Never played this version of SW. My books are in the mail (Core, Force and Destiny, Fly Casual). I bought FaD because I was curious how FFG implemented the Force, but I intend to stick with EotE for the most part and leave FaD for a side campaign or one shot where folks want super powers.

Anyway, my question is: I have been hearing about gear tweaking/upgrades. I want to know if this game leans more towards skill or toys? Is Super Slicer Sarah with her standard datapad better at hacking than Dabbler Dave with a hyper custom slicing deck that he stole from ImpSec? Is Sharpshooter Sam with an off the shelf stock pistol going to be as effective as Spray and Pray Steve with his jury rigged autofire?

I prefer a more skill based game if possible...what has been your folks experience with this system?

May the Schwartz be with you...

I'd say the game is more based on skills, toys certainly help and some combo (jury-rigged autofire is an example) are very powerful, but it all comes down to skills: rolling those triumphs and advantages are the factor that define the day.

So super slicer sarah is probably much better at slicing than Dave, because the hyper custom datapad will give nothing more than one or maybe two boost dice, but Sarah has lots of skills and talents to work her magic.

Same goes for sharpshooter Sam: if he has invested in skills and relavant talents he has a much better chance of hitting the target and taking him out (especially with criticals) while Spray and Pray Steve needs enough skills to even activate autofire to do his spray and pray trick ('cause autofire increases the diffculty and must be targeted at the most difficult target first). Tbh jury-rigged autofire is quite OP so in a game Sam could excell at taking out single targets, while Steve, if he pulls the trick off, can reasonalbly exterminate a group.

In general skills are much more relevant in this game, especially because every pc can do everything: you can use a totally untrained skill so investng in abilties is always better than just using new toys. Weapons can however change the equation due to their special charcteristics that when activated can easily give the upper hand to a less skilled character. Allthings being equal skills (and talents) are the important part.

Tl;dr skills are more important than toys, but some weapons can heavily influence the results.

The majority of the focus in this game is on skills as well as talents. This isn't pre-5e D&D where your character is only as good as their gear.

In most cases, if equipment provides a bonus to a skill check, it's a fairly minor one, with the equipment chapter suggesting at most a boost die for "having the right tool for the right job." Most gear that provides a flat bonus to a skill check is often limited to a free advantage (nice but not a game-changer) or boost die (still nice, but not a huge game-changer in terms of whether you'll succeed or fail).

Weapons are a tad different, as the attachment/modification system can make an appropriately modified weapon a real monster, with a classic example being a heavy blaster rifle (which has auto-fire, widely agreed upon to be one of the most broken weapon qualities in the game) with an augmented spin barrel (adds more damage and allows for armor penetration when modified) or a lightsaber with a fully modified Ilum crystal, or even a bowcaster with both of its specific attachments to make it perform pretty close to how Chewie's bowcaster did in TFA, i.e. instant death to anyone that doesn't have a proper name. However, in many cases those attachments are expensive (lightsaber crystals especially) or require somebody that's really good at Mechanics to be able to cram in all those modifications (which get progressively more difficult).

Skills. The relative power curve of characters is decidedly different in this game I think. While PCs general level of lethality can spin up quickly, their level of defensiveness does not. Even a fairly advanced PC has to exercise a level of care in combat.

Anyway, my question is: I have been hearing about gear tweaking/upgrades. I want to know if this game leans more towards skill or toys? Is Super Slicer Sarah with her standard datapad better at hacking than Dabbler Dave with a hyper custom slicing deck that he stole from ImpSec? Is Sharpshooter Sam with an off the shelf stock pistol going to be as effective as Spray and Pray Steve with his jury rigged autofire?

I would go with "neither". Getting cool mods is fine and all, but not necessary - my politico went through life not having any. Having a good skill is useful, but any schlubb can have 4 yellows in a skill. Talents, on the other hand, are where the real meat of a character is.

My brand new technician is pretty good at fixing stuff with her two Mechanics and 3 attribute - but I am working my way towards Contraption (build a device that lets you solve a problem. Need a bridge to get across this canyon? Done!) and Bad Motovator (once a game, make any device fail) as fast as I can. And I really want to jump over to Outlaw Tech to get the Utility Belt talent (spend a destiny point and produce a previously undocumented tool or weapon).

Amazing gear does not make up for lack of skill/talents. The character with agility >2 and ranged(light) >0 with a generic blaster pistol will more often hit and damage and trigger cool effects than the character with agility <=2, no ranks of ranged(heavy) and a jury-rigged heavy blaster rifle tweaked as much as possible.

That being said, amazing gear combined with decent* skill and talents can be better than a character with great skills and talents.

*I define decent as a dice pool that consists of a mix of 4 green/yellow dice with some talents to either give cool options or enhance the normal options.

Of important note, the only types of gear so far that have attachments and modifications are weapons, armor and starships. So there are no Shadowrun situations where the script-kiddie dumped 500,000+ nuyen into their cybereck so they're more effective than the actual skilled hacker. The right tools give a boost die, maybe two. Some of the best tools give an upgrade, or reduce difficulty, but those are a bit more rare.

What some groups find worrisome are situations where a player might have a characteristic at 5 or 6, because it's tied to the skill they wanted to use most, and they completely eclipse another player who has a skill tied to that characteristic, but that player's characteristic isn't as high. An example of this that I have seen is one player plays a mechanic/tinkerer type. They want to build the coolest toys. So they play a high intellect species, like Drall. They raise intellect to 5 at chargen, and raise it to 6 with dedication. Now, any other player who wants to do an intellect based check has the potential to be completely overshadowed by this Drall. Good groups can deal with these situations in many ways. I bring it up only because I have seen it cause some trouble for some people previously.

Attributes are more important than skills (and hence why raising them after play begins is frightfully expensive).

Skills are good, but don't actually raise competence (chances of success) so much as raise the chances of critical success.

The best pilot ever played in an Edge/Age game I've run only had pilot space 3... but had fully completed the Pilot tree, and was halfway through Commodore. He was frightfully effective. And that was before the release of new pilot-affecting trees in AoR: Stay On Target...

In a lot of cases, talents overshadow skills. Skill 1 and 5 talent based blue addons, on an att 4, is frightfully effective.

Attributes >> Skills > Gear.

Attributes big bonus is they apply to entire skill groups and set one of the two parameters for the dice pool. Skill are nice because they're relatively easy to raise, but provide only marginal value until they exceed the characters' attributes. Gear is a flat (but usually minor) boost that's applicable to everyone, so its value stays the same while skills and attributes can go up over time.

Gear (other than weapons) has a pretty flat power curve, so one medkit, with minor differences, is much like another medkit. The choices for gear are what specific niche does the gear need to fill and how much of it can you afford or carry.

I came across this thread about dice math the other day and it's been an incredibly interesting read.

The quick and dirty seems to be "the more dice, the better chances of success." How you go about getting those dice is the fiddly bit.

In combat some players get a little wrapped up in killing targets as a measure of success or effectiveness. There are ways to add quite a few Boost dice via attachments and with some weapon effects like Ensnare and Concussive, all you need is a successful combat check and a couple Advantages to have a devastating effect on a target without even exceeding Soak. Point being you don't need a super high attribute or skill rank to actually be able to make a difference in a fight.

One thing is for certain, you can't buy much in the way of shiny toys with the initial 500 credits...

One thing is for certain, you can't buy much in the way of shiny toys with the initial 500 credits...

Notably, the cheapest rifle that's not a slug thrower is the 600 credit hunting rifle. Playing a character who won't use deadly force except in specific circumstances, it was important to me to have a gun with a stun setting. Had to get more obligation just to afford an acceptable blaster.

I like both.

Take the XP Bonus from obligation and spend it in higher Attributes. 3-3-3-3-2-2 is a good and solid start. Any attribute on 4 is in my oppinion a waste of xp and gives you more trouble than benefits. The game is all about skills and you need a very broad approach to play comfortable. My first characters were one-trick-ponys and while they shined in there area of expertize, they sucked in nearly all other fields. Unless you play in a very big group, every character has to be at least able to do routine jobs in at least two branches. My Gunslinger in our current campaign is a very good fighter (obvious), also good in coercion as well as sculduggery. Then we have a Socialiser (Charmer/Performer) who is good as well in negotiation, charm and deceive and an able fighter with melee weapons and we have a Pilot/Technician. It would be fine if we had a full time slicer/medic, but at least our GM granted us a NPC Astromech droid.

Start raising your skills, as there are fare more medium skill checks than hard ones but they tend to come in plenty of aspects and choose talents that grant you more options in favor of those which grant you boosts in a single task you are already competent in.

A vew things to consider: You can buy attributes only at character creation, after that you have to buy a skill tree up till dedication, Bionics are very expensive and prone to deactivation by ion weapons, Money is easier to get than XP, the gear you can buy for 3000 creds is not top of the line and it is very easy to loose gear in this game while it is very unlikely that you will loose skills or attributes permanent.

Take the XP Bonus from obligation and spend it in higher Attributes. 3-3-3-3-2-2 is a good and solid start. Any attribute on 4 is in my oppinion a waste of xp and gives you more trouble than benefits. The game is all about skills and you need a very broad approach to play comfortable. My first characters were one-trick-ponys and while they shined in there area of expertize, they sucked in nearly all other fields. Unless you play in a very big group, every character has to be at least able to do routine jobs in at least two branches. My Gunslinger in our current campaign is a very good fighter (obvious), also good in coercion as well as sculduggery. Then we have a Socialiser (Charmer/Performer) who is good as well in negotiation, charm and deceive and an able fighter with melee weapons and we have a Pilot/Technician. It would be fine if we had a full time slicer/medic, but at least our GM granted us a NPC Astromech droid.

Start raising your skills, as there are fare more medium skill checks than hard ones but they tend to come in plenty of aspects and choose talents that grant you more options in favor of those which grant you boosts in a single task you are already competent in.

A vew things to consider: You can buy attributes only at character creation, after that you have to buy a skill tree up till dedication, Bionics are very expensive and prone to deactivation by ion weapons, Money is easier to get than XP, the gear you can buy for 3000 creds is not top of the line and it is very easy to loose gear in this game while it is very unlikely that you will loose skills or attributes permanent.

This isn't really widely accepted advice. There is nothing wrong with skewing your Characteristics a bit more.

While I would agree with the general principle that this game favours character over gear, bare in mind that good weapons can really change the outcome of a fight, particularly against low-soak enemies. This is really, REALLY important to remember as a GM. For example, a group of Stormtrooper minions, while not particularly skillful, carry blaster rifles, which are long range and do 9 damage + successes. If you've got a couple of Brawn 1 party members (a Neimoidian Politico, or a Toydarian Trader, or even something like a Twi'lek Assassin) then they've likely only got a soak of 1 or 2, unless they've seriously invested in armour, and their wounds are capping out at 10-12. One lucky round of fire could easily see them go down.

Talents, on the other hand, are where the real meat of a character is.

My brand new technician is pretty good at fixing stuff with her two Mechanics and 3 attribute - but I am working my way towards Contraption (build a device that lets you solve a problem. Need a bridge to get across this canyon? Done!) and Bad Motovator (once a game, make any device fail) as fast as I can. And I really want to jump over to Outlaw Tech to get the Utility Belt talent (spend a destiny point and produce a previously undocumented tool or weapon).

Absolutely. Talents are what takes a character from "pretty good" to "that was awesome".

More significantly, talents are what really make playing different specialisations feel different. In terms of skills and attributes, there's not a massive amount of different between playing a Human Assassin or a Mon Calamari Heavy (would love to see that build, BTW), but the only talents they share are Grit and Dedication. With no talents, those characters could end up mechanically identical; with a full talent tree, you can identify which is which after a single round of combat.

I didn't say "don't buy talents at all" but invest in a good foundation before you specialize. Talents are nice, but you have to keep the balance between specialization and playing a generalist. My first Character was a Gadgeteer who was very talent-oriented and very incompetent at anything but slotting enemies. I advice the same when it comes to the gear for the job. Starting low and slow and getting the tools ingame is in my opionion the more efficient way and opens up more ways in the future.

It depends very much on the style of your Game and the way your GM is handling the game. Our GM practices a sandbox-style game where you really need a group that can handle most tasks that are covered in the game. If you play a fight-heavy campaign or a social oriented campaign it is better to specialize the characters early on.

The phenomenon mentioned by edvardavern is a very good point indeed. Nearly all figures in the game are glass cannons. It is easy to dash out lots of damage but to withstand damage on the other hand is very hard. While most player characters can stand two to three or even more shots with common blaster pistols a attack with heavyer weaponry is very likely to come to an fatal outcome. A Character with Soak 2-4 - which most PCs will propably end with - is able to resist one shot and the secont will bring him over the edge if the character is not able to use a stimpack. And even then the next shot will finish him off. Going down is not lethal in most cases but the outcome is in most situations fatal for the plans of the group since it is very hard to get a unconcius character to safety - not speaking of completing the assignement. Disruptors or other weapons with the vicous-quality are even worse because they can damage a character permanent or even kill with one hit and a good roll on the crit table. So the Dodge-Talent is vital as well as planning attacks and ambushes and to choose the right weapons for the job. But you can avoid many fights at all if you are skilled in stealth and skulduggery or if you have a competent face in your group.

My players have been patiantly awaiting what will come from the Technician book. So far I have not allowed gear to be moded, in exception of jet-packs (which count as vehicle).