Yeah, strictly speaking I don't see extra ranks in parry/reflect as excessive.

1: It's per attack. Throw enough attacks at someone and they will have to use it multiple times.

2: It costs strain. Combine with the above and keep the action moving along, give them a long action scene or face against something with linked 3 (Grevious, autofire weapons, multple squads) and then they will have their challange.

3: It's possible to disarm them. Then parry/reflect won't apply for following attacks.

That being said, it's dependant on situation

Yeah, strictly speaking I don't see extra ranks in parry/reflect as excessive.

1: It's per attack. Throw enough attacks at someone and they will have to use it multiple times.

2: It costs strain. Combine with the above and keep the action moving along, give them a long action scene or face against something with linked 3 (Grevious, autofire weapons, multple squads) and then they will have their challange.

3: It's possible to disarm them. Then parry/reflect won't apply for following attacks.

That being said, it's dependant on situation

A good example is look at Ki-Adi-Mundi in Revenge of the Sith. I am sure he had plenty of ranks in Reflect. Don't do you much good when 20 or 30 people are shooting at you. You will run out of strain then go down.

My players actually said in our previous campaign I was giving out too much xp because they were getting to high in xp, but that was when I was giving 30 to 40 xp so slowed it down to 20 xp for normal sessions and after a story arc I give a bonus 10 on top of the 20

The "freedom with responsibility" occurs in a great many RPGs. It's possible to min-max and make a cheesy character in any system, with some systems even being geared towards making the PC as twinked out as possible; D&D 4e is a stellar example of a player having to actively work to make a sub-optimal character.

But that's entirely irrelevant to the OP's question of allowing one player to cheese this system in a specific way, mostly to avoid spending XP on specific talents so that they can more quickly get to the juicer talents.

This indicates to me that you missed a big part of my question and intent, which was not "cheesing the system." Taking that standpoint when you don't know someone, and when they have given some good clues to the contrary, is insulting and necessary. I wasn't sure how potentially broken a character with two trees worth of parry dips might become, especially if the cost of adding additional levels drops back down to 5 from 25 before ramping back up.

Would that break the system, or take it out of its "sweet spot" for playability? Would that require characters to be retired. Also, while I have been gaming since 1977, I've only been playing this system for about a year and I wasn't sure whether or not the designers thoroughly play tested - or even intended for the system to support - adding additional saber-trees.

A great many systems do, in fact, break down after a certain point. Back in the bad old days of AD&D "name level" was the point where things started to go sideways. One group I played in kept accruing experience without ever "leveling up" because we were in the sweet spot in terms of telling stories.

Some people in this thread were kind enough to share their perspective, and their experience, without inferential ad hominems. I appreciate that. I see that additional levels of parry past 5 can be necessary and won't necessarily make a character ridiculous to play or invulnerable (ergo, cheesy). I also ken that the additional buy-in for additional trees does - to a certain extent - insert some balance into the drop in cost of parry when you start the new tree.

And, for the record, since you are throwing stones Hero-way (and open system way), I'll go on record saying anyone who has the problems with Hero that you describe isn't having those problems because the system is broken. They are having those problems because the culture at their gaming table is broken and/or they don't understand the system well-enough to successfully run it.

I've been playing Hero since 1983. Sure, you can create completely ridiculous builds in Hero. If you are doing that one of the following is in play: 1) you are acting in bad faith, 2) you are extremely incompetent, or 3) you are simply doing it wrong. And, yes, I did just say that: doing it wrong. If you know what you are doing and have good judgement you won't have balance issues with systems like Hero. People shouldn't blame tools they haven't mastered for their own incompetence.

As for having an open talent system in the FFG system, I do think it would work insofar as it wasn't completely unstructured. Ergo, talents were divided into universal, specialized, and signature; and had appropriate costs (including rising costs for stacking talents) and prerequisites in place. Putting a system like that in place takes a lot of thought and work, and good judgement, but it can be done - and could be very satisfying for people who prefer a little more flexibility than the trees allow.

Whether any given poster here is sufficiently competent enough, and operates in a gaming group whose culture is mature enough, to pull that off isn't for those who don't know them to judge.

My players actually said in our previous campaign I was giving out too much xp because they were getting to high in xp, but that was when I was giving 30 to 40 xp so slowed it down to 20 xp for normal sessions and after a story arc I give a bonus 10 on top of the 20

I'm feeling like a cheapskate.

Yeah, strictly speaking I don't see extra ranks in parry/reflect as excessive.

1: It's per attack. Throw enough attacks at someone and they will have to use it multiple times.

2: It costs strain. Combine with the above and keep the action moving along, give them a long action scene or face against something with linked 3 (Grevious, autofire weapons, multple squads) and then they will have their challange.

3: It's possible to disarm them. Then parry/reflect won't apply for following attacks.

That being said, it's dependant on situation

Thank you. This is helpful.

If you players have high Parry and reflect, then bring in the Auto-fire and sunder weapons, that will make then duck and cover

Workable, and addresses the power factor. I run a narrative heavy game, so while I want to keep characters in the sweet spot for play, its not my biggest question. I'll give a non-parry example. Let's take a character who is a seer / makashi duelist. The seer tree has forager in it. I understand that talent makes sense for the Moses in the desert, hermit in the wilds, style seers. But, that doesn't fit every seer character's concept. Not all of them are meditating far away from civilization, or good at tracking. But, if you want to play RAW, you pretty much have to take it if you want to get to preemptive avoidance, etc. I'd much rather be able to take something else - something more fitting for the character as conceived. If you do, and I have zero issues making rulings rather than going strictly by the rules, you are no longer RAW.

Is allowing a player character to not stack on what might be an excessive amount of one thing really being worried about as a "cheese" move?

No player is forced to stack anything. Most trees in this game don't even have parry or reflect and on top of that even those that do you can generally buy around some of the ranks of you really don't want them.

This is the route I'm going at present.

Vondy, on 17 Jan 2016 - 9:57 PM, said:Vondy, on 17 Jan 2016 - 9:57 PM, said:Vondy, on 17 Jan 2016 - 9:57 PM, said:This indicates to me that you missed a big part of my question and intent, which was not "cheesing the system." Taking that standpoint when you don't know someone, and when they have given some good clues to the contrary, is insulting and necessary. I wasn't sure how potentially broken a character with two trees worth of parry dips might become, especially if the cost of adding additional levels drops back down to 5 from 25 before ramping back up.

In your eargerness to bash people who disagree with you, you also missed the point that Donavan was not replying to your original question but to your statement that " the tree system is bad and inflexible and you would have prefer a more open system. "

Now, that you like that kind of character advancement or not is not our problem. If you want to redesign it, enjoy yourself and all the trouble that come with it.

PS: Long life to Jar-Jar Binx and the Ewoks.

PS2: Dont underestimate the usefulness of Forager. You dont know when it could save the life of your party.

Vondy, on 17 Jan 2016 - 9:57 PM, said:Vondy, on 17 Jan 2016 - 9:57 PM, said:Vondy, on 17 Jan 2016 - 9:57 PM, said:This indicates to me that you missed a big part of my question and intent, which was not "cheesing the system." Taking that standpoint when you don't know someone, and when they have given some good clues to the contrary, is insulting and necessary. I wasn't sure how potentially broken a character with two trees worth of parry dips might become, especially if the cost of adding additional levels drops back down to 5 from 25 before ramping back up.

In your eargerness to bash people who disagree with you, you also missed the point that Donavan was not replying to your original question but to your statement that " the tree system is bad and inflexible and you would have prefer a more open system. "

Now, that you like that kind of character advancement or not is not our problem. If you want to redesign it, enjoy yourself and all the trouble that come with it.

PS: Long life to Jar-Jar Binx and the Ewoks.

PS2: Dont underestimate the usefulness of Forager. You dont know when it could save the life of your party.

Liking so I can show my support for Jar Jar Binx and Ewoks

Vondy, on 17 Jan 2016 - 9:57 PM, said:Vondy, on 17 Jan 2016 - 9:57 PM, said:Vondy, on 17 Jan 2016 - 9:57 PM, said:This indicates to me that you missed a big part of my question and intent, which was not "cheesing the system." Taking that standpoint when you don't know someone, and when they have given some good clues to the contrary, is insulting and necessary. I wasn't sure how potentially broken a character with two trees worth of parry dips might become, especially if the cost of adding additional levels drops back down to 5 from 25 before ramping back up.

In your eargerness to bash people who disagree with you, you also missed the point that Donavan was not replying to your original question but to your statement that " the tree system is bad and inflexible and you would have prefer a more open system. "

Now, that you like that kind of character advancement or not is not our problem. If you want to redesign it, enjoy yourself and all the trouble that come with it.

PS: Long life to Jar-Jar Binx and the Ewoks.

PS2: Dont underestimate the usefulness of Forager. You dont know when it could save the life of your party.

Liking so I can show my support for Jar Jar Binx and Ewoks

Yubyub

You know, as a compromise solution, if someone were opposed to trees, but concerned about players rushing to the highest "tier" talents, perhaps a house rule doing away with the trees but requiring a player character to have no more talents at any tier than in the "lesser" tiers... so to get 4 of the best talents, you'd need to take at least 4 of each of the proceeding tiers.

Just a random thought.

E - typos from typing without my glasses on.

You know, as a compromise solution, if someone were opposed to trees, but concerned about players rushing to the highest "tier" talents, perhaps a house rule doing away with the trees but requiring a player character no more talents at any tier than in the "lesser" tiers... so to get 4 of the best talents, you'd need to take at least 4 of each proceeding tiers.

Just a random thought.

I actually really like this idea. Reminds me of how FATE's skill system works: you can't have more +5 skills than +4, can't have more +4 skills than +3, and so on down to +1. It forces players to build an actual foundation of skills rather than picking three that they're amazing in while being garbage in everything else.

Problem with that approach is that a lot of talents can show up in different rows of different specs. A part of the balancing factor of the talent trees is the path you have to go through to get to some of them. For instance, the Gambler spec out of Fly Casual has Dedication listed as a 10 XP talent, but you've got to circle around and through a number of other talents to get to it. Plus you've got instances where a talent shows up in Row 2 for some specs and can be reached through a Row 1 talent, only to show up in Row 4 or 5 of other specs and require some jumping around to reach them.

Yes, FATE can pull it off, but it was designed that way with the skills all having the same default cost.

One could adjust XP cost and/or "tier" for each talent as part of the process as well.

Liking so I can show my support for Jar Jar Binx and Ewoks

Yubyub

Loved that song so much.