Check out the above press release for details of this current release, but I just wanted to drop some links below for ease of access.
Please stop by if you’re interested in this kind of homebrew content.
The discord we use for development is here - The reSpecialized Project
The link to the main Design Document is here -
The link to the Bounty Hunter reSpec Career -
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17YPekOyX-sdwga0q3zePDEExx86Y7Emg?usp=sharing
Been pleasure to work on this and look forward to continue work on it!
I’ve looked through the trees in detail, and have some constructive criticism, if you’d like to hear it.
Note: I understand the impulse to tweak and tweak and add and add, but making a lot of changes to something is the worst of both worlds between building from the ground up or tweaking an existing product. It leads to a mish-mash of the respective design philosophies of the original author and the editing team.
Below, I list some specific thoughts. This is not an exhaustive list.
To my eyes, the Assassin is worse at its described job (except for Vital Strike). No Witnesses could do with some tweaking, but it’s a decent add in principle. Anatomy Lessons I can see getting rid of, but taking out Deadly Accuracy is a huge nerf, and Targeted Strike is a very useful talent for burst damage.
When it comes to crits, you removed a Lethal Blows and made them more expensive to get. You do add Vital Strike, but…
Vital Strike gives the Assassin what is effectively “When the character lands a critical hit, suffer 3 Strain to make a second attack,” since Overpowered is an Average difficulty crit and the obvious choice. It’s the same problem I have with the Martial Artist talents in RAW, but even less limited. Melee/Brawl attacks tend to be lower damage and come at higher risk, while a sniper with Vital Strike gets the best of both worlds. An advanced character could plausibly three-shot a powerful target in one turn for the cost of 6 Strain. One could say “Oh, a GM shouldn’t allow that to be exploited,” but to that I say you shouldn’t build exploits into the game (a problem FFG has at times).
For Gadgeteer, Master of Arms breaks Concussive (and Breach, but that’s not nearly as bad), and the improved versions break it even more. It takes the complaints about Jury Rigged and makes them worse. I like Hot Swap, though it could do with some touched-up wording. Steady Aim is a fun add. I think the melee/ranged combat style choice of the RAW tree is a good idea, but poorly executed. I don’t mourn its loss, although I don’t like the removal of Deadly Accuracy since that’s a big chunk of damage.
Hot Swap is a great combo with my vambrace houserules—possibly too good, but that’s irrelevant.
I think I spotted a mistake in Martial Artist. Supreme Precision Strike says “or Lightsaber,” which the others don’t. The “Way” talents need rewording since there’s no such think as “initiative zero.” “When determining initiative, may opt to go last in the order and roll an Average Discipline check instead of rolling for initiative.” (Just for example)
Skip Tracer is designed to be a noir private detective, e.g. Philip Marlowe, and I think it does it well. You drift away from that concept.
Survivalist could do with some more active talents, but you drift way away from the underlying concept.
With Operator, you presume that the people using the talent are going to be using the Genesys system, which means you change the RAW talent in what ends up being a fairly major way. Overwhelm Defenses is balanced around vehicles that may have a high total Defense rating (e.g., a capital ship with 10). Converting these to Genesys means that in two or three attacks, you could strip the shields off a capital ship entirely. If this the talent is actually in Genesys, then that’s an example of poorly thought-out conversion on their part. I’ll save my rants on FFG’s vehicle combat; if you care about my opinions on it, you can check out how I rebuilt them in my comprehensive houserule set.
We appear to have different enough philosophies that I doubt I’d be of much help to your project, but I could give input if desired, and could be of help in rewording or cleaning up talents. Good luck with your project.
Hello P-47. I just wanted to thank you for this absolutely awesome amount of feedback. It’s really interesting to see what response the first iteration gets hit by. I’m going to break the feedback out in chunks and do my best to discuss foundational philosophy differences, errors I’ve made, or distinctions that may just be hidden in long text. If you’re up for a dialogue, that’s awesome. If not, it will still help me elaborate on my thoughts, even if just for myself. So thank you for that opportunity.
re: Survivalist
I can absolutely see why you would look at the loss of Hunter as a blow to the core fantasy of the specialization, same as stalker. For me, the game has already presented us with other options for stealthy ambush predators that target animals, and I would point players to those. I personally thought when it was originally designed, it is a mish-mash of nothing and sells very little story. I feel personally that honing from “general naturalist, ambush predator with tankiness” to something a bit more focused and utilizing different aspects of it’s skillset was preferably.
re: SkipTracer
This is probably partially a design philosophy difference. I have problems with specs that don’t utilize their skills to the best they could, and a non-Perception tree having a perception capstone never sat right with me. I also don’t understand the ideas of reconstruct the scene with a skip tracer, even in the light of PI Bounty Hunter. The Tracer is normally trying to track their skipper, which is almost always a known quotient. And the ideas of the underworld-leaning social bounty hunter being able to lean on both their contacts and acquaintances of their target to get to them. Also, from my viewing of PI media, social engineering is at least common. I will want more on this particulars for this one. I’m assuming it’s the pair of “Bring Em in Cold/Warm,” but any elaboration would be awesome.
re: Assassin
We’ll get into that later on where you bring it up in more detail.
re: Overdoing it
100% correct! I definitely see where the degree of changes we’re making seem extreme. I totally get that. In the previous iteration of the project, My partner in crime was holding my feet on the ground, and it was good for our compromised vision. I did feel stifled, he felt constantly pushed. I felt like I would touch a tree and it would be 50% better but I could always see more I could do to make it even better, and then we’d move on to the next nip-tuck. And I understand and accept that this won’t be for everyone. I don’t think I’m in the business of making niptucks on trees that are “nearly there” anymore. I do want some of these designs to smack people in the face. I completely understand if that brings us into conflict with more conservative designers or folks that want a “closer to raw” experience. I am unsure I could maintain interest if I compromised that much on “read the text, make big changes, more active narrative talents.” Not to say any preference here is wrong, it’s just where I (and by extension, the team) live on this.
Please, please, please. Pull out the red sharpie and mark this test up, teach. I fully acknowledge that aside from general number of connections, I’m just kind of seeing where the sculpture ends up when I start hammering. The connections for me are usually done at the narrative level. “this side of the tree lends itself to X, while the center core is Y, and other side is Z, and narratively X and Y connect through this XY talent and Y and Z connect through this YZ talent.”
That may not be intentional or obvious enough. So I’m very interested to hear your thoughts there. Tree design on its own is not my strongest suit.
We’ve made the conscious choice to make this source-book printable. So many talents have a short text and a long text. As is the case with RAW, caveats, restrictions, and power-gates exist more in the long text to give the GM’s the power to say “no jury rig cheese please.” I’ll touch on that later.
We absolutely did, and probably will continue to do so. It doesn’t help that the Cunning aspect of the game is so weak and we got about 4 cunning-adjacent character so early in the design process, and we felt like they needed more toys. I think at a core level, what tells me how much fun a spec is is how much a talent’s description plays a specific SW movie moment in my head. I think EDGE especially needs a ton more of that.
On to the specifics!
re: Deadly Accuracy
I think, whether it’s displayed in my design docs, or I’ve said elsewhere, that Deadly Accuracy was a design mistake from which all other design mistakes stem. It’s just extends variance of the vast capability of combat with zero tradeoff, and reinforces a character to be very single-attribute focused. It’s bad for build diversity, character diversity, and balance of the game. I think GMs have an easier time balancing when characters don’t have these talents. Soak scaling since the game has released has power crept consistently, because of weapons and character build power.
re: Targeted Strike
This may have actually been a mistake. I think I initially overestimated how much I wanted to take damage away from characters, obvious with my maintaining Soft Spot. I think initially I wanted to take more damage from all specs more than I do in this moment, and I think damage spike for DP talents are far safer than I originally wanted. First tree I rebuilt when I re-engaged with project, so it is just growing pains. I could easily see removing Master of Shadows for it, as I don’t value decrease talents very much. Thanks for the callout here.
re: Lethal Blows and Crits
I actually think if you look at the tree more holistically, you’ll see the entire point is critting, and it has gotten much better at it. Improved Precision Strike is a cheaper talent that gets you effectively “half” of a Deadly Accuracy through improved Piece. And 1 Lethal Blows was removed to make room for talents like the second rank of quick strike, and Sorry About the Mess. The Assassin is not about killing large numbers of people or outputting an insane amount of damage, but ensuring that they kill the first person super dead. One (two) shots, one kill. We have made all these changes with the explicit purpose of making that first shot matter the absolute most, as Sorry about the Mess functionally acts as a rank of Lethal blows++, for when you trigger a Crit 2 weapon with it, the Adv you would’ve spent on the crit goes to a +10 anyways, and then it only scales better from there. And the extra rank of Quick strike makes it more likely that you hit. Couple that with more pierce, the defense removal, and the likelihood that you hit on that first attack is almost guaranteed, which is what the Assassin should be built to do. Vital Strike just makes it such that if you need a bit more gas to kill them dead, you have that opportunity.
re: Vital Strike & Improved Precision Strike
This actually functions exactly how improved Precision Strike does RAW, which was never a problem with Martial Artist. The long text of Improved Precious Strike and Vital Strike say “once per round.” Which means even on a subsequent crits, it cant be used to hit the button for another Overpowered. The talent is functionally safe, in my mind. I have never found improved Precision Strike on Steel Hand Adept using Far Strike to be dangerous to game balance, and without many force multipliers in the tree, I doubt it would be. I understand that crit selection is terribly fraught with risk of abuse though and should look at it closely when playtesting. Thanks for this callout specifically.
re: Master of Arms
Another one of the long-text fixes the issue situations. Concussive, Breach, and Linked are all excluded from the talent. Concussive 3 is terrifying.
re: Combat/Ranged Build
We tried our best to make this a tree as weapon skill agnostic as possible, so that people could really explore the diversity in combat with different weapon and weapon skills. You’ll find nothing really is lost aside from power-crept quality talent, but we kept crippling blow, a benefit in my mind. I think the rest really was chaff, and didn’t need to be split as an “either or” tree. I think more talents to applying to more aspects of the character’s combat is a net positive.
re: Deadly Accuracy
I ranted up above, so I will just say that Deadly Accuracy is a self-defeating talent in this specialization. Adding 3-5 damage to a ranged heavy attack, that is more than you could ever hope to get from your boosted side arm from hot-swap. And for that reason, I can’t see any reason to engage with the core gameplay loop.
re: Precision Strike
That was a missed update when it was found earlier. Thanks for pointing it out! I’ve edited it to match the book-style character sheet (which should also be correct).
re: Way Talents
Long text for this talent does a lot of heavy lifting. Working Mindful Assessment-style talents into a text box is actively difficult. The long text says “as if they rolled with zero success or advantages” to give them a 0/0 initiative slot. Say “go last” doesn’t actually correspond to a value in the same way because if enemies are rolled in later, do they still go before you, or what if they roll with negative modifiers or roll 0/0? How do you tie break? The solution was to mirror the Mindful Assessment and make the least amount of rules questions.
I think it does some parts well but doesn’t do enough with Negotiation and the social engineering aspect (a core element of being a PI imho). I am very open to calling the warm/cold talents a divergent ideas from the original intent of the spec, and may be better served with other talents. This is where I’ll ask you directly to join the Discord and give us your thoughts on PI in a more conversational format so that we can see what changes are actionable. So please do stop by!
I mentioned it above, but I think our idea of Survivalists differ. I could be wrong there, but I see more of a rugged individualist meets “hunter/killer of sentients” And while the “Hunter” talent definitely does fall under than umbrella, I don’t think that it’s core to selling that, especially when the “Creature hunter” is right around the corner with Big Game Hunter. I also think that the Survivalist would be the 3rd best animal hunter in the entire system as it stands (behind BGH and Hunter in F&D). And that to me is okay and even preferable, for a spec that’s not actually about hunting monsters, but rather people. He just happens to be good at killing and surviving where monsters would be.
Good shout on this as well. Our intention is to list talents in their RAW state and then offer O66 or Genesys Rules changes in the long text in the talent tree section (or the design doc). My RPGSessions sheet was unedited from that change, and needed to promote the RAW talent rather than the O66 version. Also, we’re toying with the long text of the O66 version being changed to “doesn’t stack successively” so the talent really only takes account for the largest single expenditure (maxing out at 2 in this tree). We’re also likely to point towards O66 hack in a sidebar about adjusting space combat, as we prefer that in this project, but the game will default to most-all SWRPG ruleset, even if we do suggest they try the Genesys vehicle rules.
I actually think us having different philosophies is beneficial to this project. I am on record saying the last version of this project was doomed because me and my primary partner disagreed on so much that our compromise left us unhappy in the middle. But, I think there are room for more conservative folks in the room if only to help us pull back on “too much, too fast, all at once”. I am actively looking for conservative voices telling me how to do cool things with less, rather than telling me not to do cool things, if that makes sense. Specifically with regards to Skip Tracer, as that’s where I can see us coming to a good point of both contention and agreement.
So I really do want to have more extended conversations about this philosophy mismatch with you, where you think we make missteps or do too much. Consider the formal invitation extended (to the discord).
As I mentioned at the top, thank you so much for your interest, insights, and picking apart of the stuff we have so far. It’s been invaluable, both from testing our creative maturity to respond to critique, and to see where we can do better as a team.
Have a great rest of your Sunday!
Sincerely,
Drew (LittlestMinish)
Sure, I’d be happy to talk about it in more detail.
(FYI, I responded to your post as I read through, so if anything seems a bit out of place or redundant, that would be why.)
A note on design philosophy: The mechanics and labels do not dictate a narrative, so I care less for the name matching the spec than I do for the spec being cohesive and filling a solid niche (one of my favorite things to do is play a spec, but use an abnormal narrative for it). For that reason, in my analysis of RAW specs, I’m going to put a greater emphasis on the underlying design of the talent tree than on the design as it relates to the name.
The RAW tree isn’t perfect, and some tweaking could improve it. What I see is a tree built around the PI role, with a name that doesn’t match the mechanarrative all that well.
Good Cop and Hard Boiled I see as major losses for the tree. As for Reconstruct the Scene, I get the objection about it not being a “Perception tree,” but Perception is a career skill and is useful to the tree. More specifically, the narrative is excellent for the tree style. As a chaser of fugitives specifically, it may be less useful, but it has a lot of general utility and fits with the tree’s overall construction. It also certainly can be useful, such as confirming that the suspect in X event is your target, or identifying a description of someone the target met with.
Bring 'Em in Cold/Warm is a dual talent I think is okay. It works well for a “The Mandalorian”-style character, which is what it’s designed to be. I think the talents themselves are a bit clunky (I can expound on that later), but in discussing underlying concepts, that has little relevance. I have more of an issue with what was removed, and with “Dirty Tricks.” To lay it out straight, that talent is borderline useless. You aren’t often going to generate many net Success on a Hard non-combat check, it costs an Action, and 33% of the time, the Setback passed will have literally no effect, and an unaccountable percentage of the time, it will have minimal effect. I get what you’re going for, but I don’t think it’s executed well.
I think there is way too much Setback removal. The RAW Skip Tracer already verged on too much Setback removal. I’d cut Leverage, but the others fit the design well.
Licensed to Carry creates more problems than it solves, I think, because of its underlying assumptions. It assumes the character cannot acquire a license/permission outside of the talent, or that such license/permission can be wished into being by the talent. I think those fiddly bits are best left to the GM to adjudicate narratively, mechanically, and through Social checks, or to ignore entirely. The narrative aspect is especially important because some Restricted weapons (e.g., T-7 Ion Disruptor) nobody is going to let you carry.
With Good Cop and Negotiation, the Skip Tracer is a good teammate for a Face character who has more/more flexible Social skills. Without, he is self-reliant, while lacking the skill breadth necessary to be truly self-reliant.
I said some tweaking could improve Skip Tracer, but the more I look at it, the less room I actually see for improvement. It’s built to a theme, and built pretty tightly, with some flexibility within said theme. Most I see would be dropping the 20XP Bypass Security and maybe replacing Soft Spot. Structurally, I see area for improvement: It could have an emphasized bifurcation into urban/rural, building off of 1x Expert Tracker vs. 1x Bypass Security, with durability bonuses falling on the rural side and social on the urban, with underworld types in the middle.
Yup, and that’s why I ended my previous post the way I did. I would encourage you to consider building from the ground up rather than “editing” existing trees. Reference and take some inspiration and talents, but start fresh rather than shuffling and replacing. This means that you’d start with a more unified vision and wouldn’t muddle your vision with that of the original designer.
Oof, that could be a big project. I’m not going to do that now, but I’ll work up a tree for you when I get a good chance. One thing I noticed in particular is that a likely route to Improved Precise Aim doesn’t require you to purchase Precise Aim. The second rank of Precise Aim actually gates the opposite half of the tree.
In my opinion, a good rule shouldn’t need GM fiat to fix it. That’s one of my problems with some stuff in the RAW. Internal balance. Secondly, if you have to write up a lot of caveats, restrictions, and power gates, the talent is probably too broad or vulnerable to exploitation.
That [Cunning] hasn’t been my experience at all. As for the movie moment, sure, but you took out Hard Boiled, Good Cop, and Reconstruct the Scene from Skip Tracer, and those three talents are extremely evocative of media moments, whether movie, TV, or book, and not just Star Wars. Two of them are ranked passives.
I don’t agree, but even if I grant your premise, that’s the context you’re working within. Removing that tool doesn’t make sense to me. If you’re trying to make an FFG SWRPG 2.0, then more power to you, but if you’re trying to make tweaks within the game for broad consumption, I think removing something like that is a huge mistake because of all the downstream effects.
I don’t think it makes sense to describe Deadly Accuracy as bad for build/character diversity because it can be applied to whatever skill the character wants to use (for a sniper, pistol, or knife Assassin, for example). It doesn’t dictate a path, it enables a path to be further improved (and makes some options, like small Melee weapons or Brawl, more viable). It also makes combat-focused characters stick out more because it rewards them for a focus on combat. To make a D&D comparison, it feels a little like removing the martials’ Extra Attack feature. This is what they’re supposed to be good at. At a max, it gives +5 damage. That’s strong, but it’s also really expensive. I should also point out that it isn’t a flat increase, but only applies to one hit of an attack. No Linked or Auto-fire to abuse it.
Master of Shadows is key to the tree. I do not recommend removing it. It’s that little extra bit to let the character ensure they beat the check.
Fair enough, but my statement about worse was because of the damage factor. The quickest way to put someone down in this system is not with crits, but with damage. Since WT is (in my experience as player/GM) usually considered a kill except on select Nemeses, this makes damage output more important for Assassins. If you want one shot, one kill, you’d better be looking for high damage output. That’s the point of having Deadly Accuracy and Targeted Blow.
Let’s say you combine two Lethal Blows with a crit, +20 from Advantage, for a total of +40. Average result is 90.5, max result is 140. Vital Strike caps the maximum crit you can inflict, so unless there’s a particular effect you really need, it’s a tool for getting in a second shot. Again, damage is how you put targets down. Plus, you get that damage and you likely crit (Quick Strike and SAtM) allowing you to roll a straight crit again.
Here’s how I built similar concepts in my system. It can’t be ported over because of various underlying factors, but it might give you some ideas:
Military sniper:
I don’t like the design of Precision Strike (not to be confused with Precise Aim). I think it was a good idea in principle that turned out bad in execution because the crit table was not built with crit-selection in mind. It was intended to be a roulette wheel.
I recommend putting together a doc or a section in the main doc where you compile all the new talents with their longtexts. I was reading off of RPG Sessions, and since you aren’t space-limited there, I had no reason to believe the text (which already overflowed the box size and had to be scrolled) was not the full description.
Master of Arms still has issues, mostly with table rhythm. The first isn’t so bad, but the second adds in a potential “second action” with Advantage to be adjudicated between and the third means you have to choose a quality on each weapon in your inventory, and this character is designed to have many. Or you make it that they choose when they select the weapon, which is strong. I fundamentally do not like the talent. As a counterpart to Jury Rigged (“Increase a quality rating by X”), I’d be okay with it, but as an Active talent, I think it’s clunky. The Action cost also means that it will rarely be used except when the character gets a chance to “prepare” before a combat, and this system is (intentionally, I think) light on “combat preparation” things. Plus, then you get into arguments about when an encounter starts and ends. The exception is once it’s Improved, where it then has some risk, but little actual opportunity cost, especially since a failed check will likely generate enough symbols to avoid losing the Action, making failure inconsequential.
I don’t think Hot Swap works as a way to incentivize weapon-switching for the sake of weapon-switching. I see Hot Swap as a bonus for the people who bring the right tools for every job, and like to use them. If you have a perfectly good blaster pistol, why would you gain a bonus from swapping for a different blaster pistol? However, if you swap a blaster pistol for a grenade, or a missile launcher, or a shock baton, now you are not only swapping to a different tool, but you’re throwing the enemy a curve ball. The blaster/blaster thing is goofy, and some people might do it, but it’s a lot of extra cost for not a lot of extra bonus, so I imagine most would have a primary with some variety rather than multiple borderline-equal weaponry.
Bottom-line: Weapon swapping is and should usually be for substantially different weaponry, not swapping for the sake of swapping.
If you go last in the initiative order, you go last. There is no value other than “last.” The only problem is if you have multiple characters who generate a “last” slot. But that was a slap-dash example, not an actual suggestion. Even if your long text is clear, your short text should be communicative and smooth.
I’m not familiar with Mindful Assessment.
As mentioned earlier, this is where Good Cop does a lot of heavy lifting. In particular, this is because Skip Tracer is designed to be part of a group, whereas the traditional noir detective is a lone wolf (perhaps with a secretary or sidekick on occasion).
Bear in mind that Survivalist predated both of those by a hefty margin. As built, it may be behind BGH and Hunter, but that’s not really relevant.
It was built to the concept of someone who is at home in the wild and around animals. Riding them, using them, hunting them, killing them, etc. They can work as either hunters of animals or as hunters of people who use animals in their job.
Alright, I’m brain tired. I don’t have much to comment on the rest, so I’ll respond to your closing remarks:
That’ll be fun. I’m not sure if I’m willing to invest the time on a more longstanding basis, but I promise to think it over. Even if I end up declining, you are more than welcome to reach out with questions or just to pick my brain.
You’re welcome. I’m analytical, so I enjoy pulling things apart and looking at their guts, and I love this game (except when I hate it), so I enjoy playing around with said guts. This was a fun thing to do.
Have a good night (or morning, if that’s when you read this).
This hasn’t been proofread, so please bear with any mistakes. It was a lot to write out.
I gave some more thought to the Assassin tree and have some thoughts:
To bring it more in line with the “Assassin” archetype, one approach would be to minimize damage output (like you did) and emphasize infiltration/accessing the target, with a quick kill being the ideal.
Frankly, for the way this system is built, I think the combat style is just fine.
That said, I came up with an alternate talent to Vital Strike:
“When the character spends [Advantage] or [Triumph] to inflict a Critical Injury on a Rival who has not yet acted in the encounter, he may spend a Destiny Point to cause the Rival to suffer additional wounds up to his Wound Threshold+1. This does not generate a second Critical Injury.”
Perhaps add a clause that it allows the character to inflict “Bleeding Out” on a Nemesis.
This threads the needle between Wound focus and Crit focus, and gives the assassin what is effectively high burst damage with a variety of weapons, but only at the start of the encounter. It also synergizes with Sorry About the Mess. For that matter, it could be called Sorry About the Mess (Improved).
Anyway, just a thought. I haven’t had the wherewithal to comb over the talent trees or join the server, but at this point I’m planning to join.
Thanks for the further feedback P47! I can tell you we’ve used it to great effect and already making better choices.
We’re determined to going all-in on the crit nonsense, so you can spend excess Adv and Triumph to remove more minions from a group on crit, or killing a Rival. It’ll give the Assassin more reach in removing folks from the outset of an encounter.
Can’t wait to see you in the channels. Let us know if there’s anything you need in onboarding into the project.
