2 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Taking out of career specs is not discouraged in this system. In fact, it's pretty much expected that you'll inevitably take at least one out of career spec, if not more. Soresu is much more than using Intellect for an attribute. It's a heavily defensive form, meaning lots of Parry and Reflect, as well as multiple other defensive talents. Force-Sensitive Outcast only grants two ranks in Parry and one in Reflect; no other Defensive talents. It's all about offense.

No? The system discourages (mildly) takign out-of-career specs, because it costs more experience to do so. And, I think there was a podcast where one of the developers said they assume something like 300 experience to be a complete campaign, which is not all that much, and certainly not enough to cause out-of-career specs to be inevitable.

Now I will say it's not a very heavy discouragement though, but it's clearly trying to make you stay within the bounds of one career to get a coherent vision for your character. The Signature Abilities too are meant as rewards for people who do that.

And yes, fluffwise Soresu is heavily about defense, but the talent in Soresu Defender is also called *Soresu Technique*. Clearly, it alone is meant to represent the fundamentals of the form, with everything else being additional mastery.

I also never said that Outcast was supposed to replace the entire tree, like you seem to be implying here. The key point that I want to make is that "it is weird that the Jedi spec, which is intended to provide a baseline to build any classic jedi, does not allow additional lightsaber forms by default". WIth that sole exception, it does its job perfectly; It has the basic parry, reflect, and improved versions of both, with Lightsaber Throw in there for good measure. It's all you need, except for the ability to use any form with it (mechanically, as you can fluff it however you want).

I'm honestly not quite sure what your point actually is... What Outcast is doesn't matter, it's not meant to match up with any of the form trees.

1 minute ago, TheJack said:

No? The system discourages (mildly) takign out-of-career specs, because it costs more experience to do so. And, I think there was a podcast where one of the developers said they assume something like 300 experience to be a complete campaign, which is not all that much, and certainly not enough to cause out-of-career specs to be inevitable.

Now I will say it's not a very heavy discouragement though, but it's clearly trying to make you stay within the bounds of one career to get a coherent vision for your character. The Signature Abilities too are meant as rewards for people who do that.

And yes, fluffwise Soresu is heavily about defense, but the talent in Soresu Defender is also called *Soresu Technique*. Clearly, it alone is meant to represent the fundamentals of the form, with everything else being additional mastery.

I also never said that Outcast was supposed to replace the entire tree, like you seem to be implying here. The key point that I want to make is that "it is weird that the Jedi spec, which is intended to provide a baseline to build any classic jedi, does not allow additional lightsaber forms by default". WIth that sole exception, it does its job perfectly; It has the basic parry, reflect, and improved versions of both, with Lightsaber Throw in there for good measure. It's all you need, except for the ability to use any form with it (mechanically, as you can fluff it however you want).

I'm honestly not quite sure what your point actually is... What Outcast is doesn't matter, it's not meant to match up with any of the form trees.

No, costing a little extra XP is not discouraging taking out of career specs. If they wanted to discourage the taking of out of career specs, they would have either restricted characters to only in career specs, or they would have made the cost much, much higher to take an OOC spec. It should be noted that the majority of my PCs in different campaigns I'm playing in have at least one Out of Career spec, if not more. One of them has five specs, only one of which is an In Career spec. So, no, taking out of career specs is not discouraged at all. Having them cost a little extra XP is normal for any game system that uses any form of "class" structure.

4 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

No, costing a little extra XP is not discouraging taking out of career specs. If they wanted to discourage the taking of out of career specs, they would have either restricted characters to only in career specs, or they would have made the cost much, much higher to take an OOC spec. It should be noted that the majority of my PCs in different campaigns I'm playing in have at least one Out of Career spec, if not more. One of them has five specs, only one of which is an In Career spec. So, no, taking out of career specs is not discouraged at all. Having them cost a little extra XP is normal for any game system that uses any form of "class" structure.

... yes, as a discouragement. I'm not saying it's a large discouragement, but the fact that it exists at all is discouragement. Why else would it cost more? The designers could easily have just said that there wasn't any additional experience cost to taking out-of-career specs.

The fact that it costs more than normal is in and of itself discouragement.

Also, congratulations, you give your PCs a ton of experience I guess? 5 specs of which one of them is a career spec means you're spending 180 experience on specs alone, which is just under 2/3rds of what the devs consider a full campaign, so... Good for you? A single datapoint does not make a good argument for the average. I should note that the campaign I'm in is also wildly beyond what is normal for experience as well, as I've got something like 310 experience to play around with and at least another 300 confirmed to show up.

1 hour ago, TheJack said:

Now, if they just say that "the Jedi career counts any FaD spec as in-career" or something like that, then it's fine, as the career now has a legitimate way to acquire the other forms... It's annoying and not the best implemented, but it's there.

If you’re going to go this route, limit it to only the saber oriented trees and not the others. It’s already a pretty huge advantage for Jedi players xp wise, so definitely don’t allow it for every F&D tree. If you're going to go that route then there’s no point in counting any spec as out of career for any character, not just the Jedi.

What I’d do, if I wanted to make any exceptions, is allow the Jedi player to pick a single spec from the various F&D careers to count as in career, but they’d need to make that designation at character creation.

Just now, AnomalousAuthor said:

If you’re going to go this route, limit it to only the saber oriented trees and not the others. It’s already a pretty huge advantage for Jedi players xp wise, so definitely don’t allow it for every F&D tree. If you're going to go that route then there’s no point in counting any spec as out of career for any character, not just the Jedi.

What I’d do, if I wanted to make any exceptions, is allow the Jedi player to pick a single spec from the various F&D careers to count as in career, but they’d need to make that designation at character creation.

Yeah, agree, this would make the most sense. IMO it's also a rather inelegant method... What I'm hoping for is that they release a Master spec later on that includes a saber style talent. Then folks can take that to get the minimum baseline ability in that style, and then expand outwards to out-of-career specs if they wish to become better at their chosen style

Just now, TheJack said:

Yeah, agree, this would make the most sense. IMO it's also a rather inelegant method... What I'm hoping for is that they release a Master spec later on that includes a saber style talent. Then folks can take that to get the minimum baseline ability in that style, and then expand outwards to out-of-career specs if they wish to become better at their chosen style

Definitely agree. I don’t think I’d open that ‘can of worms’ for my game. Just asking for a butt hurt player, and that’s just not worth it.

I could see allowing Jedi to pick one FaD career and count those Specs as In-career (and for Sig Abilities). That way you have Jedi Consulars, Jedi Mystics, Jedi Guardians, etc. The tradeoff is that you're bound to the Jedi Order, and maybe Conflict awards are increased.

2 minutes ago, TheJack said:

... yes, as a discouragement. I'm not saying it's a large discouragement, but the fact that it exists at all is discouragement. Why else would it cost more? The designers could easily have just said that there wasn't any additional experience cost to taking out-of-career specs.

The fact that it costs more than normal is in and of itself discouragement.

Also, congratulations, you give your PCs a ton of experience I guess? 5 specs of which one of them is a career spec means you're spending 180 experience on specs alone, which is just under 2/3rds of what the devs consider a full campaign, so... Good for you? A single datapoint does not make a good argument for the average. I should note that the campaign I'm in is also wildly beyond what is normal for experience as well, as I've got something like 310 experience to play around with and at least another 300 confirmed to show up.

No! Costing a little extra XP to take an out of career spec is not a discouragement, not by a long shot. Why does it cost more? Simple. It costs more because it is outside of that character's primary field of expertise. It's like a medical doctor deciding to sideline as a construction worker. Having out of career specs cost the same as in career specs defeats the purpose of having "Careers" in the first place. Careers determine your character's primary outlook and focus. It fundamentally determines who and what they are at the most basic level. If anything, the structure of the system encourages, if not demands players take out of career specs. How does it do this? It does it by how it spreads out various talents, such as Parry and Reflect, for instance, or Tinkerer, Grit, Toughness, etc. any of the ranked talents. To get as many ranks as possible in these talents, requires taking multiple specs from multiple careers. You have to take Out of Career specs to gain access to as many ranks in these talents as possible. Also, if you have an F&D character who has a particular focus, such as crafting, or lightsaber combat, such a character will have to take multiple out of career specs. The craftingspecialist would need both Armorer and Artisan (a guardian and Sentinel Spec respectively), and might also want to dip into some of the Technician or Engineer specs from EotE and AoR. The Lightsaber specialist might want to master multiple Lightsaber forms, each of which is in a different career. So, no, taking out of career specs is not discouraged, it is actually heavily encouraged.

Three Hundred XP total is a drop in the bucket. That's not even enough to create a fully trained Jedi. A Knight Level character has almost that many in total at creation ( an average of 100 starting XP plus 150 more for Knight Level), but his overall ability is barely that of a Padawan.

And, for the record, the campaign in question is a "Master" level/ "troupe style" game using previously played, Master Level (1500+ XP) "signature" characters, including some ported over from older systems. Mine came from WEG D6 and was converted over. He's an 1875 XP character. I also have a starting character in that game. It should be noted that all of the "Master" characters each have multiple out of career specs. All of my other characters are starting characters, and two of them have two specs-one in career and one out of career. I have a KotOR era Wookiee Sentinel (Sentry/Armorer), a Clone Wars era Cathar Seeker (Ataru Striker/Steel Hand Adept), a Rebellion era Zeltron Sentinel (Racer), A Sequel era Mandalorian Guardian (Armorer), and a Sequel era human Guardian (Soresu Defender/Navigator/Artisan/Racer/Sentry), and I'm planning on adding a sixth Spec to him as soon as I have enough XP saved up.

6 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I could see allowing Jedi to pick one FaD career and count those Specs as In-career (and for Sig Abilities). That way you have Jedi Consulars, Jedi Mystics, Jedi Guardians, etc.

That’s an idea that I was toying around with if a player wanted to take Padawan Survivor, or the otheruniversal specs from DoR, as their starting spec.

@TheJack

I think you missed the point of the Jedi and Clone Trooper Careers.

Rise of the Separatists is meant to be used by gamers using any of the three lines. The Jedi Career, while interesting, is there primarily if you don't have Force & Destiny. Clone Trooper is there if you don't have Age of Rebellion.

Any of the F&D Careers can represent a Jedi, and the Soldier Career can cover the Clone Trooper. Yet if you don't have one or both of those books, you can still run the Clone Wars using RotS.

P.S.: 300 XP isn't the end of a campaign. I GM and/or play in 4 campaigns, and they range from 400 earned XP all the way to 800 earned XP.

Ok...it's about time for the old lady talking about how many years its been meme. How the heck are all the other books coming out that were announced after it? Did I miss something? Did it get stealth dropped?

1 minute ago, Tramp Graphics said:

No! Costing a little extra XP to take an out of career spec is not a discouragement, not by a long shot. Why does it cost more? Simple. It costs more because it is outside of that character's primary field of expertise. It's like a medical doctor deciding to sideline as a construction worker. Having out of career specs cost the same as in career specs defeats the purpose of having "Careers" in the first place. Careers determine your character's primary outlook and focus. It fundamentally determines who and what they are at the most basic level. If anything, the structure of the system encourages, if not demands players take out of career specs. How does it do this? It does it by how it spreads out various talents, such as Parry and Reflect, for instance, or Tinkerer, Grit, Toughness, etc. any of the ranked talents. To get as many ranks as possible in these talents, requires taking multiple specs from multiple careers. You have to take Out of Career specs to gain access to as many ranks in these talents as possible. Also, if you have an F&D character who has a particular focus, such as crafting, or lightsaber combat, such a character will have to take multiple out of career specs. The craftingspecialist would need both Armorer and Artisan (a guardian and Sentinel Spec respectively), and might also want to dip into some of the Technician or Engineer specs from EotE and AoR. The Lightsaber specialist might want to master multiple Lightsaber forms, each of which is in a different career. So, no, taking out of career specs is not discouraged, it is actually heavily encouraged.

Three Hundred XP total is a drop in the bucket. That's not even enough to create a fully trained Jedi. A Knight Level character has almost that many in total at creation ( an average of 100 starting XP plus 150 more for Knight Level), but his overall ability is barely that of a Padawan.

And, for the record, the campaign in question is a "Master" level/ "troupe style" game using previously played, Master Level (1500+ XP) "signature" characters, including some ported over from older systems. Mine came from WEG D6 and was converted over. He's an 1875 XP character. I also have a starting character in that game. It should be noted that all of the "Master" characters each have multiple out of career specs. All of my other characters are starting characters, and two of them have two specs-one in career and one out of career. I have a KotOR era Wookiee Sentinel (Sentry/Armorer), a Clone Wars era Cathar Seeker (Ataru Striker/Steel Hand Adept), a Rebellion era Zeltron Sentinel (Racer), A Sequel era Mandalorian Guardian (Armorer), and a Sequel era human Guardian (Soresu Defender/Navigator/Artisan/Racer/Sentry), and I'm planning on adding a sixth Spec to him as soon as I have enough XP saved up.

Why is it not a discouragement?

It costs more experience, therefore it will discourage players from taking it over in-career specs. Not enough to *stop* them from doing it, but it will make them think. Anything else doesn't really matter, the fact that it costs more is already discouragement.

And I disagree with your assertion that you need both Artisan and Armorer to make a crafting specialist: One of those specs alone is more than sufficient to make a good crafting specialist (though I will say that Artisan is the better crafter of the two, with Armorer being more a hybrid crafter/combat specialist. Combat engineer, if you will).

I also would like to point out that saying that people would want to make a lightsaber specialist by taking all the lightsaber specs, is the equivalent of a DnD character taking a one-level dip in every class; it might be fun as a gimmick character, but in actual play it'd not be very good. Thankfully SWRPG is a fairly lenient system, so you might end up with something that's halfway useful in combat, but specializing in one style would be far better, and much more intuitive to any player.

At either rate, *neither* of those examples are actually examples of the system encouraging the players.

Please do separate the system itself encouraging/discouraging, and what players might want to do for themselves.

I am stating that "the system as designed, discourages players from taking out-of-career specs, by implementing a higher experience cost for doing so. I am not saying this will *stop* players, but it is going to be harder for them to do than if the experience cost wasn't there.

I will agree that ranked talents is infact a mechanical encouragement to taking multiple specs. It does not make a difference between in-career or out-of-career specs though, it just encourages more of them (as there are specs where the same ranked talent appear in multiple trees).

I also agree that 300 experience is all but nothing, but that's neither here nor there, because that's the devs speaking, not me.

As for your characters, that's pretty cool and all, but I gotta say that you're just proving my point here; your characters are WAAAY out of the ordinary, and while I wish I could be in games like yours where you get that much experience, you cannot base anything other than anecdotes on them. Most people are unlikely to get that much experience in one campaign

Now, back to my core point here... If you could please answer this one question: If a player has two equally reasonable options, one of which costs more experience than the other, do you agree that he will be more likely to chose the cheaper option?

And by that logic, no one would ever purchase ranks in non-career skills, even if they fit your concept. After all, they cost 5 XP more per rank...

1 hour ago, TheJack said:

... yes, as a discouragement. I'm not saying it's a large discouragement, but the fact that it exists at all is discouragement. Why else would it cost more? The designers could easily have just said that there wasn't any additional experience cost to taking out-of-career specs.

The fact that it costs more than normal is in and of itself discouragement.

Also, congratulations, you give your PCs a ton of experience I guess? 5 specs of which one of them is a career spec means you're spending 180 experience on specs alone, which is just under 2/3rds of what the devs consider a full campaign, so... Good for you? A single datapoint does not make a good argument for the average. I should note that the campaign I'm in is also wildly beyond what is normal for experience as well, as I've got something like 310 experience to play around with and at least another 300 confirmed to show up.

My last character had over 1200 xp when the game fissiled.

16 minutes ago, Luahk said:

Ok...it's about time for the old lady talking about how many years its been meme. How the heck are all the other books coming out that were announced after it? Did I miss something? Did it get stealth dropped?

Is "all the other" newspeak for "one" these days?

SW is not the only thing FFG makes @HappyDaze

1 hour ago, TheJack said:

... yes, as a discouragement. I'm not saying it's a large discouragement, but the fact that it exists at all is discouragement. Why else would it cost more? The designers could easily have just said that there wasn't any additional experience cost to taking out-of-career specs.

The fact that it costs more than normal is in and of itself discouragement.

Also, congratulations, you give your PCs a ton of experience I guess? 5 specs of which one of them is a career spec means you're spending 180 experience on specs alone, which is just under 2/3rds of what the devs consider a full campaign, so... Good for you? A single datapoint does not make a good argument for the average. I should note that the campaign I'm in is also wildly beyond what is normal for experience as well, as I've got something like 310 experience to play around with and at least another 300 confirmed to show up.

Every campaign I have played in has gone at least 500 earned xp (not counting starting xp). I routinely design and playtest characters at 550 or 750 xp. I'm not extrapolating anything about others campaigns but just offering my two cents, as I believe the system begins to really shine around 550 earned xp.

51 minutes ago, Luahk said:

Ok...it's about time for the old lady talking about how many years its been meme. How the heck are all the other books coming out that were announced after it? Did I miss something? Did it get stealth dropped?

It's likely a case of other products (possibly even from other companies) simply being ahead in the production queue.

If it was indeed a printing error that caused RotS to miss it's originally slated release date, the printer can't just simply put everything else on hold without putting everything already in queue to be printed else behind schedule. They'd have to fit it into their existing queue of products, since they're effectively doing a second print run (presumably at no cost to FFG since it was the printing company's fault that the initial run wasn't up to snuff).

As has been noted in various places, RPGs tend to have a much smaller profit margin than card games and minis games, so it's likely that FFG has to accept that an RPG product is going to be notably delayed if it means getting the next expansion for Destiny out on schedule. With Allies & Adversaries, that apparently didn't run into any print run issues, and so followed the normal schedule in terms of printing -> shipping -> shelves.

Add in that it's not likely the printing company used does business exclusively for FFG, and you've then got print runs for other companies who certainly won't appreciate having their print runs delayed.

Now we actually have seen this sort of thing before, with some of the AoR books being delayed (Cyphers and Masks especially) but other books that were announced well after hitting shelves before C&M did.

37 minutes ago, TheJack said:

Why is it not a discouragement?

It costs more experience, therefore it will discourage players from taking it over in-career specs. Not enough to *stop* them from doing it, but it will make them think. Anything else doesn't really matter, the fact that it costs more is already discouragement.

And I disagree with your assertion that you need both Artisan and Armorer to make a crafting specialist: One of those specs alone is more than sufficient to make a good crafting specialist (though I will say that Artisan is the better crafter of the two, with Armorer being more a hybrid crafter/combat specialist. Combat engineer, if you will).

I also would like to point out that saying that people would want to make a lightsaber specialist by taking all the lightsaber specs, is the equivalent of a DnD character taking a one-level dip in every class; it might be fun as a gimmick character, but in actual play it'd not be very good. Thankfully SWRPG is a fairly lenient system, so you might end up with something that's halfway useful in combat, but specializing in one style would be far better, and much more intuitive to any player.

At either rate, *neither* of those examples are actually examples of the system encouraging the players.

Please do separate the system itself encouraging/discouraging, and what players might want to do for themselves.

I am stating that "the system as designed, discourages players from taking out-of-career specs, by implementing a higher experience cost for doing so. I am not saying this will *stop* players, but it is going to be harder for them to do than if the experience cost wasn't there.

I will agree that ranked talents is infact a mechanical encouragement to taking multiple specs. It does not make a difference between in-career or out-of-career specs though, it just encourages more of them (as there are specs where the same ranked talent appear in multiple trees).

I also agree that 300 experience is all but nothing, but that's neither here nor there, because that's the devs speaking, not me.

As for your characters, that's pretty cool and all, but I gotta say that you're just proving my point here; your characters are WAAAY out of the ordinary, and while I wish I could be in games like yours where you get that much experience, you cannot base anything other than anecdotes on them. Most people are unlikely to get that much experience in one campaign

Now, back to my core point here... If you could please answer this one question: If a player has two equally reasonable options, one of which costs more experience than the other, do you agree that he will be more likely to chose the cheaper option?

Not necessarily. It depends upon what direction the player wanted to take the character and what specific talents each spec had. In fact, I'd hazard to say that such a player would eventually buy both specs, if not at the same time, then one after another, upon getting enough XP. That's what I would do. In fact, I've already done both. My Cathar I took Steel Hand Adept as a second spec at character creation because he's a hand-to-hand fighter. For my albino Wookiee Sentinel, I took Armorer as a second spec once I earned some XP in order to be better at crafting a lightsaber and other weapons.

And, no, a crafter doesn't "have to" take both Armorer and Artisan, but there is no reason why he wouldn't. It would be to his advantage to do so, in order to get all of the various talents that each provides. For example, an Artisan might want to take Armorer in order to gain access to Lightsaber as a career skill, as well as the talents Gearhead, Tinkerer, and Reinforce Item, as well as additional ranks in Inventor, Mental Tools, and Imbue Item, on top of the Armorer's Armor Master tree and the spec's combat talents. Likewise, an Armorer might want to take Artisan to gain access to Intuitive Improvements, Solid Repairs, Fine Tuning, Master Artisan, Mental Fortress, Natural Tinkerer, and Technical Aptitude, as well as Comprehend Technology at a cheaper XP cost.

24 minutes ago, salamar_dree said:

And by that logic, no one would ever purchase ranks in non-career skills, even if they fit your concept. After all, they cost 5 XP more per rank...

Precisely.

24 minutes ago, Eoen said:

My last character had over 1200 xp when the game fissiled.

3 minutes ago, Khazadune said:

Every campaign I have played in has gone at least 500 earned xp (not counting starting xp). I routinely design and playtest characters at 550 or 750 xp. I'm not extrapolating anything about others campaigns but just offering my two cents, as I believe the system begins to really shine around 550 earned xp.

Also, @KRKappel once ran a Convention one-shot with the players playing members of the Jedi Council, each character having in excess of 2000 XP. There is no limit to the amount of XP a character can earn, nor how many specs or talents he or she can have. That is also why taking Out of Career specs is not discouraged, but is expected.

I think it be cool if Jedi could choose either counsellor, guardian or sentinel as in career to represent their Jedi specialization. And all the lightsaber forms.

52 minutes ago, Eoen said:

And all the lightsaber forms.

Just out of curiosity, but would you be game with giving the Han Solo inspired character all of the piloting specs, or the soldier type all the non-F&D combat specs?

It’s fine if you do, it’s your game, but if you don’t then some players might feel jipped, and rightfully so.

9 minutes ago, AnomalousAuthor said:

Just out of curiosity, would you be game with giving the Han Solo inspired character all of the piloting specs, or the soldier type all the non-F&D combat specs?

It’s fine if you do, it’s your game, but if you don’t then some players might feel jipped, and rightfully so.

There’s no game balance issues in troupe style play as all of the other players have a Jedi and other non force characters. Thus, nobody feels jipped. It’s easy to mix prestige classes in the the mix.

23 hours ago, Eoen said:

Do you mean the trees? @RLogue177 has already posted the talent tree pdfs on another thread. https://www.dropbox.com/s/jvkzroneaihi3eq/Spec - Clone Wars Era.pdf?dl=0 or do you mean the long form talent discription?

This has Republic Representative but does not have Scavenger... did I miss something?

The scavenger is on the universal talent tree, instead of the clone wars sheet. I had the same issue.

Not to derail the topic but I was just wondering what other iconic characters that are stated in the Rise of the Separatist besides dooku, obi wan, and grievous?