Are Force-users more powerful than we thought?

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

Quick observation: my previous post assumed that one upgrade is applied only once. But that having been said, even if the upgrade can be applied more than once, it is still dependent upon the strength upgrade purchased, not the amount of force pips applied, so it still tops out at 4 maximum...

Nope. According to Sam (and I included the Strength Upgrade to Move as a specific example in my question), the only existing limit is how many Force Points you spend to trigger the Strength Upgrade.

So if a PC has purchases two Strength Upgrades, they could trigger it three times (assuming they generate enough Force Points in the first place) to affect a Silhouette 6 object. Granted, you're talking a fairly powerful Force-user (Force Rating 3 at least) in order to pull this off with any kind of regularity, but the potential is there, especially once Force & Destiny enters circulation.

I see what you mean in terms of "increase"; I was (and am) reading it that it tops out at silhouette 4 in the same way that armour doesn't stack. This probably should be FAQ'd at some point. I'm not saying force users shouldn't be able to throw a star destroyer around, but even Yoda needed to focus to move a silhouette 3 object (the X-wing). However, I see this kind of power being more on the level of a "signature ability" rather than in the basic power.

Here's another thought about how this isn't necessarily broken. Assuming that your new reading is correct, a force user is capable of triggering the force move power three times to upgrade to silhouette 6. The object itself has to be within short (personal) range for the basic move power to be triggered. By definition, a silhouette 6 object (a Nebulon-B Frigate) occupies much more than short range by virtue of its volume. It's 300 meters long, which I would classify as long range from one end to the other. As such, the force user would need to also boost the range of the power just to get it to have the entirety of a Silhouette 6 object fall within long range. That's less force pips available to a user for doing the strength upgrade...

So if a target is more than 20 feet long do you make players use medium range to shoot at it if they are standing next to it?

So if a target is more than 20 feet long do you make players use medium range to shoot at it if they are standing next to it?

Obviously not. :) However, shooting at a large object and trying to lift a large object are two very different tasks.

OK, so if a dowel is lying on the ground next to you that is 10 feet long, projecting away from you, and you have the strength to lift it with your hand how is that different than using the Force? I'm just playing devil's advocate here or what I'm sure some player would say.

Should I say I shouldn't touch this with a 10' pole? :P

What we are talking about is scale here, small object like a dowel can support its entire weight along its length ... A crane is strong enough to lift an entire house, but if the crane isn't secured right, or if the load of the house isn't secured right, either the crane will fall over, or the house will disintegrate. I think using real-world physics to discuss a mystical energy field is not necessarily a good way to go with this. :P

For the purposes of lifting such a massive object like a frigate, and for the purposes of limiting potential abuses of this power, I would say (and houserule) until a FAQ comes out staying otherwise that the range of the power must also be increased to completely encompass the silhouette of the object being moved... Assuming of course that the power itself is not limited to Silhouette 4.

Again, while not really an issue for purely EotE or AoR games, which a Force-user is capped at Force Rating 2 (or 3 if the GM permits a PC to take the universal Force-Sensitive specializations from both books), it will be a concern once Force & Destiny rolls around.

As an observation though, you may have hit the solution right there. Between the removal of the force rating chart and the forsaken jedi being only FR 3, maybe the plan is to simply make the max force rating of a player fairly low? At FR4 you could still do some silly things, but not with much reliability. Its not till what? FR5 or 6 that the player is going to be regularly having more then 1-3 points per roll?

I ain't saying the ability to toss a dreadnought around isn't silly or unbalancing, but its a lot less world ending if it only happens a couple times per campaign...

I think there will be a FR cap, I think 5 but maybe 6. FS 1, finish Exile 1 more, move through Emergent you're at 3, then maybe one for Padawan, Knight and Master, to end at 6. That of course would be the pinnacle of a Jedi's career and cost hundreds and hundreds if not well in excess of 1000 xp to reach.

Personally I'm really hoping they don't do Padawan, Knight, and Master specs. A Padawan is pretty adequately covered by Exile/Emergent, IMO.

And lolno, F&D should NOT be Deathwatch to Edge/AoR's DH. That would be completely awful.

Personally I'm really hoping they don't do Padawan, Knight, and Master specs. A Padawan is pretty adequately covered by Exile/Emergent, IMO.

And lolno, F&D should NOT be Deathwatch to Edge/AoR's DH. That would be completely awful.

Well... Age of Rebellion and Edge of the Empire are seamlessly compatible as the designers promised. They have made the same promise for Force and Destiny. I suspect that even with a book replete with force-sensitive careers, you're not going to have overpowered low-xp characters. Keep in mind, high XP Hired Guns get access to Signature abilities that include eliminating all minions from an encounter. It's reasonable for a high-xp Force sensitive to be able to do something similar, but at lower points I think we'll see an even power level.

Outside of Force Unleashed, have we ever seen a Force user move much more than silhouette 4 sized things?

Trying to decide if I want to cap it at 4 for now. (as the non-chart text doesn't mention the multiple uses)

Also, does this affect much outside of Move size and Influences Strain power yet?

(Strain pretty much says it can be used multiple times right in the non-chart text, but I can't remember a time when a Force user in the fiction just puts someone to sleep, or whatever.)

I agree with some sort of cap on silhouette. I think probably buying ranks of strength is appropriate. I just don't see how multiple activations of Move makes any common sense at all without even worrying about matters of it being OP. I would think a Force pip per size as well, which means you'd need a money shot of a roll with a 5 or 6 FR and 8 ranks of strength upgrades to even make it possible to toss Star Destroyers, so not impossible for the EU fans, but pretty unlikely.

As far putting people to sleep, I recall Mace Windu doing it in the Obi Wan undercover arc in TCWs.

Outside of Force Unleashed, have we ever seen a Force user move much more than silhouette 4 sized things?

Trying to decide if I want to cap it at 4 for now. (as the non-chart text doesn't mention the multiple uses)

Also, does this affect much outside of Move size and Influences Strain power yet?

(Strain pretty much says it can be used multiple times right in the non-chart text, but I can't remember a time when a Force user in the fiction just puts someone to sleep, or whatever.)

Like Starkiller's Star Destroyer move, Luke does a comparable force move against an AT-AT in Dark Empire. Yoda says size doesn't matter... but he doesn't know how OP these things can get, hehe. Maybe we're not suppose to be taking him literally. Maybe Yoda's just in teacher mode when he says "Size matters not". I mean, he at least displays a little bit of difficulty when he lifts an x-wing, as compared to something many times easier, like a lightsaber from his pocket.

I want the smugglers to be balanced with the Jedi, so as a GM, I'd need to skew the rules towards this as much as possible, even if that means disregarding EU. Size matters.

An AT-AT is Silhouette 4, which means that even a conservative reading of the rules would allow for that.

We know now that Force Unleashed is officially non-canon now... So Flinging Star Destroyers is hopefully off the list. :P

I don't think there will be much of an issue with force characters power creep.

Their powers don't necessarily have to be house-ruled at all, just narratively limited. For example, the current era has very little option to train as jedi, and i'm guessing when F&D comes out, it will be around RotJ or just after, meaning that there may be a few more jedi coming out of hiding but nothing as powerful as in the prequel era.

Regardless or the era though, they can STILL be limited with situation and narrative effect. There will be limited options to train, bounty hunters and the Empire (or what remains of it) will still be a huge threat, and travelling around letting off powers like Gandalf in the shire is just going to draw some massive attention and generally unwanted as well I'd guess.

I can't wait til they come in personally (as i'm sure the rest of the community can't wait either). It's going to make for some incredibly tense and exciting gameplay.

An AT-AT is Silhouette 4, which means that even a conservative reading of the rules would allow for that.

We know now that Force Unleashed is officially non-canon now... So Flinging Star Destroyers is hopefully off the list. :P

It's tough to overstate this. Depending on this canon review a lot of EU assumptions may go away.

I noticed this a while ago and brought it up in another thread. I'm glad to hear than my hunch was correct.

To answer the subject question, no, I don't think this makes force users more powerful. We have to keep in mind what the force die is and how many you can roll. At absolute best, you can roll 2 circles per die. More realistically, you might get 1 per die, and chances are you only have a die or two to roll. You have to recognize that the force die is largely dark side points, not light side. If you're playing to the setting conceits and not drawing on the dark side, even a reasonably powerful force user isn't going to have more than a few circles per roll. Even when F&D comes out and characters can get a higher force rating and thus roll more dice, that really doesn't change anything. In EoE and AoR, if you play to the setting, you're actually more likely to draw on the dark side than a higher rating character from F&D. I really fail to see how F&D is going to change anything.

As at least one other poster pointed out, it's not enough to hit someone with a Star Destroyer; you need to factor in the range. If you are moving Star Destroyers, you are doing so in space and thus are working on planetary scale. That's going to chew up a ton of circles just to increase to range enough to actually have any effect. Moving a Star Destroyer even long range would have absolutely no effect in a starship combat unless the ship is already colliding with something. And back to the first point about force rating and the dice, even an experienced force user with a maxed out power tree is going to need 4 or 5 circles in order to pull off this effect. That's just not somethings that's going to happen (not to mention the war crime you are committing by throwing a ship into another ship).

Regarding putting a limit on the Move-Strength upgrade, I am vehemently and completely opposed to such a narrow-minded and abusive ruling. There is absolutely nothing written that would lead to this conclusion. If you can reactivate any other upgrade an unlimited number of times, why is Strength any different? If I can draw a silhouette 4 asteroid in from any single spot in the planetary system (realizing that I probably need a force rating of 10 to do this), why can't I lift a silhouette 5 object that is right in front of me. It's a ridiculous conclusion based in fear, not based on the rules or rational thought.

Lastly, while the more ridiculous displays of power are hilariously easy to do on paper, I really don't expect to see them in play. There is nothing that F&D can include that will allow for these things to happen with any frequency. If nothing else I have said has swayed you, consider the force rating itself and the amount of XP needed to get there. Assuming that increases to force rating are at the end of the tree, the amount of XP needed to get to the upgrade, mixed with the amount of XP needed to pick up the number of specializations needed in order to do so, this kind of power just isn't something the players are going to wield. Remember that each new specialization requires 10 XP per specialization you will have. We're talking about 100 XP to hit Force Rating for the EoE Force Exile, 75 for the AoR Force Emergant, and at least 50 more XP in order to get the two specializations. Add to this powers and upgrades, and you can see how this really isn't a problem. Bare minimum in Specializations alone, we are talking at least 225 XP in order to get force rating 3, which really isn't that high. Any Specializations added in F&D are only going to be more expensive. Force rating 4 is at least 340 XP, and 5 is at least 465 XP. Not happening.

Edited by ScooterinAB

The trouble is, the canon is officially in flux at the moment. We've just got some preliminary stuff, but not, as far as I'm aware, an official document signed and sealed by Leland Chee or the team that he's a part of.

Either way, this is a good conversation to have, because I expect the Force is going to be one of the most contentious things in how it is handled. We'll get our first look at Force & Destiny, which may clarify some of the stuff that we've been talking about here.

ScooterinAB is on the right track here. The potential for serious breakage will likely be caused by some House Rule(s) in place now that may cause a ripple effect, the "Rule of Cool" which can often lead to abuse, not fully implementing balancing rules (we don't know how Destiny is going to work yet), and building rather than developing Force using PCs over time (this allows Player's to skip the development curve that alter choices along the way often min-maxing Force-monsters rather than well rounded Jedi).

I think ScooterinAB has hit it on the head. While the potential for abuse is there, it's on paper and not in the practical moms to f the game. In addition, if a force user commits all of their dice to lift a starship, then it's dice not committed to defense or some other piece. A powerful Jedi may be able to lift big objects, but most of the time it's being able to multitask effectively. One die committed to defense, maybe another committed to another task, leaving one for knocking droids down.

If a force user is focusing on moving something big, they'll be vulnerable in other ways.

Edited by Agatheron

Hi people!

I found this on forums about % statics about dices http://maxmahem.net/wp/star-wars-edge-of-the-empire-die-probabilities/
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Force Die

Results on the force die can be calculated in a similar fashion. The light and dark side die have 8 pips of their respective type over the die’s 12 faces, and so a 2/3 or 66% chance of rolling a light side pip or dark side pip on any given dice. However the actual distribution of results on a single die is unequal. In the abstract the odds of an individual pip are equal, but any given die is more likely to roll a dark side pip (58.3%) than a light side pip (41.6%).

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Its pretty complicated to obtain high results with the Force, and about scale of power, the biggest thing I ever seen or remember that canonically has been moved its a X-Wing and a few Federation tanks.

I'm "pro canon" and "anti-balance". If the biggest telekinetic only moves that thing I want that, but the same way, if its capable to survive without any problem to a more than 1 km (0.7 miles) fall or fight with a lot of droids at the same time without being hit or even fainted, I also want that.

GM's/Players can always expand powers easily if they wish to use Star Destroyers as thrown weapons XD, but I would like that the basic essence were more canonlike.

One doubt about Leeland Chee, there is a page or else to know about what exactly canon is or the revision hasn't finished?

I almost forgot it. In my main game one of my players have a Force Rating 7 (Yeah!) and sometimes he doesn't get more than 3 or 4 Pips.

Edited by Josep Maria

The trouble is, the canon is officially in flux at the moment. We've just got some preliminary stuff, but not, as far as I'm aware, an official document signed and sealed by Leland Chee or the team that he's a part of.

Either way, this is a good conversation to have, because I expect the Force is going to be one of the most contentious things in how it is handled. We'll get our first look at Force & Destiny, which may clarify some of the stuff that we've been talking about here.

Less than 5 months likely................but again...........who's counting.............

I think we certainly expect more Force clarification, Lightsaber skill, probably some gear. Don't know about ships, there can always be more added but I'm not sure what there is for specifically related to Jedi. New race choices will be interesting.

As I cited earlier, it's not a huge issue right now, because going past Force Rating 3 isn't possible.

But, if FFG follows the career/spec set-up for Force & Destiny that they've used in both of the prior core rule books, that means there are going to be multiple new specializations that will offer the Force Rating talent. And unless FFG does put a very low hard cap on how high a Force Rating can go, you are eventually going to wind up with PCs that will be rolling four or more Force dice, giving them a very high chance of netting more than four LS points on their roll.

WEG had a similar tact, where Force-users weren't very powerful at the lower ratings for their three Force skills. But, once they reached the point where they could reliably activate their various powers, the balance of the game shifted to very strongly favor the Force-users, as even without drawing on the dark side powers that game offered, the Force-user had some very potent options open to them.

I'm also in the boat of hoping that things don't get too unbalanced. I want to play a Jedi that is capable of replicate some of Luke's feats from the EU (at least as far as I've read into the beginning of the Yuuzhan Vong series), but don't want to see them get insanely powerful (nothing from Force Unleashed, for example). And I don't believe that simply aligning the power curve with XP will cut it, since, eventually (and presumably) groups will reach those high XP values, and then where does the game go?

Also, I'm not sure there's enough for non-Force users to spend XP on to develop their character once you start getting to very high XP values. I'm looking at my character, and even without maxing-out specializations, Force powers, or skills, I'm looking at upwards of 1,000 XP just to get to an unreliable version of ESB-RotJ Luke minus all of his piloting and mechanical prowess. Taking all of the powers to max, working in other specializations to round out the character is going to be ridiculously expensive. Meanwhile, a non-Force user could just keep jumping into new specializations, but at some point, they aren't going to have many left that make thematic sense, and don't have the additional XP sink of Force powers to spend XP in. Do they, at that point, just start moving into any specialization at all to pick up some more Grit and Toughened and Dedication?

Don't worry so much about XP and higher levels. As I said I have a player with more than 2.800 XP, combat focused, almost all powers at full, Force Rating 7... and he still a mortal XD

He even fears groups of minion droids and rivals so, don't worry so much about that.

Edited by Josep Maria

One thing that strikes me about this issue which is why for goodness sake would anyone want to play a character that could toss Star Destroyers around? It's so absurdly powerful it would be pointless to roleplay any challenge. Anyone of that level of power and there would be no way to incorporate that into any kind of game. There is no challenge, no tension, no doubt over outcomes, it would just be silly.

Edited by 2P51