Now i may have missed it here on the forums, but when creating a character and they take on another Obligation or two, do they get another obligation or do the points get added to their total Obligation??

Dbrowne1974 said:

From what I understand you could (at least in theory) split your amount of obligation among several obligations any way you like. That may fall apart in practice, though. What counts, I think, is the recommended total obligation. Key word there being "recommended." I haven't yet seen if there is an absolute cap on the amount of total obligation a single character can take. However, to me, the chart that talks of taking +5 or +10 obligation seems to imply a cap of +10 over your starting obligation. What that starting obligation is seems to be the fluid part (and ultimately up to the GM).

Again, this is my take on it as I think the written rules are a bit fuzzy in that respect.

Qingtian said:

Agreed.

I suggested in the thread pertaining directly to starting credits, but I'm thinking a +500 increase across the board would help alleviate this.

Starting with a 1000 credits lets you buy a decent blaster, maybe some (very) light armor, and still have enough money left over for other things fitting your character concept. And if you want bigger/better gear, you get more of a bang from increasing your starting Obligation. So you can have your well-armed and armored bounty hunter or mercenary, but you're going to have some hefty Obligation to go along with it.

Dbrowne1974 said:

I've been reading it as the extra points get added to their total starting Obligation.

So a Bounty Hunter with a Duty Obligation opts to accept an extra +10 Obligation so that they can start with some really snazzy gear, would have a starting Duty Obligation that's 10 points higher than the default value given for the size of the group.

I just made my first character and I found myself flipping back and forth a lot, having to read multiple sections again and again just to figure out what resources I had to spend during character creation.

For example, I just happened to pick Hired Gun: Marauder as my Career/Specialization. The Marauder description doesn't say you can increase two of the bonus skills to Rank one. I couldn't find that rule easily. I ended up reading another Specialization description, found it there, and then found it again back on p.28.

It seems like there should be a short cut chart or table that lists the basic starting resources all on a single page. These tables exist, but they are broken up and distributed in multiple places.

The Force Specialization feels like it should be with the rest of the Career/Specializations instead of a chapter in the very back. I can understand why its in the back, but again, it leads to excess page flipping and confusion during the character creation process, at least the first time through.

I really liked the actual options for creating the character, I just found myself being very unsure of the resources I had and if I was spending them correctly. I chart or table or something that consolidates this would be awesome.

KnightFysher said:

Wow, that was not my experience. The small number of creation guidelines seemed easy enough to remember that I just found my resources and plotting things out. It was all pretty intuitive and simple. I'm not trying to imply I'm smarter than you or anything like that. I mean, I've had issues like that in the past with other RPGs. And like you, the issues that I had seemed to go away after making a few more characters. I don't suspect you'll have them again now that you're more familiar with those details.

However, I'm sure they'll include some sort of creation summary chart.

After I read through the pages that laid out all the steps in small paragraphs, I had it pretty well down. However, I did have to check back a couple of times just rto make sure I had it right, or because I had forgotten something.

With that being said, however, I think it would not be a bad idea to repeat the important things at each step. For example, there was at least one career description, I think in Bounty HUnter, that included a remidner that the the player can, upon choosing a specialization, improve two of the career skills to rank one. Other careers, I believe Colonist, did not mention it. I don't see any reason not to repeat this information in every career. In this case, I think the redundancy will result in greater clarity and less of a need to page-flip back to make sure that's how it works.

There's a lot of information to take in during character creation, and anything to help process of acclimation is good, I think.

I can't remember where the question was posted, so I'll answer it here:

Someone asked before whether Dedication (I think it was called) could be purchased more than once, effectively raising a characteristic for 25xp; according to the list of talents, Dedication is a ranked talent, meaning that it can be purchased more than one time (but cannot increase a characteristic to a value higher than 6).

That's probably still a mistake or a old ruling though. Its quite clear that's not how the game is intended to work.

Note that there are plenty of specializations that contain multiples of the same talent, at varying cost.

For example, look at Fringer.

It contains Toughened, next to Dedication, and Rapid Recovery "above" it. All are connected. Jump Up is required either way to get to this point.

Why would I buy a 25xp Toughened when I (in theory) could buy it for 10xp earlier in the track (and it would have to be an option to arrive at Jump Up on this tree).

The simple answer is therefore, that no, you cannot buy the same talent twice from the same spot on the talent tree. Instead, you can have the talent multiple times, from across trees.

I would move the obligation choice/roll further back in the character process. I realize that individual DMs can do that however they like, and it can force you to think outside the box, but with my most recent group when making characters one of the players was very adamant we not look ahead to races and classes until we'd chosen our obligation first. For me coming up with the race and class might lead me naturally to picking a good obligation.

So, if I understand your logic correctly, you could only increase your characteristics by a maximum of +3 (in total), as you can only choose 3 specialisations?

Ah, but you can drop specializations. You no longer can advance those skills as career skills (but you keep any ranks), and you lose (completely lose) any non-permenant (those without the red bar) talents.

Once you drop a specialization, you can pick up a new one. So, in theory, you can train dedication 19 (6 careers, 3 specs each +1 from force sensitive) times.

6 characteristics, 6 max ranks, 36 total is the max rank. -19 means that there is 17 leftover to "get." Most characters have 12 starting, so 5 ranks left to "train."

Pick a non-human (non-droid too), race, get max obligations for +10 xp. Train the 1 characteristic to 2 (20xp, 90xp remaining), train 3 characteristics to 3 (90xp total, all spent), that means 4.

So basically, by my reading, after infinite XP, its possible to have 6s in 5 characteristics, and 5 in the other.

Shakespearian_Soldier said:

It's permanent so I think you can get it from any tree you want, any career, so a lot more than +3

…That's too much math for my brain to process this late, so I'll simply nod and agree with you. lol.

After reading over the section on Ranked Talents, I'm actually inclined to defer to your judgment, KommisarK: it mentions that you can choose a talent more than once if it is listed multiple times; by extension, this suggests that you can't do the same if it's only listed once.

Shakespearian_Soldier said:

Dedication (+1 to one attribute) is Permanent, so even if you change specialization (because it's the forth), it will remain.

Edit: As KommissarK said (sorry, I missed your post!)

What all that told me? Dropping Specializations is darned gamey and something should be done to deal with that. Though something to buy new stats should be done too.

Dulahan said:

To be honest, three specializations feels like plenty to me, especially since you can choose them from any career. I'd be inclined just to drop the entire concept of discarding an old one to add a new one, or maybe limit it to once, ever.

Venthrac said:

Yeah, or something at least. I also have to admit it seems stupid you can just forget everything suddenly but a few skills and go on for other stuff. It's just really, really gamey.

I think being able to drop a specialization will come in handy in 2014 and 2015 when your characters have either hit the roof on their current specializations in the year long campaign you've been running, or when they want to be able to be a rebel pilot in rogue squadron, or jedi :-)

That being said, it seems like it would be easy enough to limit the purchase of multiple ranks of a talent to once per equivalent xp tier. So if you bought a talent in the 15xp tier and it existed in the same tier of another career or specialization…no go. It does put more emphasis on building a stat aray that you are comfortable with long-term at the outset, but I think that's less of a problem than people getting 6's in everything accross the board "just because I can."

It may be the case. But if the system is being designed for that purpose I actually question it even more. Again, it is ridiculous you'd just suddenly forget everything you ever knew. Seriously ridiculous. Especially in a setting like Star Wars where everyone seems to be able to do a bit of everything to some extent.

I'd propose some alternate way of looking at the future, or upgrading. I don't know what, just that I don't think anyone has said a good answer yet, if we take the presumption that we have a max number of specialties and that means we will have to drop them to upgrade our characters to Rebellion or Jedi ones.

I also have to add, I find it a bit odd that Rebel characters should be any more powerful than Fringer types. After all, they're mostly normal people thrust into the situation as well. Hard knocks life and all!

Shakespearian_Soldier said:

While I get the idea of ranked talents, I noticed a few situations where you can be "forced" to pick up a non-ranked talent a second time. I assume that this should just be considered an "xp tax" to get deeper into the talent tree (and that if you drop another specialization you still have this talent), but the rules probably should, if only briefly, touch on the situation. Even if it's just to say "tough luck"

Dulahan said:

Let us look at the movie progression of Luke Skywalker:

In A New Hope: He was a Technician(I would say: Mechanic and Slicer. Mechanic because he worked on the speeder, slicer because of his working on droids). On the Millenium Falcon, he acquired the Force Sensitive Exile Specialization. We never saw him do anything with computer related stuff after the plan to memory wipe the droids, so we can guess that he "dropped" the Slicer Specialization, and took up the Smuggle: Pilot Specialization JUST in time for the fight against the Death Star.

In Empire Strikes Back, Luke is still a Pilot at the beginning, and we see when he crash lands on Dagobah he is still a Mechanic. However, we do not see him in the EU fly in combat again. It could be argued that, though he still remembers how to fly, and any permanent talents there, he dropped the pilot specialization and took up the Gun For Hire: Marauder specialization for his fight against Vader, with his developing the Move and Sense powers under Yoda's training, and the mastery of the lightsaber he developed against Vader being from Yoda's training in the Marauder specialization.

In Return of the Jedi, At the beginning, Luke is as we left him at the end of Empire, except that he has learned the Influence power, and has developed the Force Choke ability. In theory, since we do not see Luke doing any mechanics work here, he has dropped the mechanic specialization except for skill and permanent talents, and taken up one of the Jedi related career:specializations.

Into the EU: Luke drops his Force Sensitive Exile specialization fully for his Jedi Career:specialization, and picks up his Smuggler: Pilot specialization again…or maybe it and the whole string of earlier movies were the Republic Pilot specialization we should see in book 2. Fact is, though, we can look at Luke as an example of a character dropping specializations as they are no longer needed for the character as he grows over his time in the spotlight.

So with this whole 3 Specs thing, it sounds like people aren't all that happy with dropping a Spec for your 4th/5th/6th etc Spec. I think it fits the setting well, and is an alright way of only taking up so much room on your Char Sheet.

Why do I think it fits the setting? Like @Dulahan said, "everyone seems to be able to do a bit of everything to some extent." The Permanent Talents help represent that, I think. You keep leveling up yer base stats and your skills, get a few "leftover Talents," and 3 Specs that are "in focus."

When I say "in focus," it makes me think of Diaspora, which is based on the Fate system. Those characters get a certain amount of skills, and "leveling up" consists of rearranging which skills are awesome-er than others. These people go through different phases in their life, and when they are past a certain part of their life, some things they used to do start slipping. In a way, that's the best aging mechanic I've, as weird as that sounds.

Eh, I dig it, but yer mileage etc…

Shakespearian_Soldier said:

You can choose a ranked talent multiple times, but only once each time it appears on a tree. So you'd have to progress through multiple trees to the very end to be able to buy Dedication more than once. That's time consuming and very expensive for a +1 to a characteristic.