Basically, for a classless point-buy structure, FFG's game feels an awful lot like classes, and multiclassing feels just as punishing as it does in d20. I realize that even within one spec, there are so many ways to spend lots and lots of points that you probably won't run out of things to buy, but I like the idea of diversity as well as focus if that's how some PC's see their interests taking them.

While still waiting to how Genesys handles talent trees, can someone point me to any existing alternative to the career/specialization-centric model? On the Edge forum, I recall reading about some folks pondering smaller, more concentrated trees (such as sniping, medicine, etc) that are easier to buy into. Ideally that opens up character creation to make each PC truly customized, but I realize it also threatens even greater opportunity to game the game.

Glancing at FFG's Star Wars after years of sourcebook supplements, a given career has numerous specializations that could be branched into in order to give that career at least a some sense of diversity, but something still feels a little off about it. I've read that many/most PC's don't branch beyond a single career and spec because of the XP surcharge of doing so (which continues to become more prohibitive) and yet nearly any fantasy character you would try to stat would easily fork into at least two specializations if not quite a few more. Certainly the Star Wars iconic characters themselves are "multi-classed" across the board.

It may be that I simply either waive the surcharge for picking up a new in-career specialization or flatten it to +10 for in-career or +20 for out-of-career one, rather than ramping the charge based on how many you have.

Look no further than Modiphius 2D20 Conan handling of talent trees. The archetypes rather define an emphasis on startink skills and a starting talent but from there on buying skill ranks, attributes and talents is free form. Talents are arragend in small talent trees focusing on skills. My hope is, Genesys will handle it in a similar way. Secializations might fit a specific setting bout not a generic seting agnostic system.

Hmm...I will have a look at Conan 2D20.

I've been considering skill-centric talent trees (where you get a tree for each skill that you've invested XP into at character creation or thereafter), but one drawback to that is just how much more heavily used and broadly applicable some skills are vs others. Some trees will be mighty full.

Perhaps interconnected trees, where you buy a jumpoff point to another tree would work. So if your skill is Ranged Light, you eventually jump off into either a gunslinger, duelist, trickshooter, or marksman specialty tree. Some trees could be cross-linked, of course.

The downside of such a radical departure (at least from Edge) is it's really using the group of players as beta-testers, and some design decisions will be flat-out broken. The players need to accept that risk going into it, and realize that some retconning is inevitable.

Here's example how a small talent tree looks, this one below is tied to the acrobatics skill:

Upper talents are the prerequisite for talents lower in the tree. So Agile would be te prerq for Message runner, savage instincts and nimble as a cat. every branch usually handles an aspect of the skill. the lower skills being more powerful as the upper ones and of course costing more XP. Some talents have ranks and can be purchased multiple times for stacking benefits. Tose talent trees make character developements extremely flexible as they are not bound to specific classes.

So buying into a skill is all it takes to pick up the tree? Interestingly, the Dedication talents could actually be at the top of each of these trees, but should be concentrated on raising the characteristic that backs the tree (so specialized acrobatics would actually increase Agility, not ANY characteristic).

1 hour ago, Dragonshadow said:

So buying into a skill is all it takes to pick up the tree?

Indeed. The first talent often let you reroll one or more dice of a skill check. The following skills are consecutive in power.

You can literally build up your char freely. That's what I dearly hope Genesys will do as well. So multiclassing is redundant because you can define your class by your choice of skills and talents.

Btw. 2D20 has five skill ranks max like FFD SW has. Now wonder there are some similarities, Jay Little was developer of both systems^^

3 hours ago, Dragonshadow said:

Basically, for a classless point-buy structure, FFG's game feels an awful lot like classes,

Umm.... that’s probably because Genesys (and Star Wars) isn’t "classless, point-buy” a system, but very solidly a class based system. Not a class and level system, but character classes are the very core of character definition.

Something I noticed a little bit ago is that the talent trees in SW are basically actually just feats from D&D, just broken up into discrete blocks and given a graphical representation of the prerequisites. They are basically serving the same function though, to provide characters with non-skill special powers and effects.

2 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

Umm.... that’s probably because Genesys (and Star Wars) isn’t "classless, point-buy” a system, but very solidly a class based system. Not a class and level system, but character classes are the very core of character definition.

Something I noticed a little bit ago is that the talent trees in SW are basically actually just feats from D&D, just broken up into discrete blocks and given a graphical representation of the prerequisites. They are basically serving the same function though, to provide characters with non-skill special powers and effects.

Fair point regarding classes. That said, one of the chief complaints a few of my players have about d20 based stuff (Pathfinder, Starfinder, even 5E) is the "pre-chewed" aspect of classes. We're shopping systems to avoid that. I think Genesys can fit the bill, but it will require some work. Put another way, yeah, we could just keep looking elsewhere, but then we lose the cool narrative dice.

I don't agree that talents are just feat equivalents. Most of them are more like d20 class abilities. Feats are generally agnostic, class abilities are often flexible, but typically only available to that particular class. I think coming off a d20 system where you just get a huge pile of character abilities, the Star Wars careers and specializations seem kinda limited in comparison. One reason may well be that there are no free-floating feats to throw into the mix to provide some unique spins on characters. OK, sure, there's Toughness, Grit, and a couple others, but they've always struck me as filler that you have to buy to get to the stuff you actually want.

In order to add the spice of a "feat" that's external to a specialization, at the bare minimum you have to buy another specialization within a career, or worst case scenario pay even more to buy a spec in a different career. Simply paying for the ability to multiclass, without buying any specialization skills or talents within the new tree, costs roughly the same as a tier 5 talent within a tree. That's steep. Buying from two trees already has the limiter that you're splitting your focus. You shouldn't need to pay so much surcharge.

Classes are rather an archetype kind of favored skills. The specializations are what wraps a corset of specific talents in a specific order to a character. Hopefully this will not be the case in Genesys. If they handle that as flexible as their magic system I have high hopes.

40 minutes ago, DarthDude said:

Classes are rather an archetype kind of favored skills. The specializations are what wraps a corset of specific talents in a specific order to a character. Hopefully this will not be the case in Genesys. If they handle that as flexible as their magic system I have high hopes.

Agreed, but that's very definitely how Star Wars does it.