scouts & racial bonuses

[Aaziroth]

Was wondering how something should be ruled....
If a race has a special bility that duplicates a class talent, for example Umbarran's stealthy which allows a reroll of stealth, and the scout camouflage talent of improved stealth does the same, does an Umbarran scout get to reroll stealth twice, or is it that they get screwed over? I'm starting to find a lot of similar situations where things duplicate the same thing... another example on equipment, accurate weapons change range penalty to on 0 - s to 0 Med rp -2 & long to -5, and far shot does same exact thing.... do these things get screwed or what? Kinda looks like wotc dropped the ball here

 

[Wednesday Boy]

It's hard to say without seeing the wording in front of me but I would say that if two abilities had the exact same verbiage they would be redundant instead of additive in any way.

That said, I don't think it's WotC dropping the ball. The Scout camouflage talent is an avenue to let any Scout to be more stealthy. The Umbarrans' ability is a nice freebie to have. If you're an Umbarran Scout you have an opportunity to skip the camouflage talent and specialize in something else.

It can be an issue if a talent is redundant because of your racial ability and it's a prerequisite for another talent. But those are corner cases and I don't think they're a big failing to not be accounted for. In those cases I'd talk with my GM to see if I could count the Umbarran's racial ability as the prerequisite.

Concerning Far Shot and accurate weapons, to me it's a boon to have different avenues to get a similar ability because it makes gaining abilities more palatable based on your character's situation. If your character has feats available feats but little money, Far Shot is appealing. If your character has plenty of money but all feat slots are spoken for, an accurate weapon is appealing. It's nice to have options that don't require difficult decision making.

 

[Umbran]

does an Umbarran scout get to reroll stealth twice, or is it that they get screwed over?

My understanding is that yes, they get to reroll twice. I expect most Umbarran scouts would just bypass that scout talent, but if they did choose it, they get full benefit.

At least, that's how we're ruling it in the game I'm currently playing - we have an analogous setup with a Twi'lek scoundrel. Twi'lek's have a racial power to reroll Deception checks. There's a scoundrel talent that does the same. And, Scoundrels also have Knack, which allows reroll of any skill check. In theory, if she took all three, she'd be one heck of a good liar.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Reroll twice. If a character spends a talent selection on an ability, it's a jerk of a GM that says they can't use it because he's playing the "wrong species".

 

[Aaziroth]

If that's the case wouldn't the same go for accurate weapons with far shor? As there are feats depending on the type of pistol or rifle makes it accurate which has the same benefits of far shot... so if a character for example had riflemaster and far shot wouldn't it stack as well? Granted riflemaster has a few other effects depending on the type of rifle such as heavy blaster rifles increase dmg to d12

 

[ValhallaGH]

The range penalty-reduction bonuses were designed to let a character shoot out to the limit of the weapon with zero penalties. Unfortunately, with the website down, I can no longer link to this explicit statement.