I realized late that you can only raise characteristics with initial XP and talents later... But I cannot find talents that raise them... Is there a list of which ones that do?

Look at the bottom row of each talent tree, under the Dedication talent.

Heya Paladin,

Dedication is the talent that raises one stat by one point. It appears in every spec tree in the bottom row.

Wow that is a long time to wait... Hrm... Interesting.

You are suggested in the rules to spend the vast majority of your starting XP on characteristics.

Like 80% or more seems to be very common. I've made PCs who spend all but 5 or 10 of their starting XP on characteristics, including bonus XP from Obligation.

Characteristics are pretty hard to raise because they're very powerful and can only go up to 6 max. So if it was too easy that's what everyone would buy all the time.

In practice its not as daunting as it might seem.

I can see that... Just interesting... I like playing games that go for a long time and allow the player to use the character once they get up to a professional level but before they are ridiculous. Interesting to see how things work with this system.

I think it seems designed to be right up your alley then.

So far I am liking what I am seeing... Not crazy about the dice but that is probably something that will change as I use it.

You don't have to worry about attributes quite as much, outside combat you really are just aiming for that single success on a roll to accomplish a task. I think picking a given form of combat and throwing some love at agility or brawn depending on your combat form, and then looking at what else you want a character to do is a decent way to go. Some get good mileage out of just setting their character up with as many 3s in attributes as they can to be pretty decent at lots of stuff. Just kind of depends on how focused in you want a character.

So far I am liking what I am seeing... Not crazy about the dice but that is probably something that will change as I use it.

The app makes things a lot easier.

Re getting to Dedication - suggested XP per session is pretty high. It shouldn't take THAT long to get to your first Dedication if you shoot straight for it.

So far I am liking what I am seeing... Not crazy about the dice but that is probably something that will change as I use it.

Whether or not they're a fun and worthwhile gimmick is in the eye of the beholder.

I'm 50\50 right now.

The dice serve basically two functions:

1. Aid in narrative play by giving multifaceted results on three different axis (success/fail, adv/threat, triumph/despair)
2. Confound metagamers by making the probabilities too difficult to calculate in their heads

The downside is having to buy special dice when we already have plenty of normal dice. They could have figured out a way to use normal dice to give the same three-way results, but it wouldn't have been as elegant, I don't think. When I first got the game and read up on the dice and the funny symbols and all that, I remember being immediately impressed that they had invented a truly innovative mechanic I'd never seen before. It makes rolling d20's seem rather dull and boring now

As for #2, metagaming is the bane of narrative story telling, so it's natural that the designers would try to keep metagaming and min/max opportunities to a minimum. And the dice mechanic is one way they do that. If you know that when you add up all the pluses and minuses to your d20 roll that a Stormtrooper only has a 5% chance hit your AC, you (the player) might have your character just ignore him and do something else. It would make no sense for your character to do that, since the character has no knowledge of game mechanics So the story suffers. However, if you create a pool with 2 yellow and 2 green dice, add 3 difficulty dice, plus a boost and two setbacks... unless you're a mathematics savant, you're only going to have a vague notion of how successful you're going to be, so you're not going to be so dismissive of that Stormtrooper.

At any rate, I like the dice system. I think it's innovative, promotes creativity from both the players and the GM, and can help generate some unexpected twists and turns in the plot, resulting in memorable and exciting game play.

Plus, there's something viscerally satisfying about rolling a big fistful of dice

all you need to know is

1. the best dice to add when taking an out of combat skill check are the blue 6 sided dice. So if a talent offers to add blue dice it is better then a skill point.
2. yellow dice have the special crit symbol which adds a lot to the narative and having lots of them are also good.
3. more dice is better then less dice.

Can you get Dedication more than once by going to other talent trees?

Can you get Dedication more than once by going to other talent trees?

Yes. Yes you can. To a maximum of 6 per characteristic. 7 if you have cybernetics that also increase that characteristic.

I've started to notice that 4 in a characteristic plus 3 in a relevant skill will be more than sufficient for you while you worry about other aspects of your character. My wife is playing a scoundrel with a 3 in charm and 5 in presence. Her character never fails a charm check.

Can you get Dedication more than once by going to other talent trees?

Yes. Yes you can. To a maximum of 6 per characteristic. 7 if you have cybernetics that also increase that characteristic.

I've started to notice that 4 in a characteristic plus 3 in a relevant skill will be more than sufficient for you while you worry about other aspects of your character. My wife is playing a scoundrel with a 3 in charm and 5 in presence. Her character never fails a charm check.

We had a character that pushed Agility to 5 and had Gunnery, Piloting (Planetary), and Piloting (Space) all at 3. Along with most of the talents from the Pilot tree, the character was almost 'too good' at her job compared to everyone else in their areas by 400 XP.

Our Mechanic is in the same boat. Intellect at 4 with 5 Ranks. What our GM has done to "slow" him down is to give him bigger things to fix and have it take time. I have not seen him fail a Mechanics check in forever.

Can you get Dedication more than once by going to other talent trees?

Yes. Yes you can. To a maximum of 6 per characteristic. 7 if you have cybernetics that also increase that characteristic.

I've started to notice that 4 in a characteristic plus 3 in a relevant skill will be more than sufficient for you while you worry about other aspects of your character. My wife is playing a scoundrel with a 3 in charm and 5 in presence. Her character never fails a charm check.

This. The characteristics in the game are all quite "low", where a single point makes a big difference - however, at a certain point, you just don't need more. Raising a characteristics for 1 to 2 makes a big difference, and raising it from 4 to 5 is the difference between someone's that good at their job and someone that's an expert.

But once you go above 5, we're approaching genius-levels of aptitude, at which point it's not really a question of being good at your job anymore, but how much you'll succeed. I'd only ever raise a characteristics above 5 if I really, really need to be stellar at something, and only push it to 7 to realize a ridiculous concept.

Look at Characteristics as the broad strokes. Sure, if you pump all your starting XP into them, you will have a better chance of success at say, all of your Intellect related skill checks. Nothing wrong with that.

However, the cool thing I've been noticing among my players is that they are investing (therefore further specializing in) their most used/favourite skills, and getting over the idea that they are lacking in a given characteristic. So if you have only a one (below general average) or a 2 (average humanoid) in a given characteristic, you can decide which of the related skills you like/want to specialize in, and bump from there. After a few sessions, your single green in Xenology has become YGG, or something similar. Add to that any boost die from conditions/talents, and your pool doesn't look nearly so meager anymore.

The system allows for investing either way, but I have found that once you get over the daunting idea that it is oh, so difficult to raise characteristics after creation, the freedom of skill/talent investment really opens up, and you stop worrying so much about the "big six" numbers.

The other thing my players had to get over was the idea that any non-career skill was somehow "black-listed." It only costs 5XP more per rank. I had to say it a few times to really get it through their heads, but once they bought in, they suddenly had a big list of possibilities. They kept seeing their skill list as only their 12 (+/-) career/spec(s) skills, and got freaked out when I asked them to perform any non career skill checks. Now that they know it's not so bad to pay 5XP more for those skills, they are sinking their teeth in.

I hate to throw a label on it, or to disparage a system I have loved and played in its various editions for twenty years(ish), but you really have to try (I know I do), to think outside of the d20 system. Every time we play, we creep a little further out from under that influence, and squint into the light of this innovative new world.

Can you get Dedication more than once by going to other talent trees?

Yes. Yes you can. To a maximum of 6 per characteristic. 7 if you have cybernetics that also increase that characteristic.

I've started to notice that 4 in a characteristic plus 3 in a relevant skill will be more than sufficient for you while you worry about other aspects of your character. My wife is playing a scoundrel with a 3 in charm and 5 in presence. Her character never fails a charm check.

We had a character that pushed Agility to 5 and had Gunnery, Piloting (Planetary), and Piloting (Space) all at 3. Along with most of the talents from the Pilot tree, the character was almost 'too good' at her job compared to everyone else in their areas by 400 XP.

In some ways it's a narrow field (and I see a lot of the Pilot tree as simply underwhelming or very niche with a few bright spots). But with the Agi you don't even need to be trained in personal-scale Ranged attack skills to be a huge threat.

So far I am liking what I am seeing... Not crazy about the dice but that is probably something that will change as I use it.

Yeah, the dice are a gimmick.

Whether or not they're a fun and worthwhile gimmick is in the eye of the beholder.

The dice are what make the game...or rather, the mechanic behind the dice are what makes the game. I'm not sure how the dice are a gimmick, how else would you get an easy-to-calculate 2D result?

They are only a gimmick if you believe that having more than a pass/fail resolution mechanic is a gimmick. Others would call it better than that. A fun and imaginative mechanic, maybe.

To me a gimmick is a cheap trick used to con people into buying something they wouldn't otherwise, after which they realize it was pointless and didn't live up to hype.

Given that it was a hurdle for me to get some players to accept the dice in the first place, it's actually, from a marketing point of view, a liability. Now that the players have used it, the reaction is unabashedly enthusiastic.

Ergo, the dice are the opposite of a gimmick.

You can do more than pass /fail with a d20.

Or a handful of d6s.

Or d100s.

Gimmicks aren't bad by default.

But having totally separate dice for a single game that you have to buy?

That's a gimmick to me, even though they do work.

Very few games have any form of resolution beyond a pass/fail mechanic. You'll have to let me know what d20 game has anything beyond that. I would be interested to know.