I am having trouble seeing the usefulness of this talent. Question to GMs: if your player rolled a Triumph on a combat check, and they wanted to spend it on knocking their target prone, would you say no if they didn't have the talent? That seems like a very minor thing to ask for, especially considering that a maneuver is all that is required to stand up.

A prone target is more susceptible to melee attacks. Used tactically, it could have its applications.

And yeah, seeing as it's a talent for that purpose, I would have the player(s) require it.

It's all about resource economy.

Its open to Gm's and PC's to decide together.

Personally i think the Talent is there to act as a guarantee. All Triumphs are at the discretion of the GM, so the Player asks if the desired effect is reasonable and the GM has to OK it. So for us in this case i would sometimes say "yeah, 1 triumph, its slippery and the NPC falls over" but other situations i would say "this guys tough and has a solid footing, your going to need to use 2 Triumphs to knock this guy down". Then in other cases i may say "nope, this creature is just too big" or "this NPC is just simply too tough". This way its not an on/off switch and i can make any situation more or less challenging with exactly the same NPC's. But the PC who gets knockdown (a generally cheap talent) now has the power to knock any opposition down for only a single Triumph guaranteed, i cant say no.

Its open to Gm's and PC's to decide together.

Personally i think the Talent is there to act as a guarantee. All Triumphs are at the discretion of the GM, so the Player asks if the desired effect is reasonable and the GM has to OK it. So for us in this case i would sometimes say "yeah, 1 triumph, its slippery and the NPC falls over" but other situations i would say "this guys tough and has a solid footing, your going to need to use 2 Triumphs to knock this guy down". Then in other cases i may say "nope, this creature is just too big" or "this NPC is just simply too tough". This way its not an on/off switch and i can make any situation more or less challenging with exactly the same NPC's. But the PC who gets knockdown (a generally cheap talent) now has the power to knock any opposition down for only a single Triumph guaranteed, i cant say no.

In the full description (EotE p138) the talent does require additional Triumph for larger Silhouette. I do see it as a little under-powered, especially for the Fringer, who pays 20 for it. I suspect a Fringer player who didn't care for two 25 point ranks in Dodge would probably avoid this area of the tree in general.

A few options I would consider to make it more useful.

• Apply it to Brawl as well as melee attacks. The knockdown text specifies melee attacks, but it seems appropriate that practice in knocking someone off balance helps in unarmed combat as well. It also helps in that the text requires a "hit" and not damage, and more often than melee, brawl attacks tend to result in a hit that does not exceed soak. Without the talent, perhaps only hits that do damage can also knock an opponent down.
• The typical result keeps the target in its current range band (which for melee is assumed to be engaged) You can give a player the option of forcing an opponent back (disengaging) as well. If both combatants are using melee, this can be advantageous, as the enemy now has to stand and move (second maneuver) to engage on their turn. On the other hand, if the player engaged an enemy armed with a Ranged weapon, they can knockdown the opponent and remain engaged to keep the enemy penalized.

And, as I mentioned before, the usefulness of any talent depends on how often it comes up. I generally try to include challenges and opportunities that let players use their talents. This could be a difficult one.

We house ruled this talent to allow it to Auto Knockdown without spending the Triumph, if the player wishes.

Kinda like those research talents that grant an extra success on a Triumph. We make it so this adds more to the Triumph result, in a narrow fashion. Still is only melee. And still requires multiple Triumphs to knockdown larger creatures.

Works well and no longer feels like a waste.

Apply it to Brawl as well as melee attacks. The knockdown text specifies melee attacks, but it seems appropriate that practice in knocking someone off balance helps in unarmed combat as well. It also helps in that the text requires a "hit" and not damage, and more often than melee, brawl attacks tend to result in a hit that does not exceed soak. Without the talent, perhaps only hits that do damage can also knock an opponent down.

Unnecessary. Unarmed brawling has the Knockdown quality.

Looked at in a vacuum it's not super useful, but in conjunction with a lot of other things that may be occurring in a given combat it could be quite effective.

If there is more than one PC engaged in Brawl/Melee with the target they of course get a Boost.

If a couple key critical hits like Winded and Hamstrung have been landed, then the target is really SoL at that point once it's knocked down.

Apply it to Brawl as well as melee attacks. The knockdown text specifies melee attacks, but it seems appropriate that practice in knocking someone off balance helps in unarmed combat as well. It also helps in that the text requires a "hit" and not damage, and more often than melee, brawl attacks tend to result in a hit that does not exceed soak. Without the talent, perhaps only hits that do damage can also knock an opponent down.

Unnecessary. Unarmed brawling has the Knockdown quality.

You're right. I missed that, seeing as how it's buried under the "additional combat modifiers" heading, and not mentioned at all in the Brawl skill description (that would've been handy). Also a sign that I haven't had a lot of unarmed combat in my games. Working on that. (separate thread)

A prone target is more susceptible to melee attacks. Used tactically, it could have its applications.

And yeah, seeing as it's a talent for that purpose, I would have the player(s) require it.

The more interesting question is: If it weren't for that talent, would you allow Knockdown with a triumph? And if so, why the talent at all?

We house ruled this talent to allow it to Auto Knockdown without spending the Triumph, if the player wishes.

That sounds very powerful to me. I'd rather it gave the Knockdown weapon quality to all melee attacks; same name, same effect.

A prone target is more susceptible to melee attacks. Used tactically, it could have its applications.

And yeah, seeing as it's a talent for that purpose, I would have the player(s) require it.

The more interesting question is: If it weren't for that talent, would you allow Knockdown with a triumph? And if so, why the talent at all?

I dislike conjecturing on what ifs. Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't, but we have the talent so that's that.

The "melee" in Knockdown isn't capitalized. It can apply to all forms of melee attacks, whether through Melee, Brawling, or Lightsaber.