4 minutes ago, atama2 said:

No wonder this felt so awkward to witness.

I'll admit...I've indulged in my share of back-and-forth with Tramp. I've even knowingly tweaked some of his buttons to provoke a response. But these two are next level.

On 12/13/2020 at 5:30 PM, Nytwyng said:

I'll admit...I've indulged in my share of back-and-forth with Tramp. I've even knowingly tweaked some of his buttons to provoke a response. But these two are next level.

And humble too...

Hello there.

There's actually two things that bother me with creating non-optimized characters, excepting one-shot PCs who will serve for only one scenario.

First, I do not understand at all why someone would not want to optimize himself in something he like.

"Oh ****, I'm too good at playing guitar, I'll stop right know and do something else in order to be a jack-of-all-trades."

I'm totally aware that in real life, you'll have multiples experiences, and not focused only on one thing, but we all have a speciality, even if this speciality is to do nothing. (And doing everything in your power to do nothing is actually quite challenging !)

So I think that not optimizing is totally illogical. But it's my POV.

Second, the game already provide stats that present the "norm" of a race. Taking humans for example, with 2 in each stats and 2 points of non-career skills. This plus basics skillpoints allocated at creation, we already have a representation of a standard human with a job (and skills related to that job) and his hobbies (non-career skills). It's already a standard, making every point of stat/skill superior to 2, a specialisation. I mean, the differences between 1 and 5 isn't big, xp-wise , and yet it change tottaly the fact that your character is a genius or a useless guy. That's why we shouldn't have a debat of optimization or not, you're already optimized as soon as you pass 2 in a stat or skill. This video can't be applied to a system like this. Instead, if you want quirks to make your PC more fun, you should see with your GM to add some malus. For example, I have a 4 black dice malus to stealth with my droid hotshot (with 4 agi), because he's a chatterbox who can't shut his mouth even when trying to hide from the 501e. Mostly, arguments against optimization are that we put everything into datas, but isn't this exactly what you do when you "build wrong" ?

On 12/20/2020 at 4:21 AM, R0-B0T said:

Hello there.

There's actually two things that bother me with creating non-optimized characters, excepting one-shot PCs who will serve for only one scenario.

First, I do not understand at all why someone would not want to optimize himself in something he like.

"Oh ****, I'm too good at playing guitar, I'll stop right know and do something else in order to be a jack-of-all-trades."

I'm totally aware that in real life, you'll have multiples experiences, and not focused only on one thing, but we all have a speciality, even if this speciality is to do nothing. (And doing everything in your power to do nothing is actually quite challenging !)

So I think that not optimizing is totally illogical. But it's my POV.

Second, the game already provide stats that present the "norm" of a race. Taking humans for example, with 2 in each stats and 2 points of non-career skills. This plus basics skillpoints allocated at creation, we already have a representation of a standard human with a job (and skills related to that job) and his hobbies (non-career skills). It's already a standard, making every point of stat/skill superior to 2, a specialisation. I mean, the differences between 1 and 5 isn't big, xp-wise , and yet it change tottaly the fact that your character is a genius or a useless guy. That's why we shouldn't have a debat of optimization or not, you're already optimized as soon as you pass 2 in a stat or skill. This video can't be applied to a system like this. Instead, if you want quirks to make your PC more fun, you should see with your GM to add some malus. For example, I have a 4 black dice malus to stealth with my droid hotshot (with 4 agi), because he's a chatterbox who can't shut his mouth even when trying to hide from the 501e. Mostly, arguments against optimization are that we put everything into datas, but isn't this exactly what you do when you "build wrong" ?

This is a misunderstanding about what is meant by optimization, which is "best or most effective use of a situation or resource."

The sort of optimization being discussed here is building your character very narrowly towards a particular set of skills and building them to be as good at that as they can be, often exploiting combinations or loopholes or just making them better at that particular thing at every available opportunity.

As for the bolded bit, here's the difference. With optimization putting everything into data, it's that you're often building a character very narrowly which comes at the expense of story and having "This is the perfect way to build a Jedi, with Knight, Niman, and a KST-100" sort of formulas also cuts against story in favor of game mechanics. Rather, build the stats to fit the character, disregarding the "perfect" or "only" way to do something. Better characters tend to have a more broad base of abilities and aren't min-maxed.

One way to see if you are optimizing or not is to look at how you pick a ship. If you pick entirely based on stats, you're likely optimizing. If you pick based on role, appearance, and narrative justification with stats being a "does this work?" concern, you are likely not optimizing.

5 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

This is a misunderstanding about what is meant by optimization, which is "best or most effective use of a situation or resource."

The sort of optimization being discussed here is building your character very narrowly towards a particular set of skills and building them to be as good at that as they can be, often exploiting combinations or loopholes or just making them better at that particular thing at every available opportunity.

As for the bolded bit, here's the difference. With optimization putting everything into data, it's that you're often building a character very narrowly which comes at the expense of story and having "This is the perfect way to build a Jedi, with Knight, Niman, and a KST-100" sort of formulas also cuts against story in favor of game mechanics. Rather, build the stats to fit the character, disregarding the "perfect" or "only" way to do something. Better characters tend to have a more broad base of abilities and aren't min-maxed.

One way to see if you are optimizing or not is to look at how you pick a ship. If you pick entirely based on stats, you're likely optimizing. If you pick based on role, appearance, and narrative justification with stats being a "does this work?" concern, you are likely not optimizing.

Anyone who isn't optimizing their characters in a life or death situation isn't doing themselves or their group any favors. Roleplaying games aren't generally about normal life situations where cooking is the most important skill you can learn. If your characters don't have the skills they need and the stats they need to do their business then those characters are going to be scrambling to survive, until they wise up.

In real life some people do look at the stats when making purchasing decisions.

"Ask not what your party can do for you, but what you can do for your party."

As for gear there are plenty of examples of Star Wars characters being gear based as their thing. Old Boba is awesome without his armor he's even better with it.

Why is Achilles still famous after thousands of years? Because he was the best his day had to offer.

Quote

Why is Achilles still famous after thousands of years? Because he was the best his day had to offer.

No, because he had the best story teller.

1 hour ago, Eoen said:

Why is Achilles still famous after thousands of years? Because he was the best his day had to offer.

Because he happened to be in a famous story that had a bunch of other, way more interesting characters in it.

He wasn't an optimised PC but a GMPC with ten times the XP of the actual party whose only weaknes was that the story required him to die.

Part of the optimization issue in this game, and many suffer from it, is the partitioning of skills and stats, with certain ones being over emphasized. Agility in particular. I changed some assignments around to spread the love a bit more, but at the end of the day if a PC wants to make a gun turret with a name so be it. They will just suck at a myriad of other checks and that's how you address it as a GM, make sure there are things everyone is mindful of and be up front about that.

1 hour ago, 2P51 said:

Part of the optimization issue in this game, and many suffer from it, is the partitioning of skills and stats, with certain ones being over emphasized. Agility in particular. I changed some assignments around to spread the love a bit more, but at the end of the day if a PC wants to make a gun turret with a name so be it. They will just suck at a myriad of other checks and that's how you address it as a GM, make sure there are things everyone is mindful of and be up front about that.

I think a lot of the overemphasis could be resolved by combining a lot of skills, it seems silly to me that Gunnery, Ranged Light and Ranged Heavy all run off different skills but base off Agility. I get what they're trying to represent, but it feels inelegant and too "d20ish". But a lot of systems seem to have trouble toning down Intelligence and Agility scores in particular.

That's what I've done. Gunnery and Pilot are Intellect. Stealth is Cunning. Made Range Throw and it's Brawn. etc

1 hour ago, False God said:

I think a lot of the overemphasis could be resolved by combining a lot of skills, it seems silly to me that Gunnery, Ranged Light and Ranged Heavy all run off different skills but base off Agility. I get what they're trying to represent, but it feels inelegant and too "d20ish". But a lot of systems seem to have trouble toning down Intelligence and Agility scores in particular.

Even for the combat monsters (and pilot-type combat monsters), there's a need for other Characteristics. Brawn/Resilience never gets priority--until someone racks up some stubborn critical injuries. Cunning/Perception, Willpower/Discipline, Willpower/Vigilance, and Presence/Cool are all useful too. I've no problem with the high-Agility characters because they always tend to lack in other important areas.

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

Even for the combat monsters (and pilot-type combat monsters), there's a need for other Characteristics. Brawn/Resilience never gets priority--until someone racks up some stubborn critical injuries. Cunning/Perception, Willpower/Discipline, Willpower/Vigilance, and Presence/Cool are all useful too. I've no problem with the high-Agility characters because they always tend to lack in other important areas.

Yes, other stats should be necessary, but my point was that the spread of skills is poor. A leftover of a d20-inspired system dominated by Agility and Intellect. Some skills have been combined poorly (Stealth, could be supported by many stats), some skill got broken up poorly (3 different "shooting things stats").

11 hours ago, Eoen said:

Anyone who isn't optimizing their characters in a life or death situation isn't doing themselves or their group any favors. Roleplaying games aren't generally about normal life situations where cooking is the most important skill you can learn. If your characters don't have the skills they need and the stats they need to do their business then those characters are going to be scrambling to survive, until they wise up.

In real life some people do look at the stats when making purchasing decisions.

"Ask not what your party can do for you, but what you can do for your party."

As for gear there are plenty of examples of Star Wars characters being gear based as their thing. Old Boba is awesome without his armor he's even better with it.

Why is Achilles still famous after thousands of years? Because he was the best his day had to offer.

Not min-maxing is NOT equal to suck at something. It's more than enough to be decent.

On 12/23/2020 at 9:07 AM, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

This is a misunderstanding about what is meant by optimization, which is "best or most effective use of a situation or resource."

The sort of optimization being discussed here is building your character very narrowly towards a particular set of skills and building them to be as good at that as they can be , often exploiting combinations or loopholes or just making them better at that particular thing at every available opportunity.

As for the bolded bit, here's the difference. With optimization putting everything into data, it's that you're often building a character very narrowly which comes at the expense of story and having " This is the perfect way to build a Jedi, with Knight, Niman, and a KST-100 " sort of formulas also cuts against story in favor of game mechanics. Rather, build the stats to fit the character, disregarding the "perfect" or "only" way to do something. Better characters tend to have a more broad base of abilities and aren't min-maxed.

One way to see if you are optimizing or not is to look at how you pick a ship. If you pick entirely based on stats, you're likely optimizing. If you pick based on role, appearance, and narrative justification with stats being a "does this work?" concern, you are likely not optimizing.

I don't agree that min-maxing (i.e. the narrow focus) is the type of optimization being discussed here, maximizing utility (maximizing the average ability over a broad swath of capabilities) is also being discussed

The knight, niman, kst-100 is obviously a reference to me but it is a jack of all trades build that is good for maximizing utility, it is a good way to get a broad base of abilities.

And I think the kst-100 looks freaking awesome, a d has staterooms. It's check's all my boxes.

1 hour ago, EliasWindrider said:

I don't agree that min-maxing (i.e. the narrow focus) is the type of optimization being discussed here, maximizing utility (maximizing the average ability over a broad swath of capabilities) is also being discussed

The knight, niman, kst-100 is obviously a reference to me but it is a jack of all trades build that is good for maximizing utility, it is a good way to get a broad base of abilities.

And I think the kst-100 looks freaking awesome, a d has staterooms. It's check's all my boxes.

Yes, which is all built around statistics , not story . The reason why I chose the YZ-900 for my character’s ship was story driven. I needed a ship that could work as a school, as that is what the intended story dictated.

It needed to be large enough to handle a pretty decent number of passengers/students while being modified to require only a minimal crew. It required having some decent armament and speed, in order to survive an engagement, but not anything over the top. And Tanya mods needed were ones that would better fulfill that function as a school , with libraries, training areas, workshops, etc. things that can push characters’ stories and development, not too be the fastest, most badass ship in the galaxy.
I didn’t need a ship that was super fast, or could carry Starfighters, or out gun a star destroyer. I needed a ship that could be turned into a school. In other words, I wanted a ship with character . I wanted a ship that could drive a story about training students during a conflict.

What makes the Millennium Falcon such an interesting ship isn’t its speed , nor its firepower; it’s its quirks . As Lando calls it, “ She’s the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.”

The stats are a means to an end, not an end into themselves. The stats should serve the story, not the other way around. That’s what’s at issue. Most of your “optimizers” try to build the best stats, regardless of what’s more appropriate for the story or character development. They’re all about the numbers, all about the stats; how strong, how powerful are the character’s spells, how durable his armor, how deadly his weapons, how many “bad guys” or “monsters” can the character kill. How fast is the character’s ship, how strong its armor, how destructive are its weapons. That is typically all the “optimizer is concerned with.
What Ginny Di is advocating is to let the story drive the character’s development, allow for growth. Being the best at something, or anything for that matter, doesn’t necessarily make for good storytelling. Having a character who needs a lot of improvement, with plenty of room to grow, has much more story potential. The same with a ship. Having the statistically best ship, with the optimized combination of speed, durability, and firepower, does not necessarily make for a good story, By contrast, having a ship with unique character, one with quirks, one which isn’t necessarily in peak condition, that isn’t necessarily one of the fastest, most maneuverable, most heavily armed or armor. Rather, one that fits the needs of the story.

On 12/24/2020 at 2:23 AM, 2P51 said:

Gunnery and Pilot are Intellect. Stealth is Cunning. Made Range Throw and it's Brawn.

If you have collected your house-rules somewhere, I'd love to have a look.

I agree that Gunnery and Piloting (space) works well as Int skills, Piloting (planetary) could work as both, but for the sake of swoop bikers, I think agility works better all in all.

Stealth as Cunning makes all kinds of sense to me, not that Agility doesn't make sense.

So, I'd love to see more of these customisations.

Cunning for stealth makes complete sense, Agility for it makes zero. Being smart enough to stay in the shadows, count the seconds and direction of the search light pattern, patient enough to move slowly, wearing similar clothing as a crowd, hanging burlap in a window so you can see/snipe out but people can't see in, that's all described as cunning moves to me, not agile ones. I've met fat people with 2 left feet that were great hunters...

I don't really have a central doc of things I tweaked in FFG, it's a pretty decent set of mechanics. I spose I could think on it and scratch them down. I am planning on making Stimpacks essentially temp HPs, so at the end of an encounter they disappear, and yes that means people may drop when the fighting is done. I like the idea of them being more like a stimulant and there's a crash when you're done with the adrenal surge. Probably do medkits like I do healing kits in 5E, where they have a finite set of Wounds they heal before you're out of supplies and need to restock, so that a skilled medic/DR can make a medkit go farther than just some other non trained individual. Probably gonna import conditions from Warhammer as well, Bleed, Poison, Ablaze, etc. Thinking on redoing the crit chart so the injuries are critical instead of marshmallow strikes.

My guys like minis alot so I am doing a grid system now for combat. It still basically uses the movement as is, I just made engaged touching bases, short is within 4 squares, and then I'll have a 'medium stick'. Outside medium is long, and extreme will be map's edge/off the board. The grid helped me un-F autofire a little, I just have it allow an additional hit per activation on separate targets engaged with the primary instead of wookiee piling all on one target and linked is the multi hit on one target. Gunfighters with their Talent become cooler hitting multi targets. It will allow grenades to be visualized better also I think, plus minis are cool.

Stealth is under Cunnning probably for the same reason you want to split up the "Shoot Stuff" skills among two stats. Putting Stealth under Cunning pretty much makes Cunning the only stat a sneaky git character will ever need to be good at their niche.

Anyone who plays to one stat at my table is encouraged to have their Plan B, next character, ready to go. I stress lotsa skill checks out. Initiative is Vigilance and ambushes have a Difficulty. Being under fire or scare/stressed is a Cool thing and failing that will cause issues. In a ship not strapped in and getting tossed around, doing poorly on your Coordination is going to leave a lot of marks. Having to hike with a pack or work an extreme environment and a low Brawn/Resilience and it'll be snowflake down alot. So players who make a single skill check, or single stat focus with a name at my table learn quickly it was a mistake to ignore everything else.

52 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Anyone who plays to one stat at my table is encouraged to have their Plan B, next character, ready to go. I stress lotsa skill checks out. Initiative is Vigilance and ambushes have a Difficulty. Being under fire or scare/stressed is a Cool thing and failing that will cause issues. In a ship not strapped in and getting tossed around, doing poorly on your Coordination is going to leave a lot of marks. Having to hike with a pack or work an extreme environment and a low Brawn/Resilience and it'll be snowflake down alot. So players who make a single skill check, or single stat focus with a name at my table learn quickly it was a mistake to ignore everything else.

The game was not made with your table in mind.

Also, your table seems more suited to classic AD&D than this version of Star Wars.

What does snowflake dpwn even mean?

I'm aware of how the game was made, I playtested virtually all of it. I can point at Talents and Talent trees I know for a fact were based on my input.

Lots of people routinely comment about shortcomings they find in the system that seem problematic, in fact my post about changes was in fact a response to a request exactly about that. In fact the majority of the forum posts are more less either house rules, or suggestions about how to use the existing ones more creatively, or expand on them.

snowflake down means a narrowly designed fragile character that isn't capable of successfully meeting a broad variety of challenges.

On 12/24/2020 at 9:57 PM, Tramp Graphics said:

Yes, which is all built around statistics , not story . The reason why I chose the YZ-900 for my character’s ship was story driven. I needed a ship that could work as a school, as that is what the intended story dictated.

It needed to be large enough to handle a pretty decent number of passengers/students while being modified to require only a minimal crew. It required having some decent armament and speed, in order to survive an engagement, but not anything over the top. And Tanya mods needed were ones that would better fulfill that function as a school , with libraries, training areas, workshops, etc. things that can push characters’ stories and development, not too be the fastest, most badass ship in the galaxy.
I didn’t need a ship that was super fast, or could carry Starfighters, or out gun a star destroyer. I needed a ship that could be turned into a school. In other words, I wanted a ship with character . I wanted a ship that could drive a story about training students during a conflict.

What makes the Millennium Falcon such an interesting ship isn’t its speed , nor its firepower; it’s its quirks . As Lando calls it, “ She’s the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy.”

The stats are a means to an end, not an end into themselves. The stats should serve the story, not the other way around. That’s what’s at issue. Most of your “optimizers” try to build the best stats, regardless of what’s more appropriate for the story or character development. They’re all about the numbers, all about the stats; how strong, how powerful are the character’s spells, how durable his armor, how deadly his weapons, how many “bad guys” or “monsters” can the character kill. How fast is the character’s ship, how strong its armor, how destructive are its weapons. That is typically all the “optimizer is concerned with.
What Ginny Di is advocating is to let the story drive the character’s development, allow for growth. Being the best at something, or anything for that matter, doesn’t necessarily make for good storytelling. Having a character who needs a lot of improvement, with plenty of room to grow, has much more story potential. The same with a ship. Having the statistically best ship, with the optimized combination of speed, durability, and firepower, does not necessarily make for a good story, By contrast, having a ship with unique character, one with quirks, one which isn’t necessarily in peak condition, that isn’t necessarily one of the fastest, most maneuverable, most heavily armed or armor. Rather, one that fits the needs of the story.

1) I've always (standard disclaimer on always) put story first with my characters and stats secondary (Elias was a Ysanna, and eldest son of a chief, who practiced an ancestral force enhanced style of martial arts handed down by his father and from his father before him) that drove the build to support/be competent in martial arts.

The only character, Aris Renn, I've played with a kst-100, The Astral Wren, was a force sensitive but otherwise largely stereotypical smuggler... a brash hotshot racer pilot, eventual gambler and gunslinger, erstwhile face... So basically a Han Solo archetype with the novel roleplaying hook of being a fast and loose blue skinned millennial female. The Kst-100 was narratively the most appropriate ship for her... Corellian, small, well appointed living quarters and ALMOST more star fighter (sleek, fast, agile and HAS a weapon, a piss poor weapon but at least it HAS a weapon unlike the hwk-290) than transport.

Beyond that racer was a good fit to the character concept and the ship... the full throttle chain of talents pair nicely with 3 cunning (so 3 rounds) and a sil 3 < sil 5 that can punch it and gets 2 pilot only maneuvers per round... and the free running talents are good for someone who runs from a fight... yeah she can shoot straight from the get go (4 green) but with 2 brawn and 2 willpower she didn't have a lot of staying power.

Admittedly the kst-100 is NOT the most appropriate ship for every character, but the racer spec was looks to be wasted on Korath's 2 cunning and sil 5 ship... I mean how did racer mechanically benefit Korath's concept? I didn't see a point to it. Aris' next spec was going to be hotshot which helps with the gambler aspect (second chances) as well as the brash seat of her pants fast flier and pairs nicely with the racers super human reflexes and better luck next time. Being a RAW starting character there was plenty of room to grow but she worked out of the gate as a talented but inexperienced smuggler. Her build fit her concept.

And yeah you did need a ship that could carry sil 3 ships (e.g. star fighters, kst-100, etc) through hyperspace... you needed it to accommodate KathyKitten's star fighter ace starting character and by GM ruling you had a ship that could dock her star fighter.... although you strongly objected to your ship being able to accommodate hers and tried to force her to alter her concept from star fighter ace/pilot to only a gunner on your ship

And it seemed like sil 3 was most appropriate for docking with and being towed by the jedi star. And there's weren't a lot of fast (speed 4+) sil 3 ships with living quarters and a weapon to choose from as an alternative to the kst-100, of the top of my head I can't think of another one although maybe there's something in no disintegrations or enter the unknown.

2) you seem to be deliberately ignoring the fact that there is a lot of room between lousy at everything and best at anything. I've never (standard disclaimer on never) built one of my characters to be best at anything, generally competent and effective at fulfilling his/her concept sure (you should try it if you haven't already, I haven't been following your play by posts to know) but never the best .

@Tramp Graphics , @EliasWindrider , would both of you please move it here?

52 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

@Tramp Graphics , @EliasWindrider , would both of you please move it here?

I will if he will

We must have the fight to end all fights before the servers close. It will be one of the worst, least entertaining and aggravating threads ever put to a server! Like a train wreck mixed with gallons of baby vomit and cat pee.