Sarone said:

And why is someone buying access to 4 more specializations that quickly? It doesn't gain them anything. In fact, buying access to those trees has now put them behind the group by a good amount of XP as they are still, for all intents and purposes, a starting character. In two months of game play your stats haven't changed. No new talents were bought. So… why? Again, that means the real "penalty" is spread out over a larger time frame of playing and so is really minor, if it has any real impact at all.

Doc, the Weasel said:

Actually, there are a few.

1) It discourages players from overspreading their character by trying to take on too many roles too quickly.

2) In later game play, it slows down the growth of the character a small bit, but at that point they have so many talents and probably a lot of maxed skills that not always getting a new ability every game session isn't unusual anymore.

Doc, the Weasel said:

Doc, the Weasel said:

The current system encourages players to stay within their career, which can be good or bad, depending on whether or not the devs are encouraging players to stick to the archetypes represented by the careers.

This could be seen as being needlessly restrictive.  

With the removal of a profession cap, I think there does need to be a progressive increase in cost for additional specs.  Your solution does this as well as the current system and solves what you see as a problem. And you have support here too.

Others, myself included (I fully agree with Kallbecca posts above.  Those views mirror my own from previous posts), do NOT see it as a problem, and view making the change you propose as simply making a change for its own sake, which in my view (and I assume, others' views, but I don't want to speak for them in a democratic forum) doesn't justify making the change. That's why, at least, I disagree with it.

I personally think this would be a much less severe problem, empirically, if the change to out of career skill cost was reversed.

-WJL 

Doc, the Weasel said:

What reason is there for a progressive increase in cost for new specs? Seriously, each time you pick one up, you are spending XP and putting resources into the new thing instead of venturing further down the path you were on. That has built in advantages and disadvantages, without piling on system punishment through increasing cost.

I think the increasing cost of subsequent specs makes sense. You're learning more, trying to "specialize" in multiple areas, and it takes more of your focus to do so. Like the old Sherlock Holmes adage about only keeping in your mind the things that you need to perform the things you do. The more you try to cram in, the harder it is to retain everything. They ditched the previous concept of losing old specs to gain new ones, but increasing cost is something that makes sense.

On a more pragmatic level, perhaps, it is reminiscent of how advancement works in the other similar products of WFRP3rd and W40KRPG. The higher up the chain you go, the more things cost. I suspect it's kind of a "can't teach an old dog" mentality, but it makes sense. If every advancement cost the same, you'd end up with characters that were pretty powerful and diverse in a very short period of time

Also, as a side note, I like it how people keep crying for reasons for the advancement system to be the way it is, but ignore anyone who tries to furnish the discussion with said reasons. Interesting.

I think, honestly, that the simple cost of paying for access, and then having to start with the lower talents, is the right amount of cost. The idea that multi-classing should have heavy costs is questionable to begin with, but ramping up the costs is just too much. A person that tries to dip into 6 different specs in short order is going to spend a lot of XP on just gaining entry, and then end up having far more 5 and 10 point talents than a more focused character. More cheap talents at the cost of more higher point talents is a genuine cost. Dipping has built in costs and benefits, without this ramping up the cost thing.

Especially with how natural it is to use multiple specs, often from multiple careers, to model a pretty archetypal character concept.

Weapon use is a big problem here. I think the combat skills should be made career skills for every career, or at least every career should get at least one combat skill as an option.

Then again, the system would be flat out better without class skill lists and extra costs for grabbing skills outside your career.

For me the cost is not the problem, I seem to be finding that the sweet spot for character concepts I’m creating is 2 to 3 specializations, today I will be creating a demo character who is a kind of Doc Holiday / Dr Watson type, Colonist - Doctor / Mercenary / (dabble in) Scholar. This character has quite a bit of play in him, but to get any advancement in characteristics I’m going to have to dilute my concept, I will end up either taking more and more specializations that I don’t actually want, just to get the dedication bonus.

I’ve always had this problem with Warhammer, on one hand I liked the career system, but on the other the character would end up having very little relationship to the starting concept. That works for WFRP but I’m not convinced it does for Star Wars – Luke Flyboy / Jedi (fixated on Jedi) Leia – Politico Han – Smuggler / Merc 3PO R2 – Droid. They are all pretty focused character types.

There will always be people who min/max cherry picking the best abilities for the player not the character, and that’s OK, I’m not going to tell people how to have fun, but as the system stands we are all forced into the same situation, for the character above, doc will get a +2 to characteristics if he stays true to he’s concept, or have spend 125xp in politico to get another +1, after that he must step out of character and start to dilute and move away from the original concept.

The easiest way to fix this is to have the dedication bonus moved outside the tree system. For me the better fix would be that the trees presented in the book represent basic specializations and by taking the dedication bonus for that tree he could freely (at no xp cost) move to the Intermediate version of that tree and finally if he takes the Intermediate dedication bonus he freely moves to the Advanced talent tree, this option would be more work for the devs (although I would be fine with the first supplement being a players book filled with new equipment and the extended trees) and add pages to the final product.
 

CharlieBananas said:

THIS. This, this, this. I think this is one of the reasons the spec limit was removed, but wasn't really replaced with a better option. The work around that existed for this I described in a previous post.

There are 2 bad reasons that [my] players feel they are forced to take new specs

1.  Game the system to get dedication talents
2.  Reduce the now redonkulous OOC skill training costs

I addressed the former issue on the thread linked above. And I think the OOC costs should go back to what they were before the week four update.

Solve these issues, and players will see a lot less need to branch out into obscene numbers of additional specs. The only reason players should feel a need to branch out to other specs really should be to develop a character concept/archetype, or represent how the character changes through adventures.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

I think this may be a gaming paradigm issue at work, here.

For instance, given the actual rules mechanics, it doesn't seem that characteristics in this game are anywhere near the end-all, be-all that attributes are in d20 systems, which I think should obviate the need to want to game the system to pick up dedication talents.  Admittedly, that can be a hard thing to wrap one's head around if that's not what one is used to, but it seems to be the case here. 

The same can be said about in-class skill training. Realistically speaking, how many skills do you need or want a character to be able to train in? For most concepts, I don't think it should need to be that many. And if a player is only happy with the notion of being good at absolutely everything, then why shouldn't that cost a lot to be good at? 

Rikoshi said:

Rikoshi said:

This is spot on. Attribs are not really that important in this game, and its a massive paradigm shift. However, what I wrote was not "bad reasons players are forced to take new specs", but actually "… players feel they are forced.." It's absolutely a perception issue, but this wasn't explicit in my post. Good catch.

For the record, Increasing attribs produce the following bonuses:

1. Increasing the number of ability dice in a pool in early game (when skill rank < attrib rank)
2. Increasing the number of proficiency dice in a pool [parts of mid &] late game (when skill rank > attrib rank)
3. Increasing the number of ability dice in any untrained skill check.

The first benefit is much bigger than the second (it has been shown that adding a prof die to a pool has, approximately, 3 times the benefit of adding an ability die to a similar pool in regards to success probabilities, and almost no effect on advantages), so buying big on attributes at creation gives a nice big bonus on those early rolls in the form of an additional ability die, but the benefit actually gets diluted over time as training goes up, i.e. when skill rank exceeds the attrib rank, you're getting more benefits from the skill training than the attrib score. The third is more of a generalist character concern (some skills just won't get trained, even though the sometimes need a check).

The point at which the threshold is crossed is going to vary by character and attrib composition, but I don't really think that it's going to take more than a session or four for players to get their real trademark skills ranked over their associated attribute ranks. It's here that we see attributes playing a smaller role in dice pool results. But, I suspect many players are crying foul because the early levels of play are what we are most familiar with after having the game barely more than a month.

To answer your question, why shouldn't they cost a lot? well, I think they should cost a lot. But the current system makes that "cost" a freaking mess.
As for the OOC skill costs, I see four problems with the new cost:

1. Each combat skill appears in exactly 3 career or spec lists, and only 2 Careers and 8 specs have any combat skills in their lists.
2. It hinders players making RP choices because of the premiums paid on OOC skills
3. Discipline is very important for Force users, but only Hired Guns, Merc Soldiers, and Technicians have it as a career skill.
4. I personally think that the current skill lists are somewhat, well, "sloppy".

The first point is probably the biggest. Combat is still a substantial part of the game (though, in comparison to WotC trash, this emphasis is reduced), and its fair to expect players to purchase some ranks in combat skills. Under the old system, there was minimal cost benefit to buying combat specs to nab these combat skills, but with the new cost system, the value has gone up dramatically.

The second point speaks to the bad reasons I posted that players buy new specs. I don't think that buying a spec purely for a skill price discount (which is now sizable) should be encouraged. At all. and now it is.

Third is minor, given the de-emphasis of force use in this game, much to the heartache of a very VERY vocal subset of fans on these forums. I think it bears mentioning though. I believe we're gonna see a lot of Merc Soldier/Force Exiles running around.

Finally, there are some big holes in the class lists, like, doc's don't have Xenology and scouts don't have stealth as career skills. With the old costs, these oversights weren't a big deal, but because of the new premiums paid on OOC skills, the OOC has become about 3 times more expensive on them, which is substantial.

-WJL

3WhiteFox3 said:

The spirit of your statement is largely correct, but I think you have something of a misinterpretation.  What's been shown isn't so much that Attibs > skills, but instead more lower quality dice > Fewer higher quality dice in almost every combination.  So the important and most truthful part of what you're saying is supported by your second sentence: "characteristics get you an extra die in your pool".

-WJL

LethalDose said:

Speaking of descipline, well atleast the Politico and was it the Trader(?) I forgot, can get 2 extra class skills via a talent … and humans can grab a rank for free at start …but yeah the current list is somewhat strange and in general I feel OOC skills are way way too expensive - However, I dont actually see too much of a problem with picking a spec in order to get specific skills … I mean if u want to be stealthy it kinds makes sense to become a thief or assassin or survivalist or what-not …. whereas picking a spec just for one sweet (overpowered?) talent I find mroe problematic.

LethalDose said:

Good points, there (and also a good point to your breakdown.

It seems that the system wants to deemphasize attributes over skills, at least in theory (given the extremely limited means of improving them). And on a conceptual level, I see the logic there (honing specific skills vs. changing your physical makeup).

It looks like the math isn't quite working, though, and I'd encourage the devs to look at that. Personally, I REALLY like the idea of skills being more important attributes, and I'd like the math and mechanics both to reflect that.