On 1/11/2017 at 0:04 PM, Daeglan said:

Instead of lightsaber forms being universal let the first form you pick be universal. And then the rest are not?

It's only 10 XP... It doesn't break the bank, but it makes players think twice about their builds, so that it's not just one obvious path for everyone. Rather than buying into Ataru Striker simply because t hey have high Agility, for example, the extra 10-XP-cost makes them weigh it against their in-career choice of Shii-Cho Knight, which in turn causes them to think critically about how they see their PC developing.

I'd keep RAW in place.

I'll never see 10 XP (other than species starting XP as it determines Characteristics) as something that makes or breaks a decision for me in this game.

15 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I'll never see 10 XP (other than species starting XP as it determines Characteristics) as something that makes or breaks a decision for me in this game.

It depends on the GM, but it basically amounts to one session of play. Doesn't seem like a lot, no.

13 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

I'll never see 10 XP (other than species starting XP as it determines Characteristics) as something that makes or breaks a decision for me in this game.

Yeah, it's definitely not a make or break thing, but more just a minor consideration. I guess I just like the idea of the cross-career XP tax...even if the spread of lightsaber-focused specializations within the careers does seem somewhat arbitrary at times

Well lets get down to brass tacks

I want to make Mace Windu style master of all Lightsaber styles.

That xp tax is now 70 xp on top of the xp tax for additional specs.

Getting a lightsaber is hard.

Making a lightsaber is hard

Learning how to use one shouldn't be I start with a lightsaber spec.

One of the biggest reasons to make them Universal is the characters while force sensitive should not just be able to spend XP and pick up a light saber spec or even start with one.

Learning how to use one should require an epic quest to glean the lost art of lightsaber combat and its really hard to argue with, but its a base specialization in my Career. (Whine Whine Whine)

You make them Universal and not only does it remove stupid xp tax and free up room for additional career specs, but also makes it impossible to start with them and makes it as difficult as the GM wants to make it to learn them.

1. Don't confuse game mechanics with story elements. You can have a master of all lightsaber styles simply by increasing your lightsaber rank to 5 and narrating appropriately. Being able to use every single characteristic for your lightsaber checks is useless, since you are generally going to want to use your best dice pool for attacks (unless of course you were after the "I am not left-handed! " trope).

Of course, if we're talking like you want all the possible actions for versatility (like Hawk Bat Swoop, Saber Throw, Draw Closer, Makashi Flourish, etc), then I guess that makes sense for a "Master of all lightsaber styles," but there are two considerations to be made:

A) Why does a lightsaber master get away with not paying the extra XP for out-of-career specializations, while of someone wants to be a "master of gear modifications" has to spend the extra XP in order to buy into Gadgeteer, Armorer, Modder, Artisan, Mechanic, Scientist, etc?

B) We're already talking about a PC that has seen countless hours of play. In the long run, I don't think a few sessions' worth of XP is going to make that big a difference.

2. The GM is free to open or restrict any specializations that he wants from purchase. Making them universal does not automatically put them out of reach for players. That would be another house rule, to support the first house rule. Why not just make one house rule? "Talk with me if you plan to buy any lightsaber specializations." Done.

10 hours ago, awayputurwpn said:

2. The GM is free to open or restrict any specializations that he wants from purchase. Making them universal does not automatically put them out of reach for players. That would be another house rule, to support the first house rule. Why not just make one house rule? "Talk with me if you plan to buy any lightsaber specializations." Done.

This is really the important part, I think. There's nothing wrong with a player going up to their GM and saying "Hey, I'd like to make a complete lightsaber specialist but the XP tax for going outside my starting Career is too **** high." From there, the GM can decide how they want to accommodate that particular character concept.

Well, how many specializations does one really need to be a true "lightsaber specialist"?

About the only Jedi Master that was noted to be a "master" of the Six Classic Forms was Cin Drallig, the Order's Battlemaster, and he's mostly Legends in terms of continuity and capability. Even Mace Windu wasn't truly a "master" of the Six Classic Forms, though he was well versed in them. Kenobi, noted as the master of Soresu, was well-versed in Shii-Cho and Ataru.

I'd say that by the time a PC has picked up at least Niman Disciple (to get the ranks of Parry, Reflect, Defensive Training, and Force Rating) and at least one other Lightsaber Form spec as well as gotten their Lightsaber skill rank to a 5, then that PC is a "lightsaber specialist" and is likely well-versed in the other Forms, even if they've not fully "mastered" them.

Of course, there's also the element that PCs in FaD who take one of the LS Form specs aren't really studying the proper Jedi version of the Form, and instead are using a version composed of what elements they could learn of the Form from other sources.

Any hyper-specialized character in this system has to go outside of their career. If you want all the ranks of Surgeon in the game you can't stay in one career. If you want all the ranks of Solid Repairs in the game you can't stay in one career. If you want all the ranks of True Aim in the game you can't stay in one career. The 10XP markup for picking up things across careers isn't really all that big of a penalty either. That's only a total of 50XP additional cost for picking up all the lightsaber trees, and that's just peanuts compared to the 150 XP you'd spend just buying the trees, and the ~200 XP you'd have to spend in each of them to actually get all the relevant talents.

Also, if you actually put a character with the 1500 or so XP it would take to meaningfully fill out all 6 lightsaber trees up against a character who only has one lightsaber tree and spent the rest of that XP on force ratings and powers the second character would absolutely crush the first. They would actually have a more powerful lightsaber attack, because they would be rolling 6 force dice on their master technique, and probably have picked their lightsaber tree to coincide with their highest stat, while the lightsaber master only throws 2 force dice at their master techniques, and at least half their techniques are going to be in low stats. Then on top of that the more rounded high XP character is just going to have a ton of tricks up their sleeve that having 10 ranks in Parry / Reflect are no answer for. For that matter, even if you had 10 ranks in Parry, that's still only 12 damage parried, which a character using a power like Draw Closer with 6 force dice will batter through without even blinking to get crits on you.

Preface: I've not read all the posts in this thread - apologies if I cover something already mentioned.

I think the Warrior Career would be a good place for a Lightsaber generalist specialisation. It can include general combat powers like disarm, resist disarm, balance, second wind, grit, toughened, force assault, defensive training, sum djem, circle of shelter, etc. So it would not include parry and reflect, since they are tied to the specific forms. Perhaps if it includes some set piece powers, you could even remove dedication and force rating from the tree. In this way it could offer a range of lightsaber generic abilities. It doesn't have to be OP, but it can be a bit more general like the Force Sensitive Exile or Force Emergent.

8 hours ago, masterstrider said:

Preface: I've not read all the posts in this thread - apologies if I cover something already mentioned.

I think the Warrior Career would be a good place for a Lightsaber generalist specialisation. It can include general combat powers like disarm, resist disarm, balance, second wind, grit, toughened, force assault, defensive training, sum djem, circle of shelter, etc. So it would not include parry and reflect, since they are tied to the specific forms. Perhaps if it includes some set piece powers, you could even remove dedication and force rating from the tree. In this way it could offer a range of lightsaber generic abilities. It doesn't have to be OP, but it can be a bit more general like the Force Sensitive Exile or Force Emergent.

Part of the problem there is that you start making said spec something of a grab bag of goodies for a Lightsaber user, especially as you'd be cherry-picking some of the better talents from other LS Form specs based upon your suggested list.

Honestly, for something of a "lightsaber generalist" you'd probably be using Warrior's Shii-Cho Knight. By it's design, it's a very solid lightsaber combatant spec that can provide a solid defense vs. melee attacks while still being able to get their shots in.

I'd expect a generalist to have some way to defend against ranged attacks, though. It's a staple of lightsaber combat.

51 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Part of the problem there is that you start making said spec something of a grab bag of goodies for a Lightsaber user, especially as you'd be cherry-picking some of the better talents from other LS Form specs based upon your suggested list.

Honestly, for something of a "lightsaber generalist" you'd probably be using Warrior's Shii-Cho Knight. By it's design, it's a very solid lightsaber combatant spec that can provide a solid defense vs. melee attacks while still being able to get their shots in.

Personally, I'm happy with the specs as they are: they are designed to be mixed and matched to provide a lot of unique combinations, which adds to the replay-ability.

But if you have a hard-on to create a lightsaber spec for a specific type of game, then you're probably better off just making a custom tree.

1 hour ago, masterstrider said:

Personally, I'm happy with the specs as they are: they are designed to be mixed and matched to provide a lot of unique combinations, which adds to the replay-ability.

But if you have a hard-on to create a lightsaber spec for a specific type of game, then you're probably better off just making a custom tree.

Eh, I kind of disagree, there. If I want to make an awesome pilot, I can do it with a single career: Ace. That's six specs of piloting goodness (five if you're not counting Beast Rider, which I would understand) right there. The only piloting-based specs left out of the career (that isn't a duplicate of a spec already in the career) are Squadron leader (which focuses more on leading from a starfighter than flying one), Starfighter Ace (which is only relevant to the character if you're Force Sensitive), and Racer (see previous).

On the other hand, however, if I want to make an awesome lightsaber fighter, I'm kind of hosed because the lightsaber trees are all spread out across multiple careers.

If I had a player came to me at the start of a game and told me that their character concept is basically Cin Drallig but the XP tax is bugging them, I'd tell them I'd be willing to "defer" the tax. Every lightsaber spec they take counts as being within their careers for purposes of calculating XP cost, but if they buy any Force-related NON-lightsaber spec, they have to pay all of the XP they have 'deferred' so far. They would also be required to start with a lightsaber spec.

The purpose of that, of course, is to prevent someone from grabbing all of the LS trees on the cheap and then taking a single Force-focused spec like Seer to bounce up their Force Rating. If you want to focus on lightsabers, I'll facilitate that...but there needs to be a cost. You COULD be stricter and just apply the 'deferred payment' to ANY non-LS spec, force sensitive spec or no. It would depend on what the player had in mind for their concept.

WHUT?! WHERE... IS... MY... WARRIOR SOURCE BOOK!?!?!

On 1/11/2017 at 4:14 PM, Decorus said:

Actually Dooku is a Consular. He was one of Yoda's Padawans. He's a Consular that uses Makashi not an Advisor.

Infiltrator isn't even what it claims to be its some kind of melee combat tree pretending to be a stealth tree.

Sage is a half knowledge tree with Social skills shoved in because Consular is lacking a diplomat tree. So we end up with a bad knowledge bad social tree.

Advisor is the same way half face half force wizard which makes little or no sense.

They are both horrible trees that lack most of what they are described to do, because Consular can't have a Diplomat tree since they shoved in Niman. Meanwhile Mystic can't have a Shaman/Witch/Sorceror Tree since it has to have Makashi which is about as Mystic as a Japanese Robotics Engineer.

Gotta disagree with you here about the Sage tree. It's not the best social tree, but it is a great knowledge tree.

The best ranked knowledge talent is Knowledge Specialization, and Sage has three of that, the most of any tree. It also has Valuable Facts, which lets you use your knowledge to give allies very powerful bonuses.

In my opinion Sage is a better knowledge tree than Scholar.

Knowledge specialization is a bad talent and by bad I mean holy crap they should pay you to take it.

You want to pay XP to give up Triumphs for an Xtra success per rank on a single knowledge skill?

Now the other one is by far the best talent in the tree Once per encounter make a knowledge check and give an ally an Automatic Triumph on the next skill check they make.

Paying a triumph is rough, but if you just failed a check you need to pass...

And think of the competition. The other ranked knowledge talents are things like researcher and respected scholar.

So basically you are talking about lightning striking you kind of odds.

First the check has to be on that specific knowledge.

Second you have to roll a triumph

Third you have to have failed the roll.

I have never in the years I have been playing ever had that specific set of circumstances happen in weekly games.

Just now, Decorus said:

So basically you are talking about lightning striking you kind of odds.

First the check has to be on that specific knowledge.

Second you have to roll a triumph

Third you have to have failed the roll.

I have never in the years I have been playing ever had that specific set of circumstances happen in weekly games.

Do any of your players specialize in knowledge skills?

21 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

Do any of your players specialize in knowledge skills?

This is an important question. If you have a player that specializes in knowledge skills, it's important to give them lots of opportunity to shine by throwing them knowledge checks in their field at them. It's sort of like asking "What's the point of a talent eliminating Setback die when you never have have to deal with them anyways?" The question reveals that the GM is not providing the right kinds of challenges for the player to overcome with their Talents.

I'm a sage with 3 ranks in it for lore.

Its never happened once I've been playing the game weekly since FFD came out.

1 minute ago, Decorus said:

I'm a sage with 3 ranks in it for lore.

Its never happened once I've been playing the game weekly since FFD came out.

If you've never failed a Lore check with a Triumph you either don't have many Proficiency die, don't take Lore checks very often, or your GM isn't giving you difficult enough Lore checks (or a combo of all three).

No it simply means either I fail no triumph succeed with a triumph or succeed without a triumph.

Or 3 additional successes will not make a difference on the roll.

6 minutes ago, Decorus said:

No it simply means either I fail no triumph succeed with a triumph or succeed without a triumph.

Or 3 additional successes will not make a difference on the roll.

Yeah I dunno what to say to your situation, but I have personally seen the talent put to good use.

It's situational for sure, but the ability to turn a failure into a success is pretty powerful in just about any circumstance.

Additionally, sometimes it's nice to have those extra successes for more detailed info on the exact topic at hand (rather than "something else interesting" for the Triumph).