How do you feel about the rules for Ranked Talents?

[Zalakoth 20]

Just wondering how everybody felt about the rule for ranked talents increasing in tier each time it is purchased. Seems kind of dumb to me for certain talents like toughened, where in the old EotE talent trees each rank just cost 5 xp. 

 

I personally dont like it but it but I would love to hear everyone's thoughts so that I don't just remove a good rule thru house-ruling that I'm overlooking. 

 

The rule is on page 72 if that helps. 

Edited December 4, 2017 by Zalakoth

[Swordbreaker 632]

Seems like a fair balancing element to me. Grit and Toughened are probably the main points of concern, as rapidly raising strain and wounds could cause some problems for game balance.

[2P51 33,416]

So when I buy 5 ranks of Toughened every single session and have 200 Wounds, will you think it's a bad idea?

[Zalakoth 20]

10 minutes ago, Swordbreaker said:

Seems like a fair balancing element to me. Grit and Toughened are probably the main points of concern, as rapidly raising strain and wounds could cause some problems for game balance.

Fair point. I just don't know... I have always been a big believer of the party being slightly overbalanced. It makes a good story and the dice have lots of RNG. 

But thinking about the example I was goin got to give I guess what's you're saying makes sense. Unfortunately that makes my test character wrong meaning I have to remake him. 

My example was this. Imagine a nemesis that does melee combat for a fantasy campaign. He has adversary 3 since he's facing a full party alone. My thought process was the fact that when he attacks a player with his full fledged combat check against two Purple it seems pretty devastating. 

The more I think about the scenario using defensive stance I guess the more it makes sense.

My only issue now is that there is a significantly smaller amount of tier 2 talents than any others that would seem useless to any number of certain types of characters, making the pyramid hard to build without buying talents you don't want. So unless the GM adds tier 2 talents it seems like it would become an issue. 

[Zalakoth 20]

1 minute ago, 2P51 said:

So when I buy 5 ranks of Toughened every single session and have 200 Wounds, will you think it's a bad idea?

Good point. Read the above. 

[Zalakoth 20]

Someone can close the thread. I've noticed the err in my thoughts

[SavageBob 1,389]

There are a couple of things to consider here. First, most specializations in Star Wars favor only one of Grit or Toughened, meaning that in a single spec, you may be able to get up to three ranks in one, but rarely both. Second, most trees sprinkle in ranks of Grit and Toughened at lower tiers, up to and including the bottom (25 XP). And third, few trees offer four ranks of either Grit or Toughened (I don't know if any do, actually). That means that if you want that fourth and fifth rank, you'll have to buy a second specialization and pay an XP tax to do so. With all of that math in mind, I'd guess that the Genesys costs are actually on par with what it would cost in Star Wars to have four ranks or so of Toughened or Grit.

[Grimmerling 735]

10 hours ago, Zalakoth said:

Someone can close the thread. I've noticed the err in my thoughts

 

9 hours ago, SavageBob said:

There are a couple of things to consider here. First, most specializations in Star Wars favor only one of Grit or Toughened, meaning that in a single spec, you may be able to get up to three ranks in one, but rarely both. Second, most trees sprinkle in ranks of Grit and Toughened at lower tiers, up to and including the bottom (25 XP). And third, few trees offer four ranks of either Grit or Toughened (I don't know if any do, actually). That means that if you want that fourth and fifth rank, you'll have to buy a second specialization and pay an XP tax to do so. With all of that math in mind, I'd guess that the Genesys costs are actually on par with what it would cost in Star Wars to have four ranks or so of Toughened or Grit.

There's always someone who cannot help but rub it in, isn't there?

[SavageBob 1,389]

1 hour ago, Grimmerling said:

 

There's always someone who cannot help but rub it in, isn't there?

What? The OP doesn't have to respond, and it wasn't intended as a slam against him at all.  But it was a good question about game design that I think deserves to be considered. I wasn't rubbing anything in at all, just giving some thought to the relative merits of the Star Wars way of doing things versus the Genesys way.

Edited December 4, 2017 by SavageBob