Preliminary: So discounting droids, characters in FFG Star Wars start with, about :

+3 to Stats (30XP, 30XP, 40XP, if you’re spending as much XP on stats as you can)
~ 12 Career Skills (8 from Career, 4 from Specialization, minus any overlap)
~ 6 Skill Levels (4 from Career, 2 from Specialization)
Any racial perks
Access to one specialization which is mostly a talent tree, more if they spend any extra XP
Some Duty/Obligation/Whatever

Plus whatever leftover XP you can spend, yes?

So: I’m working on a Lifepath/Pathways system in anticipation of Genesys, and here’s what I’m thinking:

(I’m going to use the term “advance” a skill during character generation – all skills start as non-career skills. The first advance makes it a career skill, then the second advance makes it a +1, and so forth. Still can’t go above 2 during chargen.) I’m ditching Careers in favor of just Specializations (so ‘build you own class’), and Career Skills are defined during character generation.

Race
• Usual stuff
Upbringing
• +1 Stat
• 3 distinct Skill Advances
Education
• +1 Stat
• 3 distinct Skill Advances
Career
• +1 Stat
• Access to Talent Tree
• 2 Distinct Skill Advances
Career Event
• 2 Distinct Skill Advances
• Duty/Obligation
Career Event
• 2 Distinct Skill Advances
• Duty/Obligation

Then, at the end, the process (I’m doing this through a webapp) would tally your XP. So you could start with negative XP. If you have positive XP, you spend it as usual.

THOUGHTS?

WHAT AM I BREAKING?

Thanks for the help!

So an example I'm thinking of...

Presuppose that careers don't exist, and all talent trees are independent. Also, above, I didn't factor in the skill points into advances - there should be 18 advances. And just to be balanced, I'll ditch advancing, and just go with "Career Skill" x12 vs "Gain a Pip" x6.

Obviously some things can be broken, but if you're using a lifepath system, that's not a concern for your group, often.

So the new lifepath tiers...

Race
• Usual stuff
Background
• +1 Stat
• 3 Career Skills
• +1 Skill
Upbringing
• +1 Stat
• Access to Talent Tree
• 3 Career Skills
Career
• +1 Stat
• Access to Talent Tree
• 2 Career Skills
• +1 Skill
Career Event
• 2 Career Skills
• +1 to two Skills
• Duty/Obligation
Career Event
• 2 Career Skills
• +1 to two Skills
• Duty/Obligation

#########

So, a hypothetical character...

Quote

Race - Human. You're the most common species in the galaxy. As in the book. 2 in each stat, Wound and Strain thresholds, the Special Ability, but no XP.

So our character now has Brawn, Agility, Intellect, Cunning, Willpower, and Presence of 2.

Quote

Background - Outer Rim. You were raised on the edge of civilization, etc.

• Brawn +1.
• Knowledge [Outer Rim], Resilience, and Survival as Career Skills.
• Survival +1.

So our character now has Brawn 3, all other Stats 2. Skills are Survival +1. Career Skills are Knowledge [Outer Rim], Resilience, and Survival.

Quote

Upbringing - Street Urchin. You're an orphan, or your parents didn't care, etc.

• Cunning +1.
• Access to Thief Talent Tree.
• Skullduggery, Stealth, and Streetwise as Career Skills

So our character now has

• Brawn 3, Cunning 3, all other Stats 2.
• Skills are Survival +1.
• Career Skills are Knowledge [Outer Rim], Resilience, Skullduggery, Stealth, Streetwise, and Survival.
• Access to Thief Talent Tree.

Quote

Career - Dockhand. Loading and unloading merchant freighters.

• Brawn +1.
• Access to Mechanic Talent Tree.
• Athletics and Mechanics as Career Skills.
• Athletics +1.

So our character now has

• Brawn 4, Cunning 3, all other Stats 2.
• Skills are Athletics +1, Survival +1.
• Career Skills are Athletics, Knowledge [Outer Rim], Mechanics, Resilience, Skullduggery, Stealth, Streetwise, and Survival.
• Access to Mechanic and Thief Talent Trees.

Both Career Events would be based on Career. Say, a 1d10 option for every career stage. Not dealing with Duty/Obligation right now.

Quote

Career Event - Hostage. Some crazy smuggler, discovered by the Empire, took you hostage.

• Cool and Negotiation as Careers Skills.
• Cool +1, Negotiation +1.

Quote

Career Event - Big Score. Something big and expensive fell off the back of the ship, and you were there to profit.

• Skullduggery and Underworld as Career Skills.
• Skullduggery +1, Underworld +1.

So our character now has

• Brawn 4, Cunning 3, all other Stats 2.
• Skills are Athletics +1, Cool +1, Negotiation +1, Skullduggery +1, Survival +1, and Underworld +1.
• Career Skills are Athletics, Cool, Knowledge [Outer Rim], Mechanics, Negotiation, Resilience, Skullduggery, Stealth, Streetwise, Survival, and Underworld.
• Access to Mechanic and Thief Talent Trees.

Not a terrible character. No combat skills to speak of, but this is just a random first idea.

The question becomes... What do do with the Skullduggery? It's offered as a Career Skill twice. Thoughts?

Anyway, just a very rough first pass to spur discussion.

I like it. But that's because I'm into Conan these days...

On 6/30/2017 at 11:50 AM, CitizenKeen said:

+3 to Stats (30XP, 30XP, 40XP, if you’re spending as much XP on stats as you can)
~ 12 Career Skills (8 from Career, 4 from Specialization, minus any overlap)
~ 6 Skill Levels (4 from Career, 2 from Specialization)
Any racial perks
Access to one specialization which is mostly a talent tree, more if they spend any extra XP
Some Duty/Obligation/Whatever

Plus whatever leftover XP you can spend, yes?

I've found it more useful to think of species design in one of two ways:

• Start with a pool of 300XP, all Characteristics at 0. Raise Characteristics at the character creation costs until you are in striking distance of 100XP. Add a free rank in a skill for 10XP
• Start with humans as a baseline. Raise and lower characteristics at the character creation costs as you will. Swap the two free non-career skill ranks for a single free rank in a specific skill (no XP change).

In either case, add custom abilities for XP costs of 5, 10, or 15 as appropriate and adjust the Thresholds, shifting XP for a difference of 2 or more on a Threshold.

From there, I'd look at bumping Stats in terms of XP rather than +X to Characteristics. Also, when playtesting a life path system for Genesys, back check against what a character could have built with 100XP worth of point buy from your species and archetypes within the setting.

For a look at some great examples of a life path system, check out The Burning Wheel and Classic Traveller. Classic Traveller offers a player different "tours" they can do on starships, granting more bonuses but increasing the risk of injury and disaster... Even to the point of character death at character creation. The Burning Wheel emphasizes life paths as they exist within different social spheres (called 'settings' in the rules) of a fantasy world. It is easier to acquire new life paths within a 'setting', but some result in you moving somewhere else.

I can definitely imagine a lifepath system for Genesys where each life path grants you access to a particular Archetype, and taking more and more life paths related to that Archetype gives you more and more free ranks in that Archetype's career skills. Of course, the Archetypes mentioned in the announcement may or may not resemble the specializations from Star Wars. I've got some more detailed ideas of my own for a life path system (mostly inspired by The Burning Wheel) but I'm inclined to wait and see what design cues FFG offers in the forthcoming Core Rulebook.

As for your question about Skulduggery. It's not unusual that there are doubles in career and spec skills in Star Wars. The benefit being you can get two free ranks in the skill before using starting XP. It would certainly be a possibility to do this with this life path system thingy too, depending on player choice/roll of die.

Going this 2d20 route that it seems to me you're trying to adapt is a cool idea, but I'm not sure it's easy to make it a perfect or seamless fit.

I'm unfamiliar with life path character generation, but building on what Jegergryte says: I wonder if it might make more sense to offer options at each phase, at least for skills the character gets ranks in. For instance, the Dockhand career step could give access to Athletics and Mechanics as Career Skills, of which the player gets to choose a free rank in one. I'd also allow for up to 2 ranks at character creation, so the doubling up wouldn't matter that much. But adding in a skill-selection aspect would be important, in case you have three steps in a row that offer Skulduggery, say.

Another thought: Would talents be included in this system? For instance, the Big Score life event might offer a rank in Black Market Contacts or Convincing Demeanor as an option (or a mandatory give).

7 hours ago, sfRattan said:

I've found it more useful to think of species design in one of two ways:

• Start with a pool of 300XP, all Characteristics at 0. Raise Characteristics at the character creation costs until you are in striking distance of 100XP. Add a free rank in a skill for 10XP
• Start with humans as a baseline. Raise and lower characteristics at the character creation costs as you will. Swap the two free non-career skill ranks for a single free rank in a specific skill (no XP change).

In either case, add custom abilities for XP costs of 5, 10, or 15 as appropriate and adjust the Thresholds, shifting XP for a difference of 2 or more on a Threshold.

From there, I'd look at bumping Stats in terms of XP rather than +X to Characteristics. Also, when playtesting a life path system for Genesys, back check against what a character could have built with 100XP worth of point buy from your species and archetypes within the setting.

For a look at some great examples of a life path system, check out The Burning Wheel and Classic Traveller. Classic Traveller offers a player different "tours" they can do on starships, granting more bonuses but increasing the risk of injury and disaster... Even to the point of character death at character creation. The Burning Wheel emphasizes life paths as they exist within different social spheres (called 'settings' in the rules) of a fantasy world. It is easier to acquire new life paths within a 'setting', but some result in you moving somewhere else.

I can definitely imagine a lifepath system for Genesys where each life path grants you access to a particular Archetype, and taking more and more life paths related to that Archetype gives you more and more free ranks in that Archetype's career skills. Of course, the Archetypes mentioned in the announcement may or may not resemble the specializations from Star Wars. I've got some more detailed ideas of my own for a life path system (mostly inspired by The Burning Wheel) but I'm inclined to wait and see what design cues FFG offers in the forthcoming Core Rulebook.

Thanks for the feedback.

By necessity, dealing with lifepaths has to be in terms of Stat Bumps instead of XP, since you don't know what a person took before - everything but, say, the Events, have to be independent modules. Or at least, I'm struggling to think how "+30XP worth of Brawn" would work.

Regarding backchecking, that's what my initial math is for. A lifepath system in FFG Star Wars will, as far as I can tell, always result in characters with varying amounts of XP. My plan is to just have them total it up at the end (what they would have cost, etc.) and match it up against some bar, so your character might start with -20XP.

Burning Wheel and Traveler are huge inspirations, though I'm not a big fan of Traveler's (though I respect it). Burning Wheel I am quite fond of.

3 hours ago, SavageBob said:

I'm unfamiliar with life path character generation, but building on what Jegergryte says: I wonder if it might make more sense to offer options at each phase, at least for skills the character gets ranks in. For instance, the Dockhand career step could give access to Athletics and Mechanics as Career Skills, of which the player gets to choose a free rank in one. I'd also allow for up to 2 ranks at character creation, so the doubling up wouldn't matter that much. But adding in a skill-selection aspect would be important, in case you have three steps in a row that offer Skulduggery, say.

Another thought: Would talents be included in this system? For instance, the Big Score life event might offer a rank in Black Market Contacts or Convincing Demeanor as an option (or a mandatory give).

Choices makes it more interesting and easy to balance, but also slows down the lifepath process. But I'm not ruling it out.

One idea I had was to go with something akin to Stars Without Number: characters start with skills as non career skills, and "advance" them (see first post) during lifepath. The advance path is: Non-Career => Career => +1 => +2, etc. If you would get to advance a skill already at +2, set it aside and at the end of chargen, advance some other pool of skills.

47 minutes ago, CitizenKeen said:

Choices makes it more interesting and easy to balance, but also slows down the lifepath process. But I'm not ruling it out.

One idea I had was to go with something akin to Stars Without Number: characters start with skills as non career skills, and "advance" them (see first post) during lifepath. The advance path is: Non-Career => Career => +1 => +2, etc. If you would get to advance a skill already at +2, set it aside and at the end of chargen, advance some other pool of skills.

And are talents part of this? Or are you planning to just leave them to the specs you gain access to?

5 minutes ago, SavageBob said:

And are talents part of this? Or are you planning to just leave them to the specs you gain access to?

I mean, they'd be a part of species. I like the ideas of talents as part of lifepath (thanks to Career Event Planetary Invasion , you've got 1 Rank in Cool Under Fire , etc.), but that's a stage 2 balancing, I suppose.