In people's experience, what specs are duds, boring and uninteresting... What about them leaves them unwanted?

Is it simply its too niche a role for most campaigns or is it that the spec is completely underpowered? Or is it boring, misses the mark or...?

-slicer

Not everyone likes the expanded slicing rules. If you don't use them its a completely issues spec. Can become a great slicer without it and have a wider variety of talents. I think it lacks a cool narrative based talent.

Fringer is just underwhelming. Again, more cool narrative talents would have allowed fringer to shine. Something like:

"May take a GUIDED BY STARS action. Make a hard astrogation check to immediately know your precise location. May spend 2 adv to gain useful information about that location. Must be able to see the stars.

Beast Rider.

I don't think it's bad, per se, but they put it in the wrong place.

It doesn't belong in Ace at all. Maybe Explorer, but truthfully, it should have been a Universal spec.

Navigator, because being all about getting there only seems like half the fun.

The slicer also has a draw back of a very strange Talent tree, having to buy all the way down before you can go back up.

17 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Navigator, because being all about getting there only seems like half the fun.

I don’t know. I actually like the Navigator spec. Many of its talents come in real handy.

Scout . Because it doesn't have a single combat career skill yet has Quick Strike. I'm not saying it needs to be a combat tree, but at least give it a chance to get some trigger time on dad's trusty ol' 6-2Aug2 hunting rifle before heading out into the bush!

23 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

I don’t know. I actually like the Navigator spec. Many of its talents come in real handy.

I want to like Astrogation and navigator-builds, but while jumping into hyperspace may not be like dusting crops and is an iconic part of the genre, I've found that you can only do the quick jump to avoid the pirates/law so many times before it becomes repetitive. IMHO, a PC built around navigation (only) is a clear indication that you have too many players in your group and not enough weapons on the ship.

1 hour ago, OriginalDomingo said:

I want to like Astrogation and navigator-builds, but while jumping into hyperspace may not be like dusting crops and is an iconic part of the genre, I've found that you can only do the quick jump to avoid the pirates/law so many times before it becomes repetitive. IMHO, a PC built around navigation (only) is a clear indication that you have too many players in your group and not enough weapons on the ship.

Well, the trick is not to build the character around just that spec. My signature character has Navigator as one of five different specializations. That is where Navigator comes in handy. You take it as a second, third, etc spec, not as the central focus upon which the character is built.

Yeah but navigator should been even more, it should be part astrogator, part skip tracer, should havel some interesting narrative talents...

Scout needs like 1 or 2 signature talents to round it out.

30 minutes ago, TheShard said:

Yeah but navigator should been even more, it should be part astrogator, part skip tracer, should havel some interesting narrative talents...

Scout needs like 1 or 2 signature talents to round it out.

I don’t know. I’ve found a lot of use out of Studious Plotting , Planet Mapper , Holistic Navigation , and Intuitive Navigation talents. I haven’t had the chance to use Galaxy Mapper yet, but give it time, I will. ?

Bodyguard, which does not have improved or supreme versions of its namesake talent. Its other talents are unspectacular, with two ranks in Barrage seeming particularly out of place.

Vanguard introduces the improved and supreme versions, and has a much better talent tree, in general.

What about Entrepreneur and Scholar?

The first seems completely uninteresting.

The second I want to like...

7 hours ago, TheShard said:

In people's experience, what specs are duds, boring and uninteresting... What about them leaves them unwanted?

Is it simply its too niche a role for most campaigns or is it that the spec is completely underpowered? Or is it boring, misses the mark or...?

-slicer

Not everyone likes the expanded slicing rules. If you don't use them its a completely issues spec. Can become a great slicer without it and have a wider variety of talents. I think it lacks a cool narrative based talent.

Fringer is just underwhelming. Again, more cool narrative talents would have allowed fringer to shine. Something like:

"May take a GUIDED BY STARS action. Make a hard astrogation check to immediately know your precise location. May spend 2 adv to gain useful information about that location. Must be able to see the stars.

Fringer is a great spec , what people like is talents that are unique, things like the once per session or the ones that require a skill check in them , fringer has none of those, but it does have 2 ranks of dodge (not many specs get 2 ranks, and of those how many get 3 ranks of rapid recovery.) combined with scout you get an additional 5 strain back per turn. The explorers arent meant to be outstanding combat characters. If you look at what you get out of it, you get a solid on the street character who can either co-pilot /astrogate or at a push primary pilot. Still have to agree, not many people are that interested,

Survivalist would fall under the same idea, any tree thst that has no red talents tend to be overlooked,at least at first.

FWIW Beast Rider and Slicer too my list.

7 hours ago, TheShard said:

In people's experience, what specs are duds, boring and uninteresting... What about them leaves them unwanted?

In all honesty...most of them? I've yet to host a game where a player's character concept can be summarized in one career, never mind one spec. Most of the specs in the add-on books are worse...as if I'd have a story arc surrounding the nuances of cyborg repair...sheesh. (The books themselves are useful, no complaints there.)

It would be easier to pick the ones I like: Driver, Scoundrel, Archeologist, Politico, Enforcer, Marshall...these are standouts.

2 hours ago, whafrog said:

In all honesty...most of them? I've yet to host a game where a player's character concept can be summarized in one career, never mind one spec. Most of the specs in the add-on books are worse...as if I'd have a story arc surrounding the nuances of cyborg repair...sheesh. (The books themselves are useful, no complaints there.)

It would be easier to pick the ones I like: Driver, Scoundrel, Archeologist, Politico, Enforcer, Marshall...these are standouts.

To be honest, I often find the opposite, When building a character I find I can use several to buikd from, but here are some favz

Skip Tracer, Survivalist, Scoundrel, Thief, Marshal, Fringer, Scout, Driver, Big Game Hunter Archaeologist, mercenary Soldier, Bodyguard, Enforcer, Marauder, Gambler, Performer, Scoundrel, Outlaw Tech and thats just Edge specs, Age specs, are probably my least favourite because of the military slant of them, even still. I love the New Dawb of Rebellion specs, if you can look past many of the spec titles (which seemed designed to pigeon hole them further.

Most specs are at least interesting as secondaries (Scout, for example, is brilliant if combined with a more martial spec), but some just... aren't.

Fringer is just all over the place for me, the only high-tier talents that one has are for Astrogation (which doesn't excite me all that much), and otherwise there's just a general lack of any kind of focus.
Saboteur feels like a weaker version of the Demolitionist and Improvised Detonation is just too good of a talent to miss.
The Commodore 's coolest talent, Fire Control, can really only be used in a very specific setting. The tree doesn't look bad, but doesn't lend itself to the typical "freelancer party on a freighter-sized ship" setup.

These are just some that come to mind.

A lot of the earlier specs are kind of generic, boring, or subpar. They seemed to get better at designing interesting trees later in the games run. The slicer, thief, scholar, fringer, and more. Some are underpowered, but the real crime is just being boring. I'd love to see FFG take another pass at some of the earlier books and retool some of the trees.

17 minutes ago, Split Light said:

I'd love to see FFG take another pass at some of the earlier books and retool some of the trees.

I'd rather they just switch over to Genesys and provide "suggested templates". That way you get good suggestions, but nobody is locked in.

1 hour ago, whafrog said:

I'd rather they just switch over to Genesys and provide "suggested templates". That way you get good suggestions, but nobody is locked in.  

Could just play Genesys?

23 minutes ago, ALFRED1182 said:

Could just play Genesys?

Sure, but with the number of talents it's nice to have a bit of a roadmap.