34 minutes ago, whafrog said:Yeah, it's just balancing the cost of Talents, especially the Force ones. It's a lot of work, and I'd rather pay FFG to do it.
So you're moaning because a large corporation won't provide the minimal changes to a system that can already do exactly what you want?
10 hours ago, SavageBob said:I actually like both the Star Wars approach and the Genesys approach. I think talent trees are helpful for newer players, as they tend to be well balanced and help the player understand what sorts of things they need to pick up to be good at what their niche is. My worry with porting over to Genesys is that players might be overwhelmed with the options (especially if the wonderful Genesys Talents Expanded is on the table) and might not consider some talent that a tree might have made them pick up that they later come to appreciate. In fact, I'd love to see some published guidelines for how to introduce talent trees for the Genesys line: how to design them, how to balance them, etc.
But I also think for advanced players, the à la carte Genesys system is fine. I think it'd be pretty easy to just make that conversion without republishing the Star Wars line by making liberal use of Genesys Talents Expanded.
Finally, I wonder if there's a middle road? Say you're running Star Wars with talent trees. Your player gets to some talent she doesn't want -- a lot of people just say "let her switch it out," but if you're worried about balance issues, maybe charge a 5 XP tax for the privilege to swap it out? Another idea: Charge 5 XP to move or add a bar connecting talents that don't already connect so the player can bypass something she doesn't want?
A middle ground might be to list the star wars specializations with the appropriate Genesys talent pyramid leaving blanks for the slots that the player can choose to fill in. The the players get their template but can deviate if they so desire.
I did an example with some classes and the expanded talents list.
Seeing as how FFG didn't bother using Genesys at all for their forthcoming Legend of the Five Rings RPG (and even went so far as to create an entirely unique set of custom dice), I doubt they'll be in any hurry to revamp the entire Star Wars product line and in so doing invalidate a substantial portion of what helped the various sourcebooks sell in the first place, namely the new specializations; the new species and gear don't hurt, but folks in general seem more focused on the new specs than any other part of the splats.
And given those books are selling in enough quantity that it's viable to reprint them, that's even less incentive for FFG to throw the baby out with the bath water and completely revamp what's quite likely their top-selling RPG.
Unless Dawn of Rebellion completely flops in terms of product sales (somehow I doubt it), FFG's got a new avenue to continue publishing more new material (including specializations!) even after the Warrior sourcebook is released. In a separate thread, there's already speculation for what's coming next in terms of era-themed books, with Clone Wars being a top request followed by a TFA era book (which is likely to be done anyway once Episode IX is released).
You've also got the headache of Star Wars simply having far more unique talents spread over more than a dozen corebooks and supplements, so revamping the Star Wars RPG to accomodate Genesys' more free-form talent selection method is going to be a majorly daunting process. There's going to have to be talents that simply don't make the cut, and high chance of talents being set too high or too low in terms of what Tier they're placed at.
Another element (which may not be a concern as I'm not 100% up to speed on how the Genesys talent pyramid works), is that don't you have a finite limit of talents? At least going by the blank talent pyramid page provided in the corebook, you're looking at a max of 24 talents before you've filled up the tree. Admittedly, if you can just keep buying new rows of talents after you fill out the bottom row, then it's not a concern, but if that final row is the limit, then in the long run you're even more limited in terms of what talents you can acquire, and it runs into the common issue/complaint of more stringently level-based systems where you've only got so many "slots" for features (be they called talents, feats, or advantages).
38 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:A middle ground might be to list the star wars specializations with the appropriate Genesys talent pyramid leaving blanks for the slots that the player can choose to fill in. The the players get their template but can deviate if they so desire.
I did an example with some classes and the expanded talents list.
That's not a bad approach. In this system, does the specialization talent tree just become a suggestion, then? Or do you require the player to purchase the talents on their chosen tree, perhaps at a discount to the default, 100% à la carte approach?
Edited by SavageBob11 minutes ago, SavageBob said:That's not a bad approach. In this system, does the specialization talent tree just become a suggestion, then? Or do you require the player to purchase the talents on their chosen tree, perhaps at a discount to the default, 100% à la carte approach?
That was just plugging in the talents from SW based on the tier from the expanded talents. I wanted to see how some of the classes balanced out. They came out pretty close. The grey ones were talents that weren't in the fan supplement when I made it so they're a guess on level.
I'd say the best way to do it would be as a suggestion. Especially since they don't work out to even pyramids. But it would give a new player a template to make a particular archetype. A more seasoned character could mix and match a little more to make the archetype that they wanted.
Probably the biggest downside to this system is FFG couldn't pawn 20+ books onto the fans. At least for FFG. For the fans it would be the min-maxers. An open system is always more open to abuse.
I would think it best to have a list of general talents for everyone then create Career lists of talents that fit the theme. Then any general talent or in career talent costs normal xp, any talent outside career costs an extra 5xp. In that way you keep the theme of careers going but allows a much broader character design.
@Donovan Morningfire you can buy as many talents as you like, so long as you always have more of the next lower tier. once you have your first tier 5 talent you only have to buy 1 if each tier to get the next 5th tier talent.
So if you have 8 Tier 5 Talents then you need 9xT4, 10xT3, 11xT2, 12xT1.
The main difference you notice is that Characteristics are capped at 5 instead of 6 and you can only use Dedication to increase a specific characteristic once.
7 hours ago, whafrog said:Yeah, it's just balancing the cost of Talents, especially the Force ones. It's a lot of work, and I'd rather pay FFG to do it.
Well, that's just objectively not going to happen.
So start working on it yourself!
20 hours ago, whafrog said:Yeah, it's just balancing the cost of Talents, especially the Force ones. It's a lot of work, and I'd rather pay FFG to do it.
You know, I actually quite love the Career and Specialization setup, and I'm not eager to see a second edition that does away with it. However, I would totally support and purchase an official conversion kit.
Stupid double posts.
Edited by CaptainRaspberry14 hours ago, OddballE8 said:Well, that's just objectively not going to happen.
Maybe...maybe not. I just got Dawn of Rebellion, and, apparently breaking with several years of policy, they included the stats of almost every iconic Rebellion-period character in the media. If they had plans to continue this line, they could have milked that for a lot more books. Just including Phoenix squadron and their main adversaries would have been plenty.
15 hours ago, OddballE8 said:So start working on it yourself!
Nope, got plenty of other things to work on, and the current system works well enough if I throw XP at it. So I'll wait for the pros to do the balancing. That's why I make money...you may have heard of it, it facilitates the exchange of goods and services precisely so you don't have to do everything yourself.
1 hour ago, CaptainRaspberry said:You know, I actually quite love the Career and Specialization setup, and I'm not eager to see a second edition that does away with it. However, I would totally support and purchase an official conversion kit.
I probably should have been more clear. I'd like a setup that uses the Genesys pyramid, but I agree it would be player-overload to have to pick from such a massive pile of Talents. There's plenty of room for core and "career" books, offering several ways with sample trees to build a Thief, or Smuggler, or Guardian. The net effect for those who like structure would be the same, but it would easier to break the mold.
On 2/25/2018 at 9:17 PM, Yaccarus said:Aside from that, though, I think you’re too caught up in names of specs.
Wait, aren't you the same person who just a few posts above, complained that there are names of specs other than Consular, Guardian or Sentinel? Why should there only be those three? You know just because Bioware gave their game, with it's limited parameters, a set of concepts and named them, that doesn't mean all of Star Warsdom has to toe that same line right? They are under no obligation to have those 3 names, and ONLY those 3 names.
When names of careers are being directly taken from official titles, (not just Bioware, by the way, literally every other source on the subject confirms that all Jedi must choose to be Guardians, Consulars, or Sentinels.) that’s essentially indicating that you should get hung up on the names. Hence, why I don’t like that way of organizing them. Just consider this:
Let’s say I want to create a Jedi who has chosen Guardian as his path. This means that he his chosen physical abilities and lightsaber to combat to be his main focus. He is an aggressive sort of character, courageous but reckless. As such, he uses the Djem So form of Shien. From a lore standpoint, this is all perfectly normal.
Yet in FFG, this has created a ton of issues all because of how names and specializations are set up.
The thing that’s different with Force and Destiny is the significance that the names bear. When they’re concrete, clearly defined things, you have to get caught up on the names. And getting caught up on the names can create issues.
So what is stopping anyone from just taking the Genysis rule set and using Star Wars as a setting? I thought the whole idea behind Genysis was to create a generic mechanics system that can be used with any theme (fantasy, modern, Sci-fi, etc.). Plus, since Genysis is based off of SWRPG (which in turn was based off of WHFRP3) seems like taking what we already have in with SWRPG would be pretty "easy" to translate to Genysis (and yes, I know it isn't going to be a straight one for one, but we play RPGs so we should already be pretty creatively inclined).
Personally, I haven't run into any issues with the career/spec system of SWRPG. There are enough options that my players have always been able to find a combo that describes close enough if not exaclty what sort of character they want to play. And by using mutli-specs or even custom-specs, it has been pretty trivial to fill in any missing gaps. Obviously, there are always going to be those who break the confines of the game system, but again, with RPGs, this sort of "breakage" is fairly easy to implement (and is usually encouraged).
My friend got the Genysis book, its neat and all but i seriously don't like the pyramid system. Rather not be forced to use it, i much rather have the class trees. I have made a few characters in the Genysis system and i was in no way wowed at all. I am glad they have come up for a way to pretty much attack every single genre and style to RPG in but i would never use the pyramid system. So i vote No to converting everything to it.
Edited by Banditks11 hours ago, Otakuon said:So what is stopping anyone from just taking the Genysis rule set and using Star Wars as a setting?
Ultimately, not wanting to do the work themselves to map over all the talents, screen through what should or shouldn't be kept, and then assign Tier ratings. As well as bothering with any conversion work required given the differences in vehicle combat (minor in comparison to talents, but still needs to be done).
15 hours ago, Yaccarus said:When names of careers are being directly taken from official titles, (not just Bioware, by the way, literally every other source on the subject confirms that all Jedi must choose to be Guardians, Consulars, or Sentinels.) that’s essentially indicating that you should get hung up on the names. Hence, why I don’t like that way of organizing them. Just consider this:
Let’s say I want to create a Jedi who has chosen Guardian as his path. This means that he his chosen physical abilities and lightsaber to combat to be his main focus. He is an aggressive sort of character, courageous but reckless. As such, he uses the Djem So form of Shien. From a lore standpoint, this is all perfectly normal.
Yet in FFG, this has created a ton of issues all because of how names and specializations are set up.
- Despite clearly being a Warrior career sort of guy and not a Guardian career sort of guy, he is actually a Guardian. So, I’m faced with a choice: do I contradict the character and choose the Guardian career or did I contradict his actual rank and not be a Guardian?
- Either way, I’m sort of screwed, as Shien isn’t part of either career. So, extra XP will need to be spent.
- Furthermore, it doesn’t distinguish between Djem So and Shien at all.
The thing that’s different with Force and Destiny is the significance that the names bear. When they’re concrete, clearly defined things, you have to get caught up on the names. And getting caught up on the names can create issues.
yeah. Don't get hung up on the names. No one in the game world can see your character sheet.
On 2/26/2018 at 3:57 PM, whafrog said:Yeah, it's just balancing the cost of Talents, especially the Force ones. It's a lot of work, and I'd rather pay FFG to do it.
I'd just say where the Talent falls in the Career/Spec tree is what Tier it is in Genesys. If they pick some hyper special Talent from outside the career path from another career/spec, that's Tier +1. Conversion done.
16 hours ago, Yaccarus said:When names of careers are being directly taken from official titles, (not just Bioware, by the way, literally every other source on the subject confirms that all Jedi must choose to be Guardians, Consulars, or Sentinels.) that’s essentially indicating that you should get hung up on the names. Hence, why I don’t like that way of organizing them. Just consider this:
Let’s say I want to create a Jedi who has chosen Guardian as his path. This means that he his chosen physical abilities and lightsaber to combat to be his main focus. He is an aggressive sort of character, courageous but reckless. As such, he uses the Djem So form of Shien. From a lore standpoint, this is all perfectly normal.
Yet in FFG, this has created a ton of issues all because of how names and specializations are set up.
- Despite clearly being a Warrior career sort of guy and not a Guardian career sort of guy, he is actually a Guardian. So, I’m faced with a choice: do I contradict the character and choose the Guardian career or did I contradict his actual rank and not be a Guardian?
- Either way, I’m sort of screwed, as Shien isn’t part of either career. So, extra XP will need to be spent.
- Furthermore, it doesn’t distinguish between Djem So and Shien at all.
The thing that’s different with Force and Destiny is the significance that the names bear. When they’re concrete, clearly defined things, you have to get caught up on the names. And getting caught up on the names can create issues.
Guardian and Consular are just concepts invented for Star Wars D20, to have a more and a less martial Jedi character class. They're just game mechanics that have been paid some lip service in universe. Likewise, Sentinel was added later (don't know if that was WotC or Bioware) so FFG adding Seeker, Mystic and Warrior is just continuing on a proud tradition of adding stuff by games companies. There was never any official cannon titles for Jedi based on their skill set. D20 just needed som names to stick on separate classes.
28 minutes ago, penpenpen said:Guardian and Consular are just concepts invented for Star Wars D20, to have a more and a less martial Jedi character class. They're just game mechanics that have been paid some lip service in universe. Likewise, Sentinel was added later (don't know if that was WotC or Bioware) so FFG adding Seeker, Mystic and Warrior is just continuing on a proud tradition of adding stuff by games companies. There was never any official cannon titles for Jedi based on their skill set. D20 just needed som names to stick on separate classes.
Again, wrong. Guardian, Consular, and Sentinel are very much official groups of Jedi.
Warriors are basically Guardians, Mystics are basically Consulars, Seekers, are basically Sentinels.
What canon source referred to Guardians, Consulars, and Sentinels? There's a The Jedi Path book that came out in 2010, per Wookieepedia; but that's now pretty explicitly Legends material, and also post-dates KOTOR and WotC's RPG. As far as I know, the latter is where the three classes came from, and the former is what popularized 'em. Is there some other fictional source where they were used before WotC's RPG?
(Heck, lightsaber forms aren't actually official anymore.)
14 minutes ago, coyote6 said:What canon source referred to Guardians, Consulars, and Sentinels? There's a The Jedi Path book that came out in 2010, per Wookieepedia; but that's now pretty explicitly Legends material, and also post-dates KOTOR and WotC's RPG. As far as I know, the latter is where the three classes came from, and the former is what popularized 'em. Is there some other fictional source where they were used before WotC's RPG?
(Heck, lightsaber forms aren't actually official anymore.)
While I can't speak to the Consular/Guardian/Sentinel careers' canon status, I can confirm that lightsaber forms, in the most general sense, have been re-canonized. In Rebels, the Grand Inquisitor comments that Kanan prefers Form III to a "ridiculous degree," and in the episode where Ahsoka is watching a lesson from Anakin in the Jedi Holocron, he mentions creating a new sequence for a specific Form to help with deflecting blaster fire; Form IV, I think he says?
So while the names and the focuses of each style haven't been reconfirmed in canon, the idea that there are numbered lightsaber forms that can be recognized by experiences wielders is again canon.
12 hours ago, Yaccarus said:Again, wrong. Guardian, Consular, and Sentinel are very much official groups of Jedi.
Warriors are basically Guardians, Mystics are basically Consulars, Seekers, are basically Sentinels.
And again those in the universe CANNOT see your character sheet. They needed a label for the trees. They stuck a bunch of stuff in these trees that fit the role in question. But remember The Jedi are NOT the only game in town. So having trees that have different feels is a good thing. Also remember the Jedi we see in the media have very broad skillsets that pull from many sources. For example I see Anakin having Hot Shot. He so often makes triumphs or a despair on his crazy stunts. He fits into a kind of Guardian.
21 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:Ultimately, not wanting to do the work themselves to map over all the talents, screen through what should or shouldn't be kept, and then assign Tier ratings. As well as bothering with any conversion work required given the differences in vehicle combat (minor in comparison to talents, but still needs to be done).
Most of the work is done already, although many talents that interact with different skills in the same way have been condensed down to a generic form. The Force Talents also haven’t really been converted since this list is intended to be setting agnostic.
On 21/12/2017 at 3:15 AM, TheSapient said:TheSapient and ESP77 proudly present
Genesys Talents Expanded
Over 300 talents from Edge of the Empire, Age of Resistence, Force and Destiny, and Genesys collected, vetted, and adapted to the Genesys system.
With new talents created by the Genesys playing community
With Swordbreaker and Richardbuxton on the talent evaluation committee
But maybe you want to make some changes. You can do so in THIS WORD FILE!
You need it in spreadsheet form? HERE IT IS IN EXCEL!
You really will need to download and install these TTF Genesys Fonts, which were posted HERE.
Changelog from Version 1.0 is HERE.
On 01/03/2018 at 10:19 AM, Richardbuxton said:Most of the work is done already, although many talents that interact with different skills in the same way have been condensed down to a generic form. The Force Talents also haven’t really been converted since this list is intended to be setting agnostic.
Now thats useful, but id love to see howt he Force Talents would convert over as well.
And all the ones that are to come/been missed 
I’m sure a version 4.0 will be released eventually...?
29 minutes ago, RebelDave said:
Now thats useful, but id love to see howt he Force Talents would convert over as well.
And all the ones that are to come/been missed