Apparently Side Step should be a maneuver and not an action, should this list be updated to correct this, or wait for an official errata first?

On 1/4/2018 at 11:35 PM, RagingJim said:

I've been thinking of a divine smite like ability. How do we get a character to be able to add the Holy effect to a weapon attack. Alys Raine from the Gencon event had something simliar:

Justice of the Citadel
Once per round, suffer 3 strain to add damage equal to ranks in Discipline to one melee hit.

We could use this sort of format to create a divine type smite. eg

Divine Smite
Tier: 3
Activation: Active (action)
Ranked: No
Once per round, suffer 3 strain to add the Holy/Unholy (divine only) quality to a weapon attack. When dealing damage to a target that the GM determines is the antithesis of the character's faith
or deity (such as a priest of a god of life attacking an undead zombie), each success deals +2 damage, instead of +1. Requires at least one rank in Divine.

Paladins can’t traditionally smite every round. I would start once per encounter and increase frequency with improved.

I wouldn’t require Divine. Could represent a warrior of God in a low/ no Magic setting.

Really the attack spell IS Divine Smite:

4 in WP

A holy warhammer (your description of your wand) that adds 3 Damage and the close combat upgrade to Attack spells for free

Attack Spell with Holy/Unholy is doing 7 Damage + 2 Damage per Success, that’s as good as or better than most Melee Weapons!

If you somehow managed to add the Empowered upgrade and succeeded in the Daunting (4) Difficulty check then that’s 14+ 2 per Success!

I was looking at converting Hunter's Quarry (EOTE-EtU pg 30), when I realized something: because of the way the initiative order works for players, any ability that lasts "until the end of the character's next turn" can potentially last two entire rounds. If they act first in the order, activate the ability, then go last in the order the following round, they extend the benefit of the ability greatly. Which isn't a big deal in most cases, except with Hunter's Quarry, you're upgrading the ability of ALL attacks (not just your own) made against the target for that full duration. Then Improved Hunter's Quarry lets you spend 2 Strain to take this action as a maneuver!

I think if this gets converted, it should be a Tier 5 as is, and ditch the improved version. Otherwise that is one HECK of a sustainable buff.

EDIT: Oh, I see that it was already added. I haven't gone through the talent list very carefully! But it got heavily nerfed, from "within long range" to "AT long range". That makes a big difference. Not sure I like that... I think it's fine as a big buff, but should be more limited in use, like once an encounter, and be higher tier, since it's basically like granting everyone in your group a free Story Point for two turns.

13 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

Really the attack spell IS Divine Smite:

4 in WP

A holy warhammer (your description of your wand) that adds 3 Damage and the close combat upgrade to Attack spells for free

Attack Spell with Holy/Unholy is doing 7 Damage + 2 Damage per Success, that’s as good as or better than most Melee Weapons!

If you somehow managed to add the Empowered upgrade and succeeded in the Daunting (4) Difficulty check then that’s 14+ 2 per Success!

I don't disagree. But thematically, I feel like a Paladin is one to hit with a divine augmented strike, rather than cast a spell.

But that’s exactly what that is. You hold a hammer that you hit with, infusing the strike with your Divine magic. How it’s mechaniclly calculated vs how you describe it is important. No matter how you describe it if you want to infuse your attack with magic then you need to make some kind of magic check.

If Divine Smite is something that you cast first so that it enhances you over a number of rounds the Augment Spell can be described as being that. But if it’s a single epic strike that brings your foe to their knees before you return to using your normal attack then Attack Spell is great.

I just said Divine Smite could be Augment, this is how I would do that:

Strength 4, Will 3

Holy Icon and a Mace/Shield or Warhammer.

Cast Augment, you really probably want to keep the Difficulty to Average to have a decent chance of success. Ultimately you can increase your ranks in Divine magic to 4, for a dice pool of APPP, so that Haste can be added. Otherwise if you have some way to reduce the Augment difficulty then also add the Haste effect (so that concentrate can be performed with less risk of suffering strain). Then because of the Holy Icon you’re getting a boost to your Wound Threshold as well.

But in the end you waste a turn augmenting yourself for a single additional Ability dice and you need to make a manoeuvre every turn. For any kind of Damage dealing Attack is simply the best Spell there is within the structure FFG provides.

One thing the system doesn't appear to do very well is "half caster" careers, those (like paladins) who augment their main abilities (in this case melee combat) with a smaller amount of magic. In Genesys, you're kind of all in on magic, or not.

In the Gen Con playtest, the character of Alys has some magical ability (through the Templar talent), which grants her Divine as a career skill, but she may only make one magic skill check per encounter. She also has the "Justice of the Citadel" talent, which is a Smite for all intents and purposes (3 Strain to add damage equal to ranks in Discipline to one melee hit). Presumably she is allowed to cast additional spells out of combat, but someone who played in the scenario would have to confirm that.

I'm not sure what the best solution is... I think talents that allow limited spellcasting, or talents that provide abilities flavoured as spell-like effects, is probably the best route. Paladins are mostly about smiting (in D&D at least), so a talent similar to "Justice of the Citadel" would be fine (or just use Lucky Strike and call it "Divine Smite" instead). You could make a "Lay on Hands" talent that functions once per session to restore all wounds to a single target, another talent that allows immunity (or improved resistance) to disease, etc.

7 minutes ago, Direach said:

One thing the system doesn't appear to do very well is "half caster" careers, those (like paladins) who augment their main abilities (in this case melee combat) with a smaller amount of magic. In Genesys, you're kind of all in on magic, or not.

In the Gen Con playtest, the character of Alys has some magical ability (through the Templar talent), which grants her Divine as a career skill, but she may only make one magic skill check per encounter. She also has the "Justice of the Citadel" talent, which is a Smite for all intents and purposes (3 Strain to add damage equal to ranks in Discipline to one melee hit). Presumably she is allowed to cast additional spells out of combat, but someone who played in the scenario would have to confirm that.

I'm not sure what the best solution is... I think talents that allow limited spellcasting, or talents that provide abilities flavoured as spell-like effects, is probably the best route. Paladins are mostly about smiting (in D&D at least), so a talent similar to "Justice of the Citadel" would be fine (or just use Lucky Strike and call it "Divine Smite" instead). You could make a "Lay on Hands" talent that functions once per session to restore all wounds to a single target, another talent that allows immunity (or improved resistance) to disease, etc.

Look at the Mystic Theurge talent. Reskinned from Templar. Oncer per encounter and grants a magic skill of your choice.

Edit: You can use Attack and augment as Richardbuxton suggests and you get heal to replicate Lay on Hands.

Place voluntary limits on your own character to get the flavors you want narrtively.

3 minutes ago, ESP77 said:

Look at the Mystic Theurge talent. Reskinned from Templar. Oncer per encounter and grants a magic skill of your choice.

So is the intent that it can be used normally outside of structured encounters? For healing up afterwards, for example?

4 minutes ago, Direach said:

So is the intent that it can be used normally outside of structured encounters? For healing up afterwards, for example?

That’s the way I think of it. Non structured encounters between screen wipes.

Edit: Still only once per “encounter “ if that was your question.

Mystic Theurge is a great way to model not just Paladins but Arcane Archer, Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight, etc.

2 minutes ago, Direach said:

So is the intent that it can be used normally outside of structured encounters? For healing up afterwards, for example?

Yes. The idea was to create a single Talent that covered a Ranger, a Paladin, a Thief who finds lock picking easier without tools.

The thing is that so long as you don’t want to use magic to cause damage you will not need to cast a spell every single turn. Augment is amazing if your character isn’t trying to move too much, particularly if they have Actions beyond melee attacks.

The Genesys talents tend to be more mechanical, and less flavorful, than what was put out for Star Wars. Maybe what Genesys needs are community created guides for building archetypal character types. A person could do this for either/both the Genesys talent list and/or the Genesys Talents Expanded list.

Had a few more ideas for talents, these based off of "luck" or pushing it past the limit. I feel like both of these talents should be one Tier lower, but I'm listing them where they are to be conservative. As always, thanks for the feedback.

LAST DITCH EFFORT

Tier: 2

Activation: Active (Incidental)

Ranked: Yes

Once per session, after a unsuccessful roll a player may spend a Story Point and describe the character's attempt to turn around the failed situation. Roll one Challenge Dice and a number of Ability Dice equal to ranks in Last Ditch Effort. If the number of uncancelled [[Success]] from these dice is greater than the number of [[Failure]] from the original check, the original check now passes with 1 [[Success]]. Any [[Dispair]] generated from these dice are also added to the original check.

BLACK CAT LUCK

Tier: 3

Activation: Active (Incidental)

Ranked: No

Once per turn before rolling a check, a player may add a Boost dice to their pool. After doing so reserve a Setback dice by the Story Point pool. Before rolling any check, the GM or Players may add one of the reserved Setback dice to any allied check which is not affected by this Talent. The GM may spend a Story Point to add all reserved dice to the dice pool instead of only one. These Setback dice are not affected by Talents or other effects which remove Setback dice.

BLACK CAT LUCK (Improved)

Tier: 4

Activation: Active (Incidental)

Ranked: No

After the player adds a Setback dice to the roll of an allied player other than themselves, remove a Setback dice from the reserve pool.

Notes:

Last Ditch Effort: This talent is made for "boosting" past those results where you wind up with zero success or failures, but with a bit of risk. From this great reference document the odds of generating at least one success from this check are 26/49/66/78% with an 8.3% flat rate of generating a Dispair. Thematically its to emulate the moments in a movie when the technician can't figure out why the machine won't work but shoving his gum into the problem spot makes it work, when the negotiations have failed but the character goes "actually, there is one more thing....", when the driver has to "punch it" to get through the car chase montage of the moment, or any of the other "wait.. I have an idea!" moments when all seems lost.

Black Cat Luck: This is meant to emulate having bad luck that only seems to affect others, or taking short cuts that come back to bite you. I might want to add "Note: Use tokens to represent Setback dice in the reserve." to prevent dice shortages.

I’m not a fan of Black Cat, it’s too easy to be a di*c and hand those dice to the same person every time. My group would probably have fun with it, yours too I’m guessing, but not every group could.

28 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

I’m not a fan of Black Cat, it’s too easy to be a di*c and hand those dice to the same person every time. My group would probably have fun with it, yours too I’m guessing, but not every group could.

Oh man, it could quickly turn into a Hate talent. Or the opposite might occur, where a player has a cow over getting even one bad luck dice even though all the other players have already gotten a ton.

It could be modified so that the 'tokens' or whatever have to follow a distribution rule like Talents, so there's a limit to who gets all the black dice.

Here's another Talent. The name comes from the fact that a lucky rabbit's foot is lucky for everyone except the rabbit!

LUCKY'S RABBIT FOOT

Tier: 2

Activation: Active (Incidental)

Ranked: No

Once per turn before rolling a check, a player may add a Setback dice to their pool. After doing so reserve a Boost dice by the Story Point pool. Before rolling any check, Players may add one of the reserved Boost dice to any allied check which is not affected by this Talent.

On 9.1.2018 at 4:31 AM, ESP77 said:

Mystic Theurge is a great way to model not just Paladins but Arcane Archer, Arcane Trickster, Eldritch Knight, etc.

May I propose to turn the Mystic Theurge into a ranked talent? This way, someone who wants to invest in being able to cast more spells per encounter can do so. This way, it may be more rewarding to invest XP into the magic skill.

While I am making suggestions, I would love to have a sentence like "This talent should be used in (insert settings) settings." for each talent. That could help people selecting talents for their games. Also, it could include a call-out to alternate rules required to make use of the talent (like Magic, Hacking, Vehicles, etc).

1 hour ago, JohnChildermass said:

May I propose to turn the Mystic Theurge into a ranked talent? This way, someone who wants to invest in being able to cast more spells per encounter can do so. This way, it may be more rewarding to invest XP into the magic skill.

Mystic Theurge (Improved). Turns oncer per encounter into at will ??

5 minutes ago, ESP77 said:

Mystic Theurge (Improved). Turns oncer per encounter into at will ??

That, at least to me seems to be a step too far Maybe because I like the idea of ranked talents.

We could potentially add a line saying

“If you choose to exclude Mystic Theurge (Improved) from your campaign then you may make this talent Ranked, where each rank increases the number of spells you may cast per encounter.”

But so far we have tried to avoid this level of complexity in the Talents.

7 minutes ago, JohnChildermass said:

That, at least to me seems to be a step too far Maybe because I like the idea of ranked talents.

I'd have to agree. Also with Ranks you keep the limits to a maximum of 5 uses per encounter (if I understand that Talents cap at 5 ranks). Though in reality, how many spell actions does a mage use in a single encounter on average anyway? This might effectively remove the restriction for all intents and purposes.

Actually, four uses since Mystic Theurge is a Tier 2 talent. I haven't had too many structured encounters yet, but so far they either concluded really fast or took 4-5 turns. But being able to do use it three or four times, is a larger investment then.

@Richardbuxton Not necessary to do this just on my account. Rather include the "This talent is used in..." sentence. I guess that would be more useful to more people.

7 minutes ago, Khaalis said:

Also with Ranks you keep the limits to a maximum of 5 uses per encounter (if I understand that Talents cap at 5 ranks

There is no cap. Once a tier 5 ranked talent is taken you can purchase it again as another tier 5. The “cap” is the high cost of xp. Dedication is t5 ranked for example. You can take it again as long as you qualify for another t5.

If we rank MT then what of Improved? There is no precedent for capping a ranked talent and once you get to t4 your character can just take Improved. At that point the second rank of MT is wasted xp.

53 minutes ago, ESP77 said:

There is no cap. Once a tier 5 ranked talent is taken you can purchase it again as another tier 5. The “cap” is the high cost of xp. Dedication is t5 ranked for example.

Ouch. You are right. Hadn't considered that. Then Mystic Theurge and Mystic Theurge (Improved) might really be the way to go.

Ragingjim and Cyvaris suggested a talent called Opportunist (which has been discussed in thread as well). Turns out that makes for a great, generalized version of FFG's Eye for Detail. Thanks you two.