So, the Knockdown quality on Brawl and some weapons costs 2 Advantage. Not too shabby. However, the Talent costs a Triumph. That seems... lame. Heck, I would allow a Triumph to knock an enemy down without the talent. Would it be game-breaking at all to just rule that the Knockdown Talent gives all your Melee attacks the Knockdown quality? It hasn't come up for me yet, but it's in the Spec Tree for one of my players, so it's the first time I've given it much thought. Kinda want to head that one off before my player says, "Wait, it costs a talent and a Triumph? I thought we could just do that."

Yeah, I have houseruled that the talent gives all Melee weapons the Knockdown quality. So 2 Advantage. Clean and simple. And yes I allow Knockdowns on Triumphs. If you wanna knock down an enemy instead of critting him, be my guest!

I guess my main concern was stepping on the toes of Brawl characters, but it seems to me that a Talent should make something fairly reliable. I don't care how many yellow dice you're rolling, you can't rely on a Triumph. Also, when you leap into a squad of stormtroopers and start slashing away, you're going to want to keep them from Disengaging, so they have a hard time shooting you. If they're at Short, it's just 1 purple. If they're engaged, it's 3.

Follow-up. Should the Knockdown talent work with Lightsabers, or is that a bit too much?

That talent is an odd one. I just looked at the difference between it and the item quality.

Talent: can trigger knockdown with a triumph, takes additional triumphs to knock down a target who is larger in silhouette.

Item quality: can trigger knockdown with 2 advantage, takes additional advantage to knock down a target who is larger in silhouette.

Spending threats & Despair in combat: 3 threat or 1 despair knocks a target prone.

It seems that other than the item quality, using the brawl skill & the talent, one cannot knock a target prone unless, say, you were using the called shot aiming rules or you spend 3 avantage to "disable the opponent" in some way instead of dealing damage, which refers you to the crit table (of which there is a crit that knocks a target prone "bowled over").

The talent seems kind of useless.

5 minutes ago, The Grand Falloon said:

Follow-up. Should the Knockdown talent work with Lightsabers, or is that a bit too much?

Applying it to Lightsabers is too much. Keep it RAW in that respect, Melee only.

Just now, GroggyGolem said:

It seems that other than the item quality, using the brawl skill & the talent, one cannot knock a target prone.

And that seems to me to be a glaring error. Knocking someone to the ground seems well within the bounds of a Triumph, and if you've taken a talent for something, you should be pretty good at it.

I don't think I'll allow the Knockdown talent to be used with a lightsaber, but if they want to use a Triumph or make a Called shot, that would work just fine.

9 minutes ago, GroggyGolem said:

Spending threats & Despair in combat: 3 threat or 1 despair knocks a target prone.

It seems that other than the item quality, using the brawl skill & the talent, one cannot knock a target prone.

Yeah, considering that 3 Threat can be used to knock someone down, a Triumph on the inverse should certainly be able to accomplish it under most circumstances. Just value-wise. I get why they didn't, because if they did then the Knockdown talent would be worthless, but I don't see any reason not to just bring the Knockdown talent up into the realm of "good talents to have" rather than "I grimace when I take this talent just to progress through the tree."

4 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

Spending threats & Despair in combat: 3 threat or 1 despair knocks a target prone.

That's the active character though, not the target. And I think there are far more useful things you could use threats and despairs on.

I think I would adjust the Talent should read 3 Advantage to knockdown the Target. It won't step on the toes of Brawl characters and weapons that already have Knockdown and makes the Talent more worthwhile for melee characters.

1 hour ago, Oden Gebhac said:

That's the active character though, not the target. And I think there are far more useful things you could use threats and despairs on.

I think I would adjust the Talent should read 3 Advantage to knockdown the Target. It won't step on the toes of Brawl characters and weapons that already have Knockdown and makes the Talent more worthwhile for melee characters.

That could work too. I don't know if I'd ever spend 3 Advantage to Knockdown a target, so that is why I did 2 instead But I could see how it would be a worthwhile talent even so, because I do normally require a Triumph to do so.

Whenever I see a house rule on a Talent that requires spending Advantage/Threat/Triumph/Depair I try to determine the cost without using the Talent and it's associated cost. If the cost of the Talent is less the cost than without, then yeah it's probably a worthy fix. But if if the cost is the same, then why bother with the Talent?