Has anyone considered capping the maximum parry and reflect in their games?

Inquisitors can weigh in at 5, IIRC, and are supposed to be dangerous opponents.

However, a character who digs into multiple saber trees, could easily blow past that.

It seems like it would become both unwieldy and redundant at a certain point.

It also injects bizarre costing scenarios.

To wit, a Makashi duelist with Parry-5 paid 25 points to progress from 4 to 5.

But, as soon as they dig into another tree, they pay 5 points to progress from 5 to 6..

I've been contemplating a limit for parry and reflect in my games - though I'm not sure what that limit would be (6).

If so, I would probably let players skip those talents as they progress through other trees.

Thoughts?

have you considered just how much XP a character would be at if they are in multiple trees?

have you considered just how much XP a character would be at if they are in multiple trees?

Yes. And, if you earn an average of 15 XP per weekend for a year you'll have 780 experience. For a Jedi, that's probably a very solid tree, some powers, and some skills. If you started out at knight level play, you may be at 1,000+ xp. Its not at all unreasonable, if you have a consistent ongoing campaign to get there. I've been gaming for 35 years and have both run and played in games that lasted that long, or longer. That said, experience tells me that characters with long careers eventually have to develop breadth rather than continued concentrated power-ups if they are to remain playable over time. I have characters for some games with troves of unspent experience simply because I wanted to keep then in the "playable zone." Which is the basis of the question.

have you considered just how much XP a character would be at if they are in multiple trees?

Yes. And, if you earn an average of 15 XP per weekend for a year you'll have 780 experience. For a Jedi, that's probably a very solid tree, some powers, and some skills. If you started out at knight level play, you may be at 1,000+ xp. Its not at all unreasonable, if you have a consistent ongoing campaign to get there. I've been gaming for 35 years and have both run and played in games that lasted that long, or longer. That said, experience tells me that characters with long careers eventually have to develop breadth rather than continued concentrated power-ups if they are to remain playable over time. I have characters for some games with troves of unspent experience simply because I wanted to keep then in the "playable zone." Which is the basis of the question.

I wish my GM gave out 15 xp per session. We only get 10 with an occasional +2 xp for roleplaying. More than that we only play bi-weekly. It's actually been less than that with all the Holiday stuff going on these past few months.

There is a big strain cost to Parry/Reflect. consider hitting the PC with lots of little hits, they will drain their Strain very quickly if they try and reduce all of them. And if they are using Supreme Reflect then they are not Attacking are they so the threat is still there.

The flow on effect is that they will be using any Advantage they roll to recover Strain rather than triggering Critical's or Weapon Qualities.

Egh, Inquisitors are tough, but really, they're trained pretty poorly overall and aren't a match for somebody who has had proper training. So I wouldn't use them as any sort of baseline as to what the upper limit of a player should be.

As for the costs of talents, you're ignoring the mechanical aspect of the initial cost of buying the new specialization, and the narrative aspect that you're basically learning a brand new form which has its own movements and capabilities, and that you're applying the new stuff to improve your abilities by switching between forms in combat or are fighting with hybrid forms.

And really, Parry and Reflect can't be used for everything. Any stormtrooper or bounty hunter with good sense should be lobbing grenades or bringing out other big weapons/creative traps as soon as a lightsaber is busted out.

As for the 780xp thing. You can reasonably break the game in under 100xp if you're trying to. Somebody buying through full lightsaber form trees, having to probably rely on lightsabers (unless they're Brawn-heavy and can use other weapons) is probably one of the worst ways to do it. Not to mention somebody focusing on buying up Parry/Reflect is neglecting skill ranks and probably force ratings, probably making them the equivalent of a very sturdy rock for a vast number of sessions. Basically, 780xp is probably going to be the point where characters can be ridiculously overpowered, whether they're actively trying or not. If you're so worried about this, I'd recommend cutting down XP given from the get-go, or decreasing the amount given as time goes by. So ~15xp each session until 200xp, then ~10xp until 400xp, then ~5xp from then on.

I mean, I see where the OP is coming from. On a lark, totaled all instances of Parry across all specs in the core book, and found 22 instances of it. That plus supreme parry means 1 strain to reduce 24 damage before applying soak, which sure, is rather impressive.

That said, I don't think I have an issue with it. We're talking an incredible amount of XP, and such a character ought to be amazing.

My recommendation would be to have a goal for your game. If you know its going to last on the order of years, don't hand XP out like hotcakes.

If PCs getting to this point are troublesome, hit them with vehicle scale weapons.

"But, as soon as they dig into another tree, they pay 5 points to progress from 5 to 6.."

To be fair, they are paying more like 25 or more likely 35 for that point of parry.

I give 20 to 30xp a session

Devs recommend 5xp per hour plus RP bonuses. i add extra as we don't game weekly

Reflect is useless when you shoot them with Cortosis jacketed darts filled with Ranqor venom at long range while hiding behind cover...

Okay so I mostly do this to poor unsuspecting Inquistors and dark side force users, but **** if it won't work on Players as well.

Other then Niman, the lightsaber forms do not have force rating increases.. also if they are investing all those points into parry and reflects across multiple specs, they likely are an easy target for force powers..

Otheres have mentioned good counters, lots of small shots, grenades, poison, traps, etc..

I tend to dislike house rules except when absolutely necessary tho.

Devs recommend 5xp per hour plus RP bonuses. i add extra as we don't game weekly

I am getting shorted. Is there a link or a printed source for this?

Devs recommend 5xp per hour plus RP bonuses. i add extra as we don't game weekly

I am getting shorted. Is there a link or a printed source for this?

I'm pretty sure they make mention of it in the GM section of the book. I don't have the exact page number but I do recall the book itself states about how much xp people should be earning on average.

Yeah I follow the 5 XP per hour, plus bonuses for clever roleplaying and accomplish major goals.

Devs recommend 5xp per hour plus RP bonuses. i add extra as we don't game weekly

I am getting shorted. Is there a link or a printed source for this?

It is from the Order 66 Podcast with Jay Little. It is his rule of thumb. It is 5xp per hour of actual play... don't include off topic discussions. Episode 22 GMing A to Z with Jay Little.

Devs recommend 5xp per hour plus RP bonuses. i add extra as we don't game weekly

I am getting shorted. Is there a link or a printed source for this?

It is from the Order 66 Podcast with Jay Little. It is his rule of thumb. It is 5xp per hour of actual play... don't include off topic discussions. Episode 22 GMing A to Z with Jay Little.

This. (for those who don't know Jay is the Artist who crafted the Narrative Dice mechanic in this and the WFRP 3ed systems, he led development on the EotE Core book)

The topic of awarding XP is discussed on p320 of the FaD Core. It doesn't work in session times, but rather number of encounters, so its dependent on how fast your group plays through encounters. its a good read though and would roughly come out the same as 5xp per hour.

Page 320 under Awarding and Spending Exp

As others have noted, it takes an obsessive amount of focus to buy up all the ranks of Parry and Reflect that are offered.

Realistically, most players are going to cap themselves anyway at somewhere between 4 to 6 ranks unless they want to completely ignore using Force powers or pass on boosting the effectiveness of those Lightsaber talents that let you add Force dice to the check. My own theory is that most PCs will at some point be very likely take Niman Disciple (3 ranks of Parry and Reflect and a chance to increase their Force Rating) and then whichever LS Form spec suits their preference for the character.

In the final copy of FaD, the Build-An-Inquisitor rules only have the option to take 4 ranks of Parry or Reflect. As noted, they're meant to be a threat to someone with very little training, but against someone that's been properly trained (such as Ahsoka Tano in SW:Rebels), they're not nearly as dangerous in a straight-up fight.

Plus there's the strain cost involved in using Parry and Reflect, and even with the Light Side Paragon boost to strain threshold, it's not easy or cheap to get one's strain threshold above 20, especially if playing a species that doesn't have a major boost to their starting strain threshold like Cereans or Iktotchi (Keeping the Peace). In a one-on-one fight it's not a big deal, but when faced with superior numbers, a PC that's loaded up on Reflect can very easily be worn down simply by having to use said talent multiple times per round. It's amazing how accurate a minion group of 5 stormtroopers can be, and how effective two or three minion groups of 5 stormtroopers can be in making a player very much aware of their character's mortality as they watch their strain slowly increase from round to round...

in an average game(4-5hrs) i tend to give out around 15-20 xp plus another 5 on top of that for good RP, completing big goals or doing something particularly awesome and amazing(eg: I'm gonna put my guys up against a Rancor soon and they are really not ready to fight a Rancor they just have to get past it if the somehow manage to kill it I think they gonna deserve a reward).

I appreciate everyone's response, but a lot of people are focusing on "players obsessively buying parry and reflect" and ignoring where I asked about skipping over those talents past a given cap to get to the other abilities. For instance, let's take jedi warrior with good skills, enough agressor or to get a force rating (cheap), several force powers with mid range buys, and the full makashi tree. He's about 1100 points and not at all unplayable. He would like to dig into Niman for another FR and some of the cool talents in the mid to bottom rows. If you want to be extra efficient, replace aggressor with seer and assume he's FR 3 and 1180 points. Either way, he really doesn't need or want more parry. In this instance, the system obsessively requires the player to load up on parry and reflect even if it doesn't fit the style of play, desired power level, or desired arc for character growth.

We play most weekends with a typical session being 3 hours and a long session running 5. The awards at this mid-stage are pretty consistently 15xp, even for long sessions. As a GM I tend to be more generous in early character arcs to allow for a decent power ramp up, and then modestly tight fisted in later sessions to allow for sustainable ongoing stories.

I appreciate everyone's response, but a lot of people are focusing on "players obsessively buying parry and reflect" and ignoring where I asked about skipping over those talents past a given cap to get to the other abilities. For instance, let's takes jedi warrior with good skills, enough agreed or to get a force rating (cheap), several force powers with mid range burs, and the full makashi tree. He's about 1100 points and not at all unplayable. He would like to dig into Niman for another FR and some of the cool talents in the mid to bottom rows. If you want to be extra efficient, replace aggressor with seer and assume he's FR 3 and 1180 points. Either way, he really doesn't need or want more parry. In this instance, the system obsessively requires the player to load up on parry and reflect even if it doesn't fit the style of play, desired power level, or desired arc for character growth.

One of the problems with "talent trees".

I guess, if you and the player are comfortable with that go for it. Allow them to just skip the talents after 6.. optionally of course.

If I was your player I would choose to keep getting the Parrys and Reflects. Even with 6 ranks, that's still only avoiding 8 damage.. my villain in my game has 4 yellow dice, a blue, and a lightsaber that does 10 damage. He easily has the potential to get up to 20 dam if against someone unprepared. I would hate to skimp on the parrys and reflects and have it cost my characters life..

But the joy of gaming is if your player and you agree, do what works best for your table.. each table is different and what works for one won't necessarily work for another.

I guess, if you and the player are comfortable with that go for it. Allow them to just skip the talents after 6.. optionally of course.

If I was your player I would choose to keep getting the Parrys and Reflects. Even with 6 ranks, that's still only avoiding 8 damage.. my villain in my game has 4 yellow dice, a blue, and a lightsaber that does 10 damage. He easily has the potential to get up to 20 dam if against someone unprepared. I would hate to skimp on the parrys and reflects and have it cost my characters life..

But the joy of gaming is if your player and you agree, do what works best for your table.. each table is different and what works for one won't necessarily work for another.

A good point. However, I think my math may be a little different.

As the pool grows the success curve flattens. A potential 20 damage probably translates to 13-15 on 80%+ of rolls.

Parry 6 + Soak 4 + Armored Robes obviates 13 damage.

And, characters often have other talents than give them additional defense... at the cost of more strain.

Still, a parry should negate all damage from an incoming saber (IMO), and if your villain is swinging for 20, yep... keep stacking.