I've been discussing this with my group, and some of my PCs have had some ideas/requests to editing a tree that they like.

For example: our Smuggler would like to replace the 25 xp Grit talent at the bottom of the Scoundrel's tree with Improved Side Step (which seems fair, considering how it seems like the kind of talent a Scoundrel might have, and Improved Side Step is a 25xp talent in its source tree.) Our Skip Tracer wanted to replace Bad Cop with Good Cop.

I've made 'Wandering Sellsword' a melee-focused mirror of Bodyguard that replaces his Barrage talents with Second Wind, and his Brace Talents with Rapid Reaction.

I think some of them seem kinda fun, so I'd like to share them, if the community wants.

What do you all think? Is this the kind of thing you might allow in your games, within reason?

Yeah, definitely. Seems like it would be quite helpful to have more variations on existing trees.

The new Genesys book tells you how to do this, but I don't recommend it.

Yes, within reason. One of the BIG gripes is that things like Grit +1 can be 5pts on one tree and 20pts on another. To some, they essentially become "blocks" on the tree because some refuse to spend so much for so little.

Of course, seems like it gives away to a point-buy system at some point. That is, just buy any talent you want for X-amount of points. A difficult terrain to traverse.

3 minutes ago, DurosSpacer said:

Yes, within reason. One of the BIG gripes is that things like Grit +1 can be 5pts on one tree and 20pts on another. To some, they essentially become "blocks" on the tree because some refuse to spend so much for so little.

Of course, seems like it gives away to a point-buy system at some point. That is, just buy any talent you want for X-amount of points. A difficult terrain to traverse.

Right, which is why my biggest focus when doing them is: keep it accurate to the theme of the spec, and don't turn it into a power spike.

It's mostly updating older specs with newer talents, like the aforementioned Scoundrel getting Improved Side Step. Another is swapping out Force Sensitive Exile's 'Insight' with 'Constant Vigilance' from the Padawan Survivor.

I don't like the tree-based spec system. In fact, its the only thing I really don't like about this system. At the same time, you have to really stop and think about swapping talents to customize trees due to balance concerns. Sometimes the same talent is in a very expensive place on one tree and a very cheap place on another. A lesser, but valid, concern is stacking really potent talents into the same trees. If one is going to customize trees, and my group certainly has, you need to talk about the reasons and goals, set some basic operating principles, and do so with a light touch. I would not allow moving force rating or dedication, but I'd think about allowing a few swaps in a tree if it made sense for a character.

1 hour ago, StriderZessei said:

What do you all think? Is this the kind of thing you might allow in your games, within reason?

I think it's very much a case-by-case basis, and could depend on what it is the player is replacing and what they're getting in return.

I wouldn't use "well the talent being replaced has the same XP cost as the new talent" as that much of a metric for if it's a good swap or not. Instead, I'd judge based on the functionality of the talent, with Dedication being the one exception in that if a player says they want to swap Dedication for some other 25XP talent, I'd probably let them do it, given how useful Dedication can be since in many cases it adds at least an ability die to a skill check, and rolling more positive dice is quite often good.

Honestly, it think it is a case-by-case basis, with the important decider being "just how much of an improvement is allowing this swap-out to the character?" If the answer is "they'd be a dummy to NOT take the swap-out!" then it's probably too good of a boon.

To use your Scoundrel example, I probably wouldn't let the player swap in Improved Side Step (a pretty darn good talent) for anything other than Dedication or Soft Spot, both of which are pretty solid talents; while Quick Strike and Natural Charmer would be no-goes as swap candidates, as they're not nearly as useful (I've been in campaigns where the re-roll talents simply go unused for multiple consecutive sessions). Or maybe the Black Market Contacts or Convincing Demeanor that's at the bottom of the middle path of the spec, since neither of those are easy to get to.

For our table I've only done this once, allowing the swap of Tricky Target for Barrel Roll.

One of my players brought up the idea of allowing Dedication to allow an attribute increase or a talent of players choice (subject to GM approval). Sacrifice of an attribute increase seemed fair to our table, and send to be working well so far for us.

The only changes to the actual specs we've done were a name swap (Scoundrel career/Smuggler spec), made Fringer a Universal and put Beast Rider in it's place.

I'm a big fan of changing then to help make the player happy, as long as it doesn't unbalance the game. If the other characters in the game were force based characters who had improved Reflect or Improved Parry then I would have less concern with giving him Improved side step. Since it would help him get an ability similar to the rest of the team. If they are all edge of the Empire characters no one else really get an "Out of Turn attack", so I would probably not give him improved side step for as a trade.

Looking at the smuggler tree I would say yes for the dedication, If you game in low on social checks then I would suggest swapping for Natural charmer. or let him swap it for Soft Spot since that is a damage increase talent but used offensively versus defensively like Improved step aside.

Just my thoughts, but do what you feel works best for your game and group. All groups are unique.

8 minutes ago, Jareth Valar said:

For our table I've only done this once, allowing the swap of Tricky Target for Barrel Roll.

One of my players brought up the idea of allowing Dedication to allow an attribute increase or a talent of players choice (subject to GM approval). Sacrifice of an attribute increase seemed fair to our table, and send to be working well so far for us.

The only changes to the actual specs we've done were a name swap (Scoundrel career/Smuggler spec), made Fringer a Universal and put Beast Rider in it's place.

I think changing dedication for a regular talent would be a good trade, I haven't look through the talent to think of the crazy combinations yet. For Force and Destiny I would probably tell them they couldn't trade dedication for the Force rating Talent.

I haven't had any pilots since the barrel role talent came out, but I would let them trade the Full Throttle talents to get the barrel roll talent instead. Since Vehicle speed has a low impact in our games.

4 hours ago, damnkid3 said:

I think changing dedication for a regular talent would be a good trade, I haven't look through the talent to think of the crazy combinations yet. For Force and Destiny I would probably tell them they couldn't trade dedication for the Force rating Talent.

I haven't had any pilots since the barrel role talent came out, but I would let them trade the Full Throttle talents to get the barrel roll talent instead. Since Vehicle speed has a low impact in our games.

Yeah. Dedication for force rating would be a case by case. We only have 1 force user at the moment with FR 3. She's been dancing around her other force ratings (waiting for particularly story appropriate moments to raise) so I don't have anything to worry about why her in that regard. But since at least 2 of the F&D specs do exactly that (replace Dedication with FR +1) there is at least precedence.

As for the Full Throttle series, I can see where that would fit. With ours I only allowsed Tricky Target because 1) it's not a ranked talent like Defensive Driving and 2) the basic concept behind then both are very similar... only one is paid and the other active.

Since game balance is really subjective if that works for you and yours, absolutely wonderful. I'm truly happy it does. 👍 🙂

About the only time I might consider swapping Dedication out for Force Rating is if the character is doing so from one of the Force user specs that doesn't have Force Rating already, generally most of the Lightsaber Form specs, and even that would be on a case-by-case basis. I sure as heck wouldn't allow it for a spec that already has Force Rating available to it, since there's specs whose whole thing is that they offer the Force Rating talent twice to signify these characters are strong Force users.

8 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

About the only time I might consider swapping Dedication out for Force Rating is if the character is doing so from one of the Force user specs that doesn't have Force Rating already, generally most of the Lightsaber Form specs, and even that would be on a case-by-case basis. I sure as heck wouldn't allow it for a spec that already has Force Rating available to it, since there's specs whose whole thing is that they offer the Force Rating talent twice to signify these characters are strong Force users.

Same. Which is definitely why the "subject to GM approval"is the biggest thing.

I never gave the FR too much thought she to the players I have tending to police their own rather well.

Example, same player who thought up the idea is playing a combat Droid with high soak, high durable, unstoppable etc. He refused to take Armor Master (Supreme), because that would be just to many levels of stupid. Lol

8 hours ago, StriderZessei said:

What do you all think? Is this the kind of thing you might allow in your games, within reason?

I'm going away from specs and using Genesys. Some brave folks did the work of converting the existing Talents to give base costs for all the special ones. You should be able to find it searching for "star wars genesys". You can still use the original spec trees as a guide to the Talents that really give the spec flavour, but there is a LOT of unnecessary chaff in those trees.

On 12/21/2019 at 7:02 PM, StriderZessei said:

What do you all think? Is this the kind of thing you might allow in your games, within reason?

You do you, boo.

Personally, I like that a lot of trees have some "unecessary chaff" in them, it adds a bit of flavor.