So it just dawned on me, for some Talents that provide a benefit to other people, is there anything stopping them from stacking if multiple people use them?

The Talent in particular I'm curious about, is the Circle of Defense from the Soresu Defender tree, though I'm curious about it in general too.

I'm not near my books, so forgive me if I get some details wrong but, as I recall, it provides allies within a certain range band (Engaged I think), with a bonus to their defenses against attacks, equal to your ranks in the Talent. Now, I don't recall if it specifically says it gives them Defense, or if it increases the difficulty of incoming attacks or what. But, the logic behind this Talent is that the Jedi close ranks, circle the wagons, and start helping each other defend against attacks. So it would make sense (to me anyway), that if multiple people are trained in this technique, that it would stack.

Is there anything in the specific writeup for that talent, or in general with the rules that I'm forgetting, that would exclude this from happening?

It depends on the particular benefit the overlapping abilities in question would confer. Defense is a special case, in that it represents your maximum potential defense rather than the lump sum of everything you're defending yourself with. You always use the highest Defense bonus among all sources, though effects that add defense act separately. So, essentially, if you're using Circle of Defense and your allies have armor/shields/cover, only the highest Defense score provided by any of those four sources would apply.

Now, for other effects (like increased damage or extra Boost dice), it's different. While a character cannot benefit from more than one instance of the same talent, they can stack the effects of different talents that confer the same type of bonus.

On 11/1/2017 at 7:55 AM, KungFuFerret said:

So it would make sense (to me anyway), that if multiple people are trained in this technique, that it would stack.

You're thinking of Defensive Circle. Circle of Shelter lets you use your Reflect/Parry for PCs within your protection circle.

To answer your question: it doesn't stack because it says you gain ranged and melee defense X, not +X. If the talent granted +X defense, it stacks with your other defense, as answered in the FAQs. But when it grants you a discrete value of X defense, you cannot then apply another Defensive Circle over the top of it: you can only use the higher of the two (many) defense ratings. Stuff that adds to your defense are skills like Sixth Sense or Superior Reflexes that clearly say you gain +1 to your defense. As opposed to Defensive Training, which gives you a Defensive quality equal to your ranks. Note the difference in wording.

Hope that helps.

MS