Before going into individual Edges, I thought I’d first talk a little bit about what makes a good Edge. Edges are the building blocks of your character in the later Without Number books. They are defining class abilities, but what that means can be a bit unclear. Especially when you also consider Foci, which can also be defining.
My philosophy on Edges are they should fall into one of two categories. They either need to Solve a Problem, or make you Significantly Better. The latter category usually means adding an ability modifier. Such upgrades are rare (see my post on Backgrounds about that), so improving a key ability mod is worth the Edge. Not many Foci outside of racial/origin choices give a modifier bonus, and the Edges usually come with a few other things as well.
The other option for an Edge is that they Solve a Problem. My go to example of this is the Veteran’s Luck Edge. Originally a Warrior ability in Stars and Worlds, I think it’s one of the best abilities in the game. It gives the player options (kill something or not be killed), and it can be used often. It Solves a Problem, the problem being something is about to kill you. When making my own Edges, I try to consider how they compare to Veteran’s Luck.
Unfortunately, many of the base Edges in Cities and Ashes compare pretty poorly. Something like Educated is a pretty poor choice (being the equivalent of 10ish skill points). That’s not powerful or interesting nor does it really solve anything. One thing I tried to do is improve some of these Edges. Some Edge’s got reworked, others got a smaller boost in how often their abilities can be used.
One reason I’ve done this is for balance sake, but also for genre. As attested to by Keven Crawford in many reddit posts, characters using Edges in Cities and Ashes are weaker than their Stars and Worlds counterparts. This is for the sake of the genre: cyberpunk characters are assumed to make themselves more powerful with cool cyberware, and post-apocalyptic survivors are meant to be less powerful.
Neither of those assumptions fit the game I want to run. I plan for characters to go on adventures, fight evil threats, and in general be heroes. There’s no major enhancements like cyberware, or at least none readily available. So characters need to be stronger. Ashes recommends giving an extra Edge at level 3, but I think my reworks will work better and keep characters more focused.