Just wanted to see what others thought about this topic:

On p.15 of the Core Rulebook, a bit of bolded text states: "Players need to think carefully about their characteristic ratings, and should consider investing a significant portion of their starting experience points in improving their characteristics..."

What sort of take do the rest of you have on this? I've come across people who advocate pouring all their XP into their characteristics, knowing that they can pick up skills and talents after the first session or two. Characteristics are not easily upgraded after play begins--only with the talent deep in every tree, unless I missed something. My first chance to play is right around the corner, so I don't yet have in-game experience to back up one philosophy over the other--but I'm sure plenty of you all do.

By way of example, a human that accepts 10 extra Obligation can start out with 120 XP. This could translate exactly into four characteristic increases (from 2 to 3), but that human wouldn't have any talents to start out with, and only his free skill ranks from career/specialization/being human. Only raising three characteristics leaves said human with 30 XP left, allowing a fair bit of talent/skill selection.

In that scenario, what would you all lean towards? Or what is your general philosophy in this area? I personally saved some XP for talents and an extra skill when creating my character for this upcoming game, since having a few cool talents seemed more fun to me than one more characteristic increase.

In the end, it's not really that important--the game will be fun either way!--and I think it's more fun to think about stories, obligations, and relationships. Nevertheless, thoughts? Opinions?

Every PC I've seen made so far (5 of them) had three Characteristic increases (except for the Droid which had 6). Many characters try to have one 4, but some have opted for a more rounded approach with nothing over 3. This means that most of them start with 20 or less points to put into Skills and Talents, but it seems to be working out just fine.

For most of the Heroes on Demand entries that I've done, I've tended to lean towards three Characteristics at 3, and only rarely have I built a character with a 4 in anything.

Anything left over from buying up those three 3's tends to get split between buffing up skill ranks (usually just 1 rank at 5 XP each) and then a couple of talents from the first row of that character's specialization.

As for "planned advancement," I don't really have a hard-and-fast game plan for how my character will evolve, as I typically prefer to let campaign events inform those decisions, even if it means taking a longer road to get to a particular talent or buy a rank or two in a skill that I'd previously had no intent of taking for that character.

And that's what's nice about EotE using a point-buy system for characters, is that you don't have to be slavishly devoted to a specific progression path the way people often did for the d20 versions.

Sell your grandmother into Kessel spice-mining slavery if it buys you an additional characteristic point.

That's what's great about his system is that you can have a character start out with average characteristics but a lot of skill ranks and talents, or or can put most of your starting XP into characteristics. Either way you can have a decent character.

In the end, it's not really that important--the game will be fun either way!--and I think it's more fun to think about stories, obligations, and relationships. Nevertheless, thoughts? Opinions?

I would go with what the concept dictated over power gaming. My just created princess wouldnt have much more in attributes beyond what I gave her - and certanly not five 3's. However if I was doing James Bond or The Doctor, I'd probably pump as much as I could in.

So non-answer? Whatever character demanded of me.

I suggest focusing more on the background of your character and see where that leads you. I have played a few sessions with different builds of the same character. (we are trying to build a player base and in the process getting to re-write to try different things) In doing that I have found that the play experience for a starting Hired Gun / Mercenary Soldier varies little between having stat arrays of (4,3,2,2,2,2) (3,3,2,2,2,3) and (3,4,2,2,2,2). From there, just follow your vision. It will all work out fine in the end. XP buying seems to work very well and if you are unsure where you want to go right away, just hoard XP till ya have a better feel for the system.

There's been lots of thought on these boards about this subject. All I can say is this: Think hard on what you want your character to be - a young know-it-all with lots of raw talent, then go all attribute. You wan't a grizzled old veteran that has come out of retirement? Focus more on skills and talents.

It all comes down to what you want to play as a character. Sadly as the constant gm for this game, I don't get to make too many characters. But, I generally follow the above rules. Think about the life of the character and go from there, what is the character known for? Is he/she a natural athelete or considered really strong? Were you raised in the spice mines of Kessel with no real education?

Don't focus on what your characters stats should be. Focus on what your characters story should be and go from there.

There's been lots of thought on these boards about this subject. All I can say is this: Think hard on what you want your character to be - a young know-it-all with lots of raw talent, then go all attribute. You wan't a grizzled old veteran that has come out of retirement? Focus more on skills and talents.

I agree. Great note.

Don't focus on what your characters stats should be. Focus on what your characters story should be and go from there.

Haha I've never been too worried about keeping myself focused on character story. I was just interested in everyone's experiences and opinions on the matter. I think I tend to agree with most of what's been posted. I care way more about what seems fun and fitting for a character than about what's crunchiest.

In doing that I have found that the play experience for a starting Hired Gun / Mercenary Soldier varies little between having stat arrays of (4,3,2,2,2,2) (3,3,2,2,2,3) and (3,4,2,2,2,2).

This is an interesting thing to hear. Thanks for sharing.

You have to weigh the cost to benefit ratio:

Raising a characteristic from 2 to 4 at character generation costs 70xp. And that's all you get, an extra two dice.

When buying talents, the shortest path is straight down the talent progression chart, for a cost of 75XP.

So for five more experience points you get four other talents and a characteristic boost.

I definitely went through this myself. I'm a GM but I made a character so I could just go through the process myself. In the end, I let my story dictate my choices and it felt really good. I didn't feel the need to min/max my stats. It was really fun. And a little sad. Since I'm the GM. And my character is awesome.

First thing I did with my players was explain the stat ranges. Basically that 2 was "average", 4 was "well above average"; etc. I did recommend that they would probably want to invest most of their points into the stats that they would be using a lot of.

Pretty much most of them invested xp in their stats to raise them a few points and used the left over for skills and talents. I think most ended up with 1 to 2 talents and 1 to 2 skill increases or a mix of the two.

Characteristics are really powerful in this game; it's easy to underestimate them. In terms of just successes and advantages, 4 green dice is equivalent to 3 yellow dice (though, of course the yellow dice each have a 1/12 chance of a triumph), and each characteristic covers a lot of skills. In short, you get a lot of bang for your buck.

When I make a character, I front-load almost entirely on characteristics: for most non-humans I'll take 10 points of obligation and go for 4 in two characteristics; it's super fun to be quite good at two whole sets of skills, and it allows a nice dual focus on combat and non-combat. For example, I might play a Bothan spy who has an agility of 4 and a cunning of 4, making them a good shot, a good pilot, good at sneaking, good at lying, good at getting information, etc. For a human, I might ultra specialize with one stat at 5 and play, say, a super charismatic disgraced former senator.

The nice thing about this approach is you still start with a good number of skills dues to your career, species, and specialization. Then, with a really solid baseline in place, you can expand your character by picking up talents and increasing skills with XP you earn through play, either further enhancing your strengths or shoring up weaknesses as desired and as it fits your character concept.

I don't think there's any question that if you're looking to long-term maximization of a character, dumping as many points as possible into characteristics is the way to do it. That said, I think there are two things that recommend against that.

First, I think the advantage of Characteristics is a bit overstated. Like most Stat+Skill systems, EotE favors stats, but I don't think it's really that much. Admittedly I haven't actually run the numbers on it yet, but the upgrade doesn't seem that overwhelming, and late development one more point in characteristic will only mean one more upgrade. The relatively small number of skills also limits the advantage of going heavy on characteristics.

More importantly, to my mind, is that I think it's very hard to make interesting characters if all you do is number-crunch and sink points into characteristis. Can a Human upgrade 4 characteristics to 3 at the start? Yes, but that means zero extra skills and zero talents, which are what define the character. A lack of Coercion our Trandoshan Bodyguard changes the feel of the character dramatically? The Wookie Big Game Hunter wouldn't be much of a Big Game Hunter without Expert Tracker, Outdoorsman, and Hunter. And the force sensitive spec for our scout may mean a characteristic doesn't get upgraded, but it's absolutely central to the character concept.

In the end, I think the mechanical advantage is there, but it's less than in many other systems, and it hurts your ability to have a starting character that evokes a concept more than most other systems. Sure, you can get all that later, but I want to start with a concept - not a bland manequin who will eventually grow into the concept I want to play.

In the end, I think the mechanical advantage is there, but it's less than in many other systems, and it hurts your ability to have a starting character that evokes a concept more than most other systems. Sure, you can get all that later, but I want to start with a concept - not a bland manequin who will eventually grow into the concept I want to play.

This echoes my opinion as well. I find talents extremely evocative of concept, moreso than characteristics or even skills.

Characteristics are really powerful in this game; it's easy to underestimate them. In terms of just successes and advantages, 4 green dice is equivalent to 3 yellow dice (though, of course the yellow dice each have a 1/12 chance of a triumph), and each characteristic covers a lot of skills. In short, you get a lot of bang for your buck.

When I make a character, I front-load almost entirely on characteristics: for most non-humans I'll take 10 points of obligation and go for 4 in two characteristics; it's super fun to be quite good at two whole sets of skills, and it allows a nice dual focus on combat and non-combat. For example, I might play a Bothan spy who has an agility of 4 and a cunning of 4, making them a good shot, a good pilot, good at sneaking, good at lying, good at getting information, etc. For a human, I might ultra specialize with one stat at 5 and play, say, a super charismatic disgraced former senator.

The nice thing about this approach is you still start with a good number of skills dues to your career, species, and specialization. Then, with a really solid baseline in place, you can expand your character by picking up talents and increasing skills with XP you earn through play, either further enhancing your strengths or shoring up weaknesses as desired and as it fits your character concept.

Thank you for offering a different perspective. It seems loading up on characteristics can make a character initially a lot more capable with a good range of skills, even without being trained in them. Sounds fun to try out.

I tend to favor bumping up characteristics. Particularly agility. I like having agility at 4 unless my character is going to brawl, for the simple reason that so many useful actions are agility-related.

It seems to me that this system is a lot more lenient when it comes to untrained skill roles. As such, higher stats can make for very competent characters right out of the box. Moreover, character creation allows you to pick up a large number of starting skills for free.

At the same time, I assume my character should develop over time. As characteristics can only be bumped in character creation or late game, and since a lot of the marginal boosts to skills tend to be for individual 5 xp purchases, it seems silly to me to bump up four skills of 5 XP each, when I can transform a Twi'lek's starting brawn from 1 to 2, thereby improving wounds, soak, brawl, melee, athletics, and encumbrance--and still being able to pick up the four skills the minute I receive 20 xp (the typical xp reward suggested by the Core Rules).

In character creation, in my opinion, you should only buy talents or skill points if you don't have enough XP to boost a stat that your character cares about boosting.

From a design perspective, FFG has created a "correct answer". When you tell players that they can only do x in this window, but they can do y at their leisure, the correct response is to do as much x as you can.

Maybe this is because I'm working on my master's thesis, which heavily incorporated Game Theory, but it creates a dominant strategy - doing otherwise is strictly disadvantageous. And believe me - I know all about making disadventageous choices with characters; this is something I do more often than not! But I want that to be a function of choices, not the system favoring one approach over another.

In my games, I remove the restriction. Players can still spend xp to advance characteristics, and dedication remains the only path to 6.

Now, making those choices re: what the character should have is much less stressful for us. The pilot character who starts out full of potential but no training, and the veteran pilot who's been through things, but is only now unlocking his potential, qre both valid approaches to the same mechanical end. I like that.

Your mileage undoubtedly varies, due to probably not being surrounded by statistics all day. :-)

From a design perspective, FFG has created a "correct answer". When you tell players that they can only do x in this window, but they can do y at their leisure, the correct response is to do as much x as you can.

Maybe this is because I'm working on my master's thesis, which heavily incorporated Game Theory, but it creates a dominant strategy - doing otherwise is strictly disadvantageous. And believe me - I know all about making disadventageous choices with characters; this is something I do more often than not! But I want that to be a function of choices, not the system favoring one approach over another.

In my games, I remove the restriction. Players can still spend xp to advance characteristics, and dedication remains the only path to 6.

Now, making those choices re: what the character should have is much less stressful for us. The pilot character who starts out full of potential but no training, and the veteran pilot who's been through things, but is only now unlocking his potential, qre both valid approaches to the same mechanical end. I like that.

Your mileage undoubtedly varies, due to probably not being surrounded by statistics all day. :-)

Not entirely sure I agree, but I do understand what you are saying.

If I have inferred correctly (I still have yet to receive my books) It's cheaper to raise characteristics through Dedication than at creation. While you wouldn't want to sell yourself short, getting a 4 for a Human is quite costly at creation. You could get some fun talents along the way to Dedication and then spend only 25 for the 4 in whatever characteristic fits. I only ran through one talent tree (Mercenary Soldier), and just went the most direct route, but this is what I found...

70 (Agility 4 at creation) + 75 (to get to the bottom of the Mercenary Soldier tree) = 145xp

30 (Agility 3 at creation) + 75 (to get to the bottom of the Mercenary Soldier tree) + 25 (Dedication) = 130xp

Mind you, this was to reach a 4 in Agility, nothing more.

Am I off here?

Maybe this is because I'm working on my master's thesis, which heavily incorporated Game Theory, but it creates a dominant strategy - doing otherwise is strictly disadvantageous. And believe me - I know all about making disadventageous choices with characters; this is something I do more often than not! But I want that to be a function of choices, not the system favoring one approach over another.

The thing I disagree with here is your definition of "advantageous".

If all you look at is the raw numerical potential of long-term character development, then yes - not maximizing your characteristics when you can is strictly disadvantageous. But that's not the only definition for "advantage". Personally, I think starting with a pretty bland character who has nothing to set their personality or background apart from anyone else who picked 4 skills is strictly disadvantageous from a storytelling perspective, both as a player and as a GM.

In short, it's only "strictly disadvantageous" if you exclude anything but the math of the game from your consideration. Deal with the game as a whole, and that label falls off quickly.

In character creation, in my opinion, you should only buy talents or skill points if you don't have enough XP to boost a stat that your character cares about boosting.

Yeah, I can see buying a skill at start under two circumstances: you weren't able to allocate a free skill point to your main weapon ("Triumph!"), or you weren't able to allocate a free skill point to a skill that (for whatever reason) you really wanted/needed. Other than that, 5xp in your first talent, but not much more -- the game-changers are much farther down the trees, and you'll be there after session one or two anyway.

Remember guys, stats does not equal story. Your character doesn't need to be portrayed as an unskilled n00b just because you don't have all the skills you want at creation. PCs are a cut above average, but they weren't necessarily so before they started their adventures. They could also be old and rusty. They could even (hold on to your helmet!) have been skilled before you buy-up their skills, but it just never came up in the fiction before.

I have to admit, running through the talent trees is an interesting theory on character building.

It only works for those characters that have easy access to Dedication out of the box (Assassin, Bounty Hunter, Doctor, Thief, Smuggler, Mechanic), and it still leaves you with lower characteristics (i.e. a human with one 3 and 35 XP left at creation, and no way to raise characteristics in the future without grabbing another class and working through it).

However, for games that aren't intended to get very far (one-offs, slow pbp's, etc.), starting off with a bunch of talents and moderate characteristics isn't a half-bad idea.

I think it works best with the bounty hunters. Some of the other classes only give you mediocre talents attached to Dedication (i.e. smuggler).

I poured as much experience I could into my characteristics. Skills can come later. These cannot.