Rikoshi said:

I disagree, though I do not think that Multi-Specialising should be too cheap, pricing it too high will mean many players will ignore the mechanic because it is now excessively expensive. I think that the previous iteration was perfectly fine, it allowed for characters to have a little more dimensionality than this current cost mechanic will provide. In my opinion this is something which impacts the characters life throughout, what is the point in removing the three specialisation limit of they are only going to make the price so prohibitive that you will only be able to gain access to additional specialisations by saving a month or more worth of xp to just gain access to a maximum of four more career skills and an additional talent tree to spend even more xp on.In addition, this also effectively makes the Force Sensitive Exile specialisation almost moot as the cost to purchase it is becoming too much.

I would however say that even if FFG maintain this cost level to publication there is nothing to stop you from simply ignoring the change and ruling the cost as the previous version or even the original printed version. I know we all want the final release to be what we each perceive as the best balance but we are never going to all agree. I personally hope that they will retract this last change in the specialisations costs and while they are at it remember to look into the changes they made into the Force chapter as some of that still refers to the Three Specialisations Max rules.

Exalted5 said:

I don't see this last skill getting on. This game really doesn't WANT you to have a lightsaber, and even if that weren't the case, FS Exile is also, probably, set up to reflect other Force Sensitive traditions, like the Baran Do Sages, the Fallanasi, or various others; ones who, while still hunted by the Emperor's pogroms, are seen as much less significant than the Jedi, or other Sith, and so not hunted AS feverishly, and thus actually more likely to be encountered by the players. These groups don't use lightsabers, and thus the skill is of no value to them, and they wouldn't, because they're not using them, and threatening the Emperor's power, are much of why they aren't exterminated.

Me being one of those people who do want to sneak in as much a "Jedi" character in as possible, I really wish there was a lightsaber skill, and a career that could get it, but I don't see it being THAT spec. Maybe a Talent within that Spec, that gives you Lightsaber as a Class skill, maybe with one or two other things, I don't know, but make it worth a Talent, but otherwise, I doubt it'll happen.

venkelos said:

I agree, having a Lightsaber skill for the Force Exile really doesn't fit, as the Force Exile is meant to be the "self-trained, on your own" breed of Force-user; it's just that with the lack of other options for F/S heroes, it's being forced into a "jack-of-all-trades" role that it's really not suited for.

If there is a Lightsaber skill, make it part of a Jedi-centric specialization.  Perhaps a talent similar to F/S Exile's that provides Perception & Vigilance as career skills, only said talent gives you Disicpline and Lightsaber instead?

I'd also initially toyed with giving the F/S specs (Exile and my two homebrew ones) a listing of career skills, but the problem was (aside from the Jedi one), exactly what skills to give them beyond Discipline?  In the end, I wound up dropping the extra career skills and going the F/S Exile's route of a Row 1 talent that lets you add two career skills to your list.

dreddwulf1 said:

I've been working on a number of character conversions and the costs of dipping into a specialization just for a skill (looking at you medicine) is really limits spending xp's in other areas. This becomes quite clear when you just want a skill and really don't have use for the associated talent trees.

I really agree with LethalDose on his suggestion.  Let anyone have any skill (maybe encourage some background story element if the skill seems really out of line) but charge for the access to talents.

just my 2 credits.  
 

rhaz said:

First time posting, but I'm not sure I understand your problem - if the character (to use your example) wants the medicine skill, but has no interest in any of the talents associated with a specialization that gives you the medicine skill as a Career Skill, that is what Non-career skill is for.  For a starting character, to bring a Non-Career skill up to max (2) it costs 25 XP.

Compared to rules as they currently stand, to buy a Specialization you say you have no interest in, (e.g. Doctor) it would cost (again assuming a starting character, and it is your second specialization - just to get a reduction in costs to increase a Career Skill) it will cost you 35 XP (20 for Non-Career Specialization + 15 for Rank 2). - Yes this is not worth the cost, but it's not intended to be.

Ok, to fix quotes here, I said make all skills the same price. I did not get into conversions that much, though I DO think that The newest change to specialization cost is unnecessarily expensive.

                                No stealing my words. Use the idea all you like, I just want acknowledgement for my ideas.

Hello, everyone.

First off, I'd just like to ask that everyone remain calm and civil in these discussions. The feedback you all have provided has been very valuable, and we all appreciate it here. However, overt hostility does dilute that feedback and lessen that value.

Second, I would like to draw everyone's attention to another update concerning the Force Sensitive specialization. As of this week, it counts as a specific specialization, referred to as a universal specialization. Simply put, purchasing it does not incur the additional costs for an out-of-career specialization; as long as it's your second specialization it'll be 20 xp. So the cost for it has not increased as per this week's update.

Hope this helps!

   Thanks for clearing up the Cost for Force Sensitive Exile, I think we all needed to hear that. As for the skills, I think the buying of skills and access should be viable for the 'freebie' character creation skill points only. After that, let all skills be the same price (Career skill prices, specifically). Specializations could stay at earlier cost (5 x total number of specializations for in-Career Specializations, 10 x total Specializations for out of career Specializations).This way, the character concerns him/herself with purchasing access to career talents while remaining free to purchase any skill deemed necessary, as long as there is a background or in-game reason to access it. This will take a little more RP for characters, but shouldn't unbalance the game in any way. More than that, it solves the skill problem without making specializations overly cheap or expensive. In fact, it takes the focus away from skills entirely.
 

                    Just an Idea. Opinions?

dreddwulf1 said:

I don't think having a significantly different cost for character creation is a good thing. It encourages certain build strategies over others to get the same character. This has the opposite effect on RP-based choices than what you are suggesting: players are encouraged not to buy what makes for the character, but instead delay those purchases until play. At that stage, players aren't making choices based on RP. 

It also has the secondary problem of not being able to tell how many XP a character is built with without knowing how points were spent at chargen.

rhaz said:

Yeah, I didn't say this.  This isn't my idea.  I strongly disagree with it.  I don't want credit for it.  This is all Dwulf

Saying all skills are career skills for everyone is simply too homogeneous.  Let specializations be good at what they SHOULD be good at.  This means they have talents that represent their abilities AND reduced costs to their set of career skills.  The caveat, there, is that their skill lists need to make sense, which needs some work, and dreddwulf1 did indicate and made some good points.

-WJL

FFG_Sam Stewart said:

This does help.  It'll also be interesting to see what gets done with "universal specialization" mechanic in the future.

I'd like to say I'm sorry I missed this on my weekly patch-note read through, but I still don't see it in the Week 7 update pdf.

-WJL

FFG_Sam Stewart said:

It does help, though I don't see it cited on either the PDF itself or the website page for the Week 7 update.  Was it something that just got didn't get included, sorta like the Breach/Defensive oversight with Lightsabers a couple weeks back?

Hm, that does appear to be a mistake on our part. Sorry about that! We'll upload the PDFs with that update as soon as possible. 

eldath said:

I think there's a big difference between capping a character and three specializations, and allowing more than three but making it pricey.

In the former, the game is basically saying, "Sorry, you're hosed" if you decide you want your character to branch out further.  By at least making it possible, you're still leaving it open as a character option, but it's one that a character is seriously going to have to weigh.

Quite frankly, there's a big difference between "jack of all trades" (dabbling into out-of-specialization skills) and "master of all trades" (piling on specializations), and I think that's something that should take significant character resources to reflect.  And yes, I know it does start to get pretty expensive after a while, but I think the question people should be asking is, "How long of a while?"

Honestly, when you're first starting out your character, do you really want to immediately just start working on piling on additional specializations, or do you want to invest your resources into the one or two specializations you're starting with?  Adding specializations adds some lateral growth, but doesn't make for much depth, and I think the key to character development (and this may be what the designers are trying to encourage) is developing your existing specializations instead of stacking on new ones.  Wanting to be "at least okay" at something that isn't in one of your core specializations isn't, in and of itself, a cost-prohibitive thing to do.

(To think of it another way, if this were D&D, and you had a party of characters at Level 6, you're probably better off with a build like Fighter 4/Rogue 2 as opposed to Fighter 1/Wizard 1/Cleric 1/Druid 1/Bard 1/Rogue 1.  And that may sound like a silly example, but I think it's also a little silly to say that your character concept needs four or five specializations early on in order to reflect what he or she is good at.)

The other thing I keep hearing is that people seem to be in agreement that adding specializations should represent a major change in a character, but someone needing to bank XP for something like three sessions to add on that third or fourth seems like too long to folks.  I'm honestly curious: compared to leveling in other systems, does this seem too long to people?  In my experience, this is on the short to moderate end for advanced character growth, but I'd like to hear other people's thoughts.

Doc, the Weasel said:

Its a 10 change point change; the difference between buying it at 20 or 30.  I disagree that this is represents "a significantly different cost for character creation".  A 10 pt change is pretty small, and if it's bought at any other point, the cost is the same.  ten points is equivalent to the purchase of two OOC skill ranks, which is another place where order/timing of purchase matters.

Besides, I think for Force Exile in particular, the mechanism is appropriate for RP.  If someone is going to create a force user as a base concept, then they're going to take Force Exile at creation for RP purposes, regardless of the cost.  I feel the new rule just facilitates it.  

-WJL