range from 3 to 9. The nine also now has Cortosis in her armor, so I can't even pull out high pierce weapons or sabers to work against her.

I coGM, trading off, with another player (Hi Deslock) and I might be slightly more ready to move on then he, but I think we're both starting to change our mindsets and think on what the next campaign will hold. I've started letting everybody know that we'll be winding things down. Once we get through our next story arc there will be no dangling subplots left, we've got them in a nice resolution spot, all the long term badguys will be taken care of (unless they really screw up). If somebody else wants to pick up the reins and run with it a bit, or they want me to do a few wind down episodic adventures I'm good, but I don't think I'm going to bring any new major plots or villains into the game. Time to start thinking about something new. Luckily the new movies coming out are getting a lot of people's Star Wars creativity flowing.

To continue on the theme of high level play, my group had another session this past weekend.

And after all the **** we've pulled, we're finally getting the Imperial attention we have coming to us. Keeping in mind that we've taken over Whisper Base and turned it over for Rebel control, completely destroyed an Imperial intelligence station on Mandalore and scuttled an Imperial Star Destroyer full to the brim with the undead former crew (modified Rak'Ghul plague tailored for the base Mandalorian genome, which I took personally), took out and captured an ISB safehouse on Corellia and have turned over a staggering number of Imperial prisoners...lets just say they don't like us. And now they know who we are.

So while on the Wheel (somewhere we frequent due to contacts and the abundant black market), we pick up a tail. Shortly after ditching the tail, Sinno get's a alert from P.E.D. (Sinno's former pleasure droid turned mechanic/bodyguard he won in a card game) that there's intruders on the ship before going silent. Sinno, having a massively overdeveloped protective streak stampedes his way to the station's hanger bay with the Transdoshan hot on his heels and the Jedi taking a different route.

In the process, Sinno trips two ambushes, completely soaking a pistol round before blowing the responsible Imperial's head off and then charging into a pair of Stormtroopers. One of which has a light repeating blaster.

Sinno takes 3 autofire hits and a rifle hit from the pair, dropping him below half wounds, while the Transdoshan, being less emotionally invested flanks around and proceeds to gut the trooper with the repeater. The other pulls a vibroknife and cripples Sinno's leg with it! And then Sinno killed him and proceeded to limp his ass to his ship.

The Jedi infiltrates through the ship's top hatch and beats an Imperial unconscious with my toolkit before bluffing the other two onboard into surrendering.

There's more that happen after that, but the point is, three PCs at 790 xp (we made it to 810 after that) almost got hammered by 3 Rival and a couple of non-squaded mooks. Part of it was autofire, but even having a 5 man squad of troopers could have done the same amount of damage, and that was just the combat rolls.

Sorry for the long response time, Christmas stuff and all that. Posts are long enough again that I'm gonna go back to bullet pointing:

• As I have been arguing from the start, I am here to try and understand how people manage to get to 600-1200 xp without picking up enough very powerful abilities that the game became difficult to keep it balanced. Apparently now I am defending my dming style against people who can't understand that human beings can like different things.

• You're right, the average results of dice rolls and the cost of items has nothing to do with the practical applications of what happens at the table.

• I think you should take a look at what I have been writing and what you have been writing. It's fine to disagree with me, but maybe address what I said, rather than calling me a name. What makes you think what I described is monty haul?

• I never said things were going wrong. I urge you to read my bloody posts, the game was great fun from start to finish. I am more than happy to admit when im at fault as a dm. It was my fault I didn't expect how powerful my player's fleet would be, but i addressed that in later flights. If you think it's a good dm that takes things away and removes content from their players, then I would say it is you who are a bad dm.

• None of my players were brawn races, the highest brawn in the party was 3. The Jedi were two Ataru strikers (Human and Zabrak), a Shien Expert (Togruda), and a Niman Disciple (Givin). Between those trees there are 2 ranks of Toughened, I'm curious as to how you think they could survive 21 damage with breach? At 6-7 damage below threshold doesn't come back with a stimm pack. That's presuming it only hits one player and only rolls one success.

• I said that the dedication and the skills accounted for 70 xp, not that he just bought it, try to extrapolate a little. 130 xp for all the talents in addition to dedication itself and the lightsaber ranks. But thank you for addressing any of the points I made. He still rolls survival, discipline, and vigilance better than what you described as your party average with 70 xp to throw around. In addition to lightsaber and coercion. So you're telling me that has the best-in-party on a combat skill, a social skill, a spotting skill, a mental skill, and survival, is good at one thing?

• Mistype, that was one Y too many, meant to type YYYYYYG, that's what the math was for. Although you could probably get 8 in brawn from strength enhancing systems or Power Armor, though it's never a situation that's come up.

• You said you were at 3s and some of the party 4s providing YYGG as a highest result. Now you say YYG is the backup, that's only 0.625 and 0.5 advantages less. I wouldn't call that much better.

• There was one character who bought 5, I explained why he had 5 and I really don't see why this is some sort of huge point of contention.

• I would say the point of a 1 in a stat is to represent a deficiency endemic to the species, unless you are playing someone who represents an abnormality. It isn't really anything I would be opposed to.

• Just like the jedi, he has agility as his big skill for shooting, stealth, and piloting. At most other things he isn't better than any other character. His competent mechanics can be explained by 2-3 ranks, his charms by a slightly higher presence. He still isn't any less specialized than the disciple. 2/4/2/3/3/3 for Han bloody Solo, a build achievable for a human with one rank in dedication. At 350xp, that would give Han 150xp to play around with after reaching dedication in any smuggler tree except gambler. He could pick up a dozen skills, a second tree and dedicate that, exile and sense or some such in order to represent latent force sensitivity, etc.
• In my games we try to play a bit closer to real people and characters, rather than main character archetypes. Most people are good at things, bad at things, and okay at things, but rare is the person that has 3s across the board, or ranks in every skill. Just ask a football player to fly a plane, or a chemist to run a marathon. Even then, the chemist probably won't know much about physics, the football player would be equally unqualified to mountain climb. The same is true for teachers, IT workers, lawyers, garbage collectors, and even soldiers. They all have specialties, they all have proficiencies, they all have averages, they all have flaws, and they all have nadirs.
• However, the same is true in media. Look at a group like, I don't know, the Scooby Doo gang; each of them is obviously a different person, good at different things, and that is why they work well together. Both in terms of success and of keeping the viewer interested. You can have them split up and look for clues to have funny, unexpected, or nerve-wracking moments, or you can keep them together and let the total be greater than the sum of its parts.
• To go further into what I said before, as groups accumulate numbers, each overlapping skill becomes more and more redundant. The more similar each player, the fewer options the GM has open to change things up, or even increase the difficulty. This situation is even more apparent in FaD, where each career provides a combat tree that works with a different ability, as combat is one of the few places where the number of participants is unlimited.
• I didn't necessarily mean that the player had made a good character, only that the build didn't limit the potential for a good character.
• They aren't all in squads, some split up in order to keep the melee combatants away from the bulk of their forces. Even inside squad formation, they wouldn't all cluster together, but set up ranks in order to form a firing line, spread out to take advantage of their range, or skirmish to minimize loses.
• The issue I had here remains: both sides have huge damage output and comparatively few wounds. Also that slicing through waves of garbage isn't satisfying or engaging for players or GM.

Seeing is believing, I hope. Here's Mask of the Pirate Queen with 6 PCs ranging from 500 to 1500 XP:

Plenty of misses and close calls.

Sorry for the long response time, Christmas stuff and all that. Posts are long enough again that I'm gonna go back to bullet pointing:

• As I have been arguing from the start, I am here to try and understand how people manage to get to 600-1200 xp without picking up enough very powerful abilities that the game became difficult to keep it balanced. Apparently now I am defending my dming style against people who can't understand that human beings can like different things.

• You're right, the average results of dice rolls and the cost of items has nothing to do with the practical applications of what happens at the table.

• I think you should take a look at what I have been writing and what you have been writing. It's fine to disagree with me, but maybe address what I said, rather than calling me a name. What makes you think what I described is monty haul?

• I never said things were going wrong. I urge you to read my bloody posts, the game was great fun from start to finish. I am more than happy to admit when im at fault as a dm. It was my fault I didn't expect how powerful my player's fleet would be, but i addressed that in later flights. If you think it's a good dm that takes things away and removes content from their players, then I would say it is you who are a bad dm.

• None of my players were brawn races, the highest brawn in the party was 3. The Jedi were two Ataru strikers (Human and Zabrak), a Shien Expert (Togruda), and a Niman Disciple (Givin). Between those trees there are 2 ranks of Toughened, I'm curious as to how you think they could survive 21 damage with breach? At 6-7 damage below threshold doesn't come back with a stimm pack. That's presuming it only hits one player and only rolls one success.

• I said that the dedication and the skills accounted for 70 xp, not that he just bought it, try to extrapolate a little. 130 xp for all the talents in addition to dedication itself and the lightsaber ranks. But thank you for addressing any of the points I made. He still rolls survival, discipline, and vigilance better than what you described as your party average with 70 xp to throw around. In addition to lightsaber and coercion. So you're telling me that has the best-in-party on a combat skill, a social skill, a spotting skill, a mental skill, and survival, is good at one thing?

• Mistype, that was one Y too many, meant to type YYYYYYG, that's what the math was for. Although you could probably get 8 in brawn from strength enhancing systems or Power Armor, though it's never a situation that's come up.

• You said you were at 3s and some of the party 4s providing YYGG as a highest result. Now you say YYG is the backup, that's only 0.625 and 0.5 advantages less. I wouldn't call that much better.

• There was one character who bought 5, I explained why he had 5 and I really don't see why this is some sort of huge point of contention.

• I would say the point of a 1 in a stat is to represent a deficiency endemic to the species, unless you are playing someone who represents an abnormality. It isn't really anything I would be opposed to.

• Just like the jedi, he has agility as his big skill for shooting, stealth, and piloting. At most other things he isn't better than any other character. His competent mechanics can be explained by 2-3 ranks, his charms by a slightly higher presence. He still isn't any less specialized than the disciple. 2/4/2/3/3/3 for Han bloody Solo, a build achievable for a human with one rank in dedication. At 350xp, that would give Han 150xp to play around with after reaching dedication in any smuggler tree except gambler. He could pick up a dozen skills, a second tree and dedicate that, exile and sense or some such in order to represent latent force sensitivity, etc.
• In my games we try to play a bit closer to real people and characters, rather than main character archetypes. Most people are good at things, bad at things, and okay at things, but rare is the person that has 3s across the board, or ranks in every skill. Just ask a football player to fly a plane, or a chemist to run a marathon. Even then, the chemist probably won't know much about physics, the football player would be equally unqualified to mountain climb. The same is true for teachers, IT workers, lawyers, garbage collectors, and even soldiers. They all have specialties, they all have proficiencies, they all have averages, they all have flaws, and they all have nadirs.
• However, the same is true in media. Look at a group like, I don't know, the Scooby Doo gang; each of them is obviously a different person, good at different things, and that is why they work well together. Both in terms of success and of keeping the viewer interested. You can have them split up and look for clues to have funny, unexpected, or nerve-wracking moments, or you can keep them together and let the total be greater than the sum of its parts.
• To go further into what I said before, as groups accumulate numbers, each overlapping skill becomes more and more redundant. The more similar each player, the fewer options the GM has open to change things up, or even increase the difficulty. This situation is even more apparent in FaD, where each career provides a combat tree that works with a different ability, as combat is one of the few places where the number of participants is unlimited.
• I didn't necessarily mean that the player had made a good character, only that the build didn't limit the potential for a good character.
• They aren't all in squads, some split up in order to keep the melee combatants away from the bulk of their forces. Even inside squad formation, they wouldn't all cluster together, but set up ranks in order to form a firing line, spread out to take advantage of their range, or skirmish to minimize loses.
• The issue I had here remains: both sides have huge damage output and comparatively few wounds. Also that slicing through waves of garbage isn't satisfying or engaging for players or GM.

Well I see one problem. You are counting in the wrong direction. Count damage UP not down. When you exceed your damage threshold you stop. roll a crit. any damage beyond the threshold is not counted. If they are hit again roll another crit. Follow all the rules for crits. IE every previous crit adds a +10 to the roll.

I think one of the things that keep us is check, so to speak, is that I don't think any of us have a skill higher than 3, although we have a lot of 3s. The other thing is that not only do we have a broad skill set, we also have multiple specializations, I have 4 and the others have 3, and none of us have an attribute over 4, although not only do I have a brawn and agility of 4, I also have a strength enhancement system in my armor bumping me up to 5.

Even though I can almost kill a speeder in one hit from a pistol, the Jedi prefers not to kill people (although is ridiculously good at it when she chooses to) and the Transdoshan uses a long range stun rifle as his go to. My job is mainly to be bait, what with a 7 soak and 26 wounds, but even when we go in mean, it's still a challenge.

Sorry for the long response time, Christmas stuff and all that. Posts are long enough again that I'm gonna go back to bullet pointing:

• ...

• None of my players were brawn races, the highest brawn in the party was 3. The Jedi were two Ataru strikers (Human and Zabrak), a Shien Expert (Togruda), and a Niman Disciple (Givin). Between those trees there are 2 ranks of Toughened, I'm curious as to how you think they could survive 21 damage with breach? At 6-7 damage below threshold doesn't come back with a stimm pack. That's presuming it only hits one player and only rolls one success.

• I said that the dedication and the skills accounted for 70 xp, not that he just bought it, try to extrapolate a little. 130 xp for all the talents in addition to dedication itself and the lightsaber ranks. But thank you for addressing any of the points I made. He still rolls survival, discipline, and vigilance better than what you described as your party average with 70 xp to throw around. In addition to lightsaber and coercion. So you're telling me that has the best-in-party on a combat skill, a social skill, a spotting skill, a mental skill, and survival, is good at one thing?

• Mistype, that was one Y too many, meant to type YYYYYYG, that's what the math was for. Although you could probably get 8 in brawn from strength enhancing systems or Power Armor, though it's never a situation that's come up.

• You said you were at 3s and some of the party 4s providing YYGG as a highest result. Now you say YYG is the backup, that's only 0.625 and 0.5 advantages less. I wouldn't call that much better.

• ...
• Just like the jedi, he has agility as his big skill for shooting, stealth, and piloting. At most other things he isn't better than any other character. His competent mechanics can be explained by 2-3 ranks, his charms by a slightly higher presence. He still isn't any less specialized than the disciple. 2/4/2/3/3/3 for Han bloody Solo, a build achievable for a human with one rank in dedication. At 350xp, that would give Han 150xp to play around with after reaching dedication in any smuggler tree except gambler. He could pick up a dozen skills, a second tree and dedicate that, exile and sense or some such in order to represent latent force sensitivity, etc.
• ...
• To go further into what I said before, as groups accumulate numbers, each overlapping skill becomes more and more redundant. The more similar each player, the fewer options the GM has open to change things up, or even increase the difficulty. This situation is even more apparent in FaD, where each career provides a combat tree that works with a different ability, as combat is one of the few places where the number of participants is unlimited.
• ...
• The issue I had here remains: both sides have huge damage output and comparatively few wounds. Also that slicing through waves of garbage isn't satisfying or engaging for players or GM.

To your points:

• I expect "combat" characters to have a high soak (10+) and high wounds (20+), when they get to "high" XP levels. If your players don't have that, then they're not, to my definition, "combat" characters.
• You're going to have to explain to me how " best-in-party on a combat skill, a social skill, a spotting skill, a mental skill, and survival" is possible with the XP levels you're describing. Extrapolating a bit, as you suggested, it appears that this character has top Cunning in the party and has been boosting it from the start. As this system is HUGELY stat-centric, characters with the highest of a particular stat in the party are going to have those related skills locked up. However, it's rare that they'll spend the XP on ranks in the skills associated with that stat. If they do, then it's a good idea for the rest of the party to diversify their skills a bit. Another solution is to split the party.
• 5 ranks in a class skill is 75xp, straight-line dedication is 75xp, another career/universal tree, and another straight-line dedication is 95xp. That leaves (with a 300xp level) 55xp for -anything- else. At 300xp, the only way (with a starting 4 in a stat) to get 6Y1G is with cybernetics for the skill -and- the stat or with a rank of true aim or similar. In any event, that player has dedicated 81.7% of their experience to THAT SKILL ALONE. Seems to me that they should be the best there ever was at that...
• I don't really understand your response... 2Y1G backing up 2Y2G isn't that much worse... Which is why splitting the party isn't such a bad idea in this system...
• Yes... 350xp could provide for multiple trees, a bit of diversity (your 12 skill reference) and overwhelming ability at their focus. That's -why- I've said at this XP level, characters have hit their focus and are now branching out. This is the time in the campaign to push them away from their focus to generate tension and give them opportunities to shine at their specialties.
• This is why splitting the party is such a crucial part of this system (and is reflected in the movies).
• You're talking about the classic problem of glass cannons. They have huge damage output, but comparatively little staying power. This should indicate to the party (and to the GM) that their natural state is a running, not pitched, battle. If they give the enemy time to set up, or bring to bear, the big guns, they'll get smacked. So they have to always keep moving and holding an area for a period of time should be filled with tension.

The other thing to remember, and this is BIG:

Exceeding wound or strain threshold means being TAKEN OUT.

Not killed. As in - not dead.

Get stomped on by a bunch of StormTroopers, and guess what? You wake up in a scary place. The story goes on...