Homebrew items: Hk-series Assassin droid career + two jedi universal specs

Homebrew & House Rules
#1

Hello!

So I have made two Universal Specializations and one HK Assassin Droid career with multiple specializations I’d like to get your opinions on!

My thinking with these have been basically concepts to which I have added talents that support the vision. Basically, what I lack is the mechanical and balancing perspective. I am sure there are multiple things here I haven’t thought about and might not actually work so well.

But give me your inputs and your ideas if you like and tell me if they look interesting at all or not!

With the Jedi specializations I’ve been heavily inspired by Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor, plus I really wanted there to be jedi trees with talents that supports the use of non-lightsaber weapons while still making use of the jedi’s unique abilities.

With the HK trees I just gave it talents I think feel reasonable for an HK Assassin droid to have. That being said, balancing issues and stuff haven’t been given super much thought.

They’re made in RPG sessions, so I post a link here that I hope works!

Jedi Survivor, Jedi Rebel universal specs

Hk-series Assassin Droid

#2

The HK droid “Career” is interesting. I only looked at the Assault tree in detail. It looks like a reskinned and modified Heavy spec, improving on talent selection but inheriting some of its flaws. The renamed talents are actually pretty well done. I’d usually just say to keep the RAW names, but those are fun renames.

One note: Talents in the top row should not have connections to each other. They are fully accessible.

I looked over the Jedi careers more carefully and have some feedback:
Jedi Rebel:
Indistinguishable should not be a 25 XP talent. It is not worth that much and is just going to be skipped.
Jedi Senses should just be called Superior Reflexes. That’s a spot where I don’t think renaming the talent is necessary or helpful.
All in all, I think the tree is far too similar to Force-Sensitive Exile/Emergent. Its passive talents feel like a merger of the two, and then it adds some strong combat talents on top of that. I look at it and say “Isn’t this what Emergent is supposed to cover?” Emergent gives a combat character (AoR) a Force-powered glow-up. I think you’re going for Jedi Survivor as a “second” EotE Force universal and Jedi Rebel as a “second” AoR Force Universal, rather than intending them as universal specs intended for use with Force and Destiny? Under that premise, I can’t imagine anyone taking Force-Sensitive Emergent. Rebel gives Quick Draw, Deadly Accuracy, adds Force dice to ranged combat, and gives +1/1 Defense.

As for Jedi Marksman, renaming Intuitive Shot is not necessary or helpful. That’s not the big problem though. The talent itself is overpowered, especially compared to the equivalent lightsaber talents (I’ve had to deal with it). In the Hunter tree, which I think is the only one that gets it, it costs 110 XP to get down to it. Here, it costs 70XP, AND it’s right by Force Rating. I don’t usually care that much about reach costs, but here it’s significant. I balk at the inclusion of Intuitive Shot primarily because of how quickly it power scales.

Call Weapon needs some specifics.

That’s all I have time for now, but I’ll revisit this later.

#3

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply and to give some really great and thoughtful feedback! I am truly grateful and you touch on some really good things I didn’t even consider! I’ll definitely give the tree a re-work with this feedback in mind!

You’re awesome!

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#4

So glad it’s helpful! Here’s some detailed feedback on the other Jedi tree.

Jedi Survivor:
Jedi Brawler is extremely similar to an Enhance upgrade that allows the character to add Force dice to Brawl checks.
Self-Taught is a direct downgrade from Well Rounded, while costing more and gating further down the tree.
Tree-navigation is a nightmare of epic proportions. It is entirely linear, with every talent being required for the purchase of the next talent. There are RAW trees with significantly more flexibility which are infamous for their difficult navigation and irritatingly linear structure. Generally speaking, it is best to organize a tree by “types” and build narrative progressions from talent to talent. This is not always possible, and links aren’t always obvious. It is also much easier said than done.

Indistinguishable doesn’t belong that far up the tree. It’s simply too expensive. It’s a 5-15XP talent. I believe RAW contradicts me there, having some additional ranks of it at higher XP costs, but I criticize the RAW for that.

Force Rating should be rank 5.

Overall, the tree’s talent composition feels very similar to Force Sensitive Exile, albeit borrowing some from Force Sensitive Emergent.

Bullet Time, while an evocative name, is not very Star Warsian. It’s fairly powerful, but I’m not super concerned about it at this stage.

Remember the Order is very interesting. I like the concept, but I’m not sure how well the narrative and mechanics meld. I take it the idea is an ex-Jedi reining in his worst impulses (or “redeeming” bad actions)? I think it makes it a bit too easy to slough off Conflict, which already tends to under-accumulate in the RAW. Maybe instead have it be that the character recovers 1 Strain whenever he doesn’t use Dark Side pips to generate FP?

Food for thought: Are you designing specs to serve as supplements to EotE/AoR characters, or are you designing specs to narratively augment FaD characters? This will affect the sorts of talents you will want to add, and how many of them.

Also, I recommend considering whether to add Parry and maybe some Reflect. First though, you need to nail down a better idea of what exactly you want these trees to do.

#5

Thank you again for this feedback!

I am currently re-working the trees in accordance to a lot of the thoughts you have given me! My initial idea with making the jedi trees were that I really wanted a tree that helped the character be potent with weapons that weren’t lightsaber based. And then I added in things with inspiration from Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor, and I was thinking that characters like these should be pretty good at a lot of different things; like blending in and surviving and generally in faring for themselves. The Bullet-Time talent is actually like the mass-bind/force slow power that Cal Kestis uses in Jedi Survivor. At least that’s what it’s supposed to symbolize.

I know it’s technically Force Bind - but the inspiration for me was that I kept using the power in the game as a kind if ‘get out of a tough spot’ mechanic, and I wanted the talent to reflect that.

That being said, all the things you have said and the feedback you’ve given is very insightful, a lot of these things I didn’t consider. I’ll look closer at Padawan Survivor, Force Sensitive Emergent and the other similar trees and will try to see how I can make my trees a little bit more their own thing while also balancing out the talent tree better!

Thank you!

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