Specifically, how the week four update has changed the entire feel of the game for me. This is in regards to acquiring specializations, and the removing of permanent talents. On one hand, this is a great idea as the original method led to a large issue of keeping track of where you got specific talents. The new way leads to a lot less book keeping. Which is good, and fits with the idea of the system.

However it feels wrong to me.

The original method gave me hope on how to incorporate new specializations, that were going to come out in the later books, onto an existing character. It felt more organic, and gave more weight to the choices you make. When I first read the original document rules, I felt I immediately knew how the Jedi were going to be incorporated, without becoming the "I'm better than you at everything" class that seemed to happen with them in the previous d20 version. I could see how a character such as Luke Skywalker could change from being a backwater farm boy, to a capable leader and soldier and eventually a full fledged Jedi, Or how Han Solo went from smuggler to respected leader. The original rules espoused Yoda's words of "You must unlearn, what you have learned".

You had a limit on how many specializations you had - admittedly, three was rather arbitrary, but with a finite amount you had a hard choice on how to build your character. With the new rules, this is not as meaningful as it just costs you more and more to learn new abilities. This reeks of power creep to me. I liked the idea of my characters initial class choice being meaningful, which it still is, as your class skills will never change and influence how your character develops and how their early development will influence their future. Even though Han became a General and soldier, at his core he still thought like a smuggler.

Choosing to leave a specialization meant that you lost something, but was offset by the option of getting new abilities. This filled me with hope for Age of Rebellion. I could play a character that started out as a bounty hunter, but along the way decided to give up my mercenary ways and embrace a greater ideal. Sure, I would still be influenced by my early career, but as the character grew I could put to rest some of my past and become something new. This progression was very much like Luke becoming a Jedi.

I imagined the Original trilogy, if run as a campaign under FFG's current plan for the RPG would have been like this: During a New Hope, Luke starts as a Explorer: Fringer or Technician: Outlaw tech (he was a tinkerer). During the campaign he gets some experience, saves it till the end and buys the Force Sensitive exile specialty, and ups his piloting (space) skill. He blows up the Death Star.

The GM then buys Age of Rebellion and Luke takes new specialization of Fighter Pilot from the Soldier class (Just an example here) but also wants to take the Wing Commander specialization so he gives up his original Fringer/Outlaw Tech specialization to become a capable soldier and leader. During the campaign he spends more points on the force sensitive exile and the GM lets him take the Lightsaber skill. He proceeds to fight the campaign Nemesis by himself and gets his hand cut off.

After this long campaign (which included much of the time between the first and second movie) the GM gets the newly released force and Destiny where Luke gives up the Force Sensitive Exile, and takes the Jedi class.

During this whole campaign Luke's player would have made choices on how his character developed. Losing some abilities, but gaining new ones. This feels like an organic way of playing a character. Under the new system, you would just have to spend more experience, and thus the choices become less meaningful. Eventually every character could have every ability (not likely, but with enough time it's possible) You could end up with a character that has a 7 page character sheet. This seems counter intuitive to the the games design, as you now have to keep track of so many abilities.

All in all, I love this system as I've read it. (haven't played yet - lack of dice is a big factor), but I'm not a fan of the specialization changes. I'm hoping that the game goes back to the original 'more book keeping' method or they do a drastic re-design again.

As with all Systems I intend to homebrew my own setting, I will keep the core mechanics - the dice rolling is superb in my opinion. But I'll probably change the class structure around.

Ideas I may incorporate are:

that you only get the additional class skills from your FIRST specialization and class. Once again, an important choice that will influence your character.

Keep the finite number of specializations, but less permanent talents.

Make permanent talents cost MORE, but can only ever be taken once - Even across multiple Specializations.

Thing is, if I start learning how to do something, I don't forget how to do parts of that something just because I decide to start learning something else. Say I start learning programming languages, learn BASIC, then decide I want to get into, I don't know, pottery. That knowledge of BASIC doesn't just vanish from my mind; I just never get any better at it, or learn any more programming languages. So I'm not a fan of losing talents you've already learned.

DailyRich said:

Yes, this +1.

Yes the knowledge may not just up and vanish from your mind but you certainly are not as skilled in it as you used to be if you don't keep it up with daily use. I would like to think that the skill upgrades represent this. If the character Luke from the OP's example followed that path, while he wouldn't still have the talents from his old mechanic tree, he would probably have a few skill points in the Mechanic skill to represent that he at one time was skilled in that area, now he still knows enough to be better at it than your average person (someone with no skill points) but he is not the expert at it that he once was (someone with the specialization)

I think this reflects a truer system in my mind. If you are not putting talents to use all the time they degrade. I played hockey for the first time in 5 months last night and let me tell you I was no where near as good as I was half a year ago.

AFrede said:

That is exactly what I think. Many of the talents seem to be reliant on gear that a character might have (without being actual equipment a character bought). Also, as I said, represents a tough choice a player has to make in terms of talents.

As a person grows, they generally don't forget completely how to do something, but as their life changes some things will become less important to them, and less of a focus in their life. A character could be all about modding his gear, or wearing the best armour, and then become a Jedi and realize that is not as important to them.

I'm very much an advocate of having choices that matter in a game. And just having to spend more XP to get more specialties eliminates some of that for me.

Maybe a character should only have one Specialty at a time. Everything not in their specialty costs more, and taking a specialty outside their career has an even greater cost. You basically have to spend XP to change your specialty. Perhaps have your first specialty is the only one that gives the extra class skills. I'm not sure, but it is something I'll think over.

DailyRich said:

You have obviously never changed professions. Most skills and knowledge are very much use it or lose it.

Doc, the Weasel said:

Indeed. I stopped drawing for while after I got a new job which required most of my time and energy to be devoted to unrelated skill sets and when I started up again it was exactly like I had lost something when comparing my work to things I had completed years ago. Up until that point the progression was clearly one of improvement but when I redirected my focus I could clearly see things take a step backwards.

I think FFG was on to something very interesting with their initial design intentions.

I'm not sure if the change will ultimately result in power creep or an inferior product, but it certaily feels less inspired and more like the designers are cowing to the lowest common denominator. More of a symptom, less of a problematic change in itself, I guess. I was really looking forward to seeing the specialty mechanic in action, but my players never got the chance to even purchase one new specialty before the rules change.

I dunno… I kind of felt that the "3 Specializations" was pretty perfect. Look at some main Characters in Star Wars…

Leia: Politician, Spy, Jedi

Luke: Colonist (farmer), Pilot, Jedi

Han: Soldier, Smugger, General

I guess I have to get updated on what exactly these changes mean. I have not really kept up on the last couple revisions. So they removed the perma-talents… but they opened it to as many as you want? I am going to have to re-read this when I get home.

I am not keen on this change as well I liked the 3 speclization at a time but you only kept certain things when you change specilzation

To be honest, I have no issue with the change, the one thing I found a little hard to swallow before was the Meta-game nightmare I could see unfolding with dropping specializations but keeping permanent talents, so I liked that change. So far I have no real gripes with the changes that have been made but lets be honest, when FFG finish the game and release it there will be some disappointed fans. It is physically impossible for them to create a game which everyone agrees with; one group of players want things one way, another group want them another way. They can't win except by making the game they originally had in mind as well as they can.

Personally I would have preferred the game to just be a Star Wars game that I could run in whatever time period I liked without feeling restricted to a specific game style and time, but that is not the route they are taking and I will just have to adapt my plans and the numbers to fit. Even with that limitation I have to say I am pretty impressed so far.

E

eldath said:

As someone else stated, the change just seems like FFG bowed to pressure to remove it, rather than take a chance and have a unique mechanic that could turn out very interesting. But I do agree that it could have been Meta-game nightmare, but some changes could have been made, in that there are fewer permanent talents, and the ones that are permanent are spread over almost all the specialties, so once you have it, you never have to buy it again. For instance, you buy one talent in one specialty for say 10 xp. This is a permanent talent, when you leave to go to another specialty, which has it for 20 xp, you don't have to pay because you already have it. So the advantage is that some specialties will get some permanent talents earlier than others, so it is a choice. It just feels like a lost opportunity that could have been explored.

As to the the time period and setting, well, in terms of time period, the game is not really affected much at all. There have been many empires, and always a fringe area. The theme (or style) of the game, it is harder to change.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am happy with the game. I understand the choices made. It just feels, as I've stated above, that there is a feeling of a lost opportunity with the rules as written. For me, as of right this moment, the game has gone from feeling 'absolutely phenomenal' to 'really good'. I am already thinking of how to convert other systems to use the dice mechanics, and work on building my own settings and changing the genre.

I don't know what FFG calls this system, but more than anything I've read, this system screams "Make a Superhero RPG". I believe this is going to be one of my personal projects.

That Blasted Samophlange said:

eldath said:

Agreed. I like the idea of not capping the number of specialisations, and removing permanent/non-permanent talents. It's going to be rare that a character has more than three specialisations anyway, as the decreasing benefit and escalating cost will cut down on players taking too many. And removing the optimisation meta-game from choosing permanent talents is also welcome.

However, I don't like the changed XP costs that result in a different optimisation meta-game around the order in which a player takes specialisations. IMO, it should go back to 5 + 5 x new number for both non-career skills and specialisations. Consistent, scaling, order independent and simple.

FFG have stated they're still working on it, so hopefully we'll see that happen.

3WhiteFox3 said:

I certainly could play with those rules. On personal projects, I will probably do that. You hit the nail on the head, so to speak, with it being a great idea in need of some polishing. That is the crux behind how I feel. That this was an idea that should be embraced, and give a unique feel to the game. Instead, I feel, they (the designers) took the easy way out. Now, as they have said, they are still working on things. The game is far from complete. As to the complexity, I did suggest that the number or the way permanent talents be presented be altered. That the permanent talents be available to all (or at least multiple) specializations, and that when you get them, they don't have to be purchased again in another tree.

The easiest way I could describe what I mean is imagine all the talent trees pages layered on top of each other. Each page has a section cut out, so when put on top of another the 'permanent' talent lines up with the cut out. Now depending on the specialty this could be in the 10xp range, but in another it would be in the 20xp. The different specialties grant either earlier or later access to this hypothetical talent, but the talent must only be purchased once in regards to requirements for other specialty trees. So as not to make a must have choice, you make more than one permanent talent available, but different times for each specialty. Specialty 1 Gets Talent 'A' at 10 xp, but Talent 'C' at 20., Specialty 2 gets Talent 'B' at 10, but 'A' at 25xp. etc. So as the system was written, it was cumbersome, but the core idea seemed very poignant and meaningful for character choice and differentiation. Something that I feel is needed for a narrative system.

I feel that making everything available to every character, just at a progressively higher cost is saying that every character can eventually do everything and get every ability. I want a game that makes me choose between going left OR right, and losing the outcome of going one path in favour of another, rather than going down one path and looping around to do the other way. Every choice should have consequences.

As you say, this may be something for another game, but from a character standpoint, and going with Luke as my example, He had to choose at some point to go from being a soldier to a Jedi, and along the way give up something to go forward along his chosen path.

Doc, the Weasel said:

But, who says you're not going to use an old talent? Just because you're getting a new talent tree doesn't mean previously learned talents will never again see the light of day.

Another thought about how the game is changing is the issue of 'Dice Math'. Basically the odds of generating a success. I bring this up as there is a fair number of people that seem to wan the dice to be redesigned, which seems a bit late in the game to do that, or the more likely approach that interpretation of symbols be changed - this is specifically in regards to the 'Triumph' and 'Despair' results.

I don't feel that either of these is really necessary. The game seems to be designed along the philosophy that you only every need ONE success. Sure others are great, but you only need the one. The game is about the dynamic choices that come from interpreting the threat (despair) and advantage (triumph) results on the dice. Generating 7 advantage should be almost as interesting (if not more) than just getting a hit. You can move, again, give allies a great opening, or even do something really creative.

This is something that should be embraced. "You must unlearn what you have learned.." Success isn't everything. Perhaps, sometimes, style is the better way to go for an interesting game.

Back to the idea of losing the benefits of a talent, switching specialties and the like. I like to imagine talents along the lines of a singers (or imagine another type of artist) vocal range. If they stay in constant practice, they can reach notes that others could not - they are benefiting from a talent. If said singer doesn't sing for years, their vocal range effectively atrophies.

Perhaps there should be a way to make certain of the players choice permanent - effectively making character defining talents that will never leave a character, no matter if they change specialties.

These are all things I'm considering for my SuperPowers game using this system.

That Blasted Samophlange said:

An interseting notion, and I'm starting to side a bit more with your original post that FFG had a pretty good means of controlling rampant speciazliation purchasing with the system they had originally (max of 3 specs plus the permanent/non-perm talents). Granted, there was a bit more bookwork involved in tracking which talents were permanent and which ones weren't, but there's bookwork involved already just from tracking which row you purchased certain talents from.

As for making a talent permanent, one simple method would be to add a 5XP kicker to the cost of the talent when it's purchased. This enables the player to say "no matter what else happens, this talent is a key feature of my character."

I am also concerned about power creep, but I am not that concerned about characters eventually becoming masters of everything.

Just as a thought experiment, imagine a group that plays one session every week. Let's assume that each session results in an average of 15 experience points. That might be a little bit conservative, but I think it is a reasonable number to work with.

After one year, a character in this campaign would have earned 780 experience points.

If one player loves specializations and wants to get all the specializations for three careers, then that would cost 440 experience points for nine total specializations (2nd is 20, 3rd is 30, and so on).

That leaves 340 points for talents. The minimum number of experience points needed to get a top tier talent is 75, and that is only following one line straight down a tree. So, at best, a character like this could have four top tier talents in the nine specializations after a year.

The character would also only have a handful of points in skills, so I think this would be a pretty extreme example.

The bottom line is that choosing to have many specializations would completely hamstring talent choices. I think most players would want to have fewer specializations and more top tier talents within those specializations. If someone wanted every talent in one specialization, then that would be a minimum of 300 points! I figure that is at least twenty good gaming sessions.

I am aware that some people have massive multi-year campaigns, and that is completely awesome. However, when it would require two or three years of regular gaming to really start to fill in several talent trees, I just don't see a serious problem with having unlimited specializations.

In almost every case that I can imagine, a player would do much better focusing on two or three specializations, appropriate talents, and skills.

I think that getting rid of the complications involved in tracking permanent talents and dropping specializations is a perfectly reasonable design decision.

My math was a little bit wrong, but I don't think it changes the point.

I should have added 70 more points to the total cost of nine specializations because seven of those specializations will be non-career.

So, the total number of points for nine specializations should be 510 experience points. This means that the player would have even fewer points for talents and skills.

I suppose that someone who played the same character for ten years could start to master many of the specializations, but that would be an extraordinary example.

In most campaigns, moving beyond two or three specializations would severely restrict points for talents and skills. I assume that most people would like to move towards at least some of the top tier talents and have a reasonably balanced set of skills.

In my opinion, this rule change primarily simplified the tedious tracking of dropped specializations and permanent talents.

Simple is not necessarily better, but I think that this change is an improvement.

Actually, a couple weeks ago I and some friends did a few high-level (characters had their starting XP budget plus an extra 250 XP) system stress tests, and the following showed up amongst the four sample PCs:

The Wookiee Death Machine (Hired Gun/Marauder) didn't buy an additional specializations, but rather focused entirely on the Marauder tree, and given he also raised a few of his skills (including some non-career ones), he still hadn't purchased every talent in his starting specialization. Something of a one-trick pony, as he was really good at smashing things, but not much else beyond that.

The Twi'lek femme fatale (Bounty Hunter/Assassin) bought the Gadgeteer specialization, but didn't get much past mid-level in the two of them, trading focus for versatility, being fairly adept at combat, social interaction, and investigation/tracking.

The Human brash rogue (Smuggler/Scoundrel) bought the Pilot specialization mostly to buff up his piloting ability, but didn't go much into the talents (just the Row 1 talents), and somewhat foolishly devoted XP to buying the non-career Lightsaber skill (bought at the pre-Week 7 Update rate of new rank x 10).

The Human Minor Jedi (Smuggler/Scoundrel/Jedi Initiate*) only had a couple of Scoundrel talents, but spent most of his XP on Force Powers (Sense and Move) as well as Jedi talents, and still wasn't able to to buy all the Force Upgrades he'd have liked, and roughly a third of the Jedi Initiate talents (providing a lightsaber, some defensive abilities with said weapon, and the Force Rating talent).

Nobody went past two specializations, even with all that XP, and only one character came close to filling out a specialization tree, and even he didn't manage it. With non-career skills (one of the biggest reasons to buy additional specializations) being reset to their original cost, I think the draw to purchase a bunch of specializations has been reduced quite a bit, and that's before factoring in the increased cost of even buying a career specialization.

So from all this, the need to have "unlimited" specializations doesn't really seem to be necessary, as most PCs will be spending quite some time, even at MetalJedi's proposed "15 XP per week" rate, just purchasing the talents from their initial specializations, so we're probably only looking at certain character types needing to have more than two additional specializations.

*this is a home-brewed Force-Sensitive Specialization I came up with as a means of providing a "Jedi trainee" character but not going full-blown Jedi Knight in the process.

That Blasted Samophlange said:

borithan said:

Well, there's always the seemingly novel idea of retiring that character, as they've probably accomplished everything they'd set out to accomplish during that point in terms of story. Completely filling out just three talent trees is hundreds and hundreds of XP, to say nothing of increasing your skills. And even the rate of 15 XP per week, that's still going to take a long time (probably a couple of years), and longer still if not accumulating XP at that rate.

And truthfully, how many campaigns really last more than three years with the exact same characters?

That Blasted Samophlange said:

This sounds great… from a certain point of view. After having read through the rules and chatted about it on the forums, I would have agreed.

However, when we actually sat down to play, both myself and my players found it pretty cumbersome. Generating and spending 7 advantage on a single successful roll is fun. Generating 3-4 advantage on several rolls across a single combat, especially when most of those rolls are failures (drastically cutting back the options for what you can spend the advantage on) turns into a bit of a chore, and really slows down the flow of the game.

I really like this game, and about 90% of how it works in play… I just want that other 10% to be smoothed out a bit, so it isn't so jarring in play.

I've been tossing around the idea of limiting the use of Threats/Advantages to one per turn, so if you get 4, you can spend up to 4 advantage, while the others go to waste. Might speed things up a bit. Honestly, I found running combat to be very smooth, quick, and cinematic. As far as I could tell, nobody had many questions regarding positioning and my players had very little trouble spending advantage or threats during combat. I was at a loss for how to spend them sometimes out of combat, but in combat things went very smoothly.

beeblebrox said:

That was my experience too - when the PCs hit (succeeded). However, when they fail (miss), they can't activate critical hits or most weapon qualities, which drastically cuts down the options for spending advantage in combat, and (at least in my game) resulted in them trying to figure out how best to spend that 4 advantage, which usually was spent activating 2-3 things which cost 1-2 advantage each… that slowed things down a fair bit in our game.