That Blasted Samophlange said:

I actually agree. Choices are important, and deciding whether to stick with current specs or drop one to make room for another was a real selling point. Heck, the limited number of specs coupled with the talent trees brought to mind the good ol' days of SW Galaxies.

While the bookkeeping of permanent vs non-permanent talents might be a bit of a hassle to keep in mind, it's not like everyone is going to be swapping out specs left and right. Most of the permanent talents are more on the passive side: +1 Wound Threshold, +1 damage at engaged/short range, etc. The more active talents that "define" a spec are the non-permanent ones.

Most people seem to think that changing specs makes you "forget" what you learned, but you really don't. One of the passive benefits of a spec is the cheaper cost of class skills. Swapping out your Doctor spec doesn't make you lose any ranks in medicine, just the finer applications, like stim application.

-EF

That Blasted Samophlange said:

Except that by the old rules he wouldn't… what you're advocating is a max of one specialisation. Otherwise, Luke wouldn't have had to give anything up until after he picked up a fourth specialisation (Jedi Master?) at which point he would have lost the non-permanent talents of one of his other specialisations. What you describe is treated exactly the same pre and post errata.

While I don't feel quite as strongly about the issue as you Blasted, I feel like I agree. Especially considering the format of the planned release order for the books. I really don't have much to add other than a vote +1 for change it back.

gribble said:

I don't feel it does. I'm not saying one specialization. I was stating the direction the character took in very brief overtones. I'll try to breakdown how I feel Luke progressed in terms of specializations. Much of which, would be based on his character development throughout the trilogy, and even beyond.

He starts off as, say a Technician with the Mechanic specialty - As I see Luke did a bit of upkeep on the moisture vapourators and droids, as well as his speeder.

He gets a couple of droids, his family dies, and he hops on a ship to Alderaan. During this time, he could pick up the Force sensitive exile (Obi-Wan starts teaching him the basics. Nothing too fancy)

They 'escape' the Death Star, and Luke decides to help blow it up, Taking the Pilot Specialty. Hooray! Luke Blows up the Death Star.

By the end of the movie (Campaign) Luke has the 3 specialties.

We fast forward 3 years, Luke is a Lieutenant Commander in the Rebel Alliance, maybe he gives up mechanic to get a "rebel soldier" specialty. (this is very maybe) you can disregard the rebel soldier and just move on the the below)

He's also given command of Red Squadron, renaming it Rogue Squadron. He doesn't have a lot of spare time to practice what Obi-Wan taught him, so he gives up the Force Sensitive Exile in favour of, what we'll call the "Squad Leader" talent. But, pays for this by being bushwacked… er snowwacked? by the Wampa. He then escapes, and goes to Dagobah, where he meets Yoda, who then convinces him to pursue his talents and become a Jedi. He'd have to give up something at this point, so since he left Wedge in charge, he gives up the Squad Leader specialty and gets a new one from the GM's new book "Force and Destiny" He takes the Jedi, but doesn't get a lot of XP gets a massive crit against him, but gets away.

Fast foward another year, and Luke gets some XP, gets some new talents, and defeats the big bad, resolving his daddy issues. Hooray He's a Jedi (like his father before him).

We go into the expanded universe a bit and Luke has given up the Rebel Soldier bit, and has taken the Jedi Master so he can train a bunch of new Jedi.

- Now, this is how I see his progression more or less. There are several key moments, where I see him getting new specializations and losing some old ones.

Having multiple specializations is integral to the character being unique, as the combination can be different from, say Han or Leia's character. As it is, Luke has spend A chunk of XP, has abilities he's not going to use, because the focus of the character has changed.

Another thing to consider, is when a player gets 3 sheets of talents, they're going spend time figuring out which one to use, slowing down play, flipping through the sheets to find the right situational modifier or forget that they have Utinni! and Natural Tinkerer or something.

I don't know if anyone has done a playtest where they give the characters say, 2000xp to make higher level characters, just to see how it works with the new specialty rules.

Just a few tidbits to discuss.

That Blasted Samophlange said:

Fair enough, and you make a much better case the second time around, although I'd argue some of those are pretty marginal. I wouldn't say Luke ever really took the Pilot "specialisation" - other than the trench run on the first death star, where Luke used the Force more than piloting ability - he wasn't really portrayed as a great pilot like Han was.

Regardless, Luke would be paying a bunch of XP for all that specialisation swapping under the new rules. While he never actually loses any of the talents he gained, he's still giving up a big chunk of XP that the more focussed characters like Han and Chewie are sinking into skills and talents. So there is still that element of "sacrifice" involved.

You make a good point about the "old specialisations", but I'd argue that in play, Luke's player would still have use for them all. Besides, he'd likely end up with less total talents than a more focussed character anyway, so would have less of a bookkeeping issue.