Hey all,

Where can I find a rule set explaining the layout of talent trees and how to create new ones?

Cheers,

Chris.

There aren't really any.

Dang. Thanks.

Cheers,

Chris.

Well talent trees are generally 5 rows by 4 columns. The talents in each row cost 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 experience points per row respectively.

Beyond that, to make your own trees you really only have to know wich kind of talents you want in each of the 20 total spots (or make up new talents), and how they're going to be connected.

The connections determine any prerequisite talents to acquiring any subsequent talent, starting from the top of each column.

Making an actual custom tree, that works and is somewhat balanced is pretty hard though. But by all means not impossible.

Although it's a pretty heavy time sink I'd say if you want to experiment with, and playtest, what you've build.

I haven't tried it, but I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Oggdude's includes a custom-tree-design option.

Maybe when Genesys comes out, if it uses a talent tree structure, they'll detail something. We'll have to wait and see what sort of structure they adopt.

The general rule of thumb for custom trees is "Is this new tree a must have for most characters?" If the answer is Yes then you need to tone it down a bit.

If you have ideas feel free to post them and the forum will be happy to provide advice. In general it's easiest to take an already existing tree and swap out a couple of talents to get to where you want to be.

Id be very reluctant to make my own myself, what I find is often the case is that people making their own tend to err on the overpowered side of the talents , adding in what they think would work great in the tree, cherry picking the best talents from others, this is great if all the talent trees are like this, however they are not.

It is also clear that ranked talents are in some cases rationed, take feral strength, one of the few unconditional damage addition talents , seems to have been only given to a select few specializations, similarly deadly accuracy has been said to have been left out of the Force &Destiny specializations because it takes the already awesome damage you can do with lightsabers and makes it more "Awesome". Although I personally think they went too far with the brawl damage boosting talents, albeit it is tempered by experience cost.

This means that by adding a talent tree to the game that has 3 more ranks of feral strength, you give the melee specialist the ability to a lot more damage to their attacks, upsetting the balance between, ranged /lightsaber /Brawl /Melee. As well as this you have to be careful of creating new talents that can allow similar stacking. Example with Brawl it gets rather crowded

Doctors - Pressure point Add Medicine ranks to damage ignore soak, but only strain damagee

Martial Artist's Martial Grace - Add Coordination ranks to damage for 2 strain

Feral Strength - has 6 ranks iirc allowing a blanket +6 dmg to brawl and melee checks

Deadly Accuracy - add skill rating of weapon used to damage to one attack per check

Enforcer's Walk the Walk - add Streetwise ranks to Damage of brawl check for a destiny point spend.

This gives the ability to have Brawl have a minimum damage 33 for one hit per check if you have max ranks in all the above and all the talents. This ignores soak. It costs a massive amount of xp to pull it off (although only about 200-300 to get enough to do 20 dmg per strike, not ignoring soak).

So what is the relevance of this, well someone might come up with some form of Teras Kasi talent tree, to get a more specific Martial Artist , one a bit more spiritual, but if you go into it without play testing it (Ie have people try and break the system for you), you might wind up having added a talent too similar to one in game. It is also the same principle of why FFG have reused some talent trees rather than make a new one (Pilot in Smuggler and ACE careera, meaning you couldnt stack the two main pilot specializations without leading to the PC who takes both and creates an unbeatable pilot, so having the same tree made sense there).

Also if you do go down that path Id recommend having a close look at the trees themselves and try to emulate them. Some , more potent talents were not put in Tier 5 but were placed in lower xp tiers , but required you to go through tier 5 to get them, Force Sensitive Exile is a good example of this in action. Gambler (which is like a spiral)_and Infiltrator (which is linear) are others.

Most trees have or 3 signature talents that may be unique to that tree, or may be in only one or two other specializations.

Exampless

Warden - Baleful Gaze / Grapple / Overbalance /Precision Strike (last three of those are shared with Martial Artist, which gets grapple and precision strike cheaper, showing the focus slightly away from traditional Martial Arts and more towards a more intimidating style character)

Enforcer - Walk the Walk / Talk the Talk / Loom

Marshall - Unrelenting Skeptic / Improved Unrelenting Skeptic.

If the spec is a combatative spec then it will likely have 2 or more ranks of toughened, and at least one of those is usually picked up in the 5 or 10 xp slot. They also will have 1 or 2 defensive talents, side step if ranged , defensive stance if melee, more lighter armoured specs that have more "movement" about them might get dodge instead. Note not all do, example Big Game Hunter doesnt.

If the spec has a lot of talents that cost strain then likely they will have 2 or 3 ranks of Grit.

they will often have 15-18 talents in the tree with the remainder being made up with ranks of talents. Sometimes these ranked talents are used in a way that is a tax for more powerful abilities. Example it may be that the only way to get a particular good talent for a social character is to have a 20/25 xp toughened rank directly before it forcing you to buy that before getting the cherry on the cake talent (Example Grapple on the Warden tree needs you to spend 20 xp on toughened or to come along the tier 5 row needing you to buy 50 xp in other talents first. Showing that they didnt want to make Grapple easy to grt for a Warden, but a more Martial Arts based character gets it much earlier)

I hope that helps you, and good luck if you do try it.

17 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

The general rule of thumb for custom trees is "Is this new tree a must have for most characters?" If the answer is Yes then you need to tone it down a bit.

If you have ideas feel free to post them and the forum will be happy to provide advice. In general it's easiest to take an already existing tree and swap out a couple of talents to get to where you want to be.

I think that pretty much most character types can be done with the current specializations as they are and these have the benefit of having been play tested . Often all it takes is to look beyond the title. Example a street corner off the back of a speeder truck salesman could quite easily fall under Trader ,but could equallh be a Fringer, or a thief, or a scoundrel. Depends on the skills and talents you take.

About the only thing you can't do is two weapon combat with a Ranged Light and Melee/Brawl weapon. Basically everything else has a Specialisation that fits.

11 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

About the only thing you can't do is two weapon combat with a Ranged Light and Melee/Brawl weapon. Basically everything else has a Specialisation that fits.

I have a houserule for this. The players no longer have to increase the difficulty an additional time for using mixed skills. The attack is already penalizing enough with having to use the worse of skills and abilities and the initial increase. So far no one has built a character around this concept using my house rule, but at a glance I don't see anything wrong with it.

3 minutes ago, kaosoe said:

I have a houserule for this. The players no longer have to increase the difficulty an additional time for using mixed skills. The attack is already penalizing enough with having to use the worse of skills and abilities and the initial increase. So far no one has built a character around this concept using my house rule, but at a glance I don't see anything wrong with it.

Nothing a Gunslinger with a pair of disruptors wouldn't destroy!

Thats a decent house rule, Hard Difficulty with a 2 Advantage cost is basically the same as the Sarlacc Sweep but with a single target not multiple.

True Aim helps, or Executioners Essential Kill with the Triumph option.

The reason is that after four years playing my trandoshan Survivalist-Bounty Hunter (which I enjoy), a discrepancy in the Survivalist talent tree has become noticeably apparent. I was speaking to the GM and he agreed. We both don't like the removal of Setback dice as a talent tree ability. Setback dice are assigned to rolls, they are not assumed to be automatic. If the advantage is sort of broadly applicable and for a low cost, it is not a bad price, but at high ranks, the same ignore X Setback dice schtick becomes too expensive. At that stage, as it is with me and my unspent 55 experience points, do I buy advantages that have an intermittent use in narrow circumstances or do I buy Assassin and load up on that talent tree with many more and much better advantages.

I decided to try and rework the Survivalist talent tree which would make it more useful and attractive to buy all the way up. My trandoshan character is a nice guy in a bad place and I would prefer a reworked Survivalist talent tree over the murder-focused Assassin tree. At this stage it is a thought experiment and I'll probably take Assassin but hey, maybe I can make something better. If there isn't some sort of compound-payment scheme per advantage or ranked advantages and how to interlink them, I have to grind it out myself.

Cheers,

Chris.

46 minutes ago, Insect King said:

The reason is that after four years playing my trandoshan Survivalist-Bounty Hunter (which I enjoy), a discrepancy in the Survivalist talent tree has become noticeably apparent. I was speaking to the GM and he agreed. We both don't like the removal of Setback dice as a talent tree ability. Setback dice are assigned to rolls, they are not assumed to be automatic. If the advantage is sort of broadly applicable and for a low cost, it is not a bad price, but at high ranks, the same ignore X Setback dice schtick becomes too expensive. At that stage, as it is with me and my unspent 55 experience points, do I buy advantages that have an intermittent use in narrow circumstances or do I buy Assassin and load up on that talent tree with many more and much better advantages.

I decided to try and rework the Survivalist talent tree which would make it more useful and attractive to buy all the way up. My trandoshan character is a nice guy in a bad place and I would prefer a reworked Survivalist talent tree over the murder-focused Assassin tree. At this stage it is a thought experiment and I'll probably take Assassin but hey, maybe I can make something better. If there isn't some sort of compound-payment scheme per advantage or ranked advantages and how to interlink them, I have to grind it out myself.

Cheers,

Chris.

The GM should be throwing lots of setback on many of the checks is it raining then , you have visibility problems (perception, combat skills, even vigilance) , movement problems (Coordination etc), is it windy etc. Setback should be commonplace, not a rare exception.

The effect of setback is larger than upgrading a purple to a red but not greater than adding a further purple to the check. Generally adding dice has a greater effect than changing thd type of dice rolled.

So if your GM isnt giving you setback at least 50% of your rolls then IMO they are doing it wrong and making those talents not worthwhile.

FWIW adding a setback gives you about 7% more chance of failure and threat.

I play a Guardian, and if I want to trigger Overbalance one of my goto abilities is Sense Advantage which adds two setback, albeit im stacking this on top of Baleful Gaze.

Out of interest what are you looking add to Survivalist that's different, or different to Assassin? What skills do you feel are thematic but under represented? Are there talents other places that you think would fit?

6 minutes ago, syrath said:

The GM should be throwing lots of setback on many of the checks is it raining then , you have visibility problems (perception, combat skills, even vigilance) , movement problems (Coordination etc), is it windy etc. Setback should be commonplace, not a rare exception.

So if your GM isnt giving you setback at least 50% of your rolls then IMO they are doing it wrong and making those talents not worthwhile.

No, the GM is excellent and not wrong but even in your example, my talents may only be effective 50% of the time in spite of spending lots of experience on them. The argument we have is that each advantage should give a benefit all of the time not just when its lucky, or because my character has advantages that cancel them out.

6 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Out of interest what are you looking add to Survivalist that's different, or different to Assassin? What skills do you feel are thematic but under represented? Are there talents other places that you think would fit?

Not much. I was thinking of tweaking a few advantages. Instead of cancelling setback dice, a reduction of challenge-difficulty-setback dice in those specific conditions. Rather than cancel out a Setback die, reduce one challenge-difficulty-setback to the next lowest. At the bottom, a Setback die can be cancelled. Have two difficulty dice and a setback dice, the player can choose to reduce a difficulty die to a setback die or cancel a setback die.

Cheers,

Chris.

Yeah, I think this is a survivalist thing. Most talents in most trees are "Remove one setback per rank of skill when using Skill X". The Survivalist ones are MUCH more situational, as are some others, like Slicer (where rather than using Computers their talents reference using Computers in situation X).

Now, arguably they can also be better, as for example Outdoorsman could reduce impact of envrionmental effects on a whole range of skills, so very much depends on how it's GM'd.

Decreasing time is a big element of the 3 relevant Survivalist talents, if time pressure isn't a factor then half the benefit is being lost.

Its also important for you the player to get creative about how those talents apply:

Outdoorsman can reduce setback on any skill check with any skill where wind, rain, hot, cold, etc are having an effect.

Expert Tracker can apply in city's as well as wilderness, Perception, Knowledge checks, Streetwise, Athletics (in a chase?) Vigilance... its very broad.

Forager is again broad, but also very cheap and only one rank.

In the end you're actually only forced to purchase 1 rank each of ET and Outdoorsman to get every other talent in the tree. It's not that big of a deal, and there are a lot of other Specialisations that could broaden your character than just Assassin.

Really the big problem I have with Survivalist is there's no hero talent, nothing that's uniquely powerful. It's a tree full of support talents, which means it's often best just taking a choice selection to pair with another more outspoken spec.

34 minutes ago, Insect King said:

No, the GM is excellent and not wrong but even in your example, my talents may only be effective 50% of the time in spite of spending lots of experience on them. The argument we have is that each advantage should give a benefit all of the time not just when its lucky, or because my character has advantages that cancel them out.

Not much. I was thinking of tweaking a few advantages. Instead of cancelling setback dice, a reduction of challenge-difficulty-setback dice in those specific conditions. Rather than cancel out a Setback die, reduce one challenge-difficulty-setback to the next lowest. At the bottom, a Setback die can be cancelled. Have two difficulty dice and a setback dice, the player can choose to reduce a difficulty die to a setback die or cancel a setback die.

Cheers,

Chris.

Can I ask if you are using the following

Outdoorsman - remove setback caused by environmental conditions. in the aforementioned raining situation, the PC gets to remove setback from combat checks, athletics checks etc

Expert Tracker allows you to remove setback from tracking people, id definitely be adding setback when tracking someone in game in a city.

If you read the core book, it makes it clear that talents are situational abilities and often it is better to buy a skill rank in an appropriate skill, so the fact that they situationally remove setback is not a bad thing, and to me setback for tracking should be almost automatic, unless you have perfect conditions to enable tracking to be easy (freshly laid snow for example), Outdoorsma n being able to remove environmental penalties is also pretty good as the weather should come up often in most games.

Forager is probably the biggest situational one, but when it does come up, it is superbly useful (and is only a 5xp talent)

12 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Decreasing time is a big element of the 3 relevant Survivalist talents, if time pressure isn't a factor then half the benefit is being lost.

Its also important for you the player to get creative about how those talents apply:

Outdoorsman can reduce setback on any skill check with any skill where wind, rain, hot, cold, etc are having an effect.

Expert Tracker can apply in city's as well as wilderness, Perception, Knowledge checks, Streetwise, Athletics (in a chase?) Vigilance... its very broad.

Forager is again broad, but also very cheap and only one rank.

In the end you're actually only forced to purchase 1 rank each of ET and Outdoorsman to get every other talent in the tree. It's not that big of a deal, and there are a lot of other Specialisations that could broaden your character than just Assassin.

Really the big problem I have with Survivalist is there's no hero talent, nothing that's uniquely powerful. It's a tree full of support talents, which means it's often best just taking a choice selection to pair with another more outspoken spec.

I love Fringer and it is a similar tree, being a solid talent tree with no single stand out talent, and it looks like you beat me to the post.

For OP, you may want to look at the Big Game Hunter which synergises very well with survivalist and has a few stand out talents for you.

Edit or Trailblazer from AOR soldier book.

6 minutes ago, syrath said:

Can I ask if you are using the following

If you read the core book, it makes it clear that talents are situational abilities and often it is better to buy a skill rank in an appropriate skill, so the fact that they situationally remove setback is not a bad thing, and to me setback for tracking should be almost automatic, unless you have perfect conditions to enable tracking to be easy (freshly laid snow for example), Outdoorsman being able to remove environmental penalties is also pretty good as the weather should come up often in most games.

Yes, a frequent issue I see is people focus on talents and don't consider skills. There are a lot of talents where you'd be better off getting a skill point for the same xp, unless there is something important to you it is gating.

When GMing I always add a fair bit of setback in combat from environmental effects, as otherwise the game can get very much based on who acts first. This also lets those who invest in these talents shine.

Or course, with something like Survivalist, the scenario will have a lot of impact on how much it is used. If GMing we'd be in Wilderness for at least 1/N of the sessions, where N is the number of players, if one is a Survivalist.

No, it's not about creativity. I've been playing the same character for four years. I have pushed the survivalist talent tree as far as it goes creatively. This is not about how many set back dice the GM throws at my character -- he throws plenty -- this is about abilities that are not consistently useful in spite of their ever steeper experience point cost.

The most valuable direction is the far left one which gives +2 Wounds twice and ends up at a +1 Attribute boost. I understand that every talent tree has dud slots one has to buy before getting to the better one. This is about the mechanics used for the features. Personally, I feel talent trees are mostly inconsequential and forgettable and are deliberately structured to be am experience point sink and would be handled better as simpler advantage and disadvantage lists. But this is besides the point. I enjoy the game and I am willing to buy abilities in the survivalist talent tree because talent trees are placed to be part of each characters identity -- a sort of pseudo-character class.

I don't think any should buy a new die in a skill simply because the talent tree is humdrum.

C.