Are Force-users more powerful than we thought?

By Donovan Morningfire, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

You're just saying that 'cause you're a penguin. <_<

No, I'm just saying that because I'm a smug penguin. And I have all the fish*.

* Now that I think about it, this probably explains why the other penguins look so angry all the time...

Edited by Col. Orange

You're just saying that 'cause you're a penguin. <_<

No, I'm just saying that because I'm a smug penguin. And I have all the fish.

He that hoards the fish should beware the Aqualish! The simple, simple Aqualish.... You never go full Intellect 1.

No, I'm just saying that because I'm a smug penguin. And I have all the fish*.

Touché, sir. Touché

I think that what most people want is some equivalency. Characters of the same amount of XP value should have equivalent ability. Not the same, mind. And obviously in a point-based game there will be the outliers, but overall FFG has managed to create a game where characters are on a fairly even keel. I would hope they will endeavor to continue on that path and not stray from their original purpose.

Nope, I'm not saying that Force users are just better that the other in general therms. I'm not trying to convince anyone, I'm exposing my point of view and I'm open to change. I don't use to say "that no one can convince me" because I will listen, and if your idea is better than my own, I will change and "upgrade" it.

I do think we agree, at least for the most part, so sorry if I came off a bit too hard. I was mostly reacting to Bipolar's suggestion that Force Users needed to be designed to be inherently better than everyone else, which I think would both not make for a very good game, but also doesn't really align with what we (or at least I) see in the movies.

Ultimately, I think you can find find arguments for either position. I just don't think it makes much sense, from a game design perspective, to pick the interpretation that makes the game actively worse.:)

If I recall, in the OT Princess Leia had the highest kill count.

Muggles: 1

Jedi: 0

That's because Leia's a woman, and women rock. Fact.

That's because Leia's a woman, and women rock. Fact.

This is also why all the main character Jedi are male. The galaxy couldn't handle the Real Ultimate Power of female jedi. True story.

Not sure but, Leia was the first (or one of them) famous super heroine on cinemas?

That's because Leia's a woman, and women rock. Fact.

This is also why all the main character Jedi are male. The galaxy couldn't handle the Real Ultimate Power of female jedi. True story.

**** straight.

As far as Jedi PCs being inherently "more powerful" than mundane PCs, I think there is going to be a slight advantage for those PCs made using Force & Destiny, as odds are good those PCs are going to start out with Force Rating 1 as part of their career and/or specialization (I'm leaning towards it being part of the specialization,but that's just idle speculation on my part).

But I do think that Josep and Biploar Potter and even ErikB/Aluminum Wolf are off-base in that just being a Force-user of any stripe, Jedi or not, does not mean the PC should automatically be several degrees more awesome than the mundane PCs in the group, for no reason beyond "they're a Force-user!" That was one if the big problems with Saga Edition, was that the application of a simple feat could turn a Jedi PC into very powerful character simply due to how skill check bonuses scaled in comparison to character defense scores.

The example of Jango Fett was brought up, and it's a good one because he was able to go toe-to-toe with one of the primary heroes of the films and pretty much win; Jango's goal was to escape, and he did, though Obi-Wan did manage to score a minor victory in planting a tracking device on Slave 1. The main reason that Jango got beheaded by Windu was that most of his tricks (twin pistols, jet pack, armor weapons) had been rendered useless (jet pack destroyed, armor was likely badly damaged, and he only had a single pistol after Kamino). I suspect a Jango at full operating capacity vs. Mace Windu would be a very different fight.

If I recall, in the OT Princess Leia had the highest kill count.

Muggles: 1

Jedi: 0

How many people were on the Death Star when Luke blew it up?

On the other hand, how many people were on Alderaan when Grand Moff Tarkin blew it up?

:D

He has a point... Making the tally:

Muggles: 0

Jedi: 0

Tarkin: Lots

Turns out all you need is a space station mass-murdering superweapon specialisation, and you're good to go. :)

He has a point... Making the tally:

Muggles: 0

Jedi: 0

Tarkin: Lots

Turns out all you need is a space station mass-murdering superweapon specialisation, and you're good to go. :)

Yeah, that bit of kit is way overpowered. That exhaust port limitation is never going to come up in play.

Edited by Col. Orange

Donovan with off-base do you mean that I are more based on non-real or non canonical info like roleplay info?

I'm not sure if my "uber" Force idea come from d6, d20 or Saga, but the general impresion about movies and TV shows are that Jedis (Force Users) can beat up a lot of "normal" people. If you consider that ARC troopers can also do it, yep, its a fact, but why there is always so many references that a Jedi is like a small army?

I know that strong character like Bane and Jango can confront and defeat Jedis but, seems that they are uber chars trained to confront and battle Jedi. In general therms seems than Jedi can fight with almost anyone with no problem.

About Jango vs Windu... it seems that the difference of "scale of power" was awesome. Windu killed Jango so easily because he only have one gun? Not sure. Of course Windu is the top fighter of the Jedi order but...

At Clone Wars Yoda itself tells to a few clones, that are capable of destroy lots battle droids and even tanks, that are NO MATCH against Ventress. Its like a very "scale of power difference". Sith battle training? Force Powers? No idea what is exactly but, maybe a casuality or not, but in general therms Force users use to be really dangerous and capable to confront high grade/military trained troopers.

Only the best troopers can withstand them. Of course, if there is a clear reference, maybe I'm not taking the right focus, the story tells us that "generally" Jedi beat non-Jedi but Obi (no lightsaber) vs Grievous, had a lot of problems to defeat him.

Anyone has any clarification about the Force and its true scale of power?

Yeah, that bit of kit is way overpowered. That exhaust port limitation is never going to come up in play.

True. **** those crafty players, choosing a piece of equipment with no drawbacks!

When Order 66 came up, even Jedi Masters fell fairly quickly and easily to being outnumbered by Clone Troopers. Part of it, of course, was surprise.

I was interested in the Clone Wars story arc with Pong Krell, who was shown to be a very powerful Jedi Master who had slipped to the dark side. While it did take effort, clone troopers were able to take him down.

Keep in mind, however, that the power-level we are seeing in both Episodes I-III and the Clone Wars are well-trained Jedi, many of whom are Masters, never mind Knights. Even Obi-Wan as fully-trained Padawan-almost-Knight in Episode I is likely to have been working with 3 force die, and had at least a minimum of 60xp invested in force power move (knocking over droids). He was not a beginning character even at that point.

I think FFG will do a good job at balancing things. Becoming a Jedi Knight will be a long, arduous road for characters to build up to.

I have to think to a certain extent the balance we are concerned about is in front of us. I'm as guilty as anyone of thinking of autofire as OP. I might not feel the same way when some Lightsaber wielding do gooder starts deflecting shots like swatting mosquitos. In fact I know I won't feel bad about using the HBR platoon of stormtroopers at all.....

The xp curve is going to be one aspect I think that reins things in the most. Given how the talent trees are now, and then the xp investment per power, I think possibly Lightsaber skills/talents and such will similarly follow that structure. Consequently it will be very expensive to advance a Jedi. Some may make a beeline for FR but it still is going to be expensive and they aren't going to be particularly useful for much else.

Edited by 2P51

Touching on the above post, Episode I-III Jedi are individuals who are taken as infants and trained every single day under a wealth of teachers - Yoda, the Council, their own Master, their pre-Master instructors, other students/Padawans, etc. - and whilst using a vast supply of resources - the Archives, holocrons, temples and other institutions, etc. - and are able to do so openly and without fear of the Empire. The above makes for inherently better warriors and scholars, by sheer virtue of circumstance.

Jedi in the Rebellion Era will not be so fortunate. They will begin their training much later on in years, at least by the norm, and since most of the equipment used by Jedi has been confiscated by the Empire they'll have little tools on hand to aid them; furthmore, as the number of teachers in the galaxy has dwindled to almost nothing, finding anyone who can pass their knowledge on would be extremely hard. Couple this with the fact that lessons and open action is inherently dangerous, and you've got a mixture that makes for Jedi who are weaker by circumstance.

This is not to say that Jedi can't become uber-powerful - this is true of any character with enough training/experience - but Jedi at this time should not be as skilled in their path as Jedi from the prequels.

In hindsight, my 40k RPG comparison seems off base. What i should have asked instead was what exactly should Force and Destiny offer that hasnt already been presented, except to make Force users more powerful? They have already presented a full base of abilities that we are familiar with from the movies, light side at least. I don think a book that puts in some lightsaber variants and styles and a cpl dark side powers will be very well received. They are going to put in another 5 careers with 3 specs each, plus plans for 5 more career books if this pattern with the others stays true to form. Thats a lot of jedi/sith paths to take. But for all the CRBs to stay on the same power level youre going to be looking at a lot of overlap. Of course i could be wrong, but im really not seeing alternatives.

Furthermore i am vehemently opposed to star destroyer move shenanigans. The only time that occured outside of unleashed IIRC was when Daala attacked Yavin 4, and i think the guy who chunked the star destroyers immediately died from the strain. (Borsk 81 or something?) What i mean by more powerful is greater reliability in getting off powers. Being able to lift a frieghter is well within the scale the movies showed us. High end of the scale? Sure. But within the realm of possibility.

What many people dont seem to see is that the Force Users are strong, and with lots of xp invested will be doing lots of damage and succeding on many checks. The caveat is that they wont be triumphing nearly as much as other characters.

Look at all the powers that let you spend pips to gain success or advantage. Also means red dice are much scarier for a jedi since they wont be rolling as many yellows to help balance out the effects of despair. All this means that the base careers are just as good as Jedi, and can actually do far better in their chosen fields.

Covering basic careers/specialisations that are Force-related is likely to be the focus - something which can be done without making each character overpowered. Additional Power options, the option of buying into more Force Rating talents would all be present, too - essentially allowing you to go from starting characters-with-Force access, to Force-users of a higher calibre.

You can cover new ground, therefore, without having to up the power levels to keep it original.

The problem with using Jedi from the Prequel Films and especially those from The Clone Wars is that as Shakespearian_Soldier noted is those are individuals that were not only trained from infancy, but are are far from being "starting tier" characters. Even Ahsoka was far more capable than your average starting PC would be, even in Saga Edition terms (she was 'introduced' as a 3rd level Jedi in The Clone Wars Campaign Guide), and Obi-Wan was almost a Jedi Knight by the time we first met him in The Phantom Menace. So the closest we've seen in the films and TV series so far to an actual wet-behind-the-ears Jedi trainee is Luke Skywalker when he's introduced in A New Hope prior to Artoo running off in the middle of the night, and even that state of affairs doesn't last very long (he likely dumped all the XP he got from the Death Star rescue into boosting up his Sense power to get the offensive Control Upgrade).

But here's the other thing... what makes for a good movie or TV series doesn't always make for a good RPG, and this goes double for video games. Force Unleashed was a fun game to play, but I don't want Starkiller to be the default power level for Jedi PCs.

As far as "true power of the Force," that depends on where the particular author sets the bar. Timothy Zahn sets the bar a lot lower than a number of other EU authors. The Dark Empire series set the bar much higher with the Emperor's use of Force Storms, and other stories had Luke doing near-godlike feats such as flying the Falcon solo and operating every station with a better efficiency than Han with a full crew complement could ever hope to do, or Luke using TK to reconstruct Vader's citadel on Coruscant "just because." The 2D Clone Wars animated series treat Jedi like superhuman gods, especially Mace Windu during his fight on Dantooine. The two Force Unleashed games were pretty much "who cares about if it makes sense, just let the player do really cool stuff with the Force!"

So I'd say the real guideline to go by are the movies, as those are the sources with direct input from the creator of the franchise (his involvement in The Clone Wars seems to have been mostly "idea guy" rather than actually developing or even consulting on how the action took place). In the films, we never see anyone hurling capital ships around like toys; closest we get is Palpatine hurling multiple Senate Pods at Yoda during RotS, which themselves were probably Silhouette 2. Yoda lifts an X-Wing in ESB* and some pretty heavy-looking machinery in AotC, both of which are likely Silhouette 3. Force Lightning came out of left field when RotJ hit theaters, and it's only been in the EU where it's been relegated to "standard dark side attack power" rather than a demonstration of just how powerful a Force-user the Emperor was, that he could buck the laws of conservation of energy and create lightning out of thin air.

*As for Yoda looking exhausted/tired after doing so, I'd contend that he was only pretending it was a difficult feat for him so as to not leave Luke totally discouraged. Luke's at low point, having just disappointed his teacher, and if Yoda makes it look too easy, Luke could very well resign himself to "I'll never be that good." Seeing as how Yoda's a teacher by nature, he'd know this, and know to make it look it took even him some serious effort; it's a way for him to show Luke that it can be done, but not to beat himself up over it if a venerable master had put forth some significant effort.

Keep in mind folks that the Force Powers we're going to see will likely be more in line with the films and probably not much of what we've seen in any of the video games or the Clone Wars, and it's definitely not going to be like WEG. Even the powers we saw in Eps I-III wouldn't be game breaking, mostly it was just a lot of spectacular jumps and pushing stuff around, I'm pretty certain it will be comparable numerically to whats already available to other combat careers. They've made it pretty clear that it's their intention for this series of games to stay true to the Rebellion Age and have mostly stuck to it so far at least with the basic RAW. My concern will be the Supplements and the Signature Powers and such.

The Force in Eps IV-V is what the current powers are based on, F&D will bring in what we saw in Ep VI and probably the Prequels. Maybe, just maybe there will be some powers from Ep VII but I doubt it as it's probably not covered in FFG license.

Edited by FuriousGreg

*As for Yoda looking exhausted/tired after doing so, I'd contend that he was only pretending it was a difficult feat for him so as to not leave Luke totally discouraged. Luke's at low point, having just disappointed his teacher, and if Yoda makes it look too easy, Luke could very well resign himself to "I'll never be that good." Seeing as how Yoda's a teacher by nature, he'd know this, and know to make it look it took even him some serious effort; it's a way for him to show Luke that it can be done, but not to beat himself up over it if a venerable master had put forth some significant effort.

It's also worth noting that Yoda is around 900 years old at this point - and he's on the cusp of dying from old-age (he does, after all, snuff it in RotJ). I'd imagine that his looking exhausted wasn't that he was pretending, but rather genuinely was; but that's more a reflection of his advanced years than limited Force ability.

Yeah, I thought Yoda was honestly worn out by the effort.

He was old and close to the end of his life.