Hey all,
A quick search didn't find anyone discussing this, so maybe I am missing something. But does anyone else feel like clones got the short end of the stick?
In particular comparing clones with naturals.
Suppose you are building a clone. The first real choice is do your starting skills go in your career or out of your career?
If they are in your career then they are worth 30xp so if you compare clone with natural you could build a natural and buy 2 skills at rank 2 and your natural would have:
+1 wound , +1 strain, +5 xp, +2 out of career skills and ready for anything instead of underestimated. Now underestimated isnt bad at all, but i dont feel its even close to worth all the stuff the natural gets. And even if it were, the fluff of the clone is an ordinary person "albeit in perfect health... unerring precision... an improvement over normal people". Wheras the actual rules indicate that they are strictly worse than normal people; but fortunately get underestimated because they are strictly worse than normal people.
Now suppose the skills you choose are out of career. Now the natural can purchase those two extra ranks, again for 30xp, and you end up with:
+1 wound , +1 strain, +5 xp, and ready for anything instead of underestimated. Which is slightly better, although it feels weird that to get the most out of clone you have to choose two skills to be highly trained in that are at odds with your career. Still I cant imagine ever playing clone as written. I suspect they might have written it to balance against a 110xp natural and then upped the xp on natural and forgotten clone.
Of course the other big thing is people might want to be a clone so they can just be a clone. But I dont see why people should be penalised for that.
So what are peoples thoughts? Am I wrong? Any suggestions for fixing? Anyone got any insights I am missing? Does anyone know of a better place to discuss this?