Hello, new to the forums and the beta, we ran our first full game session last week. Since our GM was going on a trip, I asked if i could borrow the book because there were a few things bothering us about the game.

One of the the main areas of consternation was in the area of class skills. It didn't make sense that certain careers or specializations had or didn't have certain skills.

The most glaring issue we ran into is that we have a Colonist (Doctor) who was upset that he didn't have access to Xenology as a career or specialization skill. Especially since one of the bullet points on it describes helping or harming a member of another species, identifying injuries in aliens, and pointing out species vulnerabilities. It also discusses things like "biological origins", "distinctive traits", and so forth. As an explorer, my trader could take this skill as a career skill, but a space colony medical expert doesn't have an advantage in learning about alien biology. Seems very odd. We know it also involves cultural and psychological elements, but the biological element of the skill is there.

I'm also not clear why some specializations seem to expand on the career skills completely, whereas other specializations get some duplication. For instance, my trader gets four entirely new class skills from the trader specialization, but the fringer has access to Astrogation as a career skill, and then again as a specialization skill. It's worse for the politico: that specialization only opens up one new career skill, the remaining three are duplications. The duplication seems common throughout.

I understand that the specializations allow you to spend two additional ranks in those bonus skills, so in the short run characters with duplication may have higher ranks in a skill, but in the long run specializations with duplicate skills are going to result in characters spending more XP to be equally competent in as many areas as other characters because they'll be spending out-of-career XP on more things. And if the intent is to make characters focused in their key areas of competence with specialization skills, and that accounts for duplication, then why doesn't the scholar have any of their knowledge skills duplicated? It doesn't make sense no matter how you look at it.

We kind of feel like each specialization should have an equal number of new class skills, and an equal opportunity to focus. Perhaps separate lists to indicate what you can take extra ranks in to start, and what skills are added to your class skill lists?

Overall, it feels like it's hard to build to character concept and there should be at least one or two more skill ranks available to start, but the main issue we had was people asking why one character's list of career and specialization skills would save them XP in the long run, while others got a small boost in starting competence that would cost them a great deal in the long run in terms of spending XP.

The best I think we can say is to agree that some of the Career/spec skill lists really seem to have missed the mark. The reasons some specs have redundant skills with the careers are:

1. Allows newly minted characters to get 2 ranks in one skill at creation for free
2. Allows characters moving into out of career specs to still get skills that are important to that spec

It's kind of a fluke of the system. Under the old advancement rules it wasn't a big deal, but with the new costs, the sloppy skill lists are causing some pain.

-WJL

I spent some more time with the rules, and going through the boards and I guess I feel that for a game that claims to have a narrative focus, character creation and development overall is very gamist.

You're really going to get the most out of your character by using math rather than building from concept.

I posted about each of these in various places but I really want to put it together, because it's given me a strong opinion about the game, and that opinion is that math and system mastery matters more than story.

1) The differing number of career / spec skills that you get for each specialization means that for character A to get two ranks in each of twelve different skills, he's paying significantly less XP in the long run than character B, because character A has 75% duplication in career and specialization skills but character B has no duplication.

All character A gets in exchange for that is the opportunity to start out with one or two skills at two ranks rather than one. That advantage disappears after a few sessions of play when character B gets enough experience to start raising skills.

Let's look at a Politico as character A vs a Trader as character B. One has three duplicated spec skills while one has no duplication – they get four extra career skills.

If the players of both characters wants to increase a lot of different skills (say someone is trying to play a dilettante or jack-of-all-trades and trying to find the best way to do that), the Politico gets three more out-of-career skills than character B. If they wants to raise a number of skills to rank 2, he's paying 90 XP (rank one in three non-career skills 3 X 1 X 10 = 30 + rank two in three non-career skills 3 X 2 X 10 = 60). But character B as a trader pays 45 XP (3 X 1 X 5 = 15 and then 3 X 2 X 5 = 30).

Granted this supposes that both characters just wanted to raise those three additional skills not on their main career list to rank 2. But as unlikely as the specific scenario may be, should it really cost double the XP? If a character's main goal is to have a broad range of skills and be something of a dilettante or jack-of-all-trades, and they want to look at the easiest path toward doing that, does it make sense to say to them that it costs double the XP to do that as someone who deals in political intrigue as it does as a someone who buys and sells (mostly) legal goods?

Now, you can say that this doesn't account for people taking out-of-career specializations, but out-of-career specializations cost more than ever now with the week 4 updates.

Then you've got odd choices on skill lists, like the Doctor specialization I mentioned previously being the only type of colonist who can't get the skill that deals in part with alien physiology and anatomy as a career skill while the politician and scholar can.

The better way to do this would be to have career skills, then unique specialization skills that add equally to every spec's career skills, then a bonus skill list where you can spend one or two points any way you like.

Career A: X number of career skills.

Specialization A1: Y number of specialization skills to add to your career list.
Z number of skills on a list where you can apply bonus ranks.
Specialization A2: Y number of specialization skills to add to your career list.
Z number of skills on a list where you can apply bonus ranks.

Career B: X number of career skills.

Specialization B1: Y number of specialization skills to add to your career list.
Z number of skills on a list where you can apply bonus ranks.
Specialization B2: Y number of specialization skills to add to your career list.
Z number of skills on a list where you can apply bonus ranks.

Where X, Y and Z are the same number throughout all careers and specializations. There should be an equal number of opportunities to focus or diversify in terms of skills for each career-specialization combination. Otherwise things get weird, and it's all up to the world view of the person who designed the specializations. Does it really make sense that someone who focuses on trade couldn't be as focused as someone who specializes in lore? Does it really make sense that a scholar couldn't be more of a generalist than someone who buys and sells a legal good of some sort? Shouldn't you let the player decide if that makes sense for their character, rather than forcing it by emphasizing focus over diversity in certain specializations, according to the way you think it should work?

If you do it this way, you can also avoid all the weirdness you have in the skills, like doctors who can't do xenobiology as well as politicians. You don't have to go through contortions to get players to focus in certain areas, you can call out either career or specialization skills for them to focus in on the separate lists. Here's your list of extra career skills for this specialization. If you're a starting character, here's your list of career and specialization skills where you can taken additional ranks to start.

If XP costs are going to differ depending on whether something is in career or out-of-career, then the specializations that give you the most diversity are going to pay off the best in the long run. But this completely negates building to concept and roleplay. It's all math now.

2) Talent trees aren't really trees with distinctive branches, they're talent buckets with strings you have to navigate to get what you want. They're spaghetti bowls.

A tree would work like this:

I've got four main branches to my talent tree: branch A relates to flying starships really well, branch B relates to navigating through space really well, branch C relates to having a lot of contacts at spaceports and among spacer culture; and branch D relates to that uncanny knack for getting through in a pinch that many sci-fantasy and sci-fi space pilots seem to have.

I can take all of the talents in branch B in succession, and my character is focused on astrogation. I might want this if part my character's focus is going to be that of the co-pilot or navigator of a crew.

The buckets we currently have work like this:

I may have to take a number of talents that have nothing to do with my main focus before I get to the ones that help me do what I want. Instead of actual branches, there are twisting paths that cover a lot of the different areas of focus within a specialization. If I want those navigation talents, I might have to take some stuff about rolling in and out of cockpits (and incidentally, mounting beasts) or I have to take some stuff about recovering quickly from stress along those same paths as plotting courses and reading star charts and flying ships. I could want to play a physically awkward character who is really amazing behind the yoke of a fighter pilot (like Jek Porkins, perhaps) but this supposes that I'm also physically fit or tough, or can jump on and off of banthas really well.

It's hard to grow your character organically according to whatever concept you want when you've got these tangled strings of talents you've got to follow in a cluster or clump of talents.

In reality, most people might be more well-rounded than a focused RPG character, but it's impossible to account for all of the different ways that people can be well-rounded: In real life, I've got high spatial reasoning but a disability that often causes me to walk into door frames or spill food on myself while trying to use a fork and get food in my mouth. Show me a bunch of shapes, lines, moving objects, curvatures and trajectories, and I'm a wizard. I can discern how everything sizes up and where everything is But doors are my enemy. The point is that you couldn't do that the way you have talent trees right now. In order for me to be good at spatial mapping, I'd also have to be amazing at flying a ship and jumping on and off of riding animals (if I were built as a finger especially.)

Since you can't account for every way that characters can be different, it's better to allow focus and let players choose the different focuses their characters have than to try to enforce versatility and have characters wind up with a bunch of traits that don't make sense. Then they can do the rest through roleplay.

3) If you takie specializations in a certain order, they cost more. It doesn't matter whether it makes more story sense for you to go from smuggler to pilot and then do the out-of-career trader, and whether you have more roleplaying opportunities to handle your progression that way. You're going to pay more going smuggler > pilot > trader than you will smuggler > trader > pilot.

If the game is really narrativistic, it shouldn't matter. I should be able to choose whatever order makes the most sense for my character. But the costs for out-of-career specializations are now such that it's much cheaper to get all of my out-of-career specializations early and then my career specializations.
Again, math trumps narrative. There are threads on this, as well.

4) There should never be a situation where you pay more XP to play the same exact character, depending on how you built them. But taking into account many of the above points, it's all too easy to do that now. You could wind up paying double (if not more) in the end for the exact same character in terms of characteristics, skills and talents. How and when you buy everything makes the difference. That's not narrative in the slightest.

We made some mistakes on my character, and so I went back to remake her both within the beta rules and the most recent rules updates. Because of the way I started to build her the second time, I wound up two skill ranks and one talent shorter than before. I then realized if I could have done it the exact same way with just the beta rules, it wasn't the updates. That shouldn't happen. Making allowances for the mistakes that were made, I shouldn't have to worry about the order I take things during creation to get the same exact character.

This encourages min-maxing, point counting and focus on numerical and system advantages rather than building from character concept.

It was kind of exciting to see that the number one thing on your character creation checklist was to create a concept. But I feel like for all the following steps, you have to throw away parts of that concept in order to build an effective character and not feel ripped off compared to the player next to you.

There's a thread on a class-less or career-less ideas for EotE here . Current ideas include removing career skills amongst others. Worth a look I think.

Illya Mar said:

I believe the Doctor (like the Politico) has a talent which allows it to gain any two skills as class skills …the choice to leave xenology out of a the doctors starting career skills could thus be seen to indicate that while xenology IS a reasonable choice …just like some combat skill for a combat-medic type doctor … It is not ALL doctors who would be expected to have some level of proficiency in xenology

Boehm said:

Scholar and Politico have well-rounded. Doctor does not.

-WJL

A thread I started on character creation, specifically focused on some imbalances I'm still seeing with Droids, and also with Trandoshans:

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=318&efcid=46&efidt=727791

Sorry for not quoting anyone details but this is in relation to the 'Starting Gear' with the 500 Cr.

Recommend that FFG do away with the credits and obligation increase for credits replacing them starting gear based on their first choice specialisation

My reasons for doing this are:

1) Reduce the risk of the Group's Obligation being too high before play starts

2) Speeds up character creation - gets the players into he adventure quickly rather than spending time after building skills then having to go to the shops sowing play

3) Aids new player and inexperienced players getting the beginning equipment more suited to the type of character they want to play

Remember, there will be players who will never have played an RPG or any of the earlier publications of SW games.

I am trying to build up a list of recommended starting gear for each specialisation going to work on a balanced list.to the one I posted earlier in the 'Starting Credits' thread

SanjuroTokage said:

Maybe instead of just "equipment packages," offer the choice between starting credits for the "ala carte" method of picking your gear, or a list of suggested equipment packages for the newer players.

I'd rather not making starting equipment hard-wired into a specilization, as there are more than one type of assassin or bodyguard or even mechanic, just to name a few specializations.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Fair play on the idea to make it suggestive package, this would help new players at least get a 'starter for ten' on what to take while it lets the more experienced players tailor the equipment to their concept as they have a better idea on what they want to play. It would be something I would support for the final core book

Prefer to keep the suggestive packages in specialisations for the new and inexperienced, I found that a stereotyped package helps them think about how to play the character to begin with while they build confidence on RPGing (based on past experience with running and playing games).

I am going to continue this topic in the General Discussion forum under 'Starting Credits' thread.

The other item I am picking up in the many threads out there is that a majority of the players are taking the obligation increase for money so would it be better to do away with the obligation increase and adjust the new one (in the weekly update) by ten with five players starting 15 and six or more at 10. Then give 3000 credts to everyone where they can trade 1000 credits for 5 xp or 2000 creds for 10xp if they want more skills and talents instead of equipment.

Hi:

(1st post here, was wonderin' if it's even the right place for it)…

A big, bad, basic question:

I'm unsure/not clear which are the options a player would choose to get the extras by adding Obligation points past the character's base score - the Character Creation Bonus or the Gear Bonus? Or is it the +5 Bonus or +10 Bonus? Since there's no "character creation sample" I'm left to my own devices…

I've searched for an answer & found none, please excuse my ignorance!

Thanks!

L

Hi:

I posted this before, but it seemed to fail…

Totally noob question:

Can someone please explain to me the Human's Special Ability?

Thanks!

L

LETE said:

You can either take 5 more in Obligation for your character to gain 5 extra XP OR you can take 10 more in Obligation for your character to gain 10 extra XP.

AND

You can either take 5 more in Obligation for your character to gain 1000 extra starting credits OR you can take 10 more in Obligation for your character to gain 2500 extra starting credits.

So Adam creates an character with 20 in Obligation, he raise it to 30 for 10 extra XP to spend at creation and then raise it to 35 for an extra 1000 starting credits, a total of 1500 starting credits.

Therese on the other hand does not want any extra XP or credits so her starting Obligation will still be 20.

LETE said:

Humans, Species Abilities (Page 36) Changed with the last errata. Entirely remove the special ability that gives humans acces to an additional specialization and replace it with the following: " Special Ability: Humans and near-humans start the game with access to one additional rank in each of two diffrent non-career skills of their choise. They may not train this skill above Rank 2 during character reation."

Therese created a human Smuggler with the specialization thief. That combination does not normally give her access to a combat skill so che choose to use her 2 additional rank in non-career skill in the skil lRanged (Light).

Ruskendrul said:

Hey there Ruskendrul:

THANKS!

L

After 13 pages, it's possible that I've missed it, but Wookies don't have their climbing claws! They are natural climbers because of them, but they are honor-bound to never use them to hurt others. Sounds like one boost die to Athletics to me!

-EF

EldritchFire said:

I noticed they were missing too when I got the book, but seeing how many perks Wookiees got already, as well as other species loosing long-term traits (Twi'leks not having low-light vision being one), I wasn't that bothered by it.

it could also be that since climbing is covered under Athletics, and Wook's get a nice boost to Brawn already, the designers may have felt the climbing claws were overkill, especially as there are going to be players that want to have their Wookiee PCs be "madclaws" that use their claws in combat.

Not saying I disagree with you, and think a simple boost die to Athletics (but only when climbing, not leaping or swimming) sounds like a decent option, but just offering soem thought on why it wasn't there to begin with.

I just played my first game last night, and I really enjoyed the game! However, chargen did leave me a bit disappointed. Specifically, spending XP on characteristics. Lame. There is no other point in the game where you spend XP for characteristic increases, so why is it in chargen? I need my XP for skills, talents, and a Force power! Spending over half my starting XP on increasing 2 characteristics is no good.

Instead of an XP cost, give everyone 3 or 4 points to add to characteristics. Give droids more, to make up for the fact that they start with 1s instead of 2s.

Also, the obligation seemed a bit kludgy, but I'll get to that in the obligation thread later. However, I don't like the idea of obligation being used to get more XP. Everyone wanted it, but we couldn't all take it since it would send our obligation over 100.

-EF

EldritchFire said:

Well, freshly made PCs shouldn't be the equivalent of Han Solo right out the gate, but rather pre-ANH Luke or Leia, or TPM Anakin even more so. So you probably shouldn't be able to buy all the skills and talents that you want right out the gate. Aside really from those two, most of the leading characters we see in movies and the EU have several adventures under their belt by the time they're introduced

Given that you need a fairly expensive (both to buy and to reach in several cases) talent to increase your starting characteristics after the game starts, being able to make your character particularly good in one or two areas by buying up those characteristics makes sense. Though I suppose you could provide PCs with a pool of floating characteristic points to be assigned at character creation, limited to a +1 to two or three characteristics (in effect, no starting characteristic higher than a 4), but I'd suggest cutting back on the XP pool for starting characters as it seems the design intent was PCs to spend roughly half or more of their starting XP budget on characteristics, then buy a handful of ranks in skills and a few talents with the remainder.

I think it's universally agreed that Droids get the short end of the stick in terms of character creation, but my thought is rather than limiting Droid PCs to 4th-degree models, open it up to all droid degrees, and provide the PC a bonus to specific characteristics based on their droid degree; after all, the two most iconic droids in the series is a 2nd-degree astromech and a 3rd-degree protocol droid.

When I made my droid character, I essentially ignored the 4th degree descriptor and made a 3rd degree droid. Nothing about the stats indicate anything different. Also, I realized that making droids requires you to be much more specialized than other characters, which I like, since I feel like that's what droids should be since they are actually a result of "intelligent design" so to speak. Droids by neccessity of their XP budget end up with very specialized characteristics, while their extra skills give them an edge up in the career and specialty of their choice.

Ruskendrul said:

Your example does not mirror the ability as you wrote it, nor as I understand it. Therese could only put 1 rank in ranged (light), since she has to place 1 rank in 2 different non-career skills. So she could put 1 in ranged (light) to be able to more proficiently shoot at law enforcement and security, and for example 1 in brawl to kick as in close combat, or 1 in melee for shiv them to pieces with her vibroknife - perhaps preferable to bruising her tender thief fingers

About extra obligation for xp and/or cash, after starting two different test groups I noticed that most players took extra obligations for xp, only one did for cash. In one of the groups the players didn't take any extra - she thought all that xp was a hassle to place, she'd rather play her character … the first group did take a lot extra, and I hadn't really noticed the limitation of only taking the xp option once, either 5 or 10 extra xp, not both. So I let my players take 15 extra obligations for extra 15 xp. So far that hasn't really had a grea impact on stuff, other than the group starting with 110 obligations and being all miserable for a while until they managed to lower the obligation below - which the starting adventure lowered their obligation below - to 90 so this is going to be a house rule I think, more starting options

Donovan Morningfire said:

I'm not trying to make Han Solo or Luke Skywalker, I'm just trying to keep up with the adversaries. I don't know if it was the enemies we fought in the adventure, or all adversaries in general, but they had higher characteristics and skill ranks than we did. Looking at the adversaries chapter, the henchmen have more 3s than a starting PC can reasonably have if they also want an out-of-career skill, or even a 10XP talent.

-EF

EldritchFire said:

I'm thinking it might very well be the enemies you fought.

From what I've seen, most early encounters should consist primarily of minions with one or two Henchmen thrown in for some added challenge. Henchmen are going to have slightly better characteristics than a starting level PC, which is going to be balanced out by the fact that they're going to be outnumbered by those PCs. Throwing a party of starting level PCs against a half-dozen Henchmen is akin to pitting a group of 1st level D&D heroes against a pack of Vampire Spawn; the end result is going to get pretty ugly unless the PCs are amazingly lucky. And a lone Nemesis-level NPC is pretty much a boss fight, not a run-of-the-mill encounter for starting PCs in this game.

Unless put into groups, minions have no skill ranks at all, and tend to get dropped pretty easily; one good shot (3 or more successes) from a heavy blaster pistol will drop most every type of minion except for stormtroopers. So they make excellent adversaries for starting heroes. In fact, looking at the Crates of Krayts adventure in the back of the book, most of the combat encounters are heavy on the minions, with the last non-starship encounter being a case where victory is successfully escaping the bad guys' pursuit rather than taking them all down.

I ran my first Demo of Edge of the Empire for the Dragon's Lair store in Austin, TX. Some of the feedback that I got from both old Saga players and from some new players was they did not like that your attributes were set after character creation and that you had to spend XP to get ranks in it. One of the suggestions that was made to me was that during character creation you should get 1 or 2 attribute points to spend on your character that does not come out of your XP or increase the starting XP by 20-40 pts.

I do agree that the way it is now it really forces you to pick what you what your character to be like based on the race. If I want to make a Brute I really need to pick Wookiee or Trandoshan. If you want to be a Sniper then Rodian is your best bet (only spending 40 xp to get 4 in agility vs. 70 xp for most other races). I think if the starting XP would be a little higher it would be easier to help get characters created and more options. Right now it seems like if I want an attribute heavy character I cant have any talents or skills but if I want a more balanced character in the end he will suffer from bad attributes.

jyanta said:

Yeah, that was me who suggested it. I had fun for the bit that I played, stupid work having me go home early

-EF

It came out this weekend that our group has generally decided against EotE, and while I was personally willing to give it at least a little more time, I had to agree with the others about its shortcomings, and so we're not going to be continuing with the beta. We only made it one character creation session and two full four or five hour game sessions in. That said, I thought I'd provide a final bit of feedback based on an observation, because I liked WFRP 3rd, I really like the X-Wing Miniatures game, and I hope that FFG can make this whole SW RPG thing work for them.

I'm posting this here because the biggest complaints were about character builds, customization, optimization, and creation. It's generally more of the same from what I mentioned before, despite the recent errata negating some of the XP cost differentials.

Several players said it felt like in order to be effective at something their characters had to be built too narrowly focused in one area for Star Wars characters. One player at our table said she felt like there was more math than roleplaying to be considered with character building. It didn't seem to be fulfilling its narrative promise for her.

The majority didn't like the way talent trees felt less like trees with branches you could select and more like paths you had to follow, taking things you don't want or that don't fit your character to get things you do want or do fit your character.

Our group still really wants to play a Star Wars game now, everyone's got the bug. I'm sorry to say they just don't want to try this Star Wars game any more.

The die mechanics differences between WFRP and EotE were a secondary disappointment (I think everyone felt the bigger dice pools of WFRP, adding characteristics and skill rather than taking the largest number on the character sheet and then upgrading, were less swingy; that the smaller dice of WFRP (d8s and d10s) seemed to be a factor as well, changing the system's 'math'; and that the stance dice gave you some level of control over how many mitigating circumstances your successes or failures would have and something like aggression/reckless dice could have been really thematic for Star Wars.) The consensus was that it felt strange that they'd use the same general mechanic but change it so much from what people had been playing and seemed more-or-less well-received, and in a way that just seemed to make the results grittier still than WFRP, when space opera should feel more heroic.

But I digress, and in the end it was primarily about making the kind of character everyone wanted to play.

So I started looking through previous game systems, and something struck me that I think was key to the game's failure with our group: the general trend in Star Wars gaming is toward opening up character creation and customization with things like classless systems (WEG), systems with free multiclassing (SAGA), and generally speaking, systems where characters are built cafeteria-style (you can pick up whatever dishes you want to make your meal, whether those dishes are classes, specializations/advanced classes, feats, talents, skills, etc.) In some way, they all provide for a lot of customization so that you can ultimately approximate any kind of character concept. We talked about how in WFRP, moving from career to career was expected and built into the game as an expectation, whereas in EotE it felt like changing specializations was almost discouraged or punished, and about how you're essentially always your starting career.

What I think made EotE a hard sell is that you're going from Star Wars games with a cafeteria of character options (with previous games, within the framework of the game, you can eventually have anything with anything) to a narrower menu of options (you can have the steak with the baked potato or steak fries, but not with the rice pilaf.) And it's particularly bad that you're doing it with the same license/game setting as these other games. With other options available to us, it turned out to be a deal breaker.

Whether you're a fan of the parent system, WFRP, or a fan of Star Wars, it just seems narrower and harsher in terms of choices and gameplay.

I'm sorry it didn't work out. And maybe some day we'll be able to come back to it and give it a second look, with some changes and extra options and variant rules. But for now, this is the general consensus among the core four players of the group. Our GM is disappointed, but hopefully we'll all get past it. We'd still like to see where he was going with his story.