Hello Everyone!

This report features some loosening of restrictions and some helpful reminders all around the CS system.

Primary And Secondary Skill Changes

Both the Lightsaber Form and Martial Arts Form skills are changing. A conversation regarding these skills has kicked off again recently (Thank you Erinyes) about these skills that stand out from the others (and have been one of my personal peeves about the CS system for a long time). These two skills are unique in having Primary/Secondary classifications, and in forcing the selection of a specific form to tie to both skills if used.

By comparison at no point do we make people choose a primary bladed weapon type (such as dagger, rapier, broadsword, etc), or a primary blaster type (pistol, rifle, etc). Even though there are different things within those skill groups you are assumed to be skilled at all of them, at the same level.

Lightsaber Forms and Martial Arts Forms have stood apart due to the fact there are really cool “flavor” variations. That concept is not changing but its implementation is.

We are removing the secondary versions of both of these skills and making the primary the sole version. By having any points in either Lightsaber or Martial Arts, you can now select that character's preferred form, and that will continue to be displayed on the CS as the base that anyone can write off of. Note: The number of “preferred forms you are able to display on your CS is still locked to what your current rank in the club is. James provided this helpful chart if you are wondering when you can display your second preferred form.

Now, you are no longer going to be locked to only using that form listed. If you have +3 in Lightsaber you can use any form effectively at that level. You have mastery over the weapon and how to use it. The forms remain effective flavor to spice up how you describe the combat. Your character has their default preference, but if you find yourself really wanting to write using Soresu instead of Makashi, then go ahead.

This stems from two major issues. First is, it's overly restrictive. Why does a slightly different stance suddenly make you not capable of using the weapon? It is arguably less different to change forms than it is to use an entirely different style of weapon. Second, its never been feasible to “judge” a fiction as being strictly adherent to the form on your CS. Sure we have keywords listed and some general moves you can throw in there. For example, how can we enforce “whirlwind” as strictly Soresu while “whirling” is strictly Ataru?

For many of you, this change won’t do much, the majority of people don’t put points into the secondary skills. Thanks to James I have some full numbers on these.

Out of 1503 total active sheets (active members, PC/NPC/Slotted), 160 (10.6%) have points in Secondary Lightsaber, which also drastically drops in numbers above +3 skill level. There are also 175 (11.6%) with points in secondary Martial Arts (with only 7 at +4 and none at +5). This means some of you will now get to play with reworking your skill pyramids. And then everyone benefits from not needing to be restricted into how they write the forms/styles they use in combat. So go wild.

Feat Reminder

Now that the feats update has had plenty of time to settle in for people, I wanted to take a moment to remind everyone about an important detail of feats.

There are feats that add new abilities. Some of these are pieces of a skill or power that appears in higher levels of the skill/power. A +5 in Athletics doesn't need the Parkour feat to run around objects easily. A +5 in Suppression doesn’t need the Time Out feat to shut down a connection to the Force. These feats are allowing access to very specific pieces of a skill/power to be used at a lower skill level. Fatigue, focus, strength, and duration all still rely on the base skill/power level.

Species Recap

Since my last report there was a long rush of supplementals caused by many new species proposals being received. To recap we have added:

• Kushiban
• Kessurian
• Dowutin
• Gamorrean
• Shani
• Lurmen
• Selonian

Should there be a species you think is really cool, or would be fun to have a character of, we are always accepting of new proposals. We do accept proposals from canon and legends material. Species must be humanoid with two arms and two legs. I highly recommend looking at the wiki template for species to see what information is used to better support your proposal. Having all those sections helps tremendously.

Also please make sure your proposal has text that is copyable. Transcribing word-for-word descriptions is not fun for anyone.

Important Links

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Thank you for reading. As always if you have any Fiction related questions, concerns, comments, or snide remarks, feel free to message me on Discord or send me an email [Log in to view e-mail addresses].