As I was browsing the various talent trees in preparation for our first session next week I noticed that while many of the talent trees are fairly open and allow lots of horizontal and vertical movement, a couple of them are very restrictive. The two that stand out the most are the Mechanic: Slicer tree, and the Explorer: Trader tree. The Slicer especially seems very imbalanced as it forced the player directly down the left side and then once they hit the bottom they can begin to work back. The Trader is not as bad, but is still more limited than the rest of the trees.

If the skills of these trees were balanced to compensate for this then it is understandable but looking at the talents in every tree they are very similar, a few that grand new abilities and some that give adjustments to characteristics ect. If the connecting lines in some of these trees were omitted accidentally then maybe this is a proofreading issue but it seems that it isn't.

As my brother set out to make his Slicer he was curious why he had to spend 140 xp to gain his second rank of Bypass Security, when the majority of other classes are spending between 25-50 xp to get a second rank in one of their ranked abilities.

I guess what I am driving at is that players enjoy choice, railroading them into certain talents for some trees like this will drive some away from the class. I am fine with having some talents difficult to acquire but it seemed extreme in a few cases.

I said the same thing, and so did the slicer in my group (with out prompting from me) The slicer definitely needs to be reconfigured.

It would be useful to have some sort of designer guidelines for how the current trees were developed, with tips on how to balance home-brew trees or how the designers feel that the current trees are as they should be?

Seeing as how I'm working on a couple home-brew talent trees of my own, I wouldn't mind hearing some of the thoughts behind the design process behind some of the wonkier trees, like Slicer or Trader.