So I've been GM'g for my friends for about 2 years now, so my group are well stocked on XP and have multiple talent sheets. More often than not, lately when they've been tackling encounters, they lose track of what talents they have to help with the situation and spend a good chunk of time sifting through their pages to find it.
Anyone have tips on how they manage their growing list of talents? Do you use the spec decks or some other method?
Edited by Micromanic16 minutes ago, Micromanic said:So I've been GM'g for my friends for about 2 years now, so my group are well stocked on XP and have multiple talent sheets. More often than not, lately when they've been tackling encounters, they lose track of what talents they have to help with the situation and spend a good chunk of time sifting through their pages to find it.
Anyone have tips on how they manage their growing list of talents? Do you use the spec decks or some other method?
I use oggdudes.
15 minutes ago, Daeglan said:I use oggdudes.
Ditto.
I use SWSheets .
Spreadsheet.
I put together a spreadsheet and list the talents in alphabetical order for my characters. Pretty quick to put those together, and when I pick up a new talent, it's easy to add new talents.
There are three columns: Talent Name, Rank, & Talent Summary.
Since I've modified the rules so thoroughly OggDudes doesn't work for me or mine.
As far as something at the table that isn't on a device, I'd suggest that they take the time to write out a cheat sheet of the various active talents (or passive talents like Moving Target) for quick reference.
There is space for talents on the basic character sheet.
9 hours ago, Rimsen said:There is space for talents on the basic character sheet.
Not really for advanced characters though. It won't really even get you through one talent sheet.
The players can make reference sheets for each phase of the game, one with combat related talents, one with social, and the divided how ever else fits for their character.
On my sheet if a skill get boost or setbacks, I will mark those on the skill like with a BD or SB. If it can use the Force dice I will mark FD next to the skill to remain me. on the Force character I have written the amount parried and Reflected up by my defense so I don't have to go through and recount each time.
14 hours ago, Rimsen said:There is space for talents on the basic character sheet.
5 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:Not really for advanced characters though. It won't really even get you through one talent sheet.
@P-47 Thunderbolt is correct there. I have a character whose character-folio is 26 pages long including a cover page and background page.
While providing plenty of latitude to the PCs, at some point I think it has to be that you "just didn't think about that" if they don't use a talent that would have been useful. I don't think its reasonable to hold up the game while the PCs sift through 26 pages. If they have been using this system long enough to have the problem remembering what they can do I feel that is on them. Sorry if that sounds harsh, it isn't meant to be harsh, but realistic if the game is to keep its flow.
26 minutes ago, RickInVA said:While providing plenty of latitude to the PCs, at some point I think it has to be that you "just didn't think about that" if they don't use a talent that would have been useful. I don't think its reasonable to hold up the game while the PCs sift through 26 pages. If they have been using this system long enough to have the problem remembering what they can do I feel that is on them. Sorry if that sounds harsh, it isn't meant to be harsh, but realistic if the game is to keep its flow.
which is why it is often better to build up your pc. But also it is why i love Oggdudes. It does things like add the remove setback to rolls due to talents. adds boost for the same. builds the possitive end of the dice pool. adds defense and tracks how much damage parry and reflect can remove and so on. which goes a long way towards making the game flow.
1 hour ago, RickInVA said:While providing plenty of latitude to the PCs, at some point I think it has to be that you "just didn't think about that" if they don't use a talent that would have been useful. I don't think its reasonable to hold up the game while the PCs sift through 26 pages. If they have been using this system long enough to have the problem remembering what they can do I feel that is on them. Sorry if that sounds harsh, it isn't meant to be harsh, but realistic if the game is to keep its flow.
I think instances of players porting over characters from long-running campaigns in other systems and picking a variety of specs and Force powers because a single box on the tree matches up with something the character did once many years ago and driving their character record up to 26 pages are going to be outliers. As such, it’s up to them to remember what they’ve got and figure out how to manage their character.
17 hours ago, Nytwyng said:I think instances of players porting over characters from long-running campaigns in other systems and picking a variety of specs and Force powers because a single box on the tree matches up with something the character did once many years ago and driving their character record up to 26 pages are going to be outliers. As such, it’s up to them to remember what they’ve got and figure out how to manage their character.
Yes, but that's not the point either myself, nor @P-47 Thunderbolt are making. Even a character who has advanced to max out even a single Spec, or even Force power. is going to require more than one sheet on a character form. You need a sheet for each Specialization, one for each Force power and all its potential upgrades, one for each Signature Ability, one for Equipment, one or more for a full lit of talents, one for all of the skills, etc. Even a Starting character's folio is going to run about 9 sheets or so.
On 2/9/2020 at 2:39 PM, Tramp Graphics said:Yes, but that's not the point either myself, nor @P-47 Thunderbolt are making. Even a character who has advanced to max out even a single Spec, or even Force power. is going to require more than one sheet on a character form. You need a sheet for each Specialization, one for each Force power and all its potential upgrades, one for each Signature Ability, one for Equipment, one or more for a full lit of talents, one for all of the skills, etc. Even a Starting character's folio is going to run about 9 sheets or so.
Even if you summarize just the stuff they’ve actually gotten so far and leave off the stuff they haven’t gotten yet, you still have a lot of pages of stuff to be printed.
OggDudes program has a summary mode, and it doesn’t even cut the number of pages required in half.
I printed off the trees, a custom sheet for space craft/speeders, force powers e.c.t I've got an entire book given over to equipment and notes. This can be a fairly crunch intensive system as far as talents can go so keeping good notes is super important. I personally have much less interest in a "freeform" tiered system of talents because I'm a visual person, I've got very little interest in physically writing out every one of my hundred talents at this point when I've already got nice coloured charts that shows everyone precisely what I got.
All I can say is have a good feel for what your character can do and be fairly clear with what your character specialises in. If that obscure talent is something you regularly forgets, then it isn't really important to the character just a bit of extra chaft that regularly gets forgotten. For example, Tobin F.in Stryder is a masterful artisan and a force emergent assassin whom is attempting to teach future generations not to live in anger. In super short, he's sneaky, got a lot of skills in deception, stealth, has a singular lightsaber tree and had brought into teacher so that he could use the large amount of skill ranks to make other characters better. I've got trees in bounty hunter, assassin, Emergant, Artisan, At Striker and Teacher and 8/9 force powers at various levels of mastery. I probably only use about 15% of my character's talents in a given session, so I don't sweat the small details of forgetting I can reroll a machanics, or having the basic heal/harm, and I've probably only used Now the Master about 1 in 3 sessions due to the large group size and a super need never really coming up. As long as I know exactly what my character is great at I don't mind anything else. Truth be told I don't even remember the star fighting rules, or a lot of the extra stuff; Tobin wouldn't know how to fly in a squadron since he's only occasionally stolen something so it simply isn't important for me as a player to know.
What I would do however is noting talents that are used regularly. I know I've got 4 ranks in dodge, 3 ranks in parry and 2 in reflect. Having that included on the main page on the edge of my character sheet reduces the amount of flipping I have to do since it's right there above my strain/wound total.
I imagine part of the reason "Now the master" exists is so that wise mentor type characters can pretty much do whatever the PC's can do, without necessarily having to sink thousands of xp and murdering a whole tree just to replicate the decades of knowledge they apparently have. Then again; I'm also of the opinion that characters stagnate when they aren't actively adventuring.
I just write out my character like he's an npc in a stat block. I group talents into rough categories.
Edited by EoenOn 2/8/2020 at 3:10 AM, Daeglan said:I use oggdudes.
This.
If you enter (and save!) the details of the purchased talents and powers in the Data Editor, then you've got them on the character sheet (and any following ones). You don't need to print out the specialization or Force power tree portions of the character sheet, just the front page (characteristics, WT/ST, Defences, Soak, skills, weapons), inventory page(s), and the pages listing the talents (alphabetically) and the Force powers (grouped by power). Background, motivation, morality/obligation/duty pages optional.