Hi all,

Not going to put this in EotE or FaD fora, as they are all basically the same game anyways, I was wondering if anybody had the same idea as me, and started to reverse-engineer the species? What makes them 'balanced' as compared to each other? Is one species notably more powerful than another? Should a species ability cost more if it depends on a strong statistic score, for example, starting with a rank in the Brawl skill if the species has Brawn 3 as opposed to 2, or even 1? How do Wounds, Strain and Starting XP factor in? When 'deconstructing' a species through the Experience Point system in place (kind of like how the Genesys toolkit taught me to do), is everybody else coming to about 385 XP for a starting character in total including the free Starting XP to customize your character? And did you use that reverse-engineering to create a couple of species for your own game (either Star Wars or Genesys for that matter)? My findings below :

Attribute scores

Knowing the cost to increase a statistic from 2 to 3 (30 XP) or from 3 to 4 (40 XP), Genesys gave me the insight to say that a statistic of 1 would cost 10XP (sort of like going from 0 to 1). So, theoretically, as even the mighty Wookiees 'only' have a Brawn 3, to provide your custom species with any statistic, they would have to pay 10XP for a score of 1, 30XP total for a score of 2, 60XP total for a score of 3, 100XP total for a score of 4, and 150XP total for a score of 5. Again, theoretically, as the starting maximum attribute seems to be 3 before investing starting XP. a Human attribute line of 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, and 2 would therefor cost 180 XP, and a Wookiee line of 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, and 2 would cost 190 XP.

Wounds and Strain

These are a bit tricky. Species with both a high Brawn and a high Wounds starting total seem to 'pay' more of these species build points than species with low Brawn and high starting Wounds. The same goes for Strain and Willpower. Next to that, Wounds and Strain are not equal, as seen by the talents that add to them. One talent (Toughened) adds +2 Wounds, while the other (Grit) only adds 1 Strain. Both talents can be found in different Star Wars character careers at different tiers, so for comparison I assume the talents to be equally tiered. As such, when Brawn is 3 or greater, Wounds cost more. Likewise, when Willpower is 3 or greater, Strain costs more.

Starting Experience

In my experience, it was simple to port starting XP into this on a one-for-one basis. 110 Starting XP from a Human character would also take 110 XP from this species build total.

Species abilities

Then there is a whole slew of special abilities. One species can see in the dark. Another has a specific skill they are known for. The next can choose any one skill that is not a career skill. I am still figuring out 'cost' for a lot of these abilities, finding the suggestions in the Genesys book to be of great help. Some abilities even return build points, as they are species 'abilities' that can hinder a character (such as needing to breathe a different gas mixture from the normal Oxygen/Nitrogen/trace gases mixture most species seem to be able to breathe.

So far I have deconstructed a couple of Star Wars species, and like I said, the average seems to be a total of 385 XP to build a character all the way from a '0' in every score.

This has been going on for 5 years. You're not the first to attempt this, and there's really no reason to reinvent the wheel. I'd suggest combing older threads.

I just had to respond "sad" because I didn't realize Genesys was available 5 years ago to offer just that little more insight in the matter.

Or at least, it wasn't to me, anyways.

11 minutes ago, Xcapobl said:

I just had to respond "sad" because I didn't realize Genesys was available 5 years ago to offer just that little more insight in the matter.

Or at least, it wasn't to me, anyways.

I'm not referring to Genesys. Look up the posts on things like Unofficial Species Menagerie and you'll see that the work you're suggesting has already been done. Sure, some of it might be less exacting than the system you suggest, but the ones FFG gives us are not made with such strict mathematics either, so trying to apply such is an exercise in futility.

2 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

... is an exercise in futility.

Which, to me, is an opinion. You are entitled to one, of course.

37 minutes ago, Xcapobl said:

Which, to me, is an opinion. You are entitled to one, of course.

You get on with your bad self then Sisyphus!

4 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

You get on with your bad self then Sisyphus!

Why so negative, and why the name-calling? Did we meet in real life, do I not remember that, and was it a negative experience for you or something?

46 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I'm not referring to Genesys.

I am, as mentioned in the first paragraph of the original post. That brought some new insights to light for me. So, back to the topic at hand, as opposed to derailing it completely...

47 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Sure, some of it might be less exacting than the system you suggest, but the ones FFG gives us are not made with such strict mathematics either, so trying to apply such is an exercise in futility.

Reverse-engineering a couple of species I have found these values:

Humans; 385 points

Thisspiasians; 385 points

Wookiees; 382 points

In calculations that go well over 350, a difference margin of '3', when seen through two of the first species given in EotE and one of the more recent species in FAD-UP, is resonably strict, lower than a 1% margin even. Now, if the humans were reverse-engineered to 400 points, and Thisspiasians only came out to 250, while Wookiees got all the Brawn in the world and extra abilities and were well over 500, I'd say that would be "not made with such strict mathematics". I could give more examples with calculations (Genesys-style), but let's just say the margin of difference doesn't go wildly wonkers in other species as well, making me believe FFG made the older species to some standard of sorts.

Such also makes it easier to spot overpowered or underpowered custom species. I know a lot of people wanted to see the Zeltrons, officially. For lack of them, people designed the species themselves. Using reverse-engineering since Genesys came out, some of those versions came out barely above 300 points, and another extreme added up to just shy of 450.

Or skip all that crap and just eyeball it. It's what the writers do.

The Genesys CRB is certainly a good place to look for parameters of species creation. As Happy suggests, there are several threads in these forums where folks have tried to "crack the code" before Genesys came out, and these can provide some insight as well. The big thing to remember is that a lot of it comes down to guesswork, as trying to decide how much it costs to be able to do one special ability versus another isn't an exact science. At any rate, I hope your reverse engineering has helped you with your own species-design work.

On 8/24/2018 at 6:22 PM, Xcapobl said:

Hi all,

Not going to put this in EotE or FaD fora, as they are all basically the same game anyways, I was wondering if anybody had the same idea as me, and started to reverse-engineer the species? What makes them 'balanced' as compared to each other? Is one species notably more powerful than another? Should a species ability cost more if it depends on a strong statistic score, for example, starting with a rank in the Brawl skill if the species has Brawn 3 as opposed to 2, or even 1? How do Wounds, Strain and Starting XP factor in? When 'deconstructing' a species through the Experience Point system in place (kind of like how the Genesys toolkit taught me to do), is everybody else coming to about 385 XP for a starting character in total including the free Starting XP to customize your character? And did you use that reverse-engineering to create a couple of species for your own game (either Star Wars or Genesys for that matter)? My findings below :

Attribute scores

Knowing the cost to increase a statistic from 2 to 3 (30 XP) or from 3 to 4 (40 XP), Genesys gave me the insight to say that a statistic of 1 would cost 10XP (sort of like going from 0 to 1). So, theoretically, as even the mighty Wookiees 'only' have a Brawn 3, to provide your custom species with any statistic, they would have to pay 10XP for a score of 1, 30XP total for a score of 2, 60XP total for a score of 3, 100XP total for a score of 4, and 150XP total for a score of 5. Again, theoretically, as the starting maximum attribute seems to be 3 before investing starting XP. a Human attribute line of 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, and 2 would therefor cost 180 XP, and a Wookiee line of 3, 2, 2, 2, 1, and 2 would cost 190 XP.

Wounds and Strain

These are a bit tricky. Species with both a high Brawn and a high Wounds starting total seem to 'pay' more of these species build points than species with low Brawn and high starting Wounds. The same goes for Strain and Willpower. Next to that, Wounds and Strain are not equal, as seen by the talents that add to them. One talent (Toughened) adds +2 Wounds, while the other (Grit) only adds 1 Strain. Both talents can be found in different Star Wars character careers at different tiers, so for comparison I assume the talents to be equally tiered. As such, when Brawn is 3 or greater, Wounds cost more. Likewise, when Willpower is 3 or greater, Strain costs more.

Starting Experience

In my experience, it was simple to port starting XP into this on a one-for-one basis. 110 Starting XP from a Human character would also take 110 XP from this species build total.

Species abilities

Then there is a whole slew of special abilities. One species can see in the dark. Another has a specific skill they are known for. The next can choose any one skill that is not a career skill. I am still figuring out 'cost' for a lot of these abilities, finding the suggestions in the Genesys book to be of great help. Some abilities even return build points, as they are species 'abilities' that can hinder a character (such as needing to breathe a different gas mixture from the normal Oxygen/Nitrogen/trace gases mixture most species seem to be able to breathe.

So far I have deconstructed a couple of Star Wars species, and like I said, the average seems to be a total of 385 XP to build a character all the way from a '0' in every score.

Your stat math is fine. You simply aren't going to be able to put a cost on special abilities because they aren't necessarily equal, and at some points in sessions they will be absolutely priceless and/or useless. If you have any kind of a water element in a campaign or session, species that can breathe/swim are going to be invaluable. If there is some kind of Difficult terrain element a Toydarian is going to be able to skip all that. There was a part in Beyond the Rim with some insects that had a poison based attack and our droid PC was able to just blow that off. The point is keep the species stuff flavorful but not necessarily super useful in every session.

9 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

You simply aren't going to be able to put a cost on special abilities because they aren't necessarily equal, and at some points in sessions they will be absolutely priceless and/or useless.

In a political campaign (for who ever wants to try one, as opposed to action-packed thrilling space swashbuckling) the same can be said for the Brawn and possibly Agility ability scores. In such a political campaign I could imagine Cunning and/or Presence to be so much more important than the ability to run an extra mile or be a contortionist. There is a priceless/useless label on everything, if taken into the wrong/different context where it doesn't apply as much, or more than average. It's all so... situational.

The same seems to be applicable to 'negative abilities'. I started this thread because I was wondering if Genesys changed some insights people had. I know there has been five years of species-building. Nobody needs to say that, and I know how a forum search works. But there haven't been five years of species-building with as numerical a system as in Genesys. There is a reason why I mention Genesys in my first post, even if that seems to be trivialized (even as much by myself, possibly) after mentioning it.

36 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

The point is keep the species stuff flavorful but not necessarily super useful in every session.

Genesys actually refunds such points for negative abilities. Being of a species that doesn't breathe oxigen/nitrogen atmospheres but methane instead, for example. In Star Wars the Gand Methane breather comes to mind. However, is this really something points should be refunded for? The ability itself states the character starts with a breathing apparatus and filters and what not. Only if the GM decides to make this a point (capturing the character and taking away the breathing apparatus as torture or something) does this negative ability become a very situational negative ability. But then again, let's apply a negative value to being an oxigen/nitrogen breather too. After all, a GM can abuse the fact that a character breathes a (human-fitting) normal atmosphere by putting the character in a special room where the air mixture is changed to torture each and every 'regularly breathing' species. This (GM decided, situational) option makes being an oxigen/nitrogen breather a negative abilty as well.

Point is, when looked at it this way, I am under the impression one should either do away with any underlying points based system entirely (because, well, everything can be made to be either positive and extremely usefull, or negative and extremely useless), or to put a rigid system in place (every ability costs the same for each character type, species, etc) because situational circumstances can change every little detail anyways.

1 hour ago, SavageBob said:

As Happy suggests, there are several threads in these forums where folks have tried to "crack the code" before Genesys came out, and these can provide some insight as well.

Ik know, I found those threads through the forum search function of which I am fully aware, and they were insightful as far as the "just eyeball it" part of the equasion. But I am not asking about those threads. I'm asking now that Genesys is out (for some time).

2 hours ago, SavageBob said:

The big thing to remember is that a lot of it comes down to guesswork, as trying to decide how much it costs to be able to do one special ability versus another isn't an exact science.

However, the question I guess I am trying to get answered is, whether this is true and whether other people have tried their hand at it through the Genesys insights? I respectfully disagree that everything seems to be guesswork, when up until now I have ten, fifteen Star Wars species that, after reverse-engineering them through Genesys, come out to about 385 points, plus or minus up to 5. @2P51 is right when he says certain abilities are not used very often and others are extremely usefull all the time. Have people used Genesys reverse-engineering to find, like, an average cost?

You're way over thinking or over investing in CHARGEN imo. By the time players are 10 sessions in the differences between species, whatever they may, are typically inconsequential overall.