It really depends on your GM's style I think. I have played with GM's who will allow a group to carry a character through their dump stat if they jumped to a 5 on creation. I have also played with GM's who make it a personal goal to have every player test on their worst skills at least once a game. They believed that you have to own that dump stat as part of the character and failure can be used to develop the character. Persian flaw and all that mumbo-jumbo.

19 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

Reasonable and acceptable are not synonyms. Is it reasonable that YGG hits half the time? Sure. Is it tolerable and enjoyable for a player? Not so much.

Depends on the player

7 minutes ago, arrivan said:

It really depends on your GM's style I think... I have also played with GM's who make it a personal goal to have every player test on their worst skills at least once a game. They believed that you have to own that dump stat as part of the character and failure can be used to develop the character.

Remind me never to play with such GMs. They sound crappy. FFG is not supposed to be an adversarial game, GM versus players.

"Dump" stat is a carryover from d20, and the mindset you describe is also a carryover from games that spawned the concept of the "murder hobo".

27 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

Reasonable and acceptable are not synonyms. Is it reasonable that YGG hits half the time? Sure. Is it tolerable and enjoyable for a player? Not so much.

Maybe not for you, but I, for example, don't share that viewpoint. I wouldn't expect a rookie to hit more than half the time in a fight. It would actually be un enjoyable if someone who's supposed to be bad at a task succeeds most of the time.

10 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

Remind me never to play with such GMs. They sound crappy. FFG is not supposed to be an adversarial game, GM versus players.

"Dump" stat is a carryover from d20, and the mindset you describe is also a carryover from games that spawned the concept of the "murder hobo".

One roll per game (I'm assuming that means session) with a bad stat is adversarial?

Do you only ever roll your characters' good abilities?

3 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

Maybe not for you, but I, for example, don't share that viewpoint. I wouldn't expect a rookie to hit more than half the time in a fight. It would actually be un enjoyable if someone who's supposed to be bad at a task succeeds most of the time.

You misunderstand me, Stan. What is unenjoyable, for me, is playing a character who is ineffective at his or her chosen profession. Which is why I don't build characters with less than a 4 in their primary attribute.

6 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

You misunderstand me, Stan. What is unenjoyable, for me, is playing a character who is ineffective at his or her chosen profession. Which is why I don't build characters with less than a 4 in their primary attribute.

I see it as room to grow. Failure reveals character, after all.

Edit - Also, with YGGPP, you succeed two thirds of the time, not half the time, if I'm interpreting the Excel sheet I'm looking at correctly.

I don't think that mentality its necessarily adversarial. At least it needn't be.

Hilarity ensues when the stare down death and laugh soldier has to charm the local hutt.

However I think how to spread stats really does depends on the campaign and character, and GM style.

For example my go to character is a techie with a 4 in int and 3 in cunning and agility, 1 in brawn. Max obligation. He is awesome to play.

But I also play an almost all 3s Ewok marshal, that whoops ass but also bumbles and its loads of fun!

But the scales are so different, the techy is in an elite (knight level) team of fixers dealing with sith alchemy, and mutated rancors and sith apprentices.

The other is bar brawls and struggling to get along.

1 minute ago, Stan Fresh said:

Do you only ever roll your characters' good abilities?

Of course not. Most techs don't have good Agility. Few characters have good Presence. But there's a difference between rolling an average attribute because it's called for by the narrative and having a GM deliberately target players' weaknesses just to be nasty.

1 minute ago, Stan Fresh said:

I see it as room to grow. Failure reveals character, after all.

The FFG system, especially with Orokos doing the rolling, will generate plenty of "growth" opportunities and reveal lots of "character". PCs are supposed to be heroic, right? Let them have heroic skill pools.

7 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

Of course not. Most techs don't have good Agility. Few characters have good Presence. But there's a difference between rolling an average attribute because it's called for by the narrative and having a GM deliberately target players' weaknesses just to be nasty.

But "just to be nasty" is not what the other poster wrote at all. That's coming entirely from you.

Characters being bad at some stuff is an integral part of Star Wars. Han's utter incompetence at lying leads to one of the funnier scenes in the first movie, for example.

2 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

PCs are supposed to be heroic, right? Let them have heroic skill pools.

And having weaknesses and occasionally failing is part of being a hero.

I think lots of people view CHARGEN, particularly combat careers, through a lens of session 1, and neglect the hell out of stuff they'll regret later on, particularly their initiative.

8 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

Characters being bad at some stuff is an integral part of Star Wars. Han's utter incompetence at lying leads to one of the funnier scenes in the first movie, for example.

7 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

Remind me never to play with such GMs. They sound crappy. FFG is not supposed to be an adversarial game, GM versus players.

"Dump" stat is a carryover from d20, and the mindset you describe is also a carryover from games that spawned the concept of the "murder hobo".

I actually preferred his games because he was the better story teller. He really wasn't adversarial in nature at all, but you could count on having to make a wide variety of checks in any given play session. A character with 5 brawn couldn't just bow out of the social checks or knowledge checks. You could be sure while the face was negotiating a destiny point would get flipped and the 5 brawn would be drawn into the conversation as well and asked to make a roll. It could be a mook in the corner mistakes him for someone else or maybe the mark just doesn't like his species, or hey just some drunkard crashes into him and causes a scene. It wasn't one sided either. Our face had to climb walls and make athletics checks and often would fail and hinder the party in some way due to being Falleen with a 1 in brawn.

I was thinking of the nonsense he spews out when he answers the call from security on the Death Star.

I'm unconvinced that all the stuff trying to justify the parsecs line is anything but retconning for a simple writing flub on Lucas' part. In other words, I don't think it was a lie.

29 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

I was thinking of the nonsense he spews out when he answers the call from security on the Death Star.

I'm unconvinced that all the stuff trying to justify the parsecs line is anything but retconning for a simple writing flub on Lucas' part. In other words, I don't think it was a lie.

I believe both times were Harrison Ford ad-libbing. This is from ancient memory

Another (kinda sad) thing to consider is that upgrading a green die to a yellow die isn't exceptionally advantageous. YES, it very slightly increases the chance of Success, and YES it does a decent amount to increase the odds of Success + Advantage, but the fact of the matter is that, when comparing to what a green die can do alone, a green + Boost is better than a yellow. (Of course, that analysis ignores Triumphs, which are so much fun - and I don't care what the stats say or whether it's confirmation bias, but I always seem to see Triumph and Despairs when it would be the most interesting!) What this means, though, is that - unless you're looking for triumphs - someone with 4 Agility and no ranks in Piloting is going to generally do better than someone with 2 Agility and 4 ranks of Piloting.

That means, if you want to be good at something, plan on having good Characteristics rather than (in addition to, actually) good Skills . More dice is always better. And, when planning character advancement, Dedications are awesome. This is "negative Nancy" stat optimization talk, but some players get extraordinarily frustrated when they can't make rolls, so it's worth knowing what goes into having good odds.

Or be like Han - do whatever you want. Besides, the corollary to "more dice is always better" is "less dice are worse" . If you have a diverse character concept, you'll want those 3s shoring up areas you care about, not some skill ranks. There are always ways to make up for "shortcomings" - heap up on Talents, weapons, and attachments that provide Boosts or remove Setbacks. Suddenly, your 3 in Brawn isn't so bad, because you're throwing a stupid fistfull of blue dice in place of that one green you could have had. Meanwhile, throw extra green places. Yes, it might not always be worth rolling those 3 green dice, but it's certainly better than throwing two when you really want to claim your character is good at something.

Caveat : Brawn does factor into damage for lots (all? been a while since I played a Melee character....) of weapons. Of course, one point of Brawn is only one point of Damage, which is equal to a single Success. I wouldn't say it's the end of the world, unless you're playing with low-additional-damage, non-pierce weapons like Shock Gauntlets and you're fighting Soak 5 Stormtroopers. That's less fun.

4 Agility with 0 Piloting is AAAA

2 Agility with 4 Piloting is AAPP.

2 Agility with 5 Piloting is AAAPP

The benefit of a high characteristic can't be seen with a single skill as ranks in that skill can get the dice pool up. The benefit is with the broad selection of skills that all have a big pool of dice thanks to a single investment of xp.

Assuming a species characteristic of 2 and skill is career the above examples cost:

70xp (must be starting xp) or 105xp (30xp starting plus the easiest dedication, you get 4 talents as well)

50xp, 35 if you got 2 free ranks to start... 20 if your Corellian.

So if you can get a free rank or 2 at the start then within a session or 2 you can have 2 skills up to 4 dice pools that started at 2 for roughly the same cost.

Basicly it's great to have a 4 in a skill, but it doesn't mean it has to be on your "primary" characteristic. In fact I would argue your better having the 4 in a characteristic outside your usual wheelhouse as it broadens the scope of your character. An Agile Face, a Cunning Pilot, an Intelligent Skip Tracer, a Friendly Gunslinger.

Thanks, Richard! For some reason I keep deluding myself into thinking that Skill always Upgrades Characteristic (Making 2 Ag / 4 Piloting a pool of YYY in my head). No idea why I keep forgetting that it's "lower number Upgrades higher number" - it's a rule I tried very hard to impress on the first few people I taught the system.

Now that I'm corrected, I've gotta second that opinion, as unconventional as it is... might as well have lots of ranks in core Skills and then high Characteristics where you won't be putting skill ranks, with, again, two caveats: if you want triumphs, you need a good deal of Upgrades, so you'll want your lower number to still be reasonably high, and you (might; I haven't run the numbers) want decent Brawn with Melee/Brawl for the extra damage.

I guess one of the important considerations is if Success alone is enough. If all you want to do is succeed at everything then lots of Ability dice are fine. But for instances where both Success and Advantage are needed at the same time (Combat and Crafting are the obvious ones, but it depends on your character) then a fist full of 5 Proficiency dice is ideal.

I play a Spy - Infiltrator in a game Kestin might be slightly familiar with. A melee-oriented spec for sure. He is far from being min-maxed, but I still wanted him to be somewhat effective in melee. The character only has a Brawn of 3 and will use only small melee weapons, but I can just about make it work, sort of, by having 3 ranks in Melee and one rank in Frenzied Attack. Couple that with a nasty Nano-Dagger for when I really need someone dead and the Soft Spot Talent for when I really, really need someone dead and I can do reasonably well in combat. But I bleed Strain like it's no tomorrow (especially with Dodge thrown in the mix), which can force me to use advantages to recover strain rather than assisting my teammates or myself with boosts or setbacks on the enemy. So, it can work, but if I was trying to create a very effective killer Brawn 4 would be better.

11 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

I guess one of the important considerations is if Success alone is enough. If all you want to do is succeed at everything then lots of Ability dice are fine. But for instances where both Success and Advantage are needed at the same time (Combat and Crafting are the obvious ones, but it depends on your character) then a fist full of 5 Proficiency dice is ideal.

Actually, statistically, 5 Ability dice and 5 Boost dice is ideal, but good luck getting that to happen. Seriously, I did the math somewhere in this forum. It's... intense. I believe the odds of getting Success and Advantage on an Ability die alone is 12.5%; that raises to 25% on a Proficiency die (double your chances of getting some combination of the two on one die). Plus, there's the odds of getting double Success or double Advantage, which are a nice way to pad numbers with lots of Proficiency dice. However, when rolled together, I think an Ability + Boost combo yields a mix of Advantage and Success 47.9% of the time, plus the chances of rolling 3 or even 4 symbols, which a Proficiency die alone can't do.

Of course... my math also suggests that rolling 12 Proficiency dice yields a Triumph 100% of the time, which means I'm either doing stats wrong (which is highly possible, though shameful, given my profession) or it tells you something about relying too hard on numbers.

11 minutes ago, Kymrel said:

I play a Spy - Infiltrator in a game Kestin might be slightly familiar with. A melee-oriented spec for sure. He is far from being min-maxed, but I still wanted him to be somewhat effective in melee. The character only has a Brawn of 3 and will use only small melee weapons, but I can just about make it work, sort of, by having 3 ranks in Melee and one rank in Frenzied Attack. Couple that with a nasty Nano-Dagger for when I really need someone dead and the Soft Spot Talent for when I really, really need someone dead and I can do reasonably well in combat. But I bleed Strain like it's no tomorrow (especially with Dodge thrown in the mix), which can force me to use advantages to recover strain rather than assisting my teammates or myself with boosts or setbacks on the enemy. So, it can work, but if I was trying to create a very effective killer Brawn 4 would be better.

Well, yeah, but the Pierce 5 on that weapon gives you an effective "Brawn" (for purposes of treating it as damage) of 8... so long as you Succeed. Of course, for the purposes of Succeeding you want more dice.

Absolutely. Like I said, I wanted to be somewhat effective. So he's no Wookiee Marauder with a kitted-out Vibro-Ax, but he can dish out the hurt when the dice go my way. Pierce 5 really helps against Stormtroopers. Surprisingly, it didn't against certain Sith-lizards, but that's the way things go

2 minutes ago, Kymrel said:

Absolutely. Like I said, I wanted to be somewhat effective. So he's no Wookiee Marauder with a kitted-out Vibro-Ax, but he can dish out the hurt when the dice go my way. Pierce 5 really helps against Stormtroopers. Surprisingly, it didn't against certain Sith-lizards, but that's the way things go

Well it wouldn't do to have the things you bred to fight Jedi get melted like little blobs of angry butter the second they look crossly at a lightsaber.