The cover system begs the question: If where I am throughout my turn can change my cover value, why does it not also similarly change who can validly target me (either due to range, or due to line of sight).

The campaign is unlikely to be very heavy in either brawl or melee individually. Perhaps all forms of close personal combat should be combined?

Google Sheet

What prevents or even incentivizes a player to balance their character across domain?

• Access to multiple talent trees for free across all 4 domains
• Career skills that reduce XP cost across all 4 domains

But a player could reasonably focus their XP purchases on say only ground combat skills and trees.

• Doing so will progressively cost them more, as skills and talents become more expensive to purchase the more they focus.

But it could still lead to a scenario where players plausibly focus on one domain each, which is the antithesis of the system.

• Players could be given separate XP for each domain (e.g. Personal Combat XP, Social XP, etc).

That would work for trees which are generally domain specific, but maybe less so for skills. Some skills are used in multiple domains, while others aren't really specific to any one domain.

• But most skills are primarily associated with one domain. So perhaps a list should be put together.
• Maybe players should merely be prevented from spending their XP in too lopsided a fashion.

I believe the idea behind this was a system parallel to skills for improving use of various weapons, rather than as just ad hoc talents. These proficiencies would provide different advantages over the raw increase of dice provided by investing in skill ranks. Possibilities include circumstantial bonuses, increasing reliability (e.g. rerolls, miss tolerances, etc).

One possibility was to have a linear progression, e.g.

Proficiency - Side Arms

• Tier 0 - Untrained
• Tier 1 - Trained
• Tier 2 - Skilled
• Tier 3 - Veteran
• Tier 4 - Elite
• Tier 5 - Master

One downfall of this is the possibility to have low skill in a given weapon, but have "Mastery". A possible remedy is that investing in the skill automatically grants the tier bonus, although that's a possibly dangerous compounding effect.

Another possibility would be to have a flat selection of augmentations that could be taken in any order, e.g.

Proficiency - Side Arms

• Consistency
• Flexibility
• Utility

See also #9 regarding affinities

https://github.com/jtheis85/swrpg-game-mechanics/blob/master/working/game-mechanics/assets.md

Idea: Have each role provide a bonus characteristic point to a minimum level (e.g. raise your score to 3 if it wasn't already). Perhaps limit this only to starting roles. This will incentivize players to choose a variety of roles rather than a narrow specialty.

Are roles (aka careers/specializations) even a good idea, philosophically?

On the one hand they are easy to identify with, but on the other hand they foster overspecialization and pigeonholing.

Could roles be optional/opt-in? What is roles were just predetermined packages of characteristics, skills, and talents, but any ad hoc arrangement of them would also be valid and legal?

One downside to this approach is that there would no longer be "one role per domain" to encourage players to balance their characters across all 4 domains. But maybe that just means that instead, character creation should be balanced around domains directly rather than roles. A possible complication is that some skills and especially characteristics work across domains, and domain boundaries can be fuzzy.

Rather than describe mechanics in detail, describe them in general for players, and provide detailed mechanical suggestions for gm implementation, to keep things focused on action and narrative rather than crunch.

E.g. Player
Dodge (free)
Spend strain to add setback dice to attacks against you.

Dodge (improved)
Spend more strain if you are more coordinated, dodge more often.

Dodge (supreme)
Spend even more strain if you are more coordinated, dodge even more often.

Spend strain to add 1 setback die per strain spent to any ranged or melee attack targeting you as an incidental. You cannot spend more strain than your ranks in coordination, up to a maximum of 1. All characters automatically have the Dodge talent for free.

"Free" talents, like a basic dodge, are an interesting way of handling abilities that anyone should be able to do, but with also providing ways for characters to focus on/train in them to make them more powerful.

I'm planning on keeping them the same, to avoid too much underlying upheaval. But it could be worth considering modifying them. E.g is 2 physical, 4 mental(-ish) the right balance? What's the philosophy for when each of the 4 mental characteristics makes sense?

-Vanilla willpower seems pretty lackluster

Physical Characteristics

Brawn

• Athletics (Active)
• Resilience (Reactive)

Agility

• Coordination (Active)
• Reflexes (Reactive)
• Perception (Active/Reactive)
• Stealth (Active/Reactive)

Mental Characteristics

Intelligence

• Knowledge
• Problem Solving

Willpower

• Focus (Active)
• Discipline (Reactive)

Social Characteristics

Cunning

• Negotiation
• Deceive

Willpower

• Coerce/Threaten/Intimidate (Active)

Charm

• Flatter (Active)

Presence

• Influence/Sway (Active)
• Star Power/Charisma

Leadership = influence + authority. You must both be able to get people to do what you want (by whatever means) and have the authority

Is there anything here worth salvaging?

Knowledge Skills

Logistics
Security
Recon
Sabotage
Infiltration
Strategy (Planetary)
Strategy (Space)
Tactics (Wilderness)
Tactics (Urban)
Tactics (Infantry)
Tactics (Vehicle)
Tactics (Starfighter)
Tactics (Capital)

Command

Infantry
Vehicle
Starfighter
Capital
Infantry Command

Combat Skills

Personal Combat Skills

Brawl
Melee
Side Arms
Long Arms
Grenadier
Heavy Weapons

Space Combat Skills

Aggression
Reflexes (Ag)
Evasion (Cun)
Morale (Will)
Flight Leader (Pr)
Projectiles

Capital Combat Skills

Turrets (
Tactics (Cun)
Command (Pr)

Skills
Personal Combat
Brawl (Brawn)
(Fists, Kicks, Grabs)
Melee (Brawn)
(Clubs, Blades, Staves)
Side Arms (Agility)
(Pistols, Magnums, Revolvers)
Compacts (Agility)
(Machine Pistols, SMGs, Carbines, Shotguns)
Long Arms (Agility)
(Rifles, Sniper Rifles)
Thrown Weapons (Brawn)
(Grenades, knives, spears, etc)
Heavy Weapons (Brawn)
(Launchers, Rockets, Miniguns, etc)
Vehicular Combat
Laser Weapons (Ag)
Ion Weapons (Ag)
Missiles (Ag)
Torpedos(Ag)
Piloting (Planetary) (Ag)
Piloting (Space) (Ag)
Knowledge
Core Worlds
Education
Lore
Outer Rim
Underworld
Warfare
Xenology

Rebellion
Empire

Wilderness Tactics
Urban Tactics
Indoor Tactics
Infantry Tactics
Vehicle Tactics
Starfighter Tactics
Capital Tactics
Capabilities
Computers (Int)
Mechanics (Int)
Medicine (Int)
Skulduggery (Cun)
Survival (Cun)
Streetwise (Cun)
Physical
Athletics (Br) - Active
Resilience (Br) - Reactive
Coordination (Ag) - Active
Reflexes (Ag) - Reactive
Stealth (Cun) - Active
Perception (Cun) - Reactive
Mental
Focus (Will) - Active
Discipline (Will) - Reactive
Social
Charm (Pr)
Coercion (Will)
Deception (Cun)
Negotiation (Pr)
Leadership (Pr) - Inspiration

Leadership + Tactics = Command

Should characters have some kind of mechanical advantage with different social circles? e.g.

• Politics
• Media
• Law Enforcement/Justice System
• Military
• Underworld/Criminal
• Academic/Scientific
• Medicine
• Business/Finance
• Arts/Culture
• Industry

How should knowledge skills work? Should they be like traditional RPG knowledge skills, or something else?

SWRPG knowledge skills are already a bit different from d20 skills thanks to the dice mechanics. So it's not just a matter of DC thresholds and "you know it or you don't".

How do knowledge skills overlap with #12 social circles?

How many should there be?

Knowledge: Empire and Knowledge Rebellion seem too coarse given how important they'd be. Maybe split up roughly by domain?

Knowledge: Imperial Navy (vehicle, in space at least, so not ground...)
Knowledge: Imperial Army (personal, except for marines/boarding actions etc...)
Knowledge: Imperial Security (infiltration)
Knowledge: Imperial Administration (social?)
And similar for rebellion?

Should careers even be a thing? If so, what should they be?

Should they group related roles from different domains together? e.g.

This doesn't exactly work with the old career/specialization system, which which a player was to pick a career as their "main" focus, only dabbling in other areas. With the "4 pillars" focus, this would mean picking specializations from different careers, and then what's the point?

This could potentially encourage players to play the same "kind" of character in each of the 4 gameplay pillars (e.g. play a Squad leader in personal combat, a Squadron Leader in vehicle combat, a Mastermind in infiltration, etc). But I don't think this is actually a good idea. It's fine if players choose this on their own, but there shouldn't be mechanics PUSHING them to. If anything, its probably a good idea to encourage them to NOT do it, and be more broad (e.g. a solider in personal combat, a squadron leader in vehicle combat, a support character in infiltration, etc).

First off... exactly what are they, philosophically?

They appear to be lines/trees of talents that are thematically related (e.g. cover, support, etc).

I believe the idea was that affinities were reusable packages of talents that different roles/careers/specializations could have access to, but would be the same no matter where you accessed them (and having access to them twice didn't give you anything extra. Like maybe "Medic" grants you access to the "Cover" affinity, but so does "Squad Leader".

See also #10 regarding proficiencies