I was wondering how often your players use it even buy these talents? To me and my group they seem very weak, giving up your triumph for 1 or maybe 2 successes.

I was thinking of just changing this talent to choose one of the skills, add a boost dice to those rolls. Have to pick a new skill if you get it multiple times.

Thanks for any feedback!

The analyst/scholar in our group has 4 ranks of knowledge specialization, with a potential for a couple more. Turned two triumphs into 8 additional successes on a knowledge warfare roll. Gave the squadron enough of an edge to save their battle group.

With the Knowledge Specialization, the trick is picking a skill that you know's going to come into play fairly often. But while on paper the effect isn't all that great, with 2 or 3 ranks it becomes more useful as that Triumph can turn a barely failed check into a successful one. The Archaeologist in one group I'm in has two ranks of KnowSpec for the Lore skill, and she's used it quite a few times to edge out a successful check that otherwise would have failed.

Smooth Talker's a bit more viable, since social skills tend to come up more often. For same game as the Archaeologist, I'm planning taking the two ranks offered by Padawan Survivor and link it to Deception, mostly as an ace up my sleeve for those times when I've just barely failed a Deception check.

But those talents are a YMMV kind of thing, since if the person rolling has enough good fortune on their dice they may not ever need those extra successes to turn a failed check into a successful one.

6 hours ago, Raicheck said:

The analyst/scholar in our group has 4 ranks of knowledge specialization, with a potential for a couple more. Turned two triumphs into 8 additional successes on a knowledge warfare roll. Gave the squadron enough of an edge to save their battle group.

Not sure that you can spend multiple Triumphs per check to get that many extra successes. That may just be my interpretation, as the talent's full description doesn't indicate either way. I could see it getting problematic once a PC is rolling 4 or more yellow dice even if they've only got two ranks in the talent, especially with regards to Smooth Talker where those extra successes can provide a lot more punch.

15 hours ago, damnkid3 said:

I was wondering how often your players use it even buy these talents? To me and my group they seem very weak, giving up your triumph for 1 or maybe 2 successes.

I was thinking of just changing this talent to choose one of the skills, add a boost dice to those rolls. Have to pick a new skill if you get it multiple times.

Thanks for any feedback!

I've tended to avoid these talents whenever I can. Sure, there might be some use for them, but I can almost always find something more useful to spend the XP on.

8 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Not sure that you can spend multiple Triumphs per check to get that many extra successes. That may just be my interpretation, as the talent's full description doesn't indicate either way. I could see it getting problematic once a PC is rolling 4 or more yellow dice even if they've only got two ranks in the talent, especially with regards to Smooth Talker where those extra successes can provide a lot more punch.

I always figured the cost for trading out a triumph more than makes up for the potential for lots of successes. Plus, it's a good way to turn a failed roll with triumphs into a successful roll. They're a bit situational, but the players in my groups who have taken those talents have never complained about them.

It'd be interesting to see a graph showing how these talents affect the likelihood of succeeding at a check. Do they noticeably reduce swinginess or is it just a couple percentage points? Does having them noticeably affect how competent a character feels?

I messaged one of the mathy people who are on the forum to ask for some assistance.... I should have told them "They are my only hope!"

I found these numbers, for the odds to get a triumph based on your number of skill dice:

So looking at these number if you are using the triumph to overcome a failure, then you are even with 5 skill dice you will only benefit from this talent basically 1/3 of the time. This is not taking in to account the large reduction of this percent for the amount of rolls you are going to pass since you are rolling that many yellow dice. If your skill is lower where you would need the extra success more, the change of getting the Triumph to covert is even lower.

If you are using this just for extra successes than it dependent on how your GM treats the extra success on the roll that use these talent if it it worth converting. So changing this to a boost dice will help you get a success 33% of the time regardless of your skill dice you are using on the Roll.

So any thoughts on these talent lines, and adjusting them to use a boost dice versus as is?

I anticipate making good use of Knowledge Specialization in a Clone Wars game that just started, but that's because I'm using Imperial Army Cadet's (reflavored to Judicial Forces Cadet) Know the Enemy talent to roll Knowledge Warfare for initiative, and Rise of the Separatist allows characters working for the Grand Army of the Republic to use Knowledge Warfare (instead of Negotiation) when requesting additional mission kit. That gives a couple of scenarios where being able to rack up extra successes is potentially valuable.

The problem with Knowledge Specialization for most characters is twofold: First, extra successes on knowledge checks merely reduce the time it takes you to do your research, which rarely comes up (at least in my experience, your table may vary), meaning that it only serves as a way to turn a failure into a success. Contrast with Negotiation, where stacking up extra successes brings down your costs, or Charm/Deception, where you can extend the duration of your successful check, potentially giving a reason to use Smooth Talker even when you have already succeeded. Second, the default use of a Triumph on the knowledge check gives you "relevant, beneficial information concerning the subject." Even if you fail the check and have enough ranks of Knowledge Spec to be able to turn it into a success, that piece of "relevant, beneficial information" may be more valuable than what you would get from simple success on the check. Compounding everything is the fact that this talent shows up on trees for Knowledge-focused characters with ranks of Researcher often included. These characters likely will not be failing Knowledge checks in their specialization often to begin with, meaning that they obsolete their own talent as they get better on their focus.

Note that this is going by the base rules for Knowledge skills in the core rulebooks. Disciples of Harmony offers a model that resolves some of these problems by flipping the use of successes and advantages: additional successes provide additional information, while advantages reduce the time needed for research. If you go with that model, it becomes a bit more viable to use Knowledge Spec outside of crunch time scenarios or close failures.