I would like to see some more unique abilities for species and better balance. The majority of species gain extra talents or skills, which in an XP driven game, essentially amounts to additional XP. This is not a problem except when some species have special abilities that cannot be bought with XP.

Wookies- Rage, +4 WT for -2 ST

Transdoshan- Claws, Regeneration, +2 WT for -2 ST

Not that these abilities are overwhelming (especially since they are melee) but they do, technically speaking, make Wookies and Transdoshan mechanically more powerful.

I think the fix would simply be to give each species a unique species talent or two. I would tend towards active talents. For instance, instead of giving Bothans the convincing demeanor talent, why not give them a talent that gives them a once per encounter or day re-roll of a deceit or skullduggery roll or allow them to add an additional free advantage to a successful deceit or skullduggery check?

Darl_Loh said:

It might make them more powerful in melee, but the tradeoff between the bonuses to wound and melee damage are more than balanced by their pitiful strain thresholds. which means that they're able to be stunned out with terrible effectiveness, only having strain thresholds of 9 or 10 unless their Willpower is increased or their in a specialization with easy access to Grit.

Wookiee with a massive vibro-axe charging you? Switch that rifle to stun, back up and plug away and you'll drop him before he can reach you.

The species feel pretty balanced from a mechanical level, especially after the week 1 updates. I don't know that there's any need to really mess a whole lot more with them.

Even after the first updates Gand, Rodian and Human still have the short end of the stick and Twilek have all sorts of goodness. Lets say that at base all species have 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 1 10 WT, 10 ST 100xp and 1 rank skill upgrade. I am excluding Droid because they are their own animal completely.

Bothan: +1 ST, 1 starting ability (worth around 10 xp)

Gand: +10 xp (lungs) or ability to survive in any atmosphere (lungless)

Human: +10xp (essentially a net bonus of zero xp as they have no 3 rated characteristic) and 1 rank in any skill they want (10xp if they go for a non class skill)

Rodian: 1 starting ability (worth around 20xp as you can only gain ranks of it from one tree and 2 of the ranks are deep in the tree)

Trandoshan: +2 WT, -1 ST, -10xp, Regeneration and Claws (both of which have very minor value xp wise if they were a 5xp talent i doubt many people would invest in either)

Twi'lek: +1 WT, +1 ST, choice of 2 skills rather than 1, Heat resist ability

Wookie: +4 WT, -2 ST, - 10xp, Wookiee Rage (lets call this a 15xp talent as it is comparative to Barrage/Feral Strength but is a little better)

Looking at that, Twi'lek and Wookiee are mechanically the strongest, with Trandoshan and Bothan falling in the middle, and the other three falling behind. I still don't know where to place Droids, I am playtesting one in my current campaign and he seems alright, will have to wait and see.

Now I am for sure not one of those people that is going to min-max a character, I simply want to play what is fun and I want each species to feel like that species so I have no problem with some being mechanically better than others, but this is playtest and so I simply wanted to point out the disparity.

When you think about it the bonuses to threshold work out to a lot of xp as the only other way to increase that is to raise your characteristic which is quite costly so any race that is getting one of those is ahead of the game. Some races simply get left behind.

I think Gand would be really neat to tie them into the Force a little bit as they have a mystical aspect to them, you could give them a Force Rating of 1, giving them access to force powers but perhaps not allow them to take the Force Adept tree as they insist that the ability of their findsmen is not tied to the Force.

Cyril brings up a good point about stunning Wookiees down, however it is not very costly in xp to bring their ST up a few points, Strain can also be easily removed when you roll advantages and on top of that the weapons with stun don't include a stun rating to say how much strain they inflict. Playing it right now as equivalent to damage may or may not be how it ends up finishing, somehow I think stun setting wouldn't inflict as much strain as the full damage value.

Two points:

First, I'm super happy with the week 1 updates. I now see intresting mechanical interactions for all races. As a related note, I don't feel that they need to be perfectly balanced. Much more important than figuring out the exact cost of each threshold change is ensuring each option is fun.

Second, if you insist on doing that math, then be aware that most threshold improvents will be through the Grit or Toughened talents and are priced everywhere from 5 to 25 xp.