Thanks for the replies guys. Appreciated.

Chiss: I can see your reasoning - at first glance it just looked powerful, but I agree with your stance.

Gran: I must have overlooked the "once per encounter" - thanks for the clarification.

Arkanian: Yeah. I guess I just have an issue with that skill at the moment, should probably read over it again.

Sluissi: Heavy price to pay for an upgrade, but makes sense with their reputation for taking their time yeah. Particularly useful during structured play - even if one decides to not let them speed up due to advantages/successes - or a kinder solution up that price … so they can to it faster, it just requires a better roll. Either way its got a nice flavour to it.

Noghri: I didn't notice the changes there, I basically looked at the others - due to our agreement to disagree I didn't expect any changes to it. I do - now after looking at the changes - really like them a lot! Better, even if scent is more limited than earlier, its very useful.

I said it before.  I'm disappointed at the lack of Arcona.  I know you had to pick and choose, but, I want my salt addled Arcona!

Good job though.

Donovan Morningfire said:

And just to be clear, I'm not "right" about any of this.  :)

Cathar: Granted, this is an outgrowth of Saga, but one thing that set Cathar apart from other races were their base speed.  They were the only medium race to have a base speed of 8 rather than 6.  Given that, i would like to see a racial ability that reduces the manuever cost of getting from medium to long range (and visa versa).  I'm not sure if and how that would affect the game overall (except to make melee based cathar a touch better) but i think it would add a nice flavor, especially if no other species had the same ability.

Cerean:  I would have expected a intelect 3/agility 1, but I like the boost die to cool/vigilance, and am not really disappointed by the more mundane stat spread.

Zabrak: I would, I think, Have given them a bonus stat point to brawn, agility, or willpower.  Reduce the xp of course, but I always saw zabrak as being more "powerful" than humans in a narrower band of expertise.

Ithorians:  I feel like the 11+ brawn wound threshold is too much, 10+brawn is better I think.

Gungans: One thing I liked about the OCR d20 starwars rules on gungans (at least I think it was OCR) was that they had a bonus con.  I think they should begin with a higher wound threshold, and a lower strain threshold.  12/9 IMO.

Gamoreans: Throw them a bone.  Low Xp, and less powerful stats than the togorian (wound threshold of only 12 not 14).  Viscious is a good quality, but I don't think it's worth essentially two purchases of toughened. Most people especially won't care about this, but gamoreans get a bad rap as space orcs, and I think they can be interesting.  To be clear, i don't think making the a togorian copy is good either.  Maybe give them a bosot die to resiliance to reflect their endurance.  Dunno.  but i think they need a boost, or 100xp.

Farghul: their tails are known to be partially prehnsile.  it'd be nice to include that.  Not enough to wield a weapon, but enought to grab something from the pack as a incidental maybe?

These are all minor quibblings for the most part, and I don't want them to detract from teh fact i think you guys dd a great job.  really quite nice.

And I tend to be a little … less conservative in my design, so i understand where you may be coming from.  especially since this is a beta, and not even the full fledged game.

I'll check for that thread and maybe post a few ideas for my above choices.  Gotta have kushiban, or it just doesn't feel like star wars to me.  :)

Majesticmoose said:

Fair enough, but I'll respond with my rationale where I can, though most of these are Cyril's designs.

For Cathar, the movement thing didn't make any sense as EotE isn't a tactical game, so I just simply discarded it.  Not really sure they need any kind of movement enhancer, since as you said, it really just benefits a melee fighter.

On Zabraks, they've never been noted as being inherently superior to any of those traits, and given the way species in EotE are designed, you don't get a 3 in one Characteristic without having a 1 in something else, and Zabraks aren't noted as being inherently deficient in anything.  I thnk the increase to starting Wound and Strain Threshold address the Zabrak traits of being "more enduring physically & mentally" than the average Human.

For the Farghul, I debated that adding the whole prehensile tail, but ultimately felt it wasn't really needed.  If you do want them to have it, just slap on the version the Ryn have and call it a day.

As for designing these species, even when doing official work for Saga Edition, it was a tight-rope between "too good" and "too weaksauce."  How close or how far I got to the mark on the species I developed can vary from one player to the next.  But as you said, EotE is still "in beta" and so the versions we have of the core species now may wind up getting radical changes when the final product comes out at whatever point it does next year.

Really like the write ups as a whole, and they're in line (mostly) with what I would use, so I'll likely use it whole cloth. The one exception that I have issue with is the Verpine.  In lore they're renowned as techs (at least on par with the Sluissi), but instead of getting an ability like the Sluissi, they get something on their eyesight (which, to be fair, is something they can do well). I'm not sure if this was to keep them different from the Sluissi or not, and while I certainly wouldn't want to go back to the D6 days where they were pretty much super broken, I think that something different is called for. Also, maybe something about the fact that they use radio frequencies to communicate. 

Not sure what I'd do here, but I'd love to hear your thought process into why you chose what you did with them.

Just tried to download your great work but I keep getting a page not found error.

Kaldriss said:

Are you trying for the first draft or the revised version. The revised one is at http://gsa.thegamernation.org/2012/10/31/star-wars-edge-of-the-empire-the-unofficial-species-menagerie-2-0/ and seems to be fine.

E

Kaldriss said:

The link that Cyril posted in the initial post doesn't work as I intentionally took that version down.

Eldath has the link to the most recent version in his post, and that should work.

Raithe said:

Well, the Verpine already get a couple of perks that fit their reputation as mechanics, namely Gearhead and a bonus rank in the Mechanics skill, so it's not like they didn't get anything.  With the Sluissi, they're known for their tech-savvy but also for taking a lot of time to get it "just right," meaning that if they want to get their extra perk, they have to spend a manuever to do so, which may not always be a viable option to take.  The Perception bonus is itself a nod to prior versions of the Verpine in other systems and their exceptional eye for fine details.  Though I suppose if you really felt the Verpine need more of an edge in being mechanics, then you could expand the microscopic vision to also cover Mechanics checks, or just provide a boost die instead of negating a setback die on Perception checks. or even both, though if you do go that route, I'd ping the Verpine another 5 XP, as an always present boost die is a much larger present than negating a not-always-present setback die.

The radio frequencies bit s utlimately a fluff item, and really doesn't have much use unless you've got multple Verpine in a party, plus the fact that EotE really doesn't concern itself with languages makes it even less useful under most circumstances, so in the interest of saving space and keeping with the main focus of crunch, it was left out since there's not really any mechanical benefit involved.