OOC Character Creation Thread

My only complaint about this is that it leaves some characters with fewer career skills. It doesn't quite seem balanced, even with a few extra ranks.

You still get all listed as career skills. The selection just means you don’t have to pay xp for the ranks in those skills you take.

I'm not sure you understand. A free rank isn't given in every listed career/specialization skill. You get a choice of three career skills to put a rank in, and two specialization skills. So if there are no duplicates, a character should have ten career skills. But if there are duplicates, like with my character, then I'm left with eight career skills instead of ten. That's two skills now non-career, and thus more expensive for every rank, that would be career skills for characters with no duplicates.

This is correct.

But having duplicate Skills in the two lists is the only way, short of getting a free rank from you Species, or from a Talent, to begin with a Skill at rank two.

Would it not be possible to spend XP to get a skill to rank 2?

And even if I did this, that still means my character has two fewer career skills than another character might. For me to raise ten skills (eight career, two non-career), to rank five would require 50 more XP than from someone who had ten career skills. Therefore, to have the potential to raise two skills to rank two for free at character creation is, in the long term, costing me 50 XP, whether or not I even take up the offer during creation.

And now I've confirmed, with certainty, that some characters get at least nine career skills by the end of character creation. So for the sake of balance it seems more reasonable to me to replace duplicates with other skills. I wonder why the developers would've designed it this way.

Oh now I understand what you mean. Huh I never thought of it that way.

Yes you can spend starting experience to increase a skill to rank 2 but since character creation is the only time you can use XP to increase your characteristics directly it is generally speaking a wiser choice to pump most of your XP into that since opportunities to increase characteristics later are few and far between.

Also in the long scheme of things if you found 2 skills that were non career and wanted to spend a significant amount of XP on them it wouldn’t be a bad idea to see if any specialization trees had both because then they become career skills and you likely will gain access to talents that will help those skills become more of a secondary focus for your character.

Yeah, but that just seems like a system hack; a work-around; a loop-hole.

I mean I guess but I don’t feel like the system expects you to limit yourself to only 1 spec for a whole game unless you are playing very low XP for the whole campaign like max out at 300-400?

But I always build my characters very wide? I don’t tend to consider a concept complete mechanically until like 500-600 XP min.

We won't be homebrewing it to allow replacing any duplicate Career Skills.

What you are concerned about as a blatant disbalance you may just have to take my word, of some 7 years experience playing this system, for now when I tell you it is almost completely inconsequential.

But to expand on why a bit so that you can perhaps begin to see...

If you're spending so much on Skills that it becomes a concern, you're missing out on 66 - 75% of the rest of advancement options - Talents, Characteristics, Force Powers.

Skills raise a green to a yellow.

That's it.

You know what else can do that?

Advantage, Triumph, Destiny, even some Gear.

And you don't have to spend any experience on those.

Furthermore the mathematics of this system is such that increasing ranks in Skills yields diminishing returns. 1 yellow over none? Say it gives you +10% chance success on Hard test. Just making up numbers. 2 over 1? Just +8. 3 over 2? +7 or 6%. 4 over 3? +5% So on. Point is, you pay more and more for Skill ranks but get less and less.

Not to mention Talents and Force Powers can add yellows (upgrade checks), which those do lots of other cooler things along the way. Like expand capabilities and raise Characteristics.

I don't think I've ever purchased a Skill over rank 3.

This system has a few foibles, but this is not one of them.

Interesting about the diminishing returns. I suspected something like that might exist, given the complexity of Genesys narrative dice.

What would you consider the foibles of the Star Wars variant of Genesys? Or of Genesys in general?

Vespin - how is your character? So we could start to play. Mine and Rean411's are ready AFAIK.

He's done. I just wanted to clear up the skill thing. I'll submit it for approval.

Great! Good to know.

Regarding the swrpg, there are a few well known breakable Talents/Combos, here and there. Like Jury Rigging Auto-fire, and the Scathing Tirade tyrants, and Gunslinger Gamblers and things. Which are mainly only problems because it's generally just very easy to min-max, by default (I try to correct this with my house rule of not allowing any Characteristic to start higher than 4).

There are also some issues around "Talent-tax"es (not particularly useful Talents to proceed along Spec Talent-chains)/XP-taxes (like when taking additional, multiple Specs) that could have been handled better/differently, imo.

Vehicle Combat is just a little over-wrought and awkward.

Those are the biggies that jump to mind.

Genesys; magic is generally just too good/too flexible (this can be corrected in home brew settings by not giving too much access to Magic Skills), and it's generally just too easy to get very powerful (this can be corrected by just not giving as much experience, OR creating your own Specialization Trees which ppl must use).

The SWRPG is my favorite RPG system to run and play, despite all that, and I like Genesys a lot too, but it's just a lot of work to craft it into your own settings. I want to run a game in the Android setting some day, but haven't had the chance yet.

I've indeed heard that SWGen vehicles has issues. Do you think the Genesys vehicle rules improve upon them?

Would Genesys magic be more balanced if, say, the XP cost of each rank was doubled? Maybe even tripled?

And Android is a setting I've actually been looking into lately. I even ordered The Worlds of Android book, and I already have Shadow of the Beanstalk.

Character looks good Vespin.

Because we are using Morality/your PC is subject to Morality rules, you do have the option to benefit from 1 of the following:

1. +10 XP
2. +2,500 creds
3. +5 XP, AND +1,000 creds
4. Beginning the game with a Morality of either 29 (Dark Side) or 71 (Light Side Paragon)

Also, don't forget to spend your creds, if you want, and record your gear.

Yeah. Android/Netrunner setting is my favorite setting as far as I know. But also haven't have a chance to play in it so far:( So maybe, if that game will go good we will try Android also? I really hope so:)
Also very interested in that.

Ok I’m going to roll for my pocket change now.

Ok so I’ll mark the extra 95 on my character sheet then I should be good to go.

I've actually never used Genesys' vehicular combat rules, but they are streamlined, so, I would say they appear to be better, and that is generally the view you will hear in the community that knows the topic too.

RE: Genesys magic. I don't think that is an appropriate fix. But more because I'm philosophically against that kind of changing of the core rules in a "universal" system like Genesys, rather than any thought of the functional parity it might create. I feel like there are certain things that should always be the same, between hacks, so that it is truly universal. And messing with XP costs of Skills is one of those things that I feel like should be immutable. YMMV. But I would prefer to see changes like either: more Magic Skills (perhaps even one Skill per "Spell") which is a precedented concept in the system already, or lesser access to Spells (like, a Caster should start with 1 Spell, and then have to purchase access to more through purchasing Talents) which is also precedented in the system already, or even a more resource driven magic system like Secrets of the Crucible introduces could possibly do the trick to?

And yea, I have the Worlds of Android - such a gorgeous book - and SotB, too. Cool world. Less gritty/grimey than Shadow Run, more transhumanism. I like it. I even took a crack at home brewing a "Psionics"/sci-fi magic system/Skills into it.

I saw those in the book, and it seemed like one of those could be chosen instead of staying with 50. Is that right? As for money, the only noteworthy thing I would want him to have had before the kidnap is a lightsaber, if possible. Whatever else is just cash.