Does anyone else feel that we should be able to increase our attributes using in game XP, besides the Dedication talent?

Hear me out. During character creation, I recall it costs 10 x the next desired attribute score to raise an attribute up. I agree with this.

I'm not sure, but can we do the same thing after character creation? I would even be okay with a 10x plus 10. I don't want it to be too easy, but I do think it should be possible.

I'm all for keeping the Dedication talent at 25xp, where I believe it is a reward for working your way up the talent tree.

Thoughts?

E

ejacobs said:

I like it the way it is. The current state of the mechanic does an excellent job of curbing stat bloat, while allowing flexibility at creation.

I personally think that allowing improvment of attributes via XP expenditure after creation will actually lead to worse optimization issues, instead of solving… anything.

In it's current state, it's not mechanically a problem, so the only reason to change it is "I don't like it".

-WJL

Thanks for your reply. I admit I have much more to go with playing the system out and seeing how it goes. I am curious how they will depict some of the more iconic characters' stats. Hopefully they keep to the rules and don't fudge numbers so we as players can have something to strive for. I don't think that level of aptitude and ability should be out of the realm of possibility for players, we're PC's darnit!

E

ejacobs said:

Honestly, if you do the math, after your skill ranks exceed your attribute, the value increasing the attribute rating isn't all that impressive. It's value comes as a small bump to all the skills associated with that attribute. If you want to reach a given level of "aptitude and ability", your main path to that is through skill training, not attribute improvement.

-WJL

I like restricting the attributes after character creation. Otherwise, everyone would just focus on saving their XP to raise their most important attributes to 5 before doing anything else, like buying the talents or skills that make characters unique. It would really take away from the experience I think.

Plus, I really like the idea that it is really hard to change the base building blocks of who you are. For example, I'm scrawny as **** in real life. I would have a brawn of 1. It would make no sense for me to be able to save up XP and just go up to 5 out of nowhere. However, through hard work and dedication, I could increase my brawn by going through a few specialization trees if I really wanted to. It is more thematic and it is a really cool thing that I haven't seen in any other role playing system, so I'd suggest that it stays restricted after creation.

So the Dedication talent isn't a unique talent? I can get it more than once if I work my way through multiple trees? I'm okay with that solution. I'm not married to the idea of being able to raise attributes with xp, and I like the multiple tree method. It makes sense and puts a built in cost to it.

E

As I understand it, it's both Permanent and Ranked, meaning it can be bought from multiple trees. Correct me if I'm wrong?

Shakespearian_Soldier said:

Well, the Permanent no longer applies, but you are correct in that since Dedication is a Ranked talent, you can purchase it multiple times from multiple different trees. You just can't purchase it multiple times from the same tree unless Dedication shows up more than once (which so far, it doesn't).

Correct! To my knowledge, you could get it once per specialization tree!

That means that, with an infinite amount of experience post character creation, you could raise your attributes by a combination of 19 points!

(6 careers with 3 specializations, each with one Dedication, PLUS the Force Sensitive tree, which also has Dedication.)

This also lets you get your score to 6 instead of 5, which is the character creation max. I really like that addition as well. It is harder to raise stats after character creation, but it can be more rewarding.

Endrik Tenebris said:

Don't forget that skills are a lot cheaper to buy with experience. If you're simply looking to become better at skills, just buy up the skill ranks. Due to the way the dice pool mechanic works, you're not adding characteristic and skill, but upgrading green dice to yellow.

However, the fact that characteristics work on all their linked skills does make them fairly attractive to raise. And you should, whenever you get the chance. A proficiency die is better than an ability die, after all. It's just not that necessary in the system to add yet another way to increase characteristics. You can always take more obligation at creation to better yourself

Hello Community,

since last weekend i am also "infected" with the SW:EotE virus. But i have one question.

If i have a starting level of 1 at one of my attributes, i will be limited to one yellow dice on a skill wich is related to the attribute, right?

Greeting's from Germany

Hello Community,

since last weekend i am also "infected" with the SW:EotE virus. But i have one question.

If i have a starting level of 1 at one of my attributes, i will be limited to one yellow dice on a skill wich is related to the attribute, right?

Greeting's from Germany

Your are kind of right. When you build your dice pool you consider the skill rank and its associated characteristic. The highest of those two numbers determine the number of green dice, and the lower of the two numbers determine how many of those green dice are converted to yellow dice. So if your characteristic is 1, that determines the maximum number of yellow dice you could potentially have as your positive dice without talents or flipping a destiny point. But you could still have a large number of green dice if your skill ranks are high enough.

So a smuggler could have a brawn of 1, but a melee skill of 3. His dice pool would be GGY.

I agree with the OP, in a way. I like the way the game has it set up that you have to get Dedication in order to raise an attribute, but not all talent trees are created equally. Now, a lot of players are going to gun it towards Dedication, but the talent trees are wildly different in terms of talent value. So we implemented this house rule:

"You may swap any talent with any other talent of the same cost, within one talent tree. You may also choose swap the talent with one of a lower cost, but you'll still have to pay the same higher price of the two. You may only use this swap method once per talent tree, and no, you can't skip to an improved version of a talent."

It makes it slightly better to get dedication, while balancing it so that some players aren't getting the short end of the stick due to the way the GM plays, or if the talent tree just flat out sucks.

I agree with the OP, in a way. I like the way the game has it set up that you have to get Dedication in order to raise an attribute, but not all talent trees are created equally. Now, a lot of players are going to gun it towards Dedication, but the talent trees are wildly different in terms of talent value. So we implemented this house rule:

"You may swap any talent with any other talent of the same cost, within one talent tree. You may also choose swap the talent with one of a lower cost, but you'll still have to pay the same higher price of the two. You may only use this swap method once per talent tree, and no, you can't skip to an improved version of a talent."

It makes it slightly better to get dedication, while balancing it so that some players aren't getting the short end of the stick due to the way the GM plays, or if the talent tree just flat out sucks.

You just kind of broke the system. The trees are laid out in the manner they are on purpose with careful consideration as to the cost of the abilities.

I agree with the OP, in a way. I like the way the game has it set up that you have to get Dedication in order to raise an attribute, but not all talent trees are created equally. Now, a lot of players are going to gun it towards Dedication, but the talent trees are wildly different in terms of talent value. So we implemented this house rule:

"You may swap any talent with any other talent of the same cost, within one talent tree. You may also choose swap the talent with one of a lower cost, but you'll still have to pay the same higher price of the two. You may only use this swap method once per talent tree, and no, you can't skip to an improved version of a talent."

It makes it slightly better to get dedication, while balancing it so that some players aren't getting the short end of the stick due to the way the GM plays, or if the talent tree just flat out sucks.

You just kind of broke the system. The trees are laid out in the manner they are on purpose with careful consideration as to the cost of the abilities.

I don't see how it's that broken. You're not really coming out on top XP-wise in most cases unless you pick something from very far away that is at the bottom of a ladder of mostly-suck and even then it's just the one thing.

You get to exchange, say, a 20-XP talent you have no interest in for a 20-XP talent you want. Once. Or a usually-cheaper talent that still costs 20 XP.

And for all that the trees are "purposeful," some of them are real linear suck-fests.

Definitely broken. Force user for instance, grabs Exile for 20 experience, swaps Forager (5xp) for Force Rating, grabs it for 25 experience. Then grabs Emergent for 30 experience, swaps Indistinguishable (5xp) for Force Rating, grabs it for 25 experience. 100 experience for a Force Rating of 3, as opposed to a minimum of 220 if you were to work your way through each of the trees.

Slicer? Swap Master Slicer out for Codebreaker (5xp) and spend 25 experience, as opposed to 95. Now a relatively new/inexperienced slicer can turn anything into easy skill checks as long as they've got the strain to burn.

Heavy? Swap Rain of Death with Barrage (5xp). 20 experience instead of 165. Now the player is free to auto-fire without the increased difficulty.

Or let's say you just kept it at being able to swap equal experience value talents. Well, that Pressure Point talent is going to look a heck of a lot more tempting to a Brawler, since now he can swap out Dodge with Dedication, he just needs to cough up 20 experience for Anatomy Lessons, and then he's right on his way to upping a characteristic.

Putting aside the fact that this makes min-maxing impossibly easy for players, but the point of how the trees are structured, and why a number of them are set up in their very linear way, is because it's meant to show character growth. These are tricks and things the player is supposed to have picked up by dedicating themselves to something. And while they may not be perfect in a skill, the talents represent things the character has learned through their experiences as ways to help overcome the various tasks. So it doesn't make any sense for somebody who's an inexperienced trader to either just start off with the Master Merchant talent, or to have easier access to it, when they character has little understanding and experience in trading (represented by Wheel and Deal, Black Market Contacts, and Natural Negotiator talents).

I agree with the OP, in a way. I like the way the game has it set up that you have to get Dedication in order to raise an attribute, but not all talent trees are created equally. Now, a lot of players are going to gun it towards Dedication, but the talent trees are wildly different in terms of talent value. So we implemented this house rule:

"You may swap any talent with any other talent of the same cost, within one talent tree. You may also choose swap the talent with one of a lower cost, but you'll still have to pay the same higher price of the two. You may only use this swap method once per talent tree, and no, you can't skip to an improved version of a talent."

It makes it slightly better to get dedication, while balancing it so that some players aren't getting the short end of the stick due to the way the GM plays, or if the talent tree just flat out sucks.

You just kind of broke the system. The trees are laid out in the manner they are on purpose with careful consideration as to the cost of the abilities.

I don't see how it's that broken. You're not really coming out on top XP-wise in most cases unless you pick something from very far away that is at the bottom of a ladder of mostly-suck and even then it's just the one thing.

You get to exchange, say, a 20-XP talent you have no interest in for a 20-XP talent you want. Once. Or a usually-cheaper talent that still costs 20 XP.

And for all that the trees are "purposeful," some of them are real linear suck-fests.

Yes on purpose per the devs. For balance reasons.

Hm, I'll admit I read that quite differently the first time. My first reading certainly did not allow, for example, swapping Forager for FR 2 and paying 25 out the gate for it. But upon re-reading it seems like that could be the case and yes, that would be quite broken.

Yes on purpose per the devs. For balance reasons.

Yeah ok, if they wanna make linear suck-fest trees on purpose I will hardly regard them as somehow infallible or practicing great game design in those cases.

This entire thread reads to me like, "Why can't I just break apart the entire game system at a fundamental level and min-max my character even more easily for one-third the XP cost?"

The game wasn't set up the way it is arbitrarily. And I get that not everyone who's playing this system has played a lot (or even any) other RPG systems before, but seriously, if you're a novice to the hobby, don't presume that outright breaking the game is going to 'fix' it for you.

I don't agree with talent swapping or with using xp to buy characteristics. At the point people are dispensing with how the trees are laid out they might as well dispense with the trees completely because it's just a 'do whatever you want fest' at that point. I never tell people how to play their characters or run their games at their own table but at the point you are gutting the rules so completely I have to ask why they even bought the rule book.

This entire thread reads to me like, "Why can't I just break apart the entire game system at a fundamental level and min-max my character even more easily for one-third the XP cost?"

The game wasn't set up the way it is arbitrarily. And I get that not everyone who's playing this system has played a lot (or even any) other RPG systems before, but seriously, if you're a novice to the hobby, don't presume that outright breaking the game is going to 'fix' it for you.

I can only talk for myself, and i am not trying to find a way to broke the system. I have played a lot of differrend RPG systems before (d&d, shadowrun, AD&D aso). The main clarification i need is, if i have astrogation at rank 1 and the related characteristic at 1 too, does it make sense too spend xp in order too increase the rank to 2 or will this be a waste of XP? As i mentioned before, i am from Germany and unfortunately not all of the rule books are available in German language as of now. Wie have the starter pack but the core rulebook is only available in english.

Thank you in advance for some clarification

Greeting's Ben

Lathrop did not read as it was intended, but that's my fault. My rule was poorly worded. Allow me to try again.

You might say that it breaks the game by unbalancing it, but I'd say it makes the game more fun for people with bad talent trees. That's more important than balance.

Which talent tree do you, or your group, consider bad?

Hm at the same time my EotE game experience is receiving 10-15 XP every session, so having to wait a sesh or two to pick up something good or just gown down a couple "meh" Talents in one fell swoop to get on to good stuff is not near as crippling/boring as, say, dead levels in D&D are.

I can only talk for myself, and i am not trying to find a way to broke the system.

I don't think Rikoshi was referring to your post, which was a legitimate question.

The main clarification i need is, if i have astrogation at rank 1 and the related characteristic at 1 too, does it make sense too spend xp in order too increase the rank to 2 or will this be a waste of XP?

It's not a waste of XP necessarily, but I do wonder why you'd start a character with a 1 in a characteristic related to a skill you'd like to advance. If the character is going to be a navigator, then they should have a higher Intellect to start with. If the character is not going to be a navigator, then there is no point in spending any XP on the Astrogation skill, even 1 rank.*

Since you don't have the core rules: at character creation, each character gets about 100XP (depending on species) to spend on whatever they want. This is the only time you can directly boost characteristics, and it's highly recommended that you spend most of your initial allotment of XP on characteristics. If you look at the characters in the Beginner box, they all seem to have been set up this way.

So if you want your character to be trained in something, then it's wise to buy up the characteristic in the character creation phase.

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* Note: having a rank in a skill does mean that character can use the Assist action/manuever, so it's not entirely useless to have a single rank in a skill no matter how low the characteristic.