On 5/12/2017 at 6:18 AM, Donovan Morningfire said:

For Echani, I'd suggest using the Mandalorian Humans from Friends Like These as a baseline, giving them 2's in all Characteristics, +1 to wound threshold, and a bonus skill rank in either Brawl or Melee (perhaps with the option to start with 3 ranks in the chosen skill not unlike Corellian Humans in Suns of Fortune), and 105 starting XP.

I actually hate the official mandalorian human stats. I think that klatooinians with all 2's for attributes and 110xp would have been greatly preferrable. Said another way... baseline humans except they get one free rank in a non career skill and one free rank in a combat skill neither of which can be trained above 2 at character creation.

The op's second idea for echani isn't terrible switching brawn melee and lightsaber to agility but I would value this at 30 xp (because the light saber form talent cost 10 xp for 1 skill) for this AND it doesn't override the requirements of lightsaber form talents. So starting at 110 xp as a human, increasing agility to 3 for 30 leaves them with 80, dropping them presence to 1 gives them 100 xp dropping the 2 free ranks in out of career skills gives them 120 xp and the echani martial arts talents (that just switches the attribute for those 3 skills) puts them at 90 xp. Mathematically it says it's balanced but I would put that on the high side of balanced (like pantorans) because they don't have to buy a 5 xp gateway talent to get to their ataru technique equivalent and because they get presence as a dump stat. With the 10 bonus xp from obligation/duty/morality they'd still be able to rock a 4 3 3 2 2 1 stat block at character creation which is pretty darn good

2 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

I actually hate the official mandalorian human stats. I think that klatooinians with all 2's for attributes and 110xp would have been greatly preferrable. Said another way... baseline humans except they get one free rank in a non career skill and one free rank in a combat skill neither of which can be trained above 2 at character creation.

I think that FFG considered the Deathwatch's free rank of any combat skill to be worth quite a lot of xp. Considering it can apply to an in career skill, and includes Lightsaber as an option, it is rather powerful. Personally I'm with you, I'm not sure it's 20xp worth (if the WT bump is worth 5xp), I think the Deathwatch option should have had an extra WT, or a Resilience rank. But whatever, they aren't the fanboy super soldiers but they're still a unique option.

4 hours ago, Blackbird888 said:

Your proposition would make building a combat character that can easily switch between ranged and melee much, much easier.

My initial impression was Brawn, Will, Int, Ag, Cun, Pre was the order for power-stats. Didn't seem like the system would disadvantage melee that badly compared to other systems. Do you feel that hot-swapping range would provide a heavy, undue advantage?

2 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

The op's second idea for echani isn't terrible switching brawn melee and lightsaber to agility but I would value this at 30 xp (because the light saber form talent cost 10 xp for 1 skill) for this AND it doesn't override the requirements of lightsaber form talents.

You don't seem as concerned about agility governing both ranged and melee options. I can assume you don't feel like agility is an overly-dominating characteristic then?

Agility is by far the superior stat when it comes to doing damage, Brawn has the three upsides of boosting your soak, wound threshold and allowing you to use cumbersome weaponry without penalty, where as agility has more varied utility, is far more powerful at range and allows you to use unwieldy weaponry without penalty (of which I have seen like 4 weapons, all engaged range and all but one of the are lightsabers).

But, as stated, ranged weaponry is favored in this, lightsabers being the singular exception and only because they have breach and the function to be used with any characteristic, so agility is the better stat over brawn, especially when this game is 99% glass cannons so combat tends to end within four rounds, why waste the first two rounds closing the gap, when you can in theory with a half decent modded Ranged (Heavy)/Gunnery weapon kill whatever you are fighting from extreme with autofire.

16 hours ago, Reylan Mass said:

My initial impression was Brawn, Will, Int, Ag, Cun, Pre was the order for power-stats. Didn't seem like the system would disadvantage melee that badly compared to other systems. Do you feel that hot-swapping range would provide a heavy, undue advantage?

You don't seem as concerned about agility governing both ranged and melee options. I can assume you don't feel like agility is an overly-dominating characteristic then?

IN GENERAL (meanning for specific build it could be different) I would rank Brawn and Agility as equal; Will as a close third; Int and cunning as equal; and presence as the weak stat, Brawn is equal to agility because of the starting bonus to wounds, soak, and encumbrance capacity, and willpower is a close third because it provides starting strain and it's the stat behind vigilance (the almost always [ except when you're spring an ambush or in a quick draw showdown ] applicable initiative skill ), if you're force sensitive it could take the top spot because of force powers (using and defending again them).

This echani martial arts talent would make agility the clearly dominant stat for echani but that's kind of the point behind it, but personally building an echani (assuming that they got 90 xp and I could get 10xp format obligation/duty/morality), I would start with a 3 in brawn and will anyway, a 4 in agility, 2 in int and cunning and 1 in presence. Is it more powerful than average for a combat focused build, well it makes you a good combat generalist, but a melee/brawl build would still be better served by boosting brawn as the primary stat because of the extra soak (and starting wounds) it provides... and a green nikto (3 brawn, 1 presence 2 for other attributes 100 xp, claws: +1 damage an critical 3 on brawl attacks, a free rank in coordination, you can find it in lords of nal hutta) is still going to make the best martial artist. So what is the proposed echani good for? Making your gunslinger/pilot also be the second best brawl/melee character in the group... but since you've got the 1 in presence you're not going to be all that great at quick draws so you're not going to be an awesome gunslinger, but my prediction is that soldier:sharpshooter (aor core book) would be the most popular career spec for an echani. For a Jedi the ataru striker is still going to be the most popular spec, which means you're wasting 10 xp on the ataru technique talent and it would be kind of useless to have an echani take any other lightsaber form spec besides shi-Cho knight. So yeah, i'd put the proposed echani species equal to pantorans. But in my opinion they're not all that overpowered. And if you're still really worried about balancing the echani... strip lightsaber out of the echani martial arts while leaving everything else the same (they don't get an extra 10 xp), the justification is that lightsabers are too uncommon, they haven't culturally agility trained in lightsabers.

And your proposed cumbersome restriction is a good/required balancer (I imagine it would eliminate a few high powered melee weapons but I haven't checked this)

16 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

I think that FFG considered the Deathwatch's free rank of any combat skill to be worth quite a lot of xp. Considering it can apply to an in career skill, and includes Lightsaber as an option, it is rather powerful. Personally I'm with you, I'm not sure it's 20xp worth (if the WT bump is worth 5xp), I think the Deathwatch option should have had an extra WT, or a Resilience rank. But whatever, they aren't the fanboy super soldiers but they're still a unique option.

Whether it's a career skill with the restriction that you can't train above 2 ranks or an out of career skill (even lightsabers) it's still only worth 10 xp because that's how much a rank in a non career skill (or second rank in a career skill) costs. And since no non force and destiny specialization has lightsaber as a career skills a mando who wanted to have a rank in lightsaber would be better of taking baseline human and using one of their out of career skill ranks to put put a rank in lightsaber. If the goal is to prevent a mando from having 2 free ranks in a combat skill (and that was the justification for taking away the one free rank in an out of career skill), then add a restriction that the one free rank in and out of career skill and one rank in a combat skill can't be applied to the same skill, but that's only a 5 xp benefit over klatooinians for 1 double up combat starting skill, and klatooinians get a 3 in brawn and 1 in presence with 100 xp so no biggy. But honestly my biggest beef with mandalorians is their I think the 105 xp (the 1 point of wound for 5 xp, severely limits their options for starting atributes).

Heck baseline humans, except that they can get 1 free rank in any skill (can'take raiwe it above 2 ranks at the time of character creation as the only rsstriction) and a +1 wound threshold (with 110 xp) would have been greatly preferable. And I think balanced. But as it is mandolarians, are severely underwhelming compared to baseline humans.

I definitely agree with you, the 105 XP is an odd number and severely limits choices. It does favour 4/3/2/2/2/2 build which could have been FFG trying to make a point that Mando's are better specialists than generalists compared to regular humans.

Whatever the reason I still don't think the maths works out. That one Wound should be worth 5xp, which makes that single combat skill rank worth 20! I think 15xp is reasonable since it's so flexible for any combat character, hence why IMHO the Deathwatch option should start with WT 12 (assuming FFG where determined to keep the 105xp).

The pacifist option is even more complicated because so many groups under use Knowledge to a crazy extent. Are a rank in 2 Knowledge skills and WT11 worth 25xp? Yes, but only to the right player

2 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

Whether it's a career skill with the restriction that you can't train above 2 ranks or an out of career skill (even lightsabers) it's still only worth 10 xp because that's how much a rank in a non career skill (or second rank in a career skill) costs.

One thing I'm noticing is that people seem to value multi-skilling combat way more than I do. The idea that someone would bounce back and forth between melee and range, for example, never really occurred to me, because if ranged was that strong that you'd sacrifice something else to have both a melee and ranged skill why not just use ranged and not melee. Another example was that I valued Echani martial arts at 25XP, and gave them 95 starting XP. Specifically because of the lightsaber skills and loss of XP from having to pick them in a majority of cases. I didn't really care about the versatility, and just tried to average out the XP cost.

Thinking about what Blackbird and bipolar said, I noticed they do seem to make it very difficult to take more than one combat skill or mix ranges, and I just don't personally understand why.

No matter what though, this has been a very useful thought experiment to this point.

1 hour ago, Richardbuxton said:

I definitely agree with you, the 105 XP is an odd number and severely limits choices. It does favour 4/3/2/2/2/2 build which could have been FFG trying to make a point that Mando's are better specialists than generalists compared to regular humans.

Whatever the reason I still don't think the maths works out. That one Wound should be worth 5xp, which makes that single combat skill rank worth 20! I think 15xp is reasonable since it's so flexible for any combat character, hence why IMHO the Deathwatch option should start with WT 12 (assuming FFG where determined to keep the 105xp).

The pacifist option is even more complicated because so many groups under use Knowledge to a crazy extent. Are a rank in 2 Knowledge skills and WT11 worth 25xp? Yes, but only to the right player

You know what they call a Mandolorian pacifist?

An imperial citizen. *Canned laughter* Personally, I find the mandolorian human always a bit pointless; given they are a raceless organisation (or at least used to be) it's kinda like reinventing the wheel; their perks can be decided by the player, thus I don't really have a weigh in on this.

I'm fairly confident that FFG's mandalorien human is most closely based on The Clone Wars version. The two options are surely designed to replicate the two very different ethos of the Mandolore and Concordia. I think it's a cool idea.

Edit: sorry for derailing the post, I'll try to stop analysing FFG's decisions now.

1 minute ago, Richardbuxton said:

Edit: sorry for derailing the post, I'll try to stop analysing FFG's decisions now.

Don't be sorry, half the purpose of this is to understand what's up with this system, as I'm new to it.

Part of how I learn is to dissect it, and the reason's behind the decisions. Your comment's on the mandalorians isn't too different from my own musing on what an Echani should be when responding to @Donovan Morningfire

I don't have the ability to implement anything in the system, so the end result is me understanding the system better more than anything else. You may as well join in on the musings to keep yourself interested while I argue with everyone who posts here

1 hour ago, Reylan Mass said:

One thing I'm noticing is that people seem to value multi-skilling combat way more than I do. The idea that someone would bounce back and forth between melee and range, for example, never really occurred to me, because if ranged was that strong that you'd sacrifice something else to have both a melee and ranged skill why not just use ranged and not melee. Another example was that I valued Echani martial arts at 25XP, and gave them 95 starting XP. Specifically because of the lightsaber skills and loss of XP from having to pick them in a majority of cases. I didn't really care about the versatility, and just tried to average out the XP cost.

Thinking about what Blackbird and bipolar said, I noticed they do seem to make it very difficult to take more than one combat skill or mix ranges, and I just don't personally understand why.

No matter what though, this has been a very useful thought experiment to this point.

if you are including lightsabers in the echani martial arts "talent/species ability" I take exception to valuing it at 25 xp. swapping 1 attribute for another with 1 combat skill is worth 10 xp (following the example of the lightsaber "technique" talents), so that should be 30 xp. whether you value multi-skilling or not "you" (generalized) have to pay for capability you have not capability you use. Bouncing back and for between melee and range doesn't happen much, but it can situationally. If your melee (including brawl and lightsaber) is your primary/stronger attack, you still need to be able to make ranged attacks as a back up for situations where you can't conveniently get to engaged ranged with an opponent. But it's pretty much a one way street, if your strongest attack is a ranged attack you generally don't want to resort to a melee attack, unless you have to be stealthy/quiet. And that's the reason I'm not overly concerned with the echani martial arts talent.

if you want to be the melee/hand-to-hand beatstick you're still going to want Brawn as your primary attribute, and going against type is going to handicap you a bit. While the proposed "talent" (as proposed) swaps the attribute you use with a skill, it doesn't swap the attribute used to determine base damage, because melee/brawl weapons have a base damage of Brawn +X. and uncancelled successes add to that base damage. assuming that you have a 3 and brawn and a 4 in agility instead of a 4 and brawn and a 3 in agility and you otherwise have identical dice pools you're still going to be doing 1 point less damage for your melee attacks (you'd also have 1 point less soak and maybe 1 point less of wounds), but you'll have a much better back up ranged attack and be able to pilot etc. Now if you're primarily a ranged attacker with the echani martial arts talent, you're just as good as any other ranged attacker, but you do have a good "back up" melee attack, but it's an back up attack that you'll only infrequently want to or need to use, and you won't be as good at it as a dedicated melee attacker. You could be second best in the party. with the echani you'd make a good shooter but not a good "gunslinger" because with your low presence you'll be pretty awful at quick draws. But with the sharpshooter, then once per game session (because of the quick fix talent) you'll be able pull off a good quickdraw. the two ranks of deadly accuracy would let you apply one to a ranged attack and one to a brawl/melee attack and the solider career has brawl as a career skill.

so yeah I think people value multiskilling too much, but I think I value it more than you do. But what do I know, opinions are like *** everyone has one and we all think everyone else's stink.

Here's the big problem with Echani Martial Arts as written in the original post.

First off, you're making it a career skill right out of the gate, so it's at least worth 25XP, at least once five ranks have been purchased, as that's the amount the character would spend if it all ranks were purchased as a non-career skill.

Second, it covers three skills. Now, even if we imagined you were taking a specialization that had all three skills as career skills - and that's a stretch - that means the first rank isn't worth 5 points, it's worth 15. The second rank is worth 30, the third worth 45, the fourth worth 60, and the fifth worth 75. Why? Because it gives the character the effective value of all three skills. So... once a person has bought all five ranks of Echani Martial Arts, they've saved not just the inital 25XP for making it a career skill, but an additional 150XP because it essentially covers three skills. In other words, at high level, this skill is worth 175XP more than any other combat skill, but for the same price as the other combat skills.

Third, it includes an effective characteristic switcheroo that essentially does the job of a 10XP Force Talent on three different skills (two of which, I might add, don't have a Talent that can swap them from Brawn to Agility), so that's another 30 points... gratis.

In other words, the original Echani Martial Art is actually worth 205XP more than any any other combat skill.

Now my math may be wrong, but the concept is not. This isn't just an overpowered skill, it's a game-killing overpowered skill. If a player wants his character to be good at melee, brawl, and lightsaber skills, he should just pay the XP for all of them, just like anyone else.

1 rank in Coordination, 1 rank in either Melee or Brawl. 2/3/2/2/2/1. WT10 ST10 100xp.

If the character wants to be very good at Melee be a Marauder. If they want to be good Brawlers then Martial Arts has everything they need. But they can still be a lot of other things without being game breaking.

Edit: perhaps a more interesting and unique option would be

1 rank in Coordination, 1 rank in either Melee or Brawl. 2/3/2/2/2/2. WT10 ST10 80xp.

I still believe that putting the 1 in Presence makes it too much of a convenient dump stat for what is ultimately a combat-focused species.

Taking a look at other combat-focused non-human species (i.e. those that either have free rank in a combat skill or natural weapons), Wookiees have their 1 in Willpower (useful for Discipline and strain threshold, which for them is low to start with), Trandoshans have it in Agility (meaning they're naturally bad at ranged combat without investing XP), Whiphids have it in Cunning (which ties into a whole slew of useful skills, namely Perception and Survival).

Weequays have a 1 in Presence, but apart from a high starting Brawn aren't inherently combat-focused, and also have a 3 in Cunning and a second 1 in Intellect. Nautolans have a Brawn of 3, and a 1 in Willpower, but no real combat perks apart from Brawn and a slightly higher wound threshold.

Green Nikto (Suns of Fortune) seem to be the sole exception thus far, as they begin with Brawn 3 and claws while having a starting Presence of 1. A free rank in Coordination certainly does make them prime material for a BH/Martial Artist.

Of course, the whole "Echani Martial Arts" thing of putting all the Brawn-based combat skills under Agility is hugely problematic in and of itself, as it not only apes the 10 XP "Form Technique" talents from Force and Destiny that let the PC use a different characteristic for Lightsaber combat checks, but is an always-on version of those talents that let a PC swap out the default characteristic for a different one, such as Clever Solution which lets the character once per session use Cunning for a skill check.

I'll repost my enchani write up

Echani 2 brawn 2 agility 2 intelligence 2 cunning 2 willpower 2 presence

xp 110

Because all echani use unarmed combat as a method of communication they begin the game with 1 rank in brawl.

As Echani are trained to read their opponents movements they gain a boost die on all initative checks where they can see their opponents.

22 minutes ago, amrothe said:

I'll repost my enchani write up

Echani 2 brawn 2 agility 2 intelligence 2 cunning 2 willpower 2 presence

xp 110

Because all echani use unarmed combat as a method of communication they begin the game with 1 rank in brawl.

As Echani are trained to read their opponents movements they gain a boost die on all initative checks where they can see their opponents.

I like this one, but I think I would tune the XP down a little, as a Boost Die on all initiative checks is significantly more valuable than one point in a non-career skill (when comparing your write-up to the base human). Maybe make it 95XP.

Well if messing with agility causes too many problems in making an agile melee combatant, then using the dice rolls would be an alternative.

Something like:

Upgrade any attacks made against you by enemies with lower initiative.

This would have the advantage of making the dump stat have some meaning that the 1 Pre is now hindering the activation of the racial, which should alleviate some of @Donovan Morningfire concerns of the 3 agility 1 pre stat allocation. Especially since agility wouldn't cover all forms of combat in this new version.

What I'm not sure of is how much it should be worth. Dodge is 5xp initial buy in and ranked, but has a strain cost. If you consider the activation conditions relatively equal (Strain vs winning initiative rolls) then it should cost as much as a mid-tree rank in dodge 15 or 20 xp. If the activation is considered better/worse than the strain cost, then +/- 5xp accordingly, I think.

So if you say it's worth 20xp you would be at 2/3/2/2/2/1 with 100XP

a boost die to initative checks is 5 points a non career skill is 5 points. You are suggesting a boost die to initative is 20 points

to elaborate a boost die is worth 1/3 of a success it doesn't work in ambush situations or situations where you cannot see your opponents (so its not as good as the 5 point talent)

A non career skill usually grants you an a proficiency die and is super helpful depending on what you choose. For non combat characters I would argue a dot in ranged heavy is far more valuable then a boost die to initative.

TO reylan's point

I started out going down the dodge road and its just too overpowered for the system. Echani usually anticipate their opponents moves and that is represented by them having a better chance of acting first. Its more balanced. If you search the forum you will find my echani martial artist that I wrote up long before the BH book it has some good ideas for talents that allow you to play an echani flavored martial artist with forms etc.

1 hour ago, amrothe said:

a boost die to initative checks is 5 points a non career skill is 5 points. You are suggesting a boost die to initative is 20 points

From observation inherent racial skills are 10XP and the closest thing I can think of to boost die on initiative is rapid reaction which has a strain cost per success granted, and can only add success.

But it's really obvious why the game is so glass cannon if getting a conditional difficulty dice upgrade for 15-20xp (depending on assessment of value) is too overpowered in comparison to getting an ability dice and a boost dice to initiative for 10XP

That will be a hard one to wrap my head around. I get you gain a chance for despair, but is that really so much that it blows two dice out of the water in scale?

So after playing quite a bit I can tell you for players defense caps out around 4 ish setback dice and there are very few ways to avoid damage dodge is the main one, along with sense force powers parry and reflect. Stacking dodge is very powerful it doesn't take an action lets you use your strain and adds in challenge dice usually 3 ranks in dodge which you can gain with a few specs + a racial dodge gives you the ability to turn 2 difficulty dice into 2 challenge dice and another difficulty die and long range shots become 3 challenge dice. even short range shots are suddenly 2 challenge dice. It really gets insane around 4 ranks in dodge especially if you have a stress healer in the group. Do some test rolls for rivals vs different levels of dodge and you will notice how strong it is, there is a reason why adversary is such a good talent dodge costs strain but gives you the same awesomeness.

Don't underestimate despair it turns combats around almost more then a players triumph especially if the BBEG rolls it.

43 minutes ago, amrothe said:

Stacking dodge is very powerful it doesn't take an action lets you use your strain and adds in challenge dice usually 3 ranks in dodge which you can gain with a few specs + a racial dodge gives you the ability to turn 2 difficulty dice into 2 challenge dice and another difficulty die and long range shots become 3 challenge dice. even short range shots are suddenly 2 challenge dice.

So you take assassin, and spend 55XP. You have your 4 setbacks and 2 difficulty. Spend two strain to upgrade, and assume you have initiative, so three upgrades. Your Dice pool is RRPBBBB.

Now opposite Echani has 4 brawn and two brawl from character creation, and they also have 55XP. They can get three attack upgrades by spending 40XP by upping brawl twice, and buying frenzied assault. Their dice pool is YYYYG, and just like it's not difficult to get setback dice from defense, a custom grip upgrade to a vamblade would ruin your day making it YYYYGUU vs RRPBBB

I did do a simulation in excel calculating the odds for various dice combinations before posting the idea, and two things were clear when I did:

1) Offense has the advantage. There are a tremendously greater number of ways to increase your opportunity to hit compared to prevent it (through dice rolls, not counting reflect or parry). This is why I went with a defensive option rather than offensive one

2) More dice is stronger then better dice on average, but better dice create interesting moments more often. Adding a purple will increase my likelihood to avoid an attack more than upgrading to a red, but the threat/despair density will give me more interesting options.

Can you see why I'm having such a hard time believing why a difficulty upgrade would be so unbelievably powerful compared to the inherent offensive boons that are doled out with enthusiasm?

22 hours ago, Simon Retold said:

Here's the big problem with Echani Martial Arts as written in the original post.

First off, you're making it a career skill right out of the gate, so it's at least worth 25XP, at least once five ranks have been purchased, as that's the amount the character would spend if it all ranks were purchased as a non-career skill.

Second, it covers three skills. Now, even if we imagined you were taking a specialization that had all three skills as career skills - and that's a stretch - that means the first rank isn't worth 5 points, it's worth 15. The second rank is worth 30, the third worth 45, the fourth worth 60, and the fifth worth 75. Why? Because it gives the character the effective value of all three skills. So... once a person has bought all five ranks of Echani Martial Arts, they've saved not just the inital 25XP for making it a career skill, but an additional 150XP because it essentially covers three skills. In other words, at high level, this skill is worth 175XP more than any other combat skill, but for the same price as the other combat skills.

Third, it includes an effective characteristic switcheroo that essentially does the job of a 10XP Force Talent on three different skills (two of which, I might add, don't have a Talent that can swap them from Brawn to Agility), so that's another 30 points... gratis.

In other words, the original Echani Martial Art is actually worth 205XP more than any any other combat skill.

Now my math may be wrong, but the concept is not. This isn't just an overpowered skill, it's a game-killing overpowered skill. If a player wants his character to be good at melee, brawl, and lightsaber skills, he should just pay the XP for all of them, just like anyone else.

I was talking about the revised version that just let's them swap the attribute (not a skill at all)

18 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

I still believe that putting the 1 in Presence makes it too much of a convenient dump stat for what is ultimately a combat-focused species.

Taking a look at other combat-focused non-human species (i.e. those that either have free rank in a combat skill or natural weapons), Wookiees have their 1 in Willpower (useful for Discipline and strain threshold, which for them is low to start with), Trandoshans have it in Agility (meaning they're naturally bad at ranged combat without investing XP), Whiphids have it in Cunning (which ties into a whole slew of useful skills, namely Perception and Survival).

Weequays have a 1 in Presence, but apart from a high starting Brawn aren't inherently combat-focused, and also have a 3 in Cunning and a second 1 in Intellect. Nautolans have a Brawn of 3, and a 1 in Willpower, but no real combat perks apart from Brawn and a slightly higher wound threshold.

Green Nikto (Suns of Fortune) seem to be the sole exception thus far, as they begin with Brawn 3 and claws while having a starting Presence of 1. A free rank in Coordination certainly does make them prime material for a BH/Martial Artist.

Of course, the whole "Echani Martial Arts" thing of putting all the Brawn-based combat skills under Agility is hugely problematic in and of itself, as it not only apes the 10 XP "Form Technique" talents from Force and Destiny that let the PC use a different characteristic for Lightsaber combat checks, but is an always-on version of those talents that let a PC swap out the default characteristic for a different one, such as Clever Solution which lets the character once per session use Cunning for a skill check.

Klatooinians... 3 Brawn, 1 presence, 1 rank in a combat skill other than gunnery or lightsaber (if I recall correctly) and rank in a non career skill, they could not have brawl as a career skill and still start with 2 free ranks in it. But yeah, green nikto's are on the top of the pile.

1 hour ago, EliasWindrider said:

I was talking about the revised version that just let's them swap the attribute (not a skill at all)

Yup. Which is why I said...

On 5/15/2017 at 0:58 AM, Simon Retold said:

Here's the big problem with Echani Martial Arts as written in the original post .

Emphasis mine, of course.