How does this work out for you, and for the people you play with? When doing theoretical builds, and with actually played characters, do you tend to fill out most of a spec, or is it more of a dipping into a few cheap talents, or a race to the bottom for expensive talents? Or something else?

I think it's either or, either there are a few talents to dip into or its a race to dedication.

Most of the spec most of the time.

It depends on the spec and your character concept, really. As a general rule, I try not to move to a new spec until I've nabbed the dedication talent and (if applicable) increased my force rating. Some trees have great stuff all over them, others just have less unique stuff.

For example, a Shadow (Sentinel) could conceivably just take enough talents to grab Shroud and move on. The other stuff is nice, but I can easily imagine a force using character that wants his force powers to go unnoticed but doesn't particularly care about stealth or slicing.

On the other hand, if you are focusing on combat and take gunslinger, you'll probably take everything. You *might* skip "Confidence" if your GM doesn't bother much with fear checks, but otherwise each and every talent there is going to help.

On the gripping hand, how much of the Scoundrel (Smuggler) tree you take would probably depend on your character concept. It's a well rounded spec with combat talents, social talents, and other utility talents, and a great way to add some depth to a character concept, but it also doesn't have much that's truly unique. A gunslinger will take it and cherry pick the social/trading stuff off it. A thief will take it and cherry pick the bits that improve combat ability. You might go ahead and grab everything, because more ranks of "Black Market Contacts,"Quick Strike," and "Rapid Reaction" only help; thought I can see skipping "Convincing Demeanor" after a point. You can only remove so many setback die, after all.

It depends on which tree.

In the 3/4 year we have been playing, my personal method of buying that I will usually buy a tree, make a beeline to the talents I really want (Gadgeteer was armour master and Dedication; assassin it was dedication, A-lessons. I only really wanted force emergant for the force rating, so I barely brought into that. Artisian I brought down to untucative improvements for example) and I would usually fill out the rest of the tree later. Two years ago I brought the deadly accuracy, and it's only been now that I brought the second Jury Rig from gadgetteer to make my saber pike lighter after a critical injury lowered my brawn. Brought more ranks of lethal blows and brought deep into force emergant after I got much what I wanted from artisan. So I tend to buy to a talent, then flit between trees to suit my fancy.

Most of my group tend to tackle a tree at a time; they bank up exp and buy heavy into new trees.

OKay, I'm speaking for me and the one character that I'm playing.

First, I'm relatively new and the character is only "valued" at 200 Exp with most of that going to skills.

And one other career. So I have two talent trees, and may pick up a third . . . maybe.

Because Exp is a VERY rare resource in our campaign, I'm going to be very selective in spending Exp on talents, and will be selective and probably "mostly" Cherry pick talents that fit my character concept best.

I will also "race" for the dedication, but at a slower pace.

And unless the GM starts handing out EXP faster I will NEVER fill out a complete talent tree. At our current pace, if I spent Exp on nothing but talents on a single talent tree, it would take me 3-5 years to fill out a single tree, IRL.

I made a really durable "tank" by starting with Armorer, buying down to Supreme Armor Master, then picking & choosing talents from Soresu Defender and Shien Expert. I dislike the way the rules penalize you for dipping into multiple trees, so I generally tend to keep character concepts to two or three trees, max.

In the current game im playing I have one spec (at 180 earned xp) and a couple of force powers as a guardian warden. My comrade in arms has all 3 warrior specs. So it really depends on your concept.

I can only speak for myself, but it really depends on the tree. I'll usually grab everything in the first tier, since I can get those in one session, and probably everything in the second tier - we're only 3 or 4 weeks deep in the game by then. From there, it depends on what the talents are and where I want to go with the character.

All trees are not equal mechanically. All trees may not completely cover a concept narratively. Or they might do both. So it is tree dependent I think.

I am also picky, there is so much what is cool to have and so few XP.

How many XP do u guys get? We played once per week from 6 pm to 10:30 pm and we get like 10 XP for a normal session, 15 for a very busy one and 20 for the final of a campaign final. I calculated it once, but have it not here, but i think it was like 13 XP / Week

As SFC Snuffy alludes to, the escalating cost of buying new specializations discourages picking up a new spec just to get some cheap talents and some bonus career skills. The only spec I can think of off hand where I would be tempted to just do a little cherry picking would be Recruit, but in that case I'm just as likely to find a more useful tree that gets me the skills I was looking for.

That being said, I also rarely buy everything in a tree. There's usually some navigating around talents I'm not enthused about, and I might open a tree, grab a couple of talents, then go back to a different tree to fill it out some more before returning. I would say that if I buy a spec, I'm usually planning on sinking at least 150 XP into talents from it, so roughly half the tree.

I'm a little on the fence here since I've actually only created two characters with this system and one of them was a conversion from a different system. My first character (the converted one) is definitely one that picks different talents from multiple specs, none of which were taken to completion, but, instead were taken because of the need to get certain specific talents the character had from the previous systems. The second character I've created doesn't have any talents yet and how that character will develop is still up in the air since the campaign hasn't even started yet, as it's still being organized.

Generally, I've seen players do the following:

-Ignore talents, only buy skills

-Buy single, cherry-picked trees of talents from a given specialization (often to get Dedication)

-Buy multiple specializations to get more specialization skills, and focus on those and early talents.

I don't think I've ever seen a case of "buy an entire specialization" and move on.

All trees are not equal mechanically. All trees may not completely cover a concept narratively. Or they might do both. So it is tree dependent I think.

I've also found that many narrative concepts are covered by part of a tree while the other bits don't really relate. A few trees even seem to be set up that way on purpose.

Like Gadgeteer. Not a bad Talent in the tree but that right hand column is odd. I suppose your fists count as your first 'gadgets' for Jury Rigging someone's face....

The right side oft he tree is for melee weapon users and "batmans", take the rank of tinker, stick some stud's on the stun gloves and reduce the stun trigger to 1 advantage, make swords/axes really nasty or modify that extrostaff to double hit on 1 advantage. The right side of the tree exists for strong people that rely on gadgets.

Generally, I've seen players do the following:

-Ignore talents, only buy skills

-Buy single, cherry-picked trees of talents from a given specialization (often to get Dedication)

-Buy multiple specializations to get more specialization skills, and focus on those and early talents.

I don't think I've ever seen a case of "buy an entire specialization" and move on.

I've pretty much got all the warden tree ,I've only not 5 talents to go and only one is 20 xp,with the rest cneape. Only 60xp to go

A few trees even seem to be set up that way on purpose.

I noticed that with (I think it was) Fringer. There's a little section devoted to astrogation which is completely detached from the rest of the tree.

The right side oft he tree is for melee weapon users and "batmans", take the rank of tinker, stick some stud's on the stun gloves and reduce the stun trigger to 1 advantage, make swords/axes really nasty or modify that extrostaff to double hit on 1 advantage. The right side of the tree exists for strong people that rely on gadgets.

The right side of the tree lets you beat people sense less with your hands since it gives you a second rank of Brawl and no Melee at all.

I do what fits my concept.

My table has a broad range. A couple are cherry picking from up to three different trees, a few are staying solidly within two, one is making a beeline down her single tree for the Signature Ability.

It's different means to the same end. They are all playing the character concepts they want and spending their XP accordingly.

I'm the gm, I started my players at knight level (150 earned xp) and half of them had 2 talents trees from the get go... hmm those were the brand new to rpgs players that I helped build optimized characters (with significant input from them, the told me their concept and i built it for them). Three of the veteran players (but new to the system) started with a single tree and dashed to the bottom with the night level xp and the first session or two's xp to get dedication. After filling a tad more than half the tree, the veteran players took second specs, and dashed to the bottom to get dedication again. The players I advised builds for flitted between the two trees, kept up offensively

with the veterans by pumping xp into skills. Now these players have just got or are coming up on their second dedication and the veteran players are looking for a third spec or are filling out the first two.

Because my wife is pregnant, due in July or August, one of my veteran players is going to take over as GM and is going to start a force and destiny campaign. I've been designing the first character I will actually get to play. Actually it's a conversion/rebuild of a 4th level d20 RCR character that I played in a summer 2012 campaign run by one of my current veteran players (because he also has a young child he is not the one who is going to GM come fall). I'm spec'ing him as a warden Niman disciple (starting at 225 earned xp), taking the top row of niman-disciple, the top row and most of the left colum of warden (didn't quite have enough xp to get pin) but getting over balance and most of the left column of the sense power tree. I am going to flit back and forth between niman disciple and warden, but honestly apart from the bottom row of warden (and possibly the other fearless) i've got just about everything that I want out of warden (not quite 3/4 the tree when all is said and done). But the niman-disciple tree I want just about everything in, but i'llegar need to invest pretty significantly into the move power on my way there to make use of some key niman-disciple talents.

Congrats on the soon to be new family member. May I suggest some bedtime reading from certain rpg books set in a galaxy far, far away? :-)

Re: move and niman disciple. Force users are kind of multi spec by default, if you consider powers just another talent tree like any other. And without paying more and more xp for every new tree you dip into, too.

Congrats on the soon to be new family member. May I suggest some bedtime reading from certain rpg books set in a galaxy far, far away? :-)

Re: move and niman disciple. Force users are kind of multi spec by default, if you consider powers just another talent tree like any other. And without paying more and more xp for every new tree you dip into, too.