I haven’t changed the description on any talent yet.
I do like the addition of some of the talents, though I feel that Point Blank, while better than Guns Blazing, doesn’t do here what it can in other trees. I had a few ideas for that talent affecting armor mounted weapons, so I’ll just list a few of them off.
Once per session, user may flip a Destiny Point to use one armor mounted weapon as a maneuver.
When User aims with a armor mounted weapon, user may add an additional two Boost die.
User may downgrade the difficulty of an aimed attack with an armor mounted weapon.
My idea for it is that I don’t want it be a straight bonus (something like Duelist, where you get a Boost for 1v1ing someone, or Multiple Opponents which does the other.) but I don’t want it to be a super out of the way thing for someone to use. I do, however, see this as making Ranged Heavy abit irrelevant, as most weapons that can be placed on ones armor are Ranged Light.
Swift is at least a 15 XP talent, I’d say, and Forager isn’t nearly a 20 XP talent. It’s usually in the 5-10 XP range. Most often I’ve seen it for 5 XP.
Next step in the process is to overhaul the beskar talents and This is the Way, then the tree will need a dramatic restructuring. As it is now, it is a nightmare to navigate and very disordered, as to which sorts of talents are where.
For This is the Way, my suggestion is what I said earlier, 2 Boost to Charm, Leadership, and Negotiation checks targeting like-minded Mandalorians/Mandalorians of the character’s clan, with the caveat that at GM discretion the character can lose this bonus if they do not abide by the sect’s rules.
I don’t think it should gate anything, because it is now a desirable talent that gives both flavor and a good bonus. 5 XP talent.
For Beskar Held Up and Beskar Forging, I’m not sure. I think it should be a “[Talent]” [Talent] (Improved)" sort of thing.
We can look at the Nightsister tree with it’s Ichor Blade and Ichor Blade (Improved) for an example of this.
A few points:
Adding the Cortosis quality to armor for no credit cost is too powerful. I also don’t think it should require the Cortosis quality. If we’re looking at this tree as a contemporary of Forgemaster and Death Watch Warrior (which could just be renamed “Jetpack Warrior”), it would need to be on a comparable power scale and not be the obvious choice as a better tree.
Secondly, they should be talents we can comfortably put on Row E without having to go way out of the way to get to them. Either one that gates the other horizontally, or one on Row D and one on Row E.
I’ll think more about how to handle the beskar talents. I like the idea of suffering Strain up to Soak+Defense to reduce a Critical Injury by that number*10, but it needs more thought and comparison to existing talents.
You may have already figured this out, but I realised that if you go into ‘DM Tools’ in OggDude’s you can just print a talent tree directly. Cuts down on several steps.
Swift is at least a 15 XP talent, I’d say, and Forager isn’t nearly a 20 XP talent. It’s usually in the 5-10 XP range. Most often I’ve seen it for 5 XP.
Next step in the process is to overhaul the beskar talents and This is the Way, then the tree will need a dramatic restructuring. As it is now, it is a nightmare to navigate and very disordered, as to which sorts of talents are where.
Heard. I’ll keep it more as a list for now, as I do agree that the structure isn’t the greatest.
For Beskar Held Up and Beskar Forging, I’m not sure. I think it should be a “[Talent]” [Talent] (Improved)" sort of thing.
Now sure how I feel about that, but I’ll see what you have to say.
I’ll think more about how to handle the beskar talents. I like the idea of suffering Strain up to Soak+Defense to reduce a Critical Injury by that number*10, but it needs more thought and comparison to existing talents.
I actually like this too (and was able to slip it into conversation with one of my players (thankfully one who isn’t planning to play a Mando) about the concept of this, and they said they liked it, so I’m on board for that.
A few points:
Adding the Cortosis quality to armor for no credit cost is too powerful. I also don’t think it should require the Cortosis quality. If we’re looking at this tree as a contemporary of Forgemaster and Death Watch Warrior (which could just be renamed “Jetpack Warrior”), it would need to be on a comparable power scale and not be the obvious choice as a better tree.
Since I found these forums, I’ve been slowly picking things from the Mando Source book to add as I do this. I think I’ll go ahead and simply make the Beskar Forging a legitimate -no talent attached- attachment, and we can put something else in Beskar Forging’s place
I’ve been looking at the items and such in it and adding what I think seems good, though I do think alot of his prices are somewhat on the low side for what they are, and I typically change them around.
I don’t recommend the Beskar Weave attachment. What this guy doesn’t understand is that Cortosis doesn’t short out lightsabers. Refined Cortosis can short out lightsabers. This is rare, and specifically addressed in the descriptions of the few particular weapons capable of shorting out lightsabers.
By reducing the HP cost to 1 and allowing it to dramatically increase Soak, Defense, and Durable, he has thoroughly broken the attachment. I strongly, strongly disagree with that.
I would suggest you just go with the Cortosis Weave attachment, or do what I and my players have done and simply use “narrative beskar.”
Their armors are made of beskar, but they can choose to purchase the Cortosis Weave attachment if desired, representing a further reinforcement of their armor with pure beskar, where the armor may have been an alloy previously.
With the quick skim I gave it, I don’t like most of his stats for the armor and weapons. A lot of them seem either broken, overcomplicated, not representative of what we’ve seen on screen, or unlike RAW items.
The Beskar Weave is one I’m also not a fan of completely, and is something I’m going to rework very very heavily.
I do like how he does the Whistling Birds, and it’s alot better than what I was originally going to do with what was pretty much an auto-fire micro rocket, but many of the items do definitely need some balance work (IE: making a hammer do more bonus damage than a vibroblade, or having it require a maneuver to use a flashbang. I would rule the hammer is an improvised weapon with Cortosis, and that the flashbang is used as an action.)
But that’s getting offtopic, end of the day, I’ll just keep the Pure Beskarifcation to legitimate attachments, so we can free up a talent in the tree now.
Edit: I actually kept it mostly similar to how you have it, save for the fact that I’m keeping it as computers. I was actually gonna do ranged light, but the person planning to be a Mando in my next campaign said he liked it as Computers, so that’s on him.
Alright, let’s take stock of the current situation:
Talent list:
Armor Master
Armor Master (Improved)
Beskar 1
Beskar 2
Dedication
Dodge (2)
Forager
Grit
Intimidating
Jury Rigged
Nobody’s Fool
Outdoorsman (2)
Point Blank
Pushy Talker
Swift
This is the Way
Toughened (2)
20 total.
Tier 1:
Forager
Outdoorsman
This is the Way
Toughened
Tier 2:
Grit
Armor Master
Dodge
Nobody’s Fool
Tier 3:
Jury Rigged (I think move this to Tier 4)
Pushy Talker (Definitely keep here)
Swift (Definitely keep here)
Toughened (2) (Either this or Point Blank could be moved)
Intimidating (I suppose we should move this to Tier 4, one social talent for tiers 2-4)
Outdoorsman (Definitely keep here)
Point Blank (Either this or Toughened [2] could be moved)
Tier 4:
Armor Master (Improved) (Considering how many Tier 3 talents we have, push this to Tier 5)
Dodge (2)
Tier 5:
Beskar 1
Beskar 2
Dedication.
Custom Talents:
This is the Way: The character adds 2 Boost to Charm, Leadership, and Negotiation checks targeting Mandalorians of their clan or faction. At GM discretion, the character can lose this bonus if they betray their clan or do not abide by the sect’s rules.
Pushy Talker: The character may use Willpower instead of Presence when making Negotiation checks.
Beskar 1: Once per encounter after the character suffers a Critical Injury but before the result is rolled, they may suffer strain up to Soak+Defense to reduce the roll by a number equal to the amount of strain suffered, multiplied by ten.
Beskar 2: ?
Sorry I’ve been silent for the past few days. I mostly agree with your suggestions, but I do have a few questions and concerns.
First: when you list the talents, are you listing them as if they were from left to right, or just as you thought of them?
Second: I think if we’re just gonna push Armor Master (Improved) to T5 then we might as well drop it. That’s pretty far down to go for a talent that isn’t that uncommon, and can be found in the same relative area in all other Mando trees and Gadgeteer.
Third: I think we can replace one of the beskar talents (the one we were removing in the first place) with that armor weapon system related talent. It could probably take the place of a T4 or 5 row spot.
As for that, I think I’m gonna do something simple in the way of letting them spend a Destiny point to gain a second attack action with a mounted weapon once per session. I like that because of its simplicity, and it’s not overpowered but it’s strong enough to make a player feel unstoppable, if only briefly.
Lastly, do you have any recommendations for the layout connection wise? I’m not looking for a roadmap, just a general rule to follow, or an idea you would like to suggest.
(PS: I’ve gone with your recommendation for This Is The Way when it comes to rebalancing it)
Depends on the layout. It’s Tier 4 on the Death Watch Warrior tree, but you have to cut off to the side to get to it (beeline is 80). On the Commando tree, it’s just like DWW, but directly above the 20 XP talent with no other connection point (beeline is 105). On Gadgeteer, it’s Tier 5 and over one (beeline is 100). With a fresh tree, you could make it a beeline of 75 and still put it on tier 5.
I don’t think so. If you’re looking at Din Djarin for inspiration here, what did you see that made it look like he could make an attack with the wrist mounted weapon as a maneuver? Anytime he used one (that I remember at least), it was like a solo combat check, not like he performed two combat checks in a round.
Not at the moment, as I’ve gotten caught up in a couple other projects.
Try to have the talents make a logical progression. It doesn’t have to be extremely regimented, but think of how the character would narrratively progress through the tree. Once you’ve come up with something, I’ll give feedback.
I do think that he’s been able to make two attacks before a single opponent before, but that’s beyond the point and I see what you’re saying. So, I think I have a different idea. If you look at the Stats for Grand Admiral Thrawn he has one Ability called The Art of War. It’s very strong, as it should be for a Nemesis of his caliber, but I think a lesser version could be made for this tree.
I like Those Odds:
Often in the show we see Mando fighting against multiple opponents, getting pinned down, and overall getting bested by his opponents. With or without allies this tends to happen. Despite that, he more often than not overcomes these challenges whether it be through quick thinking (think the P3 Dark Trooper or the Kyrat Dragon), or sheer determination (the pirates or Morak or the troopers on the Gozanti).
Once per session during a combat encounter, as a maneuver (TBD) may make a (I’m thinking have it be Hard, Daunting, or base it off of the combat they’re in) Survival or Discipline check. For the next number of rounds equal to the ranking of the characteristic used, each success will add an automatic success to all skill checks made against an enemy.
I think that’s adept enough to make a T5 slot and have the ump I was looking for. If anyone has any suggestions for that (Difficulty, should it require a destiny point, mechanics, a different name, etc) I’d love to hear it.
Edit: I’ve gone ahead and edited the tree now. I went ahead and put in I Like Those Odds, and kept Beskar Held Up to Per Round instead of per encounter (I’m personally ok with them being able to do that if they can pull it off, so that’s really just personal preference). If you have any worries or concerns, lmk. MandoSurvivor.pdf (328.6 KB)
This is the Way: Adjust wording to “by the rules or values of the” from “by any rules or values set by this.”
Beskar Held Up: Hmm, I guess that’s okay. It’s pretty similar to Supreme Armor Master, but I suppose my original thoughts on Beskar Held Up made it directly inferior to that talent.
Yeah, I say go with it.
If it wasn’t for Supreme Armor Master, I’d want to change the limiting principle to once per encounter.
(edit: The other argument is for what happens when you have both talents)
I don’t like I Like Those Odds as it’s currently written. I’ll think more on modifying it.
The layout is okay, but not great. Maybe swap Pushy Talker and Swift, Nobody’s Fool and Grit, and This is the Way with Forager.
This puts the social talents more concentrated on the left, and the Survival-type talents more concentrated on the right along with the combat talents. Having Intimidating and Pushy Talker so far apart doesn’t make much sense to me, considering what they are gated by.
Thanks for spotting that.
Looking at the stats, Armor Master only does it by how much soak a user has, it only costs 3 strain, and still will result in a crit with a minimum of at least one. Beskar on the other hand allows soak and defense, but each point in either costs the user a strain, and it can completely reduce a crit to zero. So they both do the same thing but differently, it’s basically a pick your poison type of deal and I’m ok with that.
And if I might ask, what is it about I Like Those Odds that turns you off?
My dum dum brain currently can’t figure out how to upload an image of the tree with a PDF, but it does put up a link to the pdf itself. In anycase, I reredid it for version 2.1 so here it is: MandoSurvivor.pdf (328.2 KB)
That is an oversight, it shouldn’t do that. The only talent that allows “reducing to 0” is Unstoppable.
I don’t like that it simply adds straight success in any circumstance. What you describe is like “he’s really outnumbered, but he manages to pull through.”
The problem with that is that it’s usually not all that outnumbered by game standards, to the point where it wouldn’t be too hard for him to pull through. For example, his “I like those odds” quote was when he was a facing a single minion group of four stormtroopers and an elderly Imperial with no real combat ability.
Or in the intro for Season 2, that’s maybe one minion group and one combative rival, with a second rival who likely has a Ranged (Light) pool of YG.
Neither of those situations are especially difficult by PC standards when you’re that advanced, meaning that the precedent for adding the talent is very weak, and on top of that the talent applies in any situation, not just when hopelessly outnumbered.
And as written, the talent lets you add Success(es) to combat checks for the entire encounter, which is more than anything else I am aware of.
Closest comparison is Hunter’s Quarry, which allows you to make a Hard Survival check as an Action to upgrade all checks against a single target once until the end of the character’s next turn.
I don’t have the full text of the talent, so I don’t know what other conditions or benefits there might be, but that’s pretty small by comparison.
It’s also worth noting that you become basically your own walking Battle Meditation (which requires FR 3), except potentially better, with the only drawback being that it only affects you.
It’s really a miniature Signature Ability.
One idea for a beskar talent would be to make one comparable to Center of Being, but always active and at only +1, just to make it a bit harder to trigger crits. But I’m not sure that’s the right way to go.
