Sorry if this has been previously dealt with, but I couldn't find an answer.

Does one generate a force pool first and then announce a maneuver or action based upon the available force points, or does one announce the maneuver or action first and then roll the dice?

The reason I ask is because certain actions, such as force jump, might become fatal failures if you only discovered them to be mundane attempts during the action. Such as jumping across a ravine. If you fail the roll, do you plummet to your death?

Thanks

Do, or do not. There is no try.

I'd run this with narrative based on circumstance. If the character has the time, then he/she can know if the attempt will be successful ahead of time before committing to an action (such as jumping the ravine). If the character is hurried, or being chased, then he/she attempts to jump the ravine, passes or fails the Force check, and you follow with a narrative that is suitably heroic/cinematic, or harmful/inconvenient, though certainly not deadly (unless it is the best narrative fit).

Think of Luke attempting to raise his X-Wing from the swamp. He had all the time in the galaxy to try. He failed. And gave up on himself. Then Yoda...well, ya know. If Luke had been pressed for time; say if Yoda were trapped underneath the X-Wing and waiting to see if Luke could pull up his britches; it might have been a different story. Either way.

For Force powers, you roll the die pool including the Force die, and then decide what to do with your results. How else would you deal with activating various Force power upgrades, or spending 1 or more Force points? With the way the Force die is constructed, this is the only approach that makes sense.

But as Brother Orpheo says, one should adopt a situational approach to these things and not be too hard-lined about it. If failing to generate the desired amount of Force points on a check (and depending what else the dice tell you), there could be any number of very interesting narrative outcomes besides "You don't think you can make that jump."

I guess my question to answer your question is do you let your non Force users roll their Athletics check to see if they would be successful before they jump the ravine to decide if they try?

The book itself notes that the Force user first rolls their Force dice, and then decides how to spend them. The specific reference is on page 278, and is the third paragraph in the second column.

So for the Force Leap scenario, the player would roll their Force dice, see if they have enough points to trigger the effect. If not, then they can opt to spend those points on some other application of Enhance. If none of those other options would fit the situation, then the PC's efforts are simply wasted this turn, just as if they'd failed to roll any Light Side pips (and chose not to convert any Dark Side pips they'd rolled).

Note that the player still has to decide which power they are going to activate before they roll those Force dice, so a PC can't say they're going to use Enhance, roll their Force dice, and then decide to use a different power, such as Move or Influence, instead.

As for 2P51's scenario, I'd allow a mundane PC to back out of jumping across a deep ravine if they feel the difficulty is too high. It'd be rather cruel of the GM to force a PC with Brawn 2 and no Athletics to have to roll against a Daunting (4 purple) difficulty. If the PC wants to take the leap anyway, that's their decision, but a player should never feel that they're being forced into a course of action. Given that an action round is roughly 1 minute, there's plenty of justification for PCs not rushing quite as much to do things as they would in systems where a combat round is only a few seconds.

Thanks for all the answers. The sequence of events on 278 is exactly what I needed.

The book itself notes that the Force user first rolls their Force dice, and then decides how to spend them. The specific reference is on page 278, and is the third paragraph in the second column.

So for the Force Leap scenario, the player would roll their Force dice, see if they have enough points to trigger the effect. If not, then they can opt to spend those points on some other application of Enhance. If none of those other options would fit the situation, then the PC's efforts are simply wasted this turn, just as if they'd failed to roll any Light Side pips (and chose not to convert any Dark Side pips they'd rolled).

Note that the player still has to decide which power they are going to activate before they roll those Force dice, so a PC can't say they're going to use Enhance, roll their Force dice, and then decide to use a different power, such as Move or Influence, instead.

As for 2P51's scenario, I'd allow a mundane PC to back out of jumping across a deep ravine if they feel the difficulty is too high. It'd be rather cruel of the GM to force a PC with Brawn 2 and no Athletics to have to roll against a Daunting (4 purple) difficulty. If the PC wants to take the leap anyway, that's their decision, but a player should never feel that they're being forced into a course of action. Given that an action round is roughly 1 minute, there's plenty of justification for PCs not rushing quite as much to do things as they would in systems where a combat round is only a few seconds.

I didn't say I'd force them to take the jump. I'd tell them the difficulty and they decide, but I wouldn't tell them the difficulty, let them roll the check to see if it works, and then if it fails decide not to take the jump.