Nothing that grand, just the ability for players to be able to not have to choose between the meta of having reliable characteristics, and having some talents at the start to make themselves stand out.
Cause at the moment although anyone can choose there’s a very strong expectation not to due to how Characteristics work in-game.
I think this is the simplest method and have used it in Genesys (that has a characteristic max of 5).
I think that’s best solved by simply giving some bonus XP at CharGen. I rarely begin games at starting level anyway.
That would be bonus Earned XP, right? The kind which can’t be spent to improve Characteristics directly?
(As opposed to Starting XP which comes from the species plus obligation/morality/duty choices.)
Yes, of course. Like Heroic/Knight-level from the Clone Wars supplements and Force and Destiny (respectively).
I could get on board with having CP’s (characteristic-only points) and XP’s (experience points that purchase anything else but characteristics).
So thoughts on how much of each when creating a new character? How much CP vs XP?
After running some numbers I found myself surprisingly wanting to give out 100 CP for “Heroes”. If you wanted a campaign of regular joes, then perhaps 70 CP.
Then hand out 30 XP for skills and talents?
So essentially the same, just renamed starting xp to CP and imposed a house rule to not spend it in characteristics.
I feel this approach way off…
The players are buying characteristics because that’s what the game recommends you and that’s how you get the most bang for your buck. You can certainly limit this, but it won’t change the way the system works and that characteristics are usually worth more.
If your players are not min maxers they can probably not even dump all their xp at the start in characteristics and if they are, they just gonna rush to dedication and still skip everything else, you just delayed them with 30 xp.
I think I explained it confusingly? What I meant is you hand the players 100 CP to be spent on characteristics only. You also hand them 30 XP that can be spent on talents, skills, etc (anything but characteristics). So your total is going up (adjust the amount of each if you don’t like it), and the character is getting a lump of XP that can’t be spent on characteristics so the min/maxers will have more skills and talents then usual. Their characteristics aren’t taking a hit at all.
Generally speaking, it seems players always advise a 4/3/3/2/2/1 split on creation (though I’m a bigger advocate of 3/3/3/3/2/2 myself). You can simulate that and the scaling of costs in creation by simply requiring a player spends XP equal to the level they are raising it to. So reverse calculating you got:
30 = 3 CP
40 = 3 + 4 CP
Total 10 CP
+1 to 11 CP so it’s Odd.
I’m not adept enough at advanced math’s to figure out if there are potential unique builds that could screw this before testing, but my hunch would be leaving it at an odd level would allow it so that anyone could make sure they can top off their scores (since they always have at least one 3 and 1).
Humans you may want to set to 12 CP instead because they typically start with that extra 10 XP and have all even scores.
Though in truth, this is a surface level fix because there are some races that have significantly lower XP pools than others.
If you wanted to cover all your angles there are other design elements you’d also need to consider such as:
The Dedication Talent being more glaring because it actively encourages someone to barrel up one stat instead of being versatile. At Creation going from 4 to 5 is 50 XP but from 1 to 2 is 20 XP. With Dedication both of those cost 25 XP. Which is one (but not the only) reason I often advocate for the 3/3/3/3/2/2 split, because assuming your game lasts long enough it’s the most XP efficient method because they operate on different rules.
One House Rule my table does to address the disparity is make it so Dedication can only raise a Characteristic up to 1 higher than what another Characteristic is at, which encourages more versatility and makes the power crawl slow down a bit (note: this is a one-table experience where everyone did take the 3/3/3/3/2/2 route, so it might not translate so well for other tables with more specialized characters).
EDIT: Made a math error, corrected it.
EDIT 2: Original cited arrays was factoring for point buys alone, this confused at least one user so I adapted it to include inherent racial characteristics.
I think it’s clear, what I don’t understand why is this different from the system? You just gave them 30 earned XP and took away the possibility to buy talents/skills with starting XP
That’s not been my experience. What I see most often is 433221 and 333222 (or 333322) builds.
Making each CP equal 10 XP for the purpose of upgrading Characteristics keeps balance, but I still do not understand what you gain over the approach of simply giving 30 bonus XP or whatever.
You’d have to balance for each individual species.
I’m not sure how to explain it any further. They can still buy skills and talents with the 30 XP.
So normal is around 100 XP. Most players rightfully sink nearly all of that into characteristics. If starting with all 2’s, they end up perhaps with a 4 (70XP) and a 3 (30XP), then 0 left over for skills and talents other then what is granted by Career (four rank 1 skills). If perhaps they instead chose three 3’s (90 XP) they still have only 10 XP left over for more skills or talents.
Let’s say you handed the players 130XP instead. What would most do? Probably add another 3 characteristic or a 4 depending on what they did with the first 100XP. They are still starting with nearly 0 talents and 4 rank 1 skills from their Career choice.
There may be players out there that instead may be doing something like only raising one characteristic to 3, then having everything else 2’s, then putting 70 XP into skills and talents. If they were in my group, I would be advising them greatly against that explaining how important characteristics are and how it will later be difficult to raise them. I just don’t see many players choosing that.
So, the idea was to grant 100 Characteristic Points, so they could still do the usual characteristic increases. Then, hand them 30 XP (or whatever you wish) of regular XP as if they had already adventured a bit. They can’t spend that on characteristics, so they are going to be able to start play with a molded character with some talents and more skill. If the 30 XP is too much, make it 10, 20, whatever you wish.
I was speaking on the point buy alone, so I wasn’t factoring in the ‘free’ characteristics that people got just by being a member of X species. I edited my post to clarify this.
I ‘believe’ they’re simply confused on why people don’t just add extra XP post-creation process instead (which would remove the ability to buy Characteristics).
P-47 seems to be looking at it from a layman’s everyday gamer perspective, where I’m trying to tinker behind the hood. I’m looking at how the design decisions of the current system psychologically compel players to respond to mechanics differently. I homebrew other systems regularly as well, I often get confusion from people who just don’t understand thinking about game design in that fashion (likely because they aren’t game designers, just gamers).
Where what what he’s suggesting would solve the issue on the surface level. It still leaves some holes in design such as:
For another Psychological example, look at how SWFFG handles credits. The game uses Credits as a reward system for players, but at the same time offers very little content that credits can be used on. Where players can be geared with “end game” gear just a few sessions in. Which is compounded where when you look at Modules the designers seem to think handing out 50-100k credit rewards is the norm.
This causes a lot of GMs to panic, cause with a scale of progression halting they think players will no longer want to play, or that the game needs to restart. So to circumvent this you see a lot of DM’s advocate for excuse after excuse of stealing the credits from their players. Adding artificial barriers like “10k fee to enter the city” or a surprise TIE-Fighter encounter whose sole purpose is to inflict hull damage the players have to repair, or surprise bounties the players need to pay off etc. etc. This is a psychological response players have in response to a design flaw in Star Wars FFG (lack of buyable content).
This was an element I also attempt to address in Homebrew, adding a series of “Superior Upgrades” to ships, weapons, armour, adding “Superior Gear” which is like adventuring gear but stronger versions, and inflating the costs of the Crafting Rules in splatbooks (cause they are woefully underpriced when compared to other gear). Thus allow credits to actually become a means of progression again, rather than a source of stress for the game, with the GM trying to find the next reason the players become poor and the players becoming upset they never actually seem to earn anything.
My first thought was to have leftovers be converted to XP. But, that would need some controls if not it’s just XP. Have a rule that you CAN move CP to XP, but only if there isn’t enough left to raise a characteristic? I think you’re using 1 CP per level instead of 10 CP per level, so that would need to be converted by x10?
For example, all of the CP you can spend has been spent. You are left with 20 CP (2 CP). All of the character’s characteristics are already 2 or higher, so you can’t raise any of them further. So, the CP becomes 20 additional XP.
No they wouldn’t, because they can’t. They can only use Species Starting XP for Characteristics, they can’t use bonus XP on Characteristics.
Eh, not really. I’m pretty into the guts of this system myself and certainly have no problem tinkering with things. I just disagree that anything here needs to change.
1: Spend it on skills and talents, as the game intended.
2: Again, this is intentional. It’s just how the game works. If you’re in a group of 6, so you can’t get the +10 XP you need to pick up another Characteristic buff, that means that the group as a whole will have fewer raised Characteristics, providing more individuality and hopefully minimizing overlap, doing more to give each character a niche.
3: Sort of, but also no. Sometimes a character build might not need an extra Characteristic point (ex. 3-3s Human), so the “spillover” can be invested into talents or skills. There is plenty of choice. Let’s look at a few Characteristic build examples:
222222 Human can be built three different “max” ways: 3-3s, 4-3s, or 4/3. 3-3s is 90 XP (9 CPs), 4-3s is 120 XP (12 CPs), 4/3 is 100 XP (10 CPs).
322221 100 XP species can be built four different “max” ways: 3-3s, 4-3s, 4-3, or 433221: 3-3s is 80 XP, 4-3s is 110 XP, 4-3 is 90 XP, and 433221 is 100 XP.
That’s three different costs for Human, and four different costs for the other.
A psychological effect of giving a set amount of CPs is that they will want to spend them all, UNLESS you can refund them for XP, in which case it becomes a moot point since it’s practically the same as what we have now, just more complicated (another principle of game design: KiSS).
With the 4-3s Human build, I’ve played humans where I instead invested the 20 XP into skills or talents because I didn’t need or want a fourth Characteristic. Sometimes I even took bonus XP and still didn’t raise a fourth Characteristic.
If you want to solve this problem, there are two very simple things you can do: Advise your players to take on Characteristics at start, and give them some bonus XP. The RAW actually pretty heavily advises you to take on max Characteristics at CharGen already, but leaves the player with freedom of choice.
I think we understand each other. I was commenting on my version of a house rule.
I depends on the situation. Ships are very costly, bases are very costly. The homesteading and workshop rules can be credit sinks, and damaged gear or ships can be expensive to fix.
I have not seen modules where 50-100k credits were offered as rewards, and so cannot comment on that, but if you look at the payscales in the EotE career splats, the prices are pretty reasonable unless you’re always giving your PCs Legendary targets or the like.
Every table is different, and there are many ways in which GMs can and will screw things up.
I admit I have not been as judicious as I should have been regarding credits in one of my games (aforementioned Legendary targets and the players heisted a Hutt’s bank), but things like ship repair, sudden expenses, operational costs etc. are good (unless handled badly) because they put pressure on the PCs to have credits and give them something to use the credits on. Obligations are another way to drain credits from the PCs, be that a favorite brother who keeps racking up gambling debts or a family farm in need of a quick bailout.
“Superior upgrades” and “superior gear” can only get you so far, because there’s still a limit to how much the PCs will decide they need, and in all likelihood they shift the problem to a different area, as now the PCs are likely a bit overpowered.
The crafting rules are a bit underpriced, but they usually intend that you’ll make several attempts. They aren’t too bad unless you’ve got a ton of XP and a ton of credits. Then it gets a bit out of hand. But if you pump up the costs too much, it’s not worth the effort until the PCs HAVE a ton of XP and credits.
Finally, long-term goals. If the PCs just want to stay in the black, they don’t need all that much in the way of credits. But if they want to start their own brewery on their homeworld, now they’ll be trying to store away tens of thousands (possibly hundreds of thousands) of credits as they earn them. Or perhaps a PC doesn’t really have any long-term goals, so he just stores them up in the bank and tries to think of something, or takes the “dark side” route of blowing it all on gambling, fast speeders, and women.
It’s as much reliant on the players as the GM to keep the game’s economy flowing well.
If the players want to play rather than wanting to “win,” the monetary situation will be handled much better.
And so what if a character gets enough to retire? Maybe he does, and the player rolls up a new character.
Is the key issue that SW/Genesys has directly shared the costs of characteristics to all other things (skills, talents, careers)? Most systems don’t do that. You derive characteristics and you derive the other stuff without a shared pool. With characteristics being so important AND they can’t be increased as easily as others, it makes the initial creation very one-sided.
If someone is willing to separate the two in a house rule, it may be much simpler and remove the problems of the shared pool. It could be CP’s or simply +1’s and +2’s to raise characteristics. Then give XP for everything else.
If so, how much XP at character creation for everything else? How many talents, career skills, skill ranks, etc would be a good starting point? Too little and a player can’t design what he has imagined (an old soldier, a wise wizard, etc), Too much makes early, simple adventures too easy.
The game, as currently constituted, intends starting level to be very “weak” and “beginnery.”
My opinion is that the game’s design does what it’s intended to do, and that you’re trying to fix a problem that is misdiagnosed. You aren’t intended to have many skills or talents at CharGen. As written, I think that CharGen is quite good (admittedly, this may sound like beating a dead horse at this point). The solution is to give your PCs bonus XP.
I think Heroic/Knight-level (+150 XP, +9,000 credits) is a well-rounded starting point, and is what I use for most of my campaigns.
50 XP is my second choice, but it isn’t much. You could raise a skill to 3, a skill to 2, and then pick up three tier A and one tier B (or one tier A and two tier B) talents.
Playing older or “experienced” characters who have the same amount of XP as the other PCs is difficult, and there should generally be an explanation for why they are not as “powerful” as their age/experience might suggest (atrophied abilities, a relatively recent change in focus/discipline, etc.).
Hey sorry for the slow reply guys. Got held up the past couple days (combined with one instance of a Reddit spiral where I lost track of time).
My mistake, sorry for the false assumption.
As for your counter-points?
That’s sort of the issue, it causes some players have it easier than others because some get a latter starting load of Characteristics, and others are forced to spent their excess on Talents. It’d be different if it were a choice, but in this case they have to.
I never thought about it that way. Now you that you mention that, it does seem to be intentional design, the large the group the more specialized you have to make the character. That’s actually pretty ingenious of the Dev’s. And likely something I missed cause I always made a house rule of:
“Players always gain the max amount of Obligation typically expected for their party size. But they likewise always gain the +10 XP and +1,500 Credits, regardless of party size or total obligation”.
I suppose this ruling also leads to a question of, should players be expected to change their character build/concept for the party size? Not party composition, but strictly in response to the number of players in the party?
But those situations generally seem more remote. The game seems to heavily reward players for having higher/more versatile characteristics as a whole/
Perhaps, but that may just lead back to the question of “Why not just do XP buy?”. Another idea I have was just keep the CP on standby, and change dedication to provide a certain amount of CP.
I’ve been doing a Module-connection campaign, and it’s been pretty standard.
[MODULE SPOILERS BELOW]
Long Arm of the Hutt provides 10k per player plus another 10k in the Hutt’s room.
The EoTE Core Adventure lets you loot at least 30k of drugs from the den (assuming you don’t accidently blow it up, which my players did) on top of the other 20k or so of bounties.
Beyond the Rim you can earn up to 30k Credits depending on what you bring back, this is before any Negotiation rolls are involved.
And then Mask of the Pirate Queen (our current Module) starts off with offering the players 60k in Credits.
[MODULE SPOILERS END]
Note, that is strictly the end-loot reward. All those Modules are also littered with other places where you can make more money as well that push those values up further (which where it leads up to a 50-100k total)
My players after doing 3 Modules to completion (Mask of the Pirate Queen we just started) now:
This party has earned about 300 XP so far across the Modules, and this is when we’re also using content like Operational Costs (but a simplified version tailored to be about the same costs) to add additional fee’s like Fuel and Rations to the mix, and where a lot of what I listed above was bought in the Outer-Rim meaning they were double the listed costs.
However, on the flip-end it is worth noting that there is a Quartermaster and Mechanic in the group, who combined have allowed stuff to be sold for more, bought for cheaper and make ship repairs cheaper. Which is probably also an explanation as to why this Credit disparity is happening.
And to clarify, this is not me complaining. I love how my players have these cool sets of gear now to reflect their experience and past adventures. But it does mean I as the GM need to be developing systems for more methods and means my players can spend their Credits on, else after a certain point the Credits will start to become meaningless.
I’m aware is a limited-time solution. But it does pad the time out quite a bit, by about 20 times if my math is right. Superior Mods are 10k each with 5k per extension. Ship Mods are about x10 that. I also added Superior Implants/Cybernetics and Superior Gear which are also x20 the cost of the vanilla versions.
And the idea is that they may eventually find themselves wanting multiple ships and weapons per player, so that will add in the duration that credits remain relevant. I will probably also allow Superior Homesteads in a similar manner (I am currently looking at how to make Homesteads applicable to a group that is always on the move, aka make their ship their Homestead).
Overpowered has never been a concern for me, regardless of the system I’m running. As the GM I have infinite tools to use to make things more challenging for the players if possible. Also Star Wars is a very ‘epic’ universe as well. Where you either go the Prequel route and heroes (or Han Solo) just charge straight into a horde of enemies and live to tell about it. Or you’re the Original trilogy where you have incredible luck/inaccurate Stormtroopers (I do play my Stormtroopers as actually being dangerous mind you). So to a certain extent I’m fine with exaggerating the encounters as my players scale up in XP and Gear. Every time I hear a GM complain that their players are too strong and they need to make things more exaggerated my response tends to be “Yes… This is Star Wars. That’s the point!”.
I only pumped it up by x4. And this is very much a “for our tables needs” fix as Players generally aren’t inclined to be crafting until they’re confident it can outcompete what they can simply buy from someone else. So I priced them still low enough to allow multiple attempts, but high enough to account for that you’re likely building advance tech out of it and to reflect how weapons “off the shelf” are likely cheaper due to the Mass Production of them.
Oh yeah, I know my players will want to pursue things like this eventually. Especially when their storyline (aka, their shared backstory) reaches a point that allows them to slow down. But I am curious, do you have any ideas for how I can mechanically represent this? Like make the Brewery or to reflect a characters benefits (and drawbacks) from living with vices?
Or would this element be better reflected with just player spending X credits and then I narrate Y situation to them and then we move on?
I don’t think retirement is something any of the characters intend to do (they’re playing siblings. So if one retires that’s likely just a group retire and us doing a new campaign instead).