Illya Mar said:

Sorry to hear things didn't work out, Illya Mar. If I may ask, how many XP did your Players' characters start with, how many XP were awarded in your 2 session, what were the character concepts they used, and, briefly, how were they built?

This could be very useful info. Thanks!

-WJL

LethalDose said:

I'm not the one with the rulebook. And considering how we broke it to the GM, I'm not sure if he'll bring it back around for me to post a lot of specifics in terms of XP. We did get significantly more XP in the second session than the first, I think our rewards for the first session were a bit on the low side even by the rules, admittedly. But for the second session it seemed more or less in line with the assumptions made here on the board, around 15 XP or so.

The core of the group was as follows:

The human colonist (doctor) didn't like his skill choices (as previously discussed, he thought it was silly that the only colonist without Xenology was the doctor), he also agreed with two other players about talent trees forcing you to take things that you didn't necessarily want, and he didn't feel like any of his options got him where he wanted to be: One, he wanted to be able to use his medical knowledge to be more effective in combat, perhaps with poisons or knowledge of anatomy, etc. While the medical skill allowed him to apply poisons, it didn't say anything about making them, and although we had plenty of chemicals on hand the GM wouldn't let him check to see if he could concoct something, so he had no access to anything like the sedatives or paralytics he thought he might use defensively if he was forced to fight. The skill that does address familiarity with various species' anatomy, Xenology, isn't a doctor class skill. Two, he felt like he couldn't fit his concept as someone who was an educated noble, a man of science, didn't make him a better leader of men… he felt like he had to focus too much on one aspect of the character to be diversified, and regardless of profession he didn't seem many options for leadership-in-action (he was looking for talents that would make him work like a SAGA noble, or a 4e D&D warlord, and provide benefits to teammates. I guess he saw the character as someone who in terms of RP was a support character and civilized voice of reason, and in terms of game mechanics was a healer and buffer/debuffer.)

The trandoshan… (I can't recall the exact spec… marauder?) was essentially Vibrosword Lizard. In fact, that's what another member of the group started calling him in character when she couldn't remember his name. The Sword Lizard was a cuisinart of death up close… and that was all he really contributed. The player, a diehard OT Star Wars fan, said that perhaps he made the wrong character but that he felt like his character would fit better in a Quentin Tarrantino movie than in Star Wars. He was looking for something a little more Bossk, and a little less Kill Bill. Despite this, he was enough of a Star Wars fan to seek out and find a copy of the book after searching local gaming stores and finding a used copy. I think he really wanted to like it. He also thought it was hilarious that talent trees worked the way that they do, and you wind up taking some talents that may not fit your character to get to the ones that do. Breaking character, he told my character that she should hurry up and practice jumping on and off of dewbacks so she could get better at astrogation, so we wouldn't get lost so much (I had been talking about maybe getting Fringer.) The snark continued from there.

The droid hired gun hadn't played WFRP with us, and she is the girlfriend of the Sword Lizard, above. She is resigned to being pulled into anything Star Wars, perhaps forever, and has come to like it as well. She offered less specifics but also felt like she was only good at one thing, but her specific complaint was that there was more math and less concept that went into her character. She was deadly with a gun, and again, it was disturbing how effective she could be at that one thing, but nothing else.

I was a twi'lek explorer (trader) with a touch of Force sensitivity through the Force Exile tree. The character concept was that she was part of a twi'lek family with a Jedi tradition, but when it was discovered she was Force sensitive as an infant, because of the Emperor's purge, her parents sent her to the outer rim to live with her sleazy uncle the roving merchant. He had her buying and selling just about anything and everything since she was old enough to talk, and then out flying and delivering cargo to customers when she was still small enough that she needed to sit on top of a crate to see out of the cockpit. As a result she became tough, self-reliant, cool and collected. Although young, she had seen a little bit of everything, she captured everyone's attention when she walked in a room, and she had an uncanny perceptiveness that she didn't realize was coming from the Force. That was the concept. In execution, because it was hard to do anything but focus on the social skill aspects of the character, get a couple of trader talents, and open up the second tree (just buying it, not buying any talents from it), I became the team's boobs. If there was someone I could seduce, flirt with, flatter, negotiate with, etc… then I was doing well. Otherwise not so much. I was a big blue pair of breasts. Looking at my options for talents in other in-career specializations for explorer, I didn't see any clear talent paths that had only talents that strictly fit my character concept.

So there we were, Human Doctor who can't mix drugs or deal with anatomy, Sword Lizard, Psycho Killer Droid, and Big Blue Boobs. Some of our characters could have worked for Shadowrun, maybe, although they still would have felt narrowly specialized. But not for Star Wars.

Edit: One final thought - In addition to talent trees, feeling too narrowly focused, and things like that… we all wound up having a certain race/career combination that seemed to have contributed to our feeling of being narrowly specialized. The races seem to push you in a certain direction a lot more than we're probably accustomed to, or make it 'too good' not to specialize in the implied areas. If you want to be a wookie or a trandoshan, why wouldn't you take melee skill? Likewise, if you want to be melee, why not take trandoshan or wookie? I feel like with the concepts we were trying to build and the choices we had, it was the only way it could have happened: Twi'lek face, Trandoshan melee death machine, Droid ranged death machine, Human expert. What we were aiming for was more: Twi'lek who is attractive yet a generally competent jack-of-all-trades, trandoshan tough guy, disturbing-yet-whimsical droid aka HK-47, and human intellectual, healer and moral compass who can rally people to a cause. Our concepts were broad, yes, but we didn't feel they were too broad for Star Wars. We made a lot of sacrifices, and all seem to have wound up going in directions largely suggested by what our races made us good at.

Well, to play Sith's Advocate, a starting character in most RPGs are going to choose between being really good at one thing, or being not-so-great at several things. This was true in WEG, and was true in the variuos d20 systems. And much like those systems, a character in EotE can branch out as they "level up" and garner more and more XP.

So the examples given for Illya Mar's group are pretty accurate for starting characters, and I found much the same with various starting-level character builts that I've seen in quite a few different games. Even in Saga Edition, these same characters would also be fairly focused on their roles, or be so generalized as to not be that good at their intended roles. Case in point being the Twi'lek Explorer/Trader, trying to be a blend of Force Adept, Ace Pilot, and social expert all at the equivalent of 1st level. Even in Saga Edition, as a 1st level character she'd be limited to the Force-Sensitive feat, being trained in the PIlot skill, and not so great at combat as she'd be starting in either Scoundrel or more-likely Noble.

However, if a GM would prefer to provide their players with greater leeway in building their characters outside of the Obligation mechanic, they can simply choose to provide more starting XP, much like starting the party at higher than 1st level in any of the d20 Star Wars games, or supplying additional starting skill dice in WEG.

One thing I have noted amidst some of the folks I've gamed with, is the expectation that a Skill rank in EotE means the same thing as a skill rank in 3.X-based d20 games, where being skilled = basic competency. However, for EotE, having a single rank in a Skill isn't "basic competency" but rather somone that's much better than the average person. It'd be akin to the difference between a casual driver and a pro race car driver; the casual driver probably wouldn't have any skill ranks in driving, getting by with just the Ability dice generated by their Dexterity characteristic, where the pro diver would have at least one rank in driving for the "bush league" racing, and two or three for the Indy/NASCAR level of drivers. So having a single rank in Pilot (Space) would be someone that's a really good pilot, rather than someone who has basic level of competence. Much like the dice math, it's a paradigm shift from what a lot of folks are used to, and certainly not an obvious one at that.

I think they should:

[1A] Get rid of the career / specialization skill lists.
[1B] Mayhaps limit “class” skills to a certain number, but let the player pick them. Give suggestions, but let the player swap skills out.

[2A] Get rid of the career / specialization trees.
[2B] Mayhaps give each talent a cost and a possible prerequisite.

[3A] I think careers / specializations should be example archetypes.

Donovan Morningfire said:

One thing I can say to that is that we've all played those other systems that you say also have a narrow starting focus, and we still felt more focused here than starting characters in those games. For one thing, in the class-based systems the classes were built with an assumed degree of combat competence, so you had some degree of separation between combat and utility - every character could have something to contribute in and out of a fight. Similarly, those of us who chose to focus on non-combat things (like medicine or charm and negotiation) felt like we should try to spend our XP becoming competent at those things and trying to get some diversity of skill and felt significantly less capable in combat because a baseline degree of combat ability isn't assumed, beyond just rolling your characteristic. I was somewhat better off with a good agility than the doctor, who felt like he just needed to hide behind things the whole time. The point is that many game systems build your character with a lot of different traits or constructs that make you feel like you have things to do in different phases of the game: combat, exploration, non-combat / skill, social interaction, etc.

The paradigm shift might play into it… to many of our players a "skill" means "here's something you can do," rather than "you can do all of these things, but here's something that you are really, really good at." Our first session's difficulty may have played into that, as we were failing left and right even on stuff we thought we were good at, but the perception persisted through the second session as well.

However, in recent months we've played a variety of game systems and we're used to adjusting our expectations and understanding of terms. MHRP, WFRP, WoD, DCC, D&D 4e, SAGA, Doctor Who AiTaS, The One Ring, Dragon Age, and Shadowrun have all been played recently by various members of our group (I would say each of us has played sessions of at least half of the games on this list over the past year alone.) We all play games weekly, or more often, and we've adjusted to all kinds of dice mechanics and game mechanics.

Despite all this, the idea that having no ranks in most skills means "you can do well at everything if your characteristic is decent" and having a single rank in a skill means "but here's something you can do really, really well" might be a bit too foreign for us. But then I feel like that's not a failing of our group. The game needs to help us take that leap, because it's not in keeping with any other system we've played, barring some narrative rules-lite games like Marvel Heroic RP where your character is defined mostly by descriptive terms and not by a lot of characteristics and skill ranks.

The tables, rules and character sheet for Edge of the Empire simply don't look like one of those rules-lite narrative games where you'd expect to have that sort of situation. For games that use the word 'narrative' to explain themselves, as the Edge beta book does, this is probably the crunchiest game I've ever looked at in terms of the importance of game mechanics and prevalence of tables and charts. If the intent is to play like a narrative game system like Fate or Cortex, it's a disconnect that the character sheet looks like something from a World of Darkness or d20 game, and that it seems to have quite a few rules for that sort of game.

To use a contemporary RPG's example, while we would generally assume that anyone living in the modern world can use a computer for basic things like using a word processor or surfing the net, we would assume that anything requiring a skill check would best be done by someone with at least one rank in the skill. That's d20, World of Darkness, and just about every other system above that we've played (I mention those specifically because they have been the two big RPGs many people will have played over the last several decades.) The GMs in most systems might not even let an untrained person make the check, and to continue the example most of us wouldn't try to program the computer or hack its encryption, or anything like that, untrained under the assumption that we don't know how, even if we had a high intelligence for our character or thought we could get lucky with the dice.

So if there's that much of a difference in approach, Edge of the Empire needs to make it very explicit. To the point where maybe they should even consider changing some names. If your character sheet is meant to represent that you can do everything, potentially, but you're really, really good at things marked on your sheet, then different terminology than 'skill' is required here. Overall presentation might also be a thing. If you're proficient in everything, but have achieved mastery of anything you paid for, the term 'skills' simply understates that condition.

I will agree with you that they lean too heavily on Obligation, and should inform GMs that they have the option to increase starting XP independent of Obligation.

Illya Mar said:

I agree with most of the points here, I really like the game, but I recognize your issues with it. I really agree that many parts of the rulebook make it sound like skills are really important and represent extensive training. However, right now if my character didn't have any training in mechanics, but happened to be really smart I am a MUCH better mechanic than the mechanic who has put all of his time and effort into machines. That just doesn't sit right with me, your abilities should matter, but not to the point of completely overwhelming your skills or the skills of others. This seems to go against the idea of the system and punish people who want to have backstories that include extensive skill or being somewhat more experienced, but don't have the raw characteristics.

darkrose50 said:

I think they should go a different route. Keep the career/spec skill lists, but have that be only for the starting "free" skill ranks. Then get rid of the in career/out of career skill cost. Let all skills cost the same.

-EF

Illya Mar said:

I dunno. It seems to me like one of those really core Star Wars tropes, that should follow from the source material, but often doesn't because other games have trained us to think differently. I mean, how many times in SW does a character do something that isn't really one of their core abilities, but they're passably good at it anyway?

E.g.: Jedi fixing hyperdrives, princesses shooting guns, farm boys wielding lightsabers, wookies driving imperial walkers, etc.

Star Wars is definitely one of those games where pretty much anyone should be able to do anything.

I tend to agree with Gribble, but caveat that by saying that trained characters should still be noticeably better.

Illya Mar said:

This is directly addressed. Page 70, skill ranks:

"Aside from the game terms, it may also be useful to consider what skill ranks represent in a more practical sense. Even a single rank in a skill represents a significant amount of time spent learning and practicing its use. It is generally reasonable to assume that other characters in the game world would rely heavily on upon their characteristics for actions outisde their field of expertise . For example, almost everyone can pilot a speeder in routine traffic, but most people do not have a rank of pilot (Planetary). Instead, they default to using their Agility characteristic for routine tasks"

This speaks DIRECTLY to your complaints. The speeder example provided is practically a mirror for your computer example. We all use computers every day, but unless we have significant training and experience with them, it is unlikely we have ANY ranks in computers at all. In EotE, there are a MAX of 5 ranks for each skill. This is substantially different than most other RPGs (at least that I am familiar with) where there are usually a dozen or more (WoD may be different, not sure). D20 has a max rank of what? 23?

I guess I'm sorry you don't like what they called a skill? Even though its functionally identical to the other games you play.

I think you actually should read the book before complaining about how they designed the game. You've stated you don't own the book, and your GM won't let you see it, so I really fail to see how you can make informed statements with anything less than substantial difficulty.

As an aside, I think Gribble makes a good point: Upgrading's mechanical benefit (how skills are represented at lower level) is pretty sad, training doesn't feel very effective at improving roll results. because its not.

-WJL

Just been thinking about what the "character background" is supposed to represent, because people seem to keep complaining that the system doesn't allow players to appropriately support it.

And that's complete Bantha poodoo.

The prevailing gripe seems to be that some players want a way to represent that your character has some abilities that are derived from his background narrative, and if these abilities (skills, whatever) aren't in line with what the character chose as a starting career/spec, they're simply too expensive. Let's start by agreeing that what you want isn't more valuable than the first rank in an OOC skill. More than that and it's not a fair to call it a small benefit. Buying one rank in an OOC really ain't that expensive, but since players have a problem with it…

So lets see, is there some way that rules allows the players to make a narrative tweak to the game that results in actual bonuses… Can we all say…

DESTINY POINTS

This is exactly what the destiny points should be used for. With a small tweak to the rules and a well fleshed out character background, there's no reason you can't use them to give slightly extended/expanded bonuses Examples:

• "You know, my family used to fly these T-16s [Or any other speeder type that fits] back home, I got this". Player with no ranks Pilot(Planetary) and appropriate background gets one rank to fly T-16s until the end of the session.
• "Let me do the talking here, guys. I used drink with this Whippid's clan-brothers back when I ran spice out of Nar Shadaa". Player with background on planet with diverse species gets Upgrade for social skills dealing with Whippids until end of encounter.
• "I used to program binary load lifters, quite similar to your moisture vaporators in many ways" Prissy little golden droid gets a rank/upgrade to mechanics and computer checks to repair/program vaporators until the end of the session.
• "There's nothing to see. I grew up here, you know" Whiney farmboy gets 1 rank to cool until the end of the session while on the rock furthest from bright center of the galaxy.

All ways of representing your character has experience in areas other than the core skills presented in your careers/specs when the appropriate situation arises.

And you didn't have to spend a single XP to get it.

-WJL

Speaking on whether characters seem unique at first or not … I have actually come to a change of heart, and really am sad to see the change whereby humans no longer gets a free specialization at start … After having played a few times new I cant help but feel a bit constricted and type-cast by beign restricted within a single specialization …now ofcause I could just purchase an additional, but with the late change to the rules this now costs minimum 20xp which might not be so much in the long run, but does feel like quite a lot for a starting character (+within the first sessions)

- I have thus started to wonder: Why not simply give EVERYONE a flat 20xp discount on the first specialization taken??! This way all starting characters would have a much more unique feel …

Boehm said:

Well, here's a question for you. Are the players building according to concept and background ideas, or according to what makes them the most efficient/optimized at their perceived role in the group?

If the answer is the second, then yes you're going to see a lot of similar character builds, because they've got the same end-goal of making an optimized build. and there's really only so many ways you can do that.

LethalDose said:

+1. Genius way of expanding the Destiny Point mechanic and encouraging Background development and good roleplaying. As long as it's limited to, say, once per character per session, then I can see this working out wonderfully.

Donovan Morningfire said:

3WhiteFox3 said:

Well, by the time 3.5 rolled around, there were plenty of sourcebooks, both official and unofficial, to provide plenty of options for D&D characters.

In the early days of 3rd Edition, 4th Edition, OCR, RCR, and Saga Edition, when there was just a single core rulebook (kinda like what we have for EotE currently), and thus not a whole lot of "optimization" options available, so a lot of 1st level characters that were optimized for a particular role tended to look pretty similar.

Donovan Morningfire said:

My concern is not about optimization, but rather that the current system encourages specialization too much ….which I find a bit booring, and yes I know you can always think outside the box and do anything u feel like … I just cant help but feel that from a creative point of view I would rather have had that everyone had access to a specialization from teh get go … so a starting pilot would not be a pilot who would be a pilot = pilot ..etc.

Boehm said:

But dont you start with a specialization already?

You get 2(3 if droid) skills from your choosen specialization and thats where you get your talents from. Or are you referring to something else?

Sirkamina said:

I meant an additional specialization … so that instead of only 18 (3 x 6 as far as I remember) variations ….there would be 18 x 17 = Shitload of combinations for starting characters

Boehm said:

With each class starting with 90 experience at minimum, and a cross class specialization costing 30 points for the first extra one, thats sort of built in. Experience is your way to customize, but just like putting exp into 8 different skills as opposed to two, the more you spread your character out, the less powerfull they are. Creating a character with 2 specializations out of the gate is possible, they just will find themselves spread a bit thin compared to their freinds, but they will also be more versatile.

The options are there so you can choose. A character with 2 starting specializations has the option of 306 differeent builds. However a character with the freedom to spend their XP however they want is only limited by their own perceptions.

The character I created uses "bounty hunter" "assasin" but in play is actually neither of those. He is a theif and little more. Assasin was just the only way i ccould get skulduggery, stealth, athletics, and perception all in the same build.

Just because the stat sheet says your a bounty hunter does not mean that is what you do.

got the beta 36 hours ago. given the high costs of stat gains, and the rather high costs of skills, and that everything is costed in increments of 5 Exp. Pts., I find the math to be needlessly inflated… especially with the 10 Exp per session guideline. Divide it all by 5, cut the multiplication down.

Also, with stats being unraisable save by bottom row row traits, starting characters suffer from "buy stats now!!!" It would be far better to allow highly expensive (say new level x25) raising, with a cap of 5.

Also, the default cannon fodder of the movies and books, the Imperial Storm Trooper, is directly on par with PC's 1-on-1… human 110 pc and 70 points of atts, (counting rebating 20 for the Att at 1… which isn't explicitly allowed), 4 base skills, and scads of gear…

My initial reaction is that it can't do Han, Lando, Wedge, nor Chewie… all are highly elite in a narrow field (Han's near best in the galaxy amongst pilots, Lando's not too far behind him, and all the characters make stortroopers look like poor shots. WEG has PC's built on 18d6, and NPC's on 12…

Oh, other issues with CGen…

… the character sheet is causing flipping. I dislike flipping the sheet during CGen, and even moreso in play, and combat data is of both sides of the sheet.

… the lack of duplication of certain data means flipping back and forth (wound and stress threshold levels, starting Exp.)

… the lack of starting power level choices

… the low Exp

… the 10 extra Exp cap… that's likely 1 skill level.

… Cr500 starting gear seems a bit low. Luke, after all, being "just this kid" with a Cr4000 speeder, a blaster, and two droids, macrobinocs, a lightsaber, and tools…

… no provision for buying down a stat, and no clear prohibition, either.

And yes, i've used week 8 update.

I really don't understand why everyone is holding Saga edition up as the best Star Wars RPG ever. Saga was incredibly overpowered it felt way to close to playing D & D and my group literally had characters with levels below 10 that could use Mind Trick on some of the highest level Sith, including Darth Revan who if I remember correctly is a CL 16.

ashimar2 said:

Probably a case of "I really, really liked Edition X of Game Y, and now they're changing it something entirely different!" Lord knows how much we've seen that with Dungeons & Dragons, particularly in the transition between 3rd and 4th edition, and doubtless we'll see it again when 5th/Next launches. Hell, I saw a whole lot of that over on the old Holonet Forums when WotC first came out with their d20-based version of Star Wars (the OCR). And we're qutie likely to see another such surge once the final version of EotE is released to the masses, particularly as Jedi aren't a main focus character type like they've been throughout all the SWd20 games.

I do agree that Force usage was incredibly ripe for abuse in Saga Edition, particularly given how skill check bonuses vs. level-based defense bonuses worked, making Skill Focus incredibly powerful at lower levels and almost a necessity at higher levels if you wanted a chance of affecting high-end boss opponents. Thought it seems that the designers for Saga Edition were counting on players being able to police their own actions rather than requiring the rules to do it for them. Sadly, it's not always as successful as they would have liked.

Ok, just checking my comprehension

On step 4 careers… is this correct?

1. Pick Career
2. mark all 8 skills on career list as career skills
3. take one rank each in 4 skills from career list
4. pick specialty
5. mark specialty skills as career skills
6. pick 2 of the 4 specialty skills at one rank each
7. go on to experience

Also: Surveilance - Uncaught entry in Explorer: Scout - What replaces it? (Based upon the text on p. 3 of Wk8 update, I suspect awarenes.)

One other niggle: the character sheet order for attributes isn't the same as the order in the book.