background: In the game, I'm running I have a player that does not want to spend time looking talents. so he is investing all his xp into skills.

I think this would turn into an issue long. wondering if any of you have run into this. if so how have you dealt with it? how do you find xp is normally spent by players?

was musing about maybe saying you can only buy a number of skills above level 2 a talent above level 2 or something

1 3 talent = 1 3 skill or should I not worry about people maxing out skills early(ish) in their characters careers

I think the problem will solve itself. I'm guessing your player is avoiding talents because they are the crunchiest element in the system, and they might just be trying to avoid analysis paralysis. However I'll admit I'm still preparing to run my first genesys campaign.

Eventually they'll run out of career skills to invest in and noncareer skills interesting enough to pay extra for. By which point they'll hopefully have a better idea of where they want to focus, which will inform the talents they should select. In the meantime start compiling a list of suggestions for them based on how they play the character.

tbh your players power level will go up faster with skills then talents. But talents are where the flavour and fun is. You could limit the ranks as you say or just go with it see where it goes. Perhaps he gets inspired when someone else from the group uses some cool talent.

Just remember that a lot of the talents lets you do specific stuff. So you got to be consistent if the players ask "hey i have 4 ranks in skill X can i try this really cool thing" generally they can but if its covered by a talent in the book that specific allows that it should have added difficulty if he docent have it or simply not be able to attempt it.

Hit em with a lot of setback (but sure to remember the narrative reason) give your players a reason to purchase knack for it or other talents that lets you remove setback.

I've house rules that to raise your first skill to grade 4, you first need at least one tier 4 talent and to raise your first skill to grade 5, you need at least one tier 5 talent.

3 hours ago, Archellus said:

tbh your players power level will go up faster with skills then talents. But talents are where the flavour and fun is. You could limit the ranks as you say or just go with it see where it goes. Perhaps he gets inspired when someone else from the group uses some cool talent.

I disagree a bit with this. There are many talents that increase a players power to survive an encounter. I had a new player buy through tier 3 at player creation (+5 or 10xp) which made a very solid tank and had done very little skill and characteristic upgrades. I threw a pretty decent monster at him and they were barely taking any damage. You may want to point this out to your player.

All of the suggestions here are great. Give them a shorter list. Include things that are effecting their game, like you throwing black dice at them, players like to remove them. I would think this player would too since they seem to be about winning their dice roles. I'd also include talents that add blue dice. I would also be sure to add dedication to that list of talents. It plays to the need to control the out come of the dice and gives them a reason to buy the other tiers. And finally the house rules that require a certain talent tier to be reached before you can buy that level of skill should help too.

The talents can be very overwhelming for a new player. In my current campaign (which has been running for just over 10 sessions) across my 6 players I had a wide swath of choices. I even had 1 player that didn't increase any of his characteristics with starting XP and began with a bunch of talents and skill ranks.

After enough sessions it evens itself out. Once they've had a chance to play their characters a bit they'll have a better idea of what kind of talents they want.

Skills make a character better within the confines of the rules, talents make the character better at breaking them. I would suggest two things;

first, as others have suggested, let them find their own way. Eventually another player will pull out dual strike, Swift, Master, or something like Signature Spell... soon enough they will get the hint and want to distribute their xp more evenly. Also things change when they are spending 25xp for a single skill rank and could be getting 3 or 4 new talents for the same amount.

Second I would avoid giving them big lists of talents and asking them to pick. Instead ask them if there’s any cinematic things they want to do regularly, any cool stereotypes they want to fit. Listen to their answers and then look for an example Talent yourself that does what the player wants, or makes doing it easier. Even come back here and ask others if they can recommend a talent. Then when you show the player how this one talent can thematically change so much then they will probably start buying up to it soon.

How many sessions have you guys played so far?

I’d imagine it hasn’t been too many, because I would think that after seeing other players do cool stuff that they’d want a piece of that action themselves.

Another thing you can do is go through all the Talents available to your player and tag them ("Healer, Face, Gearhead"). I've made a page for my players where I put all the Talents available to them (from Core Rules, Terrinoth, Expanded Talents, and my own concoctions) in one place. It's filterable so you can just see Tier 2 "Leader" talents. Makes it really easy for my players to hunt down their stuff.

Not everybody wants to go through building a page like that, but you can just put the tags into Excel. And if you can't be bothered to read through every talent and decide how they'd be used in your campaign, why should they?

one house rule i used for a one shot was:

instead of using talents, the players dice pool would be downgraded by tier and ranks of the talent covering her desired action.

on the other side PCs could buy career skills as high as their related attribute, the only limited being their remaining xp to spend.