11 minutes ago, Desslok said:

That's the DnD nerd speaking out of you.

I want it to have talents, but I don't want to have talent trees.

57 minutes ago, FuriousGuy said:

I'm with @SEApocalypse , get rid of most of the crunch (i.e. the talents and gear attachments/mods). The narrative dice are really fun but the crunch in this system causes huge scaling problems in my experience (e.g. heavy blaster rifle + Superior Weapon + Augmented Spin Barrel + Electronic Sighting System + Q22 Retinal Tracker + Mod III Cyberlegs + Mod VI Cyberarms + Deadly Accuracy + Targeted Blow + True Aim = OMGWTFBBQ!).

And there's a reason a GM can't just get rid of that and needs the Devs to do it for them?...........saying no doesn't require editing.

Replace talents with... what, exactly?

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

I want it to have talents, but I don't want to have talent trees.

That's an interesting idea. Any idea how that might work? Would players construct on-the-fly talent trees as they gain XP? That might be kind of cool. Give us a boatload of talents, each with a range of possible costs, like Grit (5–25 XP), or Natural Driver (15–25 XP). The player can buy a talent of the appropriate cost provided it is 5 XP, or she has already bought a talent of equal or lower cost. The player then fills up the tree like a bingo card.

Without talents how do you differentiate characters?

22 minutes ago, SavageBob said:

That's an interesting idea. Any idea how that might work? Would players construct on-the-fly talent trees as they gain XP? That might be kind of cool. Give us a boatload of talents, each with a range of possible costs, like Grit (5–25 XP), or Natural Driver (15–25 XP). The player can buy a talent of the appropriate cost provided it is 5 XP, or she has already bought a talent of equal or lower cost. The player then fills up the tree like a bingo card.

Maybe it will use a level system similar to Cypher. At level 1 you have so many talents, level 2 offers more talents, and so on. The game master can select X number of talents per level for one 'specialization,' selecting anything from that level or the level below. Then the player will progress level by level, purchasing talents individually. Something like that.

Personally I like the talent tree's and hope they keep them around. They provide a bit more crunch then many standard story telling systems, but don't come anywhere near to the bloaty crunch of d20, or some of the other generic systems like Hero or Gurps.

The talents allow you to really differentiate the characters. If you just have skills, that's not really enough diversity for my liking. Everybody would eventually end up looking to similar.

On an related note, you don't know how funny Telling Desslock that that's his DnD nerd speaking out is. Let's just say he's not a d20 fan.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

I want it to have talents, but I don't want to have talent trees.

That is btw a solid compromise. All-for-One in the ubiquity system was reasonable with their talents, lots of choices, from talents which basically improved your social status and connection networks to hideouts, villas and just simple fencing abilities similar to the lightsaber styles (switching the base attribute). All freely to choose, no classes, just spend xp.

42 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

Without talents how do you differentiate characters?

Skills and characteristics, roleplay and style choices. Different fencing schools for example, giving different birth to different fighting styles, access to different teachers with different philosophies, etc
Hand out for example to combine skills and you get vastly different characters, even when they roll the exact same amount of dices. You like to fence with a lot of feints? Add one boost die for each skill level at 4 or above in deception, make deception instead of melee rolls in your first turn to create an false opening, abuse the advantage afterwards with a fake counter attack to his left, just side-step to your own left instead, while blocking his sword line and follow from there with thrust into his right side lung (boost dice from deception and coordination). And like always with narrative systems, you only get your boost dice when you describe your actions in a way to make those boni plausible.

Or just overpower your enemy with strength and endurance (athletics) while making him insecure with your menacing presence (coercion) in Savage Opress style.

There is little need for talent to differentiate characters, though the more detailed and differentiated the skill system is the better. So Coordination for example can split into coordination and acrobatics, while dancing would an interesting additional skill, etc … such systems are better grounded on their basic mechanics and interactions between those basic character states. Having a convuvulated talent tree system often adds complexity without adding depth in the interactions between the character stats. Now at the other hand such systems tend to be a lot more skill heavy. Instead of talents you basically spend xp for skills and sometimes characteristics. Furthermore, with a lot of complexity removed, you generate space to adds stuff like fencing schools, stances or maneuvers avaible to everyone with come with distinct advantages and disadvantages without building too much mechanical complexity. But careful, this stuff can get more complex than people might like pretty fast, so going overboard there is just as terrible as going overboard with talent systems.

3 hours ago, 2P51 said:

And there's a reason a GM can't just get rid of that and needs the Devs to do it for them?...........saying no doesn't require editing.

You know, this is a rather mood argument, it is not like you NEED others to write a RPG system or game world for you either. Furthermore it is actually a false statement on top, because removing the talent system requires reviewing the core mechanics afterwards (from the GM or group), because a lot of mechanics in the game, like space combat rely on talents, so you should adjust other parts of the system as well in that case.

Now adapting a system to your own needs is easily, but personally I am still more interested in seeing a approach from FFG for a classless and talentless system based on their narrative dice, instead of writing my own. Time constraints, convenience would be reason enough for this wish, but on top I am actually really curious how FFG would do it. I love their idea for their dice system and it is something that was outside of my own idea space, so I am interested to see what other surprises the FFG developers have for me.

Alas, all wishing will not change what FFG is doing, so maybe I should call it better hoping, I doubt that I will not at least buy the core book to have a peak at FFGs ideas.

52 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

You know, this is a rather mood argument, it is not like you NEED others to write a RPG system or game world for you either. Furthermore it is actually a false statement on top, because removing the talent system requires reviewing the core mechanics afterwards (from the GM or group), because a lot of mechanics in the game, like space combat rely on talents, so you should adjust other parts of the system as well in that case.

Now adapting a system to your own needs is easily, but personally I am still more interested in seeing a approach from FFG for a classless and talentless system based on their narrative dice, instead of writing my own. Time constraints, convenience would be reason enough for this wish, but on top I am actually really curious how FFG would do it. I love their idea for their dice system and it is something that was outside of my own idea space, so I am interested to see what other surprises the FFG developers have for me.

Alas, all wishing will not change what FFG is doing, so maybe I should call it better hoping, I doubt that I will not at least buy the core book to have a peak at FFGs ideas.

I wasn't talking to you, I quoted Furious Guy, and he was mostly talking about attachments and gear.

I also don't know wtf a "mood" argument is.

A moot argument would mean my opinion isn't open for debate, which is certainly not true, but I would obviously disagree since I find it hard to believe there are any game systems that are used 100% RAW, it's more or less a given there will be some level of tweaking. I see no reason to take an albeit crunchy system that is fantastic, and dumb it down. That makes zero business sense either, crunch equals content, content equals money, money equals good.

Personally I loathe classless systems, they lead to boring vanilla flavored unreasonably good at everything characters that all look alike.

15 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

That makes zero business sense either, crunch equals content, content equals money, money equals good.

Personally I loathe classless systems, they lead to boring vanilla flavored unreasonably good at everything characters that all look alike.

Money equals good?

Besides, what's up with your creativity? It is so easy to make interesting and unique characters in classless systems, just build unique and interesting characters, stats come last anyway, usually with my characters there are no stats before the 3rd session. ;-)
Though if characters get unreasonable good at everything then there is an issue in a balance and progression curve usually, which is rather independent from classless or with class and skill based or talent based systems.

Now on the removal of tons of attachments, I have to agree, you are absolutely right on that. A simple "no" works wonders there already, even when it is a lot of stuff to review and to decide on ... now just limiting things to corebook attachments may work just fine and would remove a lot of complexity and crunch from the system. Though Furious Guy was explicitly mentioning talents as well.
Besides, the crunch in SWRPG is anything but fantastic. But hey, in the case I am lucky and they indeed build a lighter system based on those narrative dice than you add all the crunchy just fine back into the system. After All we both agree wholeheartedly that adjusting a system to your own needs should be common and ain't difficulty either.

8 hours ago, SavageBob said:

That's an interesting idea. Any idea how that might work? Would players construct on-the-fly talent trees as they gain XP? That might be kind of cool. Give us a boatload of talents, each with a range of possible costs, like Grit (5–25 XP), or Natural Driver (15–25 XP). The player can buy a talent of the appropriate cost provided it is 5 XP, or she has already bought a talent of equal or lower cost. The player then fills up the tree like a bingo card.

This could even work well with an archetype to determine cost. Strong Guy gets Enduring for 10-15 XP, Face Guy gets it for 20-25 XP.

I prefer having talent trees. But i could argue that the talent trees should be built for the setting. Different settings have different trees for their various archtypes..

8 hours ago, SavageBob said:

That's an interesting idea. Any idea how that might work? Would players construct on-the-fly talent trees as they gain XP? That might be kind of cool. Give us a boatload of talents, each with a range of possible costs, like Grit (5–25 XP), or Natural Driver (15–25 XP). The player can buy a talent of the appropriate cost provided it is 5 XP, or she has already bought a talent of equal or lower cost. The player then fills up the tree like a bingo card.

D&D 4th ed did something similar and it didn't work out well. To be specific, players just took the "best of the best" and left other talents/feats alone. I mean, would you go out of your way to take Keen Eyed, Outdoorsman, or Knowledge Specialisation? Probably not. But I could see Dedication, Force Rating, Intense Focus, etc., being taken with great regularity. You could just make them cost a LOT of XP to earn, but then you might go many sessions before you can afford them, stymieing the pacing of advancement and "fun" of character development.

It might work, but it would need some sound logic and mechanics around it.

As an afterthought, talent trees and skill subsets do offer a "cookie cutter" template for non-hardcore players to base a character around. There is some merit to keeping them around.

Classless systems are a min/maxers paradise. Not interested personally. I want either constraints on at will selections, or random results like Traveler. Total free choice is an Ace-Martial Artist- Sniper-Computer Expert-Aerospace Engineer every time.....

On a totally different note, I see FFG releasing supplement books that use the NDS, each themed towards different styles of play - similar to what Fate has done. It's the natural progression to a modular system that has a "core" rule set, that allows for many different skins to be bolted onto it.

It's easy enough to use prerequisites, either Characteristic levels, Skill levels, or other Talents instead of talent trees.

Example: Toughened 5xp/10xp/15xp/20xp/25xp/30xp, may not purchase more ranks of Toughened than Brawn rank.

3 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Classless systems are a min/maxers paradise. Not interested personally. I want either constraints on at will selections, or random results like Traveler. Total free choice is an Ace-Martial Artist- Sniper-Computer Expert-Aerospace Engineer every time.....

This seems like more an issue of who you play with than the system itself, honestly. Minmaxers will always find a way.

3 minutes ago, Tom Cruise said:

This seems like more an issue of who you play with than the system itself, honestly. Minmaxers will always find a way.

Not in my opinion.

They certainly find a way in this system, there's plenty of broken as hell combinations. They just have to work a bit harder.

But really why would you want to play with someone who only cares about making broken characters? Whether it's jury rig autofire abuse or cherry picking an inconsistent set of talents for the mechanical advantage, they're probably still going to be horrible to play with.

They also lead to vanilla flavored everyone looks the same characters, which I've already said. I think classless systems suck.

I can agree there, I guess. But honestly I feel like that's a matter of HOW the classless system is designed. There's plenty which let you build a coherent character identity. You just have to balance the game to make all the options appealing rather than a core few, and make those options interesting.

34 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

They also lead to vanilla flavored everyone looks the same characters, which I've already said. I think classless systems suck.

Only if everybody want the same thing in their characters. And that can happen with talent trees too if everybody picks the same ones. Both are unlikely IME, as gamers tend to abhor uniformity.

I think talent trees are fine but would be smaller and less expensive, so its easier to build different characters, a couple of melee trees, brawl trees, sneaky trees etc.

So you want magic choose from a few different magic trees.

Wanna play robin hood? Take a few talents from the dueling tree, a few from the thief tree and a brief dip into a survivalist tree.