So Genesys characters have fewer Career Skills than Star Wars characters do. (Specializations provided 4 additional Career Skills, though in practice at least 1 of them overlapped with the Career.)

Any thoughts on this? I'm thinking of houseruling Careers to 10 Skills (along with an increase in the number of Knowledge skills).

I don't think it's that big a deal, there are talents that can add career skills to a player's list, and even if not they can still buy up the skill at a higher XP cost.

Between that and the Talent Pyramid, I sort of like how Genesys slightly slows down character advancement in certain areas (folks who push for Tier 5 Talents, or who want to be skill monkeys who are good at everything for one or two Characteristics).

It's a pace of advancement issue so no big deal, and I expect the genre sourcebooks to add/tweak all things potentially including CHARGEN.

Is Well-Rounded among the talents in the CRB? If not, I don't think it'd be too much to house rule it in, perhaps starting as a Tier-1 Talent and going up from there if the player wants to buy more copies of it.

Considering that they’re recommending 20 xp per 3-5 hour session, I’m not going to give shortcuts for non-career any further thought.

If I change my mind, my plan is to only charge non-career surcharge for rank 1 and 2 of a skill. That journeyman stage is reasonably harder for someone to learn if it’s not their comfort zone, but gaining two ranks means they now have connections, mentors, resources, and training ethic to push themselves further. That said, I’ll simply remove the talents that unlock skills. I’ll be adding enough talents that there will be no shortage of ways to spend xp.

My Careers are going to have a number of Career skills equaling about 1/3 of the total number of skills in the setting.

I'm in the "shouldn't be a problem" camp as well. I think it emphasizes that each character in Genesys is meant to specialize.

1 hour ago, SavageBob said:

Is Well-Rounded among the talents in the CRB? If not, I don't think it'd be too much to house rule it in, perhaps starting as a Tier-1 Talent and going up from there if the player wants to buy more copies of it.

Well-Rounded is not in the book. If the veterans here aren't concerned, neither am I.

1 hour ago, CitizenKeen said:

So Genesys characters have fewer Career Skills than Star Wars characters do. (Specializations provided 4 additional Career Skills, though in practice at least 1 of them overlapped with the Career.)

Any thoughts on this? I'm thinking of houseruling Careers to 10 Skills (along with an increase in the number of Knowledge skills).

The game's just come out. Why are you house-ruling something you haven't had a real chance to test in play?

Just now, Enoch52 said:

The game's not even out yet. Why are you house-ruling something you haven't even seen?

Uhhh... the game came out yesterday? I have two copies of it.

On 12/1/2017 at 2:17 PM, CitizenKeen said:

Uhhh... the game came out yesterday? I have two copies of it.

Yeah, I edited that almost immediately upon posting it. But if you didn't playtest it, there hadn't been enough time to test the rules in play.

I'm a big fan of what I'm seeing with Genesys, I'm just going to start with that. Now, as I'm reading, my brain starts taking a look at and wanting to tweak right away because that's why my brain does. Having played EotE/AoR/FaD since their respective releases, it's gears are turning harder than usual.

That all being said, I'm also eyeballing career skills in Genesys. You get 8 at creation and then you're done. I saw Basic Military Training that gave you some career skills, which gives a framework for Talent-based career skills which would be easier to develop some more 3-skill-themed packages, but I was wondering if there were any other avenues.

I was kicking around the idea of some kind of "Specialization" (not what I want to actually call it because of EotE/AoR/FaD terminology, but it fits the theme) where if you have a certain combo of Talents/Skills you could pick up a "Specialization" that would grant you a few additional career skills and maybe another small bonus of some kind or another.

Final caveat is that I love playing a character that is a skill monkey/jack-of-all-trades type so am I just trying too hard to pick up some extra career skills? Has anyone else felt like they wanted more than the 8 from their career? Am I overthinking and should just come up with a couple of T2 Talents if I really can't get over it?

The issue with a talent to add career skills is that you're copying it from Star Wars that had rigidly defined specs. In star wars, they could add a single talent that gave you two more career skills and limit its impact. If you wanted to "dip" into another spec for that talent, you had to buy the spec, which is another `15 xp investment. In genesys, you don't have that - you could continue to buy more career skill talents at 5xp a pop and save a boatload of xp in the long run. you could try to restrict this by adding it at a higher tier, like tier 3 maybe - but then you negate the purpose of it. You won't be able to start with a tier 3 talent (at least you should be able to, as you should be dumping starting xp into characteristics), and by the time you work your way up to tier 3, you probably either realized you don't need those skills, or you've already purchased some ranks at out of career price. the other way to try and curtail that would be to make it unranked, but then it just becomes an auto-buy for anybody who is taking any out of career skills...and not talent should be so powerful that it's an auto-buy with the exception of dedication.

I was actually looking at Basic Military Training on page 75 of Genesys Core Rulebook for the idea of modeling a Talent-based addition to career skills OR something that used a name from Star Wars RPG, but would serve a slightly different purpose and have either a skill and/or talent combo required to get the career skill & thematic bonus unlocked

Hm didn't realize they ported that one. That one specifically was ported from Age of Rebellion, in the Recruit tree that everybody had free access to. Either way, I'd recommend you be careful with it. It could be a slippery slope to having a character with an obscene amount of skills - it'll just take them a little while to get the ball rolling.

If it's a talent that adds two specific Skills, I'd make it a Tier 1.

If you get to choose the two skills, I'd make it at least Tier 2, and maybe Tier 3.

/drops $.02

On 2017-12-01 at 11:26 AM, CitizenKeen said:

So Genesys characters have fewer Career Skills than Star Wars characters do. (Specializations provided 4 additional Career Skills, though in practice at least 1 of them overlapped with the Career.)

Any thoughts on this? I'm thinking of houseruling Careers to 10 Skills (along with an increase in the number of Knowledge skills).

You're forgetting that in EotE there is an entry fee to each new spec, which is absent from this system. So I think it generally balances out.

I wouldn't worry about it, if you want the PCs to feel more at liberty to branch out into non-career skills, just grant more XP.

I don't think a Well Rounded talent is that useful in this context. However, if you expand the number of Knowledge skills, a Well Read talent (tier 3, grants 3 Knowledge skills as career skills) might be helpful, depending on the setting.

On 20.12.2017 at 5:12 PM, DarthGM said:

If it's a talent that adds two specific Skills, I'd make it a Tier 1.

If you get to choose the two skills, I'd make it at least Tier 2, and maybe Tier 3.

/drops $.02

That would mean the tier 1 talent is free (spend 5 to save 5, and the second skill comes on top of that)

Two fixed ones should be tier 2, as is Basic Military Training. Choosing has to be at least a T3.

18 minutes ago, Farnir said:

That would mean the tier 1 talent is free (spend 5 to save 5, and the second skill comes on top of that)

Two fixed ones should be tier 2, as is Basic Military Training. Choosing has to be at least a T3.

Oh good point; I forgot that Basic Military Training was Tier 2.

Your suggestions would fit better.

29 minutes ago, Farnir said:

That would mean the tier 1 talent is free (spend 5 to save 5, and the second skill comes on top of that)

Two fixed ones should be tier 2, as is Basic Military Training. Choosing has to be at least a T3.

9 minutes ago, DarthGM said:

Oh good point; I forgot that Basic Military Training was Tier 2.

Your suggestions would fit better.

Such a talent is only cost effective if you're buying 4 or more combined ranks in the skills, because 3 is breaking even at tier 3. I suppose such talents contribute toward the pyramid level counts, but otherwise they just seem like min/max fiddliness.

And I don't quite follow why you'd be choosing two skills. Why not simplify it to one?

I think I'd just keep it honest if I wanted to include it at all:

Expanded Job Description
Tier: 1
Activation: Passive
Ranked: Yes

For each rank, choose 1 non-career skill.  That skill is now considered a career skill when purchasing new ranks.

I'd make the talent ranked since then it provides increasing resistance to rampant skill monkification.

Also a nice thought actually.

Why do you limit it to „a career skill when purchasing new ranks“ instead of just saying it‘s now a career skill?

9 hours ago, Farnir said:

Also a nice thought actually.

Why do you limit it to „a career skill when purchasing new ranks“ instead of just saying it‘s now a career skill?

That way the player doesn’t feel entitled to a refund of some XP if they purchased ranks before it became a career skill.

On 12/21/2017 at 2:00 PM, Farnir said:

That would mean the tier 1 talent is free (spend 5 to save 5, and the second skill comes on top of that)

Two fixed ones should be tier 2, as is Basic Military Training. Choosing has to be at least a T3.

Basic Military Training is three fixed skills. I do like the idea of a T3 talent where you can choose 2, though.

Good catch!

47 minutes ago, Simon Retold said:

That way the player doesn’t feel entitled to a refund of some XP if they purchased ranks before it became a career skill.

I don't think its necessary, I'd just stick with the established wording. There isn't any indication anywhere that XP is ever refundable - once it's spent it's spent.