One of my pals has decided to put all his starting XP into characteristics and none into starting skills, his reasoning being that he'll get XP with each session and can grow his character that way over time. My questions are:

1. Is this a really bad idea or is this quite common?

2. I am planning a character (a Gunslinger/Pilot) and would normally buy the "PIlot (Career)" specialization for an extra 30 XP at creation. Can I still buy this later and will it still just be 30 XP?

Sorry to ask these if the questions are in the CRB's but I'm stuck at work and I gots ta know.

Curious Monkey

1. Quite common, as the only way to grow characteristics after creation is the Dedication talent (expensive XP) or cybernetics (expensive credits/possible social stigma). Unless it's a one shot or a short campaign it's standard advice to put as much as you can into characteristics at creation.

2. Away from book, so not sure of the exact cost, but yes, you can buy it later at the same cost, assuming you don't buy another tree between them.

Hope this helps!

Those are good questions, and the CRBs don't emphasize starting options enough to give a good guide. Common consensus (which is now codified by the devs in Genesys) is that players should invest as much character-generation XP as possible into characteristics. The logic is that from here on out, raising characteristics takes both time and lots of XP or money (through he Dedication talent, or via expensive cybernetics).

Not buying more skills at character creation is perfectly viable. You get a lot of free ranks from your Career and Specialization anyway, so I'd recommend raising more skills with earned XP once you've played your first session or two.

Finally, regarding the cost of buying a second specialization: Yes, you can do it at character creation, but it's often better to wait to buy it with earned XP for the same reasons you might not want to invest all starting XP in skills. Characteristics are what you should be focusing on to start, so dropping 20 or 30 XP on a second Specialization is taking away 20 or 30 XP you could be using to bump up Willpower or whatever. The cost of second Specs and beyond doesn't change after character creation, so there's no need to rush things.

The system is actually pretty forgiving when it comes to Skills and Attributes and although you will benefit more overall by bumping that last Attribute you aren't going to enjoy the game any less if you don't.

Generally there's not many, other than odds of success on a skill check being slightly lower and no chance of rolling a Triumph if you've got no ranks in the skill. And in the long run, investing early in characteristics provides a bit more of a payout as you'll be rolling more proficiency dice once you've gotten your key skills to 4 or 5 ranks.

Generally speaking, it really does behoove the player to spend at least 75% of their starting XP on raising characteristics, having at least a couple of them at a 3, if not possibly bumping one of them to a 4 if you can swing it. Most species only have XP that you can afford to bump three of your characteristics once unless you take enough Obligation to get +10XP, which can frequently be just enough to bump a fourth characteristic by one. Granted, you might not much in the way of talents (which at chargen is usually limited to the 5XP ones found at the start of your character's starting specialization) if you spend all your XP on characteristics, but like skill ranks buying those with adventure XP is a simple matter.

2 hours ago, MonkeyInSpace said:

2. I am planning a character (a Gunslinger/Pilot) and would normally buy the "PIlot (Career)" specialization for an extra 30 XP at creation. Can I still buy this later and will it still just be 30 XP?

Unless I'm missing something in your post, Gunslinger/Pilot are specializations for the Smuggler career, so the second specialization should cost 20 xp. This cost is the same at character creation or during the regular game.

Does this help you?

Pretty much what everyone else has said, with the addition that a starting character shouldn't be needing a massive yellow dice pool to succeed at what they are doing anyway. As they are by definition, a starting character. So having 3-4 green dice, maybe with one of them being yellow, should be more than enough for a first time PC. If the GM is consistently throwing 3-5 difficulty dice challenges at them, somethings not right

And on average, most schools of thought on XP would reward a PC with 10+xp per session, possibly significantly more than that, depending on the GM and length of session. That's more than enough to buy up several skill ranks and/or talents, giving the character some immediate improvement on multiple fronts.

So yeah, definitely good idea to buy up characteristics at start, the XP for skills/talents will come regularly.

I would suggest as a houserule that every player should be able to invest as many XP into characteristics as they have starting XP, even if they don't use the actual starting XP to do so.

In the absence of that houserule, it's pretty much standard to dump everything into characteristics, yes. It's an old classic for many systems: Always buy at char gen what you can't buy later.

12 minutes ago, Cifer said:

I would suggest as a houserule that every player should be able to invest as many XP into characteristics as they have starting XP, even if they don't use the actual starting XP to do so.

In the absence of that houserule, it's pretty much standard to dump everything into characteristics, yes. It's an old classic for many systems: Always buy at char gen what you can't buy later.

Are you suggesting that if I have 100 XP, but buy all talents and skills at chargen, that I could then buy up to 100 XP of attributes with earned XP? Not sure if I understood you correctly.

That's exactly what I suggested.

That's... just the rules for Knight Level play. Where after you spend your starting XP, you get another 100 to spend.

15 minutes ago, Talkie Toaster said:

That's... just the rules for Knight Level play. Where after you spend your starting XP, you get another 100 to spend.

Um... no? Knight level means you get extra XP at the start of the RP. My houserule means you don't get anything extra, but if you don't invest the full starting XP into characteristics, you can invest earned XP into them later until you have spent as much as you could have in character generation.

On ‎2‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 2:02 PM, Rithuan said:

Unless I'm missing something in your post, Gunslinger/Pilot are specializations for the Smuggler career, so the second specialization should cost 20 xp. This cost is the same at character creation or during the regular game.

Does this help you?

very much. I managed to fat finger it twice, but yes, the second part to your answer was very helpful.

On 3.2.2018 at 11:04 AM, Cifer said:

Um... no? Knight level means you get extra XP at the start of the RP. My houserule means you don't get anything extra, but if you don't invest the full starting XP into characteristics, you can invest earned XP into them later until you have spent as much as you could have in character generation.

That is btw a nice house rule. You basically and up at some point with a knight level character, but you played the backstory basically