I don't see any good reason for the rule as written, and I prefer that there not be a 'trap' where it's mechanically better to start with Brawn/Willpower high and raise other characteristics than to start with others high and later raise Brawn/Willpower.

If order-of-development effects like this are your primary concern, why not allow players to rebuild their characters as long as they end up with the same characteristics, talents and skills? So if a character who starts with a 3 in Brawn but a 4 in Agility uses Dedication to raise his Brawn to 4, he can pretend he started with Brawn 4 and Agility 3, then used Dedication to raise his Agility to 4. This has less chance of affecting the game's balance than a house rule (though I doubt your house rule will have much effect). It also allows optimizers to develop their characters organically instead of planning characters in advance so they can take advantage of talents that are cheaper in one specialization than another.

Wouldn't that be an unnecessarily convoluted way of accomplishing what this fairly simple house rule already achieves?

It's more complicated, but I don't think rebuilds will come up enough for that complication to cause problems. After all, Willpower and Brawn are the only stats that have a special effect at character creation, and unless the game goes on for a long time, most players will only reach Dedication a few times.

Having said that, I don't have any objection to your house rule. I merely wanted to offer an alternative that didn't have any chance of affecting the game balance, as that seemed to be your primary concern about the house rule.

The only way this wouldn't have been an issue is if wounds and strain weren't based on Brawn and Willpower respectively, which A) doesn't make much sense and B) doesn't sound like much fun. So no matter which way the RAW went with this, we'd probably still be having this conversation.

Page 31 states that increases to Brawn and Willpower do not increase WT/ST, whereas increases to Brawn do increase soak. I recall reading these rules when the book came out this past July and immediately deciding to ignore them, opting instead to allow all characteristic increases to affect their respective derived attributes. I've even allowed a Doctor's Stim Application talent to temporarily boost WT and ST, and even with THAT the game hasn't broken so far, so ultimately I say go for it.

That said, I can appreciate the argument that this house rule devalues Toughened and Grit. I would also add that it makes future increases to Brawn and Willpower more valuable than other characteristics; why increase my Presence for better Charm checks when I can increase my Willpower to improve Coercion and get some more strain, for instance? I can see things both ways.

...but, as an experienced GM, I'm also well-versed in seeing things "both ways". What this comes down to is the following question; is there at least one clear, numerically justified reason why this house rule would unbalance the game? If such a reason exists, so far no one has presented it.

If you have to ask yourself why you would increase Presence and Charm when you could instead increase Willpower and Coercion along with +1 ST, then there's an obvious difference in how social interactions are played out between your game and mine. In my game Coercion checks are usually a hostile act while Charm checks typically are not.

If you have to ask yourself why you would increase Presence and Charm when you could instead increase Willpower and Coercion along with +1 ST, then there's an obvious difference in how social interactions are played out between your game and mine. In my game Coercion checks are usually a hostile act while Charm checks typically are not.

Of course. Same goes in my game and hopefully most others... although on a side note I'd still allow Coercion to be used in non-threatening way if the player justified it. (For instance, a Bounty Hunter could use it to convince a potential client that he was tough enough for a particular job.)

But that's not really the point. In the mindset of someone who wants to min/max, building your Willpower/Coercion has more payout because it also affects your Strain Threshold. Thus, they'd rather play a bully than a diplomat, at least in theory.

I was just throwing that out there to demonstrate that I understand why the RAW is the way it is. I've been ignoring these rules from the get-go.

I actually have never really house ruled anything in any game. I have handwaved certain things at times and have improvised others at times, but actually changing the rules for the benefit of our game never happened. Not because I liked RAW 100% for these games but because I wouldn't know how to keep track of the things I changed and because I am having a hard enough time getting my party to learn the RAW already without adding to or changing the official rules. I have always found that you need to have a hell of an understanding of why the official rules are the way they are and need to have a thorough knowledge of time in order to keep track of such changes and why changing them would not mess with the intended mechanics and I have never felt comfortable enough to do so...

I actually find this house rule easier to follow than the RAW. I completely forgot this was in the rules until it was brought up, because it's a bit counter-intuitive.

I actually find this house rule easier to follow than the RAW. I completely forgot this was in the rules until it was brought up, because it's a bit counter-intuitive.

Well, that might be the case but it probably is written as a rule BECAUSE it is counter-intuitive. As others have stated there are specific talents that up your treshhold and these would lose value quite a bit when you house rule this in such a way and I am convinced this is why the RAW are what they are.

I can see how Toughness/Grit loose PERCEIVED value, but not ACTUAL value. Again, if one respent one's experience points, one could gain the same stats with better results. Granted, respending experience points isn't something that's supported by the RAW, but two points;

1. It could happen in ANY tabletop game wherein new books come out frequently. For instance, I let a player exchange his Survivalist talent tree for Big Game Hunter once it became available because it was a better representation of the character he was trying to pull off.

2. Someone who wants to raise his character's Brawn and/or Willpower later on through Dedication shouldn't be penalized for that, which is precisely what the RAW is doing.

If someone could show me how this house rule would allow for better characters than the RAW already supports, I'd be more apt to discard it. As it is, I see the RAW are merely penalizing certain players without a very good reason for it. A higher WT/ST is always a good idea even if there's more than one way of doing it.

Penalized seems a bit strong.

There shouldn't be any difference between the guy that started Brawn 2, Agility 3 and increases Brawn to 3 vs the guy that started Brawn 3, Agility 2 and increases Agility to 3.

Lots of people are making very good points. I'm surprised this one didn't end the conversation, though.

There shouldn't be any difference between the guy that started Brawn 2, Agility 3 and increases Brawn to 3 vs the guy that started Brawn 3, Agility 2 and increases Agility to 3.

Lots of people are making very good points. I'm surprised this one didn't end the conversation, though.

Well, because in increasing agility to 3 you get no added value in the form of a higher wound threshold. While when increasing Brawn you would get that added value and that is where the comparison goes off track as far as I'm concerned.

Not out of an "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" point of view, but Morningfire has a point: for those Grit and Toughened talents to have the maximum reward mentality among the players, they have to provide something the players can't get anywhere else. Besides, I think it's easier to work your way to a Grit or Toughened talent than one that raises your Brawn or Willpower.

I am very confident that many players would still grab Grit/Toughened over using a rare Dedication to up a secondary or tertiary stat in their build. They might stop doing so at a high XP level, but at that point a lot of basic assumption about the game (and most games) start to break down.

For builds that revolve around Brawn/Willpower, increasing them in Dedication is already a no-brainer; they would have done so even without the +1. And I'm just not seeing +4 Wounds/Strain for most characters to be breaking the game. The Wookiee Marauder or Gand Force-user is already going to be tough to truly affect with wounds or strain, respectively.

The best argument against this house rule I could see would be with raising your Brawn or Willpower to 6 and getting extra WT/ST from that. By the RAW, that should be impossible. (Same thing goes with cybernetic implants raising Brawn [or Willpower???] to 7.)

How is that a real strong argument against?

I really don't think it cheapens those talents, considering how much cheaper they usually are than Dedication, and how much of a waste Dedication: Brawn is for a lot of characters, especially for just a wound. Maybe at 1000+ XP you start increasing tertiary stats for the hell of it, but that's an extremely remote concern.

Well, not drastically, but remember the sole purpose of Toughness and Grit is to increase Wound and Strain Threshold after character creation. By allowing Brawn and Willpower increases via Dedication to have the same effect, one is undercutting the value of Toughness and Grit. It may not be a huge deal, but the fact remains that Dedication would now incorporate aspects of those talents, in addition to all the other perks that come with an increased Brawn or Willpower characteristic.

For Force-users, being able to increase Strain Threshold and Willpower, two things that are very handy when trying to use Force Powers (particularly those requiring a Discipline check) with a single talent is a double-win. Similar case with melee-centric characters, as allowing the increase to Brawn (used for both their attack rolls and damage values) to also increase their ability to withstand damage is also a double-win.

As for the question that some asked about why the difference between increasing Brawn at character creation and increasing it after character creation and having it affect Wound Threshold, part of the character creation process is that you're covering everything up to that first adventure when your PC takes their first steps into a much larger world, which for a lot of PCs is going to be 20-plus years of "growing up" before they become intergalactic transient thrillseekers (sounds much classier than "murder hobos in space"). The Dedication talent does reflect a degree of growth in one's raw capabilities, but it's over a much shorter period of time than the multiple years that the character creation step is meant to cover.

But as a I said earlier, it's not a game-breaking house rule if the GM wants to implement it.

How is that a real strong argument against?

Since you can't have a characteristic of 6 at character creation, if you houseruled increases to Brawn/Willower increasing WT/ST it'd be a good idea to cap it at 5. A small nitpick, but noteworthy neverthelss I think.