Hello =)
as discussed in another topic I wanted to create a Force Monk for a Oneshot that was good at dishing out a bit of damage using Brawl, this is already possible to a degree with use of the Steelhand Adepts Talents but at lower XP Ranges this becomes difficult so I thought about creating a custom Talent for this Oneshot Character (and maybe future Campaign NPC’s):
This is my current write up:
Teras Kasi Strikes Activation: Active (Incidental) Ranked: Yes
When making a Called Shot (Aiming for Weakpoints) using the Brawl Skill you may increase the Pierce of the Attack by 1 per Rank of Teras Kasi Strikes.
It might be a bit to powerful since it’s currently not limited to unarmed Brawl, but in general what do you guys think?
He is trying to get Pierce for Brawl attacks at low-level. I am suggesting it just in case he had tunnel-vision of only trying to get it to work via talents.
A Called Shot adds 2 Setback. At one rank, that gives you a 5/9 chance of cancelling out at best, with a 1/3 chance of being worse-off (generating two symbols, with at least one a Failure).
And that doesn’t factor in the increased chance of outright failure on the check.
And on top of it all, it costs a maneuver, something very valuable for melee combatants.
This talent, as written, is almost always going to either be neutral or put the character worse off.
I think a better option would be “Once per round, take the Teras Kasi Strikes maneuver; suffer a number of strain not exceeding ranks in Teras Kasi Strikes to increase the attack’s Pierce quality by an equal number.”
For the record, I believe there is a talent on the Steel Hand Adept tree that adds Pierce equal to Force rating or something like that.
I have to think about this character concept I guess, since it’s only really viable with a character of XP 600+ or sacrificing nearly everything to just push Force Rating to 3 or 4 to get relevant levels of Pierce through the Steel Hand Adept Talent.
Maybe I’ll just create a Teras Kasi Monk… (since I already began with naming the Talent that way), then a Vibroknuckler with Reverse Engineering would fit the bill.
It would loose the mysticism etc. but maybe that’s alright.
If it is just for a one-shot adventure then just make his unarmed attacks deal the amount of damage you want it to do. Just make one of his 5 point talents to make the change that you want. That way he still has to buy it, but then you end up with his attacks doing what you want.
If it was ongoing campaign then I would worry about it more.
That made me think, and really if it comes right down to it, if you’re building pregens for one-shots (unless the goal is to use the characters as springboards or to introduce new players to mechanical concepts), I’d just stat the PCs like NPCs, ignoring talents trees and the like. Perhaps even take the NPC approach to talents, meaning give very few.
I get that it cuts against the grain, but if you think about it, beyond balancing, what’s the point of XP progression when no progression is to be done? You’d have more flexibility without.
That’s a fair way to view this, yes.
I usually don’t like to do that (although I cannot really specify a reason), but when it’s balanced it could certainly work.
In my case I would certainly discuss this with my campaign players (who are also part of these oneshots).
I could see this easily for Starter-Level Oneshots, less so for ~500-700 XP Oneshots since balancing might be a tricky thing to get right in those cases.