21 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

I can understand that position. I will say that paying 30 starting xp is significant as it effectively costs as much as a 2-to-3 Characteristic increase (effectively giving up the equivalent of a Dedication rank in exchange for a Force Rating rank).

Considering the various specs that have 2 Force Rating talents in them, like Sage and Seer, offset this significant power by removing Dedication talent from their tree, that seems to be a fairly reasonable trade.

12 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

Considering the various specs that have 2 Force Rating talents in them, like Sage and Seer, offset this significant power by removing Dedication talent from their tree, that seems to be a fairly reasonable trade.

I don't disagree, but I can also see why someone might be hesitant to allow FR 2 characters at the start of the game.

17 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I don't disagree, but I can also see why someone might be hesitant to allow FR 2 characters at the start of the game.

Unless, of course, they use most or all their starting experience to get that far in any Talent Tree, limiting themselves in other fields. Jedi/Padawan come to mind as the easiest to do this with currently. But then again, I would probably limit that career and specialization to games specifically set in an era that has them, like Clone Wars, or Old Republic.

What I would do is just give everyone enough XP to allow them to get where they want or close to. everybody gets something cool. Problem solved.

1 minute ago, Daeglan said:

What I would do is just give everyone enough XP to allow them to get where they want or close to. everybody gets something cool. Problem solved.

That's possible even if you do allow the buying of FR 2 for 30 starting XP. Everyone that doesn't take that option gets to spend those points raising a Characteristic from 2 to 3. Everybody does get something cool; there is no problem.

16 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

I don't disagree, but I can also see why someone might be hesitant to allow FR 2 characters at the start of the game.

*shrugs* I've never really seen the issue personally as a GM. Granted I wasn't running a mixed party, as they were all Force users. My experience with having FR 2's at start was just that they were able to more consistently use the Force how they wanted, and actually use some of the upgrades they bought. Something that was almost impossible with FR 1 most of the time.

On 7/16/2019 at 8:53 AM, KungFuFerret said:

*shrugs* I've never really seen the issue personally as a GM. Granted I wasn't running a mixed party, as they were all Force users. My experience with having FR 2's at start was just that they were able to more consistently use the Force how they wanted, and actually use some of the upgrades they bought. Something that was almost impossible with FR 1 most of the time.

Agree completely. As a GM I have no issues with a Force Rating of 2. Honestly just means they invested more in the force and are probably less skilled than in other areas. I have actually been giving all my players 3 bonus +1 to stats and allow the force users to use one of those on the force instead. Never any issues.

I’ll agree with these as well. FR 1 is so anemic it’s not funny. Anyone else in the party can start off focused on their speciality, usually thanks to a characteristic of 4, which makes them very competent in that area right from the start. A character with Agility 4 can fly almost anything and reliably hit a target at Long range, the same goes for all the other characteristics.

Until this tiny little side bar there was no way for a Force User to have that same feeling from the beginning. And even with this option you still have to buy the force Powers themselves, between the additional rating and a single force power you’re likely spending 50xp of your starting budget. That severely hampers your usefulness outside the Force.

I honestly think I would allow any F&D spec to start with this option just to allow the characters to be far more simplified without requiring multiple specs and a year of gaming to become awesome.

8 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

Until this tiny little side bar there was no way for a Force User to have that same feeling from the beginning.

There was the "Learn as you Go" optional rule, introduced a few years ago. Lets you pick a talent *cough Force Rating* from deeper in your tree, and activate it right then. You just have to spend XP towards actually unlocking it .

Always seemed like a good option to me.

1 hour ago, KungFuFerret said:

There was the "Learn as you Go" optional rule, introduced a few years ago. Lets you pick a talent *cough Force Rating* from deeper in your tree, and activate it right then. You just have to spend XP towards actually unlocking it .

Always seemed like a good option to me.

You upgrade a die from a purple to red, take extra strain from force pips I think or was it threat. Rule might be in keeping the peace.

Just now, EliasWindrider said:

You upgrade a die from a purple to red, take extra strain from force pips I think or was it threat. Rule might be in keeping the peace.

Yeah pretty sure it was in the Warrior book, as to the penalty, it was a list of options for the GM to implement. You could pick from those options. I personally always thought it was an elegant system. Usually, most character concepts that start with a lot of raw power, fall into the "strong talent, zero control/training". And their story arc usually revolves around actually getting that training, going from the equivalent of a 5 year old trying to control a firehose at full throttle, to someone actually capable of keeping it under control. And to me, the penalties associated with "Learn as you Go" reflected that very well. It was harder to do things, or more likely for bad things to also happen as a result of the PC using power they were simply not ready to handle. But, once you've spent exp (representing the PC gaining.... experience with the power), and actually buy into the Force Rating talent normally, the penalties go away. Reflecting how they've reached a minimum level of understanding/control of the power, and no longer have the drawbacks that they did as a clueless child, waving their hand around like that!!

It really does baffle me how that optional rule seems to be completely overlooked in the various discussions about "How can I have X at chargen, without having to do all this other crazy stuff or spend tons of XP?" I've seen people make really ridiculously elaborate houserules, just to allow them to take ONE thing, that makes their concept more appealing. And I'm just glancing at "Learn as you Go" going 😠 😠

Learning As You Go sidebar is in Keeping the Peace, page 74.

5 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

There was the "Learn as you Go" optional rule, introduced a few years ago. Lets you pick a talent *cough Force Rating* from deeper in your tree, and activate it right then. You just have to spend XP towards actually unlocking it .

Always seemed like a good option to me.

With the "Learn As You Go" sidebar, while the sidebar doesn't specifically disallow it, I'd call it pretty sketchy to just be able to leapfrog over several other talents just to get that one particular talent. Elsewise, what's to stop a PC from doing the same as you're suggesting for the Force Rating talent to snag talents like Hawkbat Swoop or Draw Closer or Sarlacc Sweep or even just plain ol' Dedication that much sooner? Other than the GM saying "No doing!" of course, but that can lead to a perception of bias if you allow one or more players to "leap ahead" to the Force Rating talent but other players can't do a similar "leap ahead" to other 4th/5th row talents.

Granted, even the leapfrogging doesn't help most of the LS Form specs, and it seems those are the characters which generate the most "wah, I'm stuck at Force Rating 1!" dialogue due to the need to buy into a second spec to begin with in order to have a chance of reaching Force Rating 2.

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

With the "Learn As You Go" sidebar, while the sidebar doesn't specifically disallow it, I'd call it pretty sketchy to just be able to leapfrog over several other talents just to get that one particular talent. Elsewise, what's to stop a PC from doing the same as you're suggesting for the Force Rating talent to snag talents like Hawkbat Swoop or Draw Closer or Sarlacc Sweep or even just plain ol' Dedication that much sooner? Other than the GM saying "No doing!" of course, but that can lead to a perception of bias if you allow one or more players to "leap ahead" to the Force Rating talent but other players can't do a similar "leap ahead" to other 4th/5th row talents.

Granted, even the leapfrogging doesn't help most of the LS Form specs, and it seems those are the characters which generate the most "wah, I'm stuck at Force Rating 1!" dialogue due to the need to buy into a second spec to begin with in order to have a chance of reaching Force Rating 2.

The whole point of the rule was to allow that very thing. To get access to a talent or Force Power, or whatever, that you haven't unlocked yet, via the normal progression, but at a penalty. And that you will spend some xp (every time you actually spend it) towards actually unlocking it normally. Your examples of Hawkbat Swoop and Draw Closer are the very reason that optional rule exists, so someone could have that early, but with penalties. So, I'm not really seeing the flaw here? It's working as intended with the examples you gave. Those who were fine with having a much higher rate of negative results in their dice rolls, would gain access to something a little sooner than normal. Those who weren't that set on starting with "that one cool thing they saw in Episode 2" and are happy to just get there normally, don't have the increased rate of failures, conflict, despairs, etc.

In fact, I think Rebels had a pretty good narrative example of this. How Ezra in season 1, would pull off some pretty good tricks with the Force, but seemed to tap into the Dark Side a lot easier than Kannen was comfortable with. This would be the narrative translation of "You gain +1 Conflict any time you use this power, regardless of pip result" option of a penalty.

KungFuFerret,
As long as you're fine with the PCs having the option to cherry pick any 4th or 5th Row talent, be it from a F&D spec or any other spec, so be it, again as long as you're willing to accept the consequences of PCs having those high end abilities a lot sooner than they're meant to.

For instance, a Bounty Hunter/Assassin getting Deadly Accuracy via the "learn as you" as you interpret it without picking up any of the talents that lead up to it pretty much right at character creation. Or a Colonist/Performer starting out with Biggest Fan simply by leapfrogging all the other talents in between. Or a Heavy grabbing Rain of Death without the necessary talents in between so that they can easily offset the penalty for autofire, or a Gunslinger doing the same for Guns Blazing and Spitfire. Or heck, a PC just grabbing Dedication without working their way through the rest of the tree, such as a Gambler snagging a comparatively cheap Dedication (only 10XP, so the "learn as you go" penalties will be a cinch to pay off) to quickly boost a characteristic to 4 at a fraction of the cost normally required.

Comparatively speaking, getting to Force Rating 2 (whether via the CotR sidebar or abusing "learn as you go" to leapfrog to the talent) isn't nearly as worrisome, as a Force Rating by itself is meaningless without talents and especially Force powers to make use of it. Conversely, there's a lot of 4th and especially 5th row talents that are extremely useful in the early going and wouldn't require as much extra XP spending on supplementary things to be useful.

On ‎7‎/‎18‎/‎2019 at 3:43 PM, KungFuFerret said:

Yeah pretty sure it was in the Warrior book, as to the penalty, it was a list of options for the GM to implement. You could pick from those options. I personally always thought it was an elegant system. Usually, most character concepts that start with a lot of raw power, fall into the "strong talent, zero control/training". And their story arc usually revolves around actually getting that training, going from the equivalent of a 5 year old trying to control a firehose at full throttle, to someone actually capable of keeping it under control. And to me, the penalties associated with "Learn as you Go" reflected that very well. It was harder to do things, or more likely for bad things to also happen as a result of the PC using power they were simply not ready to handle. But, once you've spent exp (representing the PC gaining.... experience with the power), and actually buy into the Force Rating talent normally, the penalties go away. Reflecting how they've reached a minimum level of understanding/control of the power, and no longer have the drawbacks that they did as a clueless child, waving their hand around like that!!

It really does baffle me how that optional rule seems to be completely overlooked in the various discussions about "How can I have X at chargen, without having to do all this other crazy stuff or spend tons of XP?" I've seen people make really ridiculously elaborate houserules, just to allow them to take ONE thing, that makes their concept more appealing. And I'm just glancing at "Learn as you Go" going 😠 😠

The Warrior book easily has some of the best rules for reputation, apprentices and establishing connections by spending a bit of their personal XP to gain a contact that can do what the party cannot do. The followers system is an extremely nice perk for small parties who mightn't necessarily cover a wide range of skills or perhaps even a duo campaign involving a warrior that mightn't have much to contribute aside from his way of fighting but is able to change people's lives for the better by acting with mercy and dignity, always been there to save a soul in need. It's a nice way of occasionally showing the positive effects the character has on the world around them and gives them alternative boons to invest in, aside from self improvement. I gotta read into that "learn as you go" idea myself, I feel there are some things I have missed out of that book.

I currently use the rules for an apprentice personally as my character has dipped into teacher due to finally reaching a moment of enlightenment after years of fighting a difficult war against both himself and the empire. but I didn't necessarily want to add another DM controlled statblock to the fray. so having an apprentice be a background character that can occasionally join the PC in combat is pretty elegant solution, and allows the PC to branch out into that character they raised should their current character die or be removed from the board for a prolonged period of time. I believe most long term campaigns should have characters coming and going all the time so being able to find interesting ways to introduce character's with pre-existing connections to the party is awesome in my book.

Unrelated note. As for the extra starting force rating; they make pretty well clear that the only reason this rule exists is that if you are playing with that book without having the prior book and want to play a Jedi. Want to skip being a Padawan? Take a characteristic hit for some more force. But I wouldn't expect this rule to be used around most gaming tables; as with all optional rules just because the career book exists doesn't mean that the GM is obligated to use all the options; only the options that the table *needs* for the tables fun.

16 hours ago, LordBritish said:

The Warrior book easily has some of the best rules for reputation, apprentices and establishing connections by spending a bit of their personal XP to gain a contact that can do what the party cannot do. The followers system is an extremely nice perk for small parties who mightn't necessarily cover a wide range of skills or perhaps even a duo campaign involving a warrior that mightn't have much to contribute aside from his way of fighting but is able to change people's lives for the better by acting with mercy and dignity, always been there to save a soul in need. It's a nice way of occasionally showing the positive effects the character has on the world around them and gives them alternative boons to invest in, aside from self improvement. I gotta read into that "learn as you go" idea myself, I feel there are some things I have missed out of that book.

I currently use the rules for an apprentice personally as my character has dipped into teacher due to finally reaching a moment of enlightenment after years of fighting a difficult war against both himself and the empire. but I didn't necessarily want to add another DM controlled statblock to the fray. so having an apprentice be a background character that can occasionally join the PC in combat is pretty elegant solution, and allows the PC to branch out into that character they raised should their current character die or be removed from the board for a prolonged period of time. I believe most long term campaigns should have characters coming and going all the time so being able to find interesting ways to introduce character's with pre-existing connections to the party is awesome in my book.

Unrelated note. As for the extra starting force rating; they make pretty well clear that the only reason this rule exists is that if you are playing with that book without having the prior book and want to play a Jedi. Want to skip being a Padawan? Take a characteristic hit for some more force. But I wouldn't expect this rule to be used around most gaming tables; as with all optional rules just because the career book exists doesn't mean that the GM is obligated to use all the options; only the options that the table *needs* for the tables fun.

I believe they also say it's applicable to the Jedi Knight spec in Rise of the Separatists