The Technical Aptitude talent has the unique honor of being the only time-reduction talent that actually stacks, reduces by 25% rather than 50%, and lacks a secondary benefit which normally is the aspect that stacks with multiple ranks. Where this becomes a problem is when all specializations of the game are available. The Slicer from the Edge CRB tree has two ranks of the talent which would take 100 XP to get both, Desperate Allies's Analyst has one as a 5 XP talent, and the Artisan from Endless Vigil has a 5 XP talent as well. If we start from Artisan, that means 160 XP will get four ranks which by the normal stacking rules for time would result in the duration reduced to 0, or basically an action.

Is there something I'm missing, or is a dedicated speed-programmer really able to do things like programming Elimination protocols per Special Modifications in a few seconds? If I am right, then that is truly awesome! I suppose dedicating a build to more rapidly performing Computer checks has earned its ability, and I might look to this as a potential build in a future game!

It reduces remaining time by 25%. Not original base time.

For instance, if something takes 100 minutes it breaks down like this:

100 -> 75 -> 56.25 -> 42.19 -> 31.65

So on and so forth.

21 minutes ago, Tweedledope said:

It reduces remaining time by 25%. Not original base time.

For instance, if something takes 100 minutes it breaks down like this:

100 -> 75 -> 56.25 -> 42.19 -> 31.65

So on and so forth.

No, nothing in this game works like that. You never have to complete multiple steps of multiplication in this system. It's not Traveller.

3 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

No, nothing in this game works like that. You never have to complete multiple steps of multiplication in this system. It's not Traveller.

Maybe not, but I don't know a single sane GM who would allow a task to take zero time.

Most importantly, this is a narrative system. Worry less about the literal time and look more at the "I have four ranks and can do this 4x faster than someone without them."

5 minutes ago, Tweedledope said:

Maybe not, but I don't know a single sane GM who would allow a task to take zero time.

Most importantly, this is a narrative system. Worry less about the literal time and look more at the "I have four ranks and can do this 4x faster than someone without them."

To quote the EotE book, "Actions include any activity complex enough to warrant involving a skill check". Unless you have something specifically allowing taking something like this and making it a maneuver or incidental, the minimum span of time that something involving a skill check can take is an action.

By my reading, that means someone who has taken 4X Technical Aptitude is able to accomplish complicated Computers tasks in one action. It couldn't take less than that action unless something else gave the ability to make a Computers check as a maneuver.

And that's perfectly valid. The player has invested into giving their character the Computers equivalent of the Fonzie Touch. Let them have fun with it.

I'd cap it to 75% reduction.

After that, you're stretching credulity.

"So it normally takes 3 days of work to program this droid, and you somehow do it in 30 seconds on a borrowed computer with none of your own work. How?"

"Space Wikipedia?"

16 minutes ago, Spatula Of Doom said:

I'd cap it to 75% reduction.

After that, you're stretching credulity.

"So it normally takes 3 days of work to program this droid, and you somehow do it in 30 seconds on a borrowed computer with none of your own work. How?"

"Space Wikipedia?"

Just about every pop culture show has a hacker that can accomplish complex computer-related tasks almost instantly. When it comes to hacking, I think that Felicity on Arrow has actually said "OK, I'm in" within 30 seconds of her butt hitting the desk chair.

And I expect that's because hacking was not the focus of the scene, just the proverbial hand waving/vehicle that moves to the next plot point (Info on badguy, super-weapon, etc). You'll find that that also happens when people are meeting with contacts, investigating a scene (in non CSI style shows), traveling to different locations, etc. These things aren't shown in any detail because otherwise you'd be eating up a good chunk of your 20-45 minute show with banal fluff that serves no purpose in moving the plot along. It's also why they montage building things, even if those things are pretty cool.

Hacking can be the focus, I'm not saying it can't, but in that case you need something to build tension. Time constraints are the most common vehicle for this. See that famous scene from Swordfish, or the "can they hack it before the cops/robots/badguys show up" from, well lots of stuff.

100% reduction removes the ability to use time constraints as a plot device.

19 minutes ago, Spatula Of Doom said:

100% reduction removes the ability to use time constraints as a plot device.

Just start the clock at 200%...

(What I mean by that is stack on additional time based on circumstances beyond the character's control.)

8 minutes ago, Simon Retold said:

Just start the clock at 200%...

(What I mean by that is stack on additional time based on circumstances beyond the character's control.)

I'm not sure you understand what a 100% reduction in time means.

It doesn't matter if the 12 hour job is hiked up to 24 hours due to poor conditions. It's reduced by 100% either way.

If the non hacking elements are the ones that are suffering from the time constraints then you've shifted the focus away from hacking and hacking has become the handwavium part without tension (beyond success or failure). Either way, time is not an element of the hacking.

If it's not a 100% reduction in time, then you can play around with arbitrary time restrictions (narratively all time restrictions are arbitrary). If it's a 100% reduction, then any job, big or small, takes an action.

Nevermind. Not worth the argument.

6 hours ago, Simon Retold said:

Just start the clock at 200%...

That's just a Richard move. If you're going to disallow the character to use his talents, don't F around with games like this. Just say "No" and move on.

(Also, don't disallow players from using their talents that they spent hard earned points on. That too is very Richard.)

This is one of things that takes a lot of xp to do one thing. It's not game breaking.

You can also use the threats and disadvantages to increase time regardless of this talent as it's only the base time this is effected.

51 minutes ago, Desslok said:

That's just a Richard move. If you're going to disallow the character to use his talents, don't F around with games like this. Just say "No" and move on.

(Also, don't disallow players from using their talents that they spent hard earned points on. That too is very Richard.)

I think what he's saying is build your time frame like you build a dice pool. Some talents and effects can reduce a difficulty to 0 but they won't eliminate setbacks. Others will eliminate setbacks but not reduce the difficulty. So if you stop thinking about any task as X time and instead think about it as time for base difficulty, which technical aptitude can reduce, and added time for setbacks, which technical aptitude cannot reduce.

So instead of saying it takes 2 days to program a droid you do it in 30 seconds you say it normally takes 36 hours to program a droid, plus three hours for not having a holonet connection, plus 6 hours for using someone elses computer that doesn't have your plug in code snippets, plust 3 hours for doing it in the back of a freighter. You tell the player that they're master at technical aptitude so they can reduce the 36 hours to negligible and do the job in a super-human 12 hours. The player then reminds you of their makeshift tools talent so you drop it down to 6 hours because the added time for that setback was removed

At least that's how I read his suggestion.

Additionally, each skill check is still going to take an action. While the user can set up amazing programs in veritable seconds, they can still only address one problem at a time. Using the Special Modifications rules, such a user has no capabilities over and above his opponent due to his speed for the contested portion, but the intruder would be able to do a total lockout and his reboot of the system would only take an action rather than an hour for his opponent.

It only costs 65XP to buy the ability to Force Move a Silhouette 4 ship. Up that to 100XP with Range and Control, and they can pull a YT-1300 at Extreme range out of the sky with a single action. Spending 160XP to be able to make any Computers check as a single action isn't overpowered in comparison.

If the justification is 'But that's using the Force! Normal characters should be more realistic!' then what about the Diplomat signature ability that lets you learn the basic histories of everyone in the room? How does that work? You just assume the character did the legwork beforehand, because they're a great diplomat, and now it pays off. So your super-slicer has spent their downtime crafting scripts and droid assistants and building custom data-spikes or whatnot and always happens to have the right tool.

If the justification is 'But it locks out a certain class of challenge!', well, so does Force Move. Or the Hired Gun's Signature Ability to instagib all Minions in an encounter. Ban those too.

10 minutes ago, Talkie Toaster said:

It only costs 65XP to buy the ability to Force Move a Silhouette 4 ship. Up that to 100XP with Range and Control, and they can pull a YT-1300 at Extreme range out of the sky with a single action. Spending 160XP to be able to make any Computers check as a single action isn't overpowered in comparison.

I agree in general, but for an accurate comparison, you would also have to factor in the cost of Force Rating improvements to get enough pips to activate everything.

The XP cost offsets the "advantage" by requiring playtime and experience to get to the point of "instant programming." So if thats what the player wants they should be able to do it.

The only issue is the sort of thing that the GM should already be big enough to handle and the player big enough to not be a Richard about. Being able to insta-program a droid is fine as long as the player isn't going around insta-programing every droid he can and trying to disrupt the game and system by bloating it all with a million stolen droid servants.

If that kind of hooey happens the GM should be able to put a stop to it pretty easy.

Using the Felicity example, while she should be able to hack into a DoD server and get some key info easily, she's not going to be able to just reprogram the entire DARPA project management system over to tactical doughnut development on a whim and get explosive jelly doughnuts in the mail the next day. Even if she does, it won't stick beyond it's relavence to the adventure at hand and will likely have repercussions.

Just because a character can do something doesn't mean it's going to play out like a reproducable bug in a video game.

1 hour ago, Talkie Toaster said:

Or the Hired Gun's Signature Ability to instagib all Minions in an encounter. Ban those too.

Instagib?

1 hour ago, Ghostofman said:

The XP cost offsets the "advantage" by requiring playtime and experience to get to the point of "instant programming." So if thats what the player wants they should be able to do it.

If that's the player's focus, the primary function of his character, then by gum the GM should not only not squash that tendency, but encourage it by building in moments that only Mr Slicer can deal with. "You need that engine power subroutine reinstalled before the ship crashes into the surface? Stand back, son. I got this!"

Also, the 160 points? That's not right - you still have to buy the other two trees. I don't have my books here at work, but that's going to be at least 250-300 points, and not 160. That's assuming, of course, that Mr Slicer makes a beeline straight to those four talents and doesn't sink any points into, oh, I don't know - the computer programming skill?

"Great, you now have four tiers of Technical Aptitude and are still rolling two yellows and one green? Congratulations. That means you can now fail in one turn when it normally would have taken you 48 hours to fail."

27 minutes ago, Desslok said:

Also, the 160 points? That's not right - you still have to buy the other two trees. I don't have my books here at work, but that's going to be at least 250-300 points, and not 160. That's assuming, of course, that Mr Slicer makes a beeline straight to those four talents and doesn't sink any points into, oh, I don't know - the computer programming skill?

"Great, you now have four tiers of Technical Aptitude and are still rolling two yellows and one green? Congratulations. That means you can now fail in one turn when it normally would have taken you 48 hours to fail."

I definitely agree in principle, Mr. Penguin, but a small technical (snerk!) quibble: failing in an action instead of 48 hours does allow our slicer many many more attempts, drastically increasing the odds of success.

The downside, of course, is that for higher difficulty checks, the chance for Threat and possibly Despair go up, too, so maybe their chance of success goes up with the time reduction, but also how quickly they can royally screw over the party .

1 minute ago, Absol197 said:

I definitely agree in principle, Mr. Penguin, but a small technical (snerk!) quibble: failing in an action instead of 48 hours does allow our slicer many many more attempts, drastically increasing the odds of success.

From a strictly RAW standpoint, sure. I guess it comes down to how the GM handles multiple attempts at a task. When I GM, unless circumstances change drastically, I wouldn't allow someone to just sit there and reroll over and over again on the same project, be it opening a lock, computing astrogation coordinates, searching a room or installing Viewports 10 to an Astromech. It might be a bit meta, but if a player can keep doing that again and again until they succeed, what's the point of rolling in the first place.

I do like the idea of the "You want to roll 50 times? Fine, that'll be 50 chances at a Despair - so have fun! Muwah-hah-hah-hah."

I'm of the opinion that any given roll not in structured time, represents your best effort under the current circumstances. So if circumstances change, a good nights rest and some caf, or upgrading your tools, then we can try the task again.

1 hour ago, Desslok said:

From a strictly RAW standpoint, sure. I guess it comes down to how the GM handles multiple attempts at a task. When I GM, unless circumstances change drastically, I wouldn't allow someone to just sit there and reroll over and over again on the same project, be it opening a lock, computing astrogation coordinates, searching a room or installing Viewports 10 to an Astromech. It might be a bit meta, but if a player can keep doing that again and again until they succeed, what's the point of rolling in the first place.

I do like the idea of the "You want to roll 50 times? Fine, that'll be 50 chances at a Despair - so have fun! Muwah-hah-hah-hah."

My take is this: you CAN keep trying again to succeed, but if your attempts draw too much attention, circumstances might change to make trying again impossible. Essentially, you can keep trying, but each attempt does not negate the side-effects of your previous attempts.

This is where that constant threat of Despair comes in: with a Despair (or enough Threat), your fumbling might alert the sysadmin that someone attempted to hack in, and they could shut you out entirely. Or, possibly with a double-Despair, she's alerted, realizes you didn't get what you were looking for, guesses you'll try again, and lays a trap for you, sneaking a worm into your rig if you try again.

52 minutes ago, kaosoe said:

I'm of the opinion that any given roll not in structured time, represents your best effort under the current circumstances. So if circumstances change, a good nights rest and some caf, or upgrading your tools, then we can try the task again.

This as well .

2 hours ago, Desslok said:

Also, the 160 points? That's not right - you still have to buy the other two trees. I don't have my books here at work, but that's going to be at least 250-300 points, and not 160. That's assuming, of course, that Mr Slicer makes a beeline straight to those four talents and doesn't sink any points into, oh, I don't know - the computer programming skill?

"Great, you now have four tiers of Technical Aptitude and are still rolling two yellows and one green? Congratulations. That means you can now fail in one turn when it normally would have taken you 48 hours to fail."

The 160 points actually does include the cost for the two extra specs (assuming they were the second and third specs)! IIRC, three of the Technical Aptitudes are 5-XP talents while the fourth is locked behind two 20s, two 15s, a 10 and a 5 and is a 10-XP talent. 25 for the four ranks, 50 for the two specs, and 85 to get to the fourth rank.