31 minutes ago, DurosSpacer said:

I have a player who went for the 4 in Presence and retained the 2 in Agility. Now he complains that he, "...can't hit anything with two dice". Also, some Abilities can be 'made up' through other means. An Agility 2 starts low, but you can get talents and weapon attachments to make you a pretty accurate shooter.

Using the Aim maneuver, even twice for 2 Strain, is a great way for even non-combatants to significantly increase their ability to hit with zero cost in credits or XP.

3 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Using the Aim maneuver, even twice for 2 Strain, is a great way for even non-combatants to significantly increase their ability to hit with zero cost in credits or XP.

Often forgotten are those environmental and situational factors. People are more focused on the mechanics and less on the beautiful world that they can create in their mind as the story progresses.

55 minutes ago, Geodes said:

Often forgotten are those environmental and situational factors. People are more focused on the mechanics and less on the beautiful world that they can create in their mind as the story progresses.

And if you can create a beautiful world filled with the smoking corpses of your foes, so much the better.

Personally I don't like 3/3/3/3/2/2, but totally will admit that I went myself overboard with 5/3/2/2/1/1 ^:^ 50 Points for the last point is just a too heavy tax when you can get one of your species dumb stats up to 3 for the same price.

Still, it actually fits very well to the character, it is the character I wanted to play, it's just the min/maxer in me who is not satisfied with the results because starting with 5 means you only can spend one dedication into your primary stat and afterwards the joy to get another dedication is not as big as it could be.

My big issue with 3s is that it is just I just don't like all rounders, though as this is just the start you can easily add all your following dedication talents into your primary stats. So there is nothing technical wrong with that approach, even when I personally like my characters with glaring weak points.

edit: Oh, and actually while my pilot HOTSHOT has presence one, he has cool and leadership up to 4 dices. Skill matter most to people without talent. And while skills are expensive, they are most certainly cheaper than pushing characteristics and yield great results. Agi 1, but ranged light 4 is still a pool of PAAA and can easily enhanced by talents on top. And getting from zero to four in a career skill is just (5+10+15+20) 50 XP, so basically dirt cheap considering the results. Even as non-career skill it's just 70XP.

Only when you are aiming for triumphs on every other roll you need to combine maxed out characteristics with maxed out skills. For everything else one or the other is just fine.

An Enforcer, an Ace, and a Diplomat walk into a bar...

<words exchanged, deals go south>

The Ace plugs a couple minions with his Dragon Eye Reaper, and he's got a couple of Advantage left. The Enforcer is up next, with his twin truncheons of doom, so the Ace figures, nah, pass the boost to the Diplomat. Enforcer practices wiffleball, but has 1A. "Get this guy off me!" he yells, and passes boost to the ... Diplomat. From behind an overturned table, the Diplomat calmly Aims twice, glad he went to the practice range recently (having spent 10XP on a non-career skill), and flips a DP for a total positive pool of YYBBBB, against...short range, automatic upgrade for shooting into combat, and a bit of flinching from all the random blaster fire (setback from the enemy) for a total negative pool of RS.

That's a Face only a brother-in-arms could love...

5 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

And if you can create a beautiful world filled with the smoking corpses of your foes, so much the better.

Nah. The most beautiful worlds are those when you make your players cry over all those smoking corpses you have created

1 hour ago, SEApocalypse said:

Nah. The most beautiful worlds are those when you make your players cry over all those smoking corpses you have created

Or better yet, make them cry over all of those smoking corpses THEY created.

10 minutes ago, Geodes said:

Or better yet, make them cry over all of those smoking corpses THEY created.

I always take pride as GM when the players are my tools to create those smoking corpses, just to realize aftewards that they should have asked first and shoot afterwards. ;-)
So yeah, I agree. Shifting the blame onto them is always great.

On the flipside of this question: GMs, always make sure to provide scenarios with multiple solutions, especially if the PC group is lacking in a particular field. If players come up with crazy schemes you didn't anticipate, try to improvise around that scheme. If the group as a whole has a bias towards certain skills, cater to that that bias. If, for example, they're all combat-focused, they probably want to play a combat-heavy game. If you have a combat-leaning party with one non-combatant character, give that character opportunities to contribute to battles with their other skills.

3 hours ago, BronzeDog said:

On the flipside of this question: GMs, always make sure to provide scenarios with multiple solutions, especially if the PC group is lacking in a particular field. If players come up with crazy schemes you didn't anticipate, try to improvise around that scheme. If the group as a whole has a bias towards certain skills, cater to that that bias. If, for example, they're all combat-focused, they probably want to play a combat-heavy game. If you have a combat-leaning party with one non-combatant character, give that character opportunities to contribute to battles with their other skills.

A real classic.
My ace for example refused to even wear a personal scale weapon, so the GMs have my opportunities to use vehicle weapons plenty of times against ground targets while making it hard and dangerous enough to still be "a challenge" for everyone. (Usually I was basically the driver for a heist, coming in hot, ramming or gunning down the ground pursuiters and getting into a chase afterwards during our daring escape, he few times we just downright crashed parties with turbolasers, but those cases are rare exceptions because it draws a lot of heat AND the GMs got better in anticipating those actions and providing air support for the bad guys.

At the same time we finally have an face character again (or better one of our players finally spend xp into that area) and now naturally our solutions can be build around the combination of our face and our computer and mechanic genius, so combat is now a lot less in focus. The GM reacts to that player desire by presenting more opportunities for that character to use her charm instead of her autofire rifle.

On 9/29/2017 at 1:46 PM, kaosoe said:

This topic came up a few months ago and was wildly divisive. As the others mentioned, it really depends on playstyle and group makeup/numbers. From personal experience, I get more out of lots of 3s rather than a single 4 and just a few 3s. I don't like to just stick to my shtick when I play a character. I tend to play characters that will try things outside of their comfort zone. So having more characteristics of a decent quality than specializing in just one area works well for me.

On 9/29/2017 at 1:59 PM, HappyDaze said:

IIRC, right now only Drall and Pantorans can start with 4/3/3/2/2/2, with the former having the 4 in Intellect and the latter in Presence. The Pantoran can also have a 3/3/3/3/3/1 if you don't mind having the 1 i Willpower. These are strong sets and are not reachable by most species (where the choice is typically either 4/3/2/2/2/2 or 3/3/3/3/2/2). And then there are the species with significant species abilities that often can't reach 3/3/3/3/2/2 (but can usually reach 4/3/2/2/2/2).

For the pantorans 4 3 3 2 2 2 spread the 4 can be in anything

Pantorans can have a 4 4 2 2 2 1 with the 1 in willpower, a 4 in preaence, without using obligation/duty/morality xp.

In the previous debate I had always done the 3 3 3 3 2 2 spread and based on that I liked it. in a new game with 350 earned xp consular: Niman disciple/martial artist I did the a 3 3 2 3 4 2 (bought down to a dedication in martial artist) and I noticed how much more easily I hit with the lights Abe (2 yellow, 2 green, 1 blue (modded custom grip), remove a black) than the 2 yellow 1 green brawl/repulsor-fist... I never had that kind of comparison before. Granted it's 3 dice difference so it's not exactly a fair comparison (I've never had that much discrepancy before I previously kept things closer with skill ranks), but a 4 can make a big difference typical defence were 1 red 1 purple and 1 or 2 black... I almost never missed with the lightsaber (the 1 time i missed i had 6 uncancelled advantage) and only hit twice with the repulsor fist (only once was sufficient to activate concusive, had exactly 1 un-cancelled success and 2 un cancelled advantage).

By the way I started with 1 force die and a fully upgraded sense defense upgrade, because I had armor with 1 ranged defense and 2 ranks of defensive training, the difficulty that incoming short range/melee attacks faced were 1 red 1 purple 1 black / 2 red 2 black... compared to a much more offensively built Jedi Attard striker seer with 3 force die 2 of which were left committed to enhance, I hit just about as often and got hit a lot less. So contrary to popular wisdom I greatly prefer sense to enhance (also enhance doesn't boost willpower so it doesn't help a Niman disciple that much, it would help with the martial artist repulsor fist though)

But green nikto and klantooinians are great combat species... you can have 4s in brawn and dex with starting xp, or a 4 3 3 2 2 1 spread (with the 1 in presence), green niktos are awesome martial artists.

But if I wanted to play a pilot I would play a gank, for the narrative justification of cybering up which allow you to get a 6 yellow 1 green dice pool for flight related pilot checks, by the way if I were to play a pilot type character it would be a bounty hunter:operator/squadron leader... the combo of offensive driving and 2 ranks of defensive driving is just too good (especially in an agresor assault fighter, being a gank with lots of cyber makes you resistant to the strain when the limiters are off) with a gunnery Droid brain and advanced targeting array (both fully upgraded) that 1 character is awesome in starship combat by themselves (you'll probably want an astromech to repair the ship too)

Nice post!

The player is likely to select a Pinterest image she likes and build the character from there. She likes pantorans, so I wil suggest that option to her, even if she might take a rodian, duros, human, twilek or wookie as easily, I guess.

Cheers,
Xavi