Does anyone use them? I'm interested to know what sort of things are at people's tables.

Not really a talent, but kind of in the same way. If I am running a F&D game, I offer players the ability to choose a class from one of the non-F&D books and add Force Rating 1 at the cost of less bonus skills at character generation.

Not really? The closest I've done is allow the addition of the Planetary range band upgrade for Move, similar to Battle Meditation.

I've made 2 custom specs (1 in the spy career [Agent a newbie James bond] the other in soldier [spec ops] ) that I let my players choose, 1 player selected 1 of the specs, spec ops.

I'm really looking forward to the dawn of rebellion Era book because of the 6 universal specs, retired clone trooper seems like a cool spec if you scrape off the fluff. I'm hoping (but not expecting) that there will be rules to let you take a universal spec as your first spec (choose any career you want (or maybe from a limited set like soldier or hired gun for the retired clone trooper), but take this spec first, you can't attach sign abilities to it, seems like something appropriate for a retired clone veteran)

13 hours ago, Cvltvre said:

Not really a talent, but kind of in the same way. If I am running a F&D game, I offer players the ability to choose a class from one of the non-F&D books and add Force Rating 1 at the cost of less bonus skills at character generation.

That's pretty cool, I might steal that the next time I run a game, currently I'm a player (I turned the gm reigns over to a player when my son was born)

On 11/11/2017 at 7:29 PM, Cvltvre said:

Not really a talent, but kind of in the same way. If I am running a F&D game, I offer players the ability to choose a class from one of the non-F&D books and add Force Rating 1 at the cost of less bonus skills at character generation.

I was thinking of doing something similar. How did it work out for your table?

11 minutes ago, Flobio said:

I was thinking of doing something similar. How did it work out for your table?

The track record thusfar has been flawless, though I don't have players that try to game the system.

A GM I played under basically gave us Fallout-style perks. After a PC failed horribly at throwing a grenade, she gained the "Indoors Kid" talent, adding a Boost to her Mechanics checks and a Setback to all checks that involve throwing. I'd love to see something like that again.

That's awesome!

I've not done anything like this myself, although I have thrown in a few small alterations to the existing spec trees. For instance, Soresu Defenders get Supreme Reflect instead of Improved, and Bodyguards drop a rank in Barrage and kick their Enduring down to the bottom tier in order to get Improved Bodyguard. So that they can, you know, guard the bodies.

But I'm now going to consider some more adjustments. Maybe minor character-specific adjustments to each tree, or "perks" like Ted mentioned. We'll see, won't we!

The one change regarding talents that we use is that we have rewritten Spare Clip, as we thought RAW killed too much of the fun. The way we use it the talent now gives a free Reload per encounter, and makes reloading an incidental rather than a maneuver.

I've seen a few custom specs (blackbird888 made a custom Jar'kai spec) and a custom signature ability (maelora I think made a custom Jar'kai signature ability).

I've thought about making minute changes to talents like absol197 suggests but I haven't yet, though I'd be interested in hearing if any changes made the spec work better or worse.

3 hours ago, JorArns said:

I've seen a few custom specs (blackbird888 made a custom Jar'kai spec) and a custom signature ability (maelora I think made a custom Jar'kai signature ability).

I've thought about making minute changes to talents like absol197 suggests but I haven't yet, though I'd be interested in hearing if any changes made the spec work better or worse.

I houseruled the quick draw talent to upgrade initiative checks made to quick draw in quick draw show downs only.

With my group I wasn't using custom talents. There are many talents out there, especially now that the sourcebooks for careers and specializations are coming to a close (at least for a round one). However, slightly related to custom talents, we did look at the talent trees and had one house rule.

A player could exchange one 'improvement'-talent in each of his or her character's specialization talent trees (Grit, Toughened, or Dedication) with one other talent (other than Grit, Toughened, and Dedication) if he or she could convince the GM of its worth within that talent tree. This new talent also couldn't appear in a talent slot with a cost lower than its already published lowest cost in any other talent tree (so Force Rating couldn't be taken in a 5-cost, 10-cost or 15-cost talent slot, as it doesn't appear in any slot with a lower cost than 20 in any other specialization). Simple common logic stuff. A Medic would not likely take a replacement talent such as Powerful Blast, but a Bodyguard might take the Improved Bodyguard talent, which only appeared in a later book (Lead by Example, for the Instructor talent tree).

This way, a player wouldn't have to come up with an entirely new specialization or feel shoe-horned into one single talent tree just to be able to take that one, specific talent, and have some minor option to customize the character. Also a way to adjust older talent trees with newer talents that 'really should have been in there' in the first place.