Those that have been following along with Edge of the Empire or just the Age of Rebellion Beta might remember this, but for those that haven't...

Some time back, I created a fan supplement to expand upon the options available for Force user PCs in Edge of the Empire (as well as Age of Rebellion), principally by offering a trio of new Force-sensitive Universal specializations (Dark Side Acolyte, Force Mystic, and Jedi Initiate) as well as some new Force powers to cover some of the stuff we see in the movies but aren't really addressed in the RPG (yet).

Well, I've recently web-published the latest version (v1.3) of Ways of the Force. It's under gone some pretty drastic changes since the last version, with the Jedi Initiate specialization and Deflect Blasters talent both getting a pretty significant overhaul, as well as the inclusion of two new Force Powers (Rebuke and Message) to go along with revised versions of prior offerings Injure and Healing.

You can download it through my blog here:

http://jedimorningfire.blogspot.com/2014/03/ways-of-force-version-13.html

Nice

Some questions regarding the changes, Donovan:

1. I know you were trying to focus this a little more on lightsaber proficiency, but does the tree NEED to force you through Lightsaber Defense on the way to the bottom? The way the tree is set up in v 1.2, someone working on their Force presence and abilities could go down the tree to stuff like Balance, Intense Focus, Force Rating, and Strong in the Force without having to purchase talents that enhances their lightsaber capabilities, which may be an issue if they don't have one yet. (That's basically the way my character has been developing--working on Force stuff, with the goal of picking up Lightsaber talents once I've found a saber, or once I've decided to fully embrace the Jedi heritage and image, and seek to build my own. Probably my only real problem with the v 1.2 tree was that I had to pick up Lightsaber Expert to get to Dedication, which felt weird to me if I hadn't invested in any other lightsaber stuff yet).
2. Why the position swap between Strong In the Force and Intense Focus? Is it just because IF is so good?
3. Why the change in position for the second ranks of Uncanny Senses/Reactions and Sense Danger?
4. Am I interpreting correctly that building a lightsaber no longer requires a talent?
5. What does the "same base difficulty" portion of Deflect Blasters mean? If it's a competitive check, isn't the difficulty merely set by the attackers skill? Is it meant to indicate that it should incorporate all adjustments the attacker may have on that attack (Boosts, Upgrades, etc...)? If so, I think that could be made a little clearer.
6. Also, on Deflect, why the change from needing to succeed on your opposed check, to tying also allowing you to deflect?
7. How come you ditched Rapid Reactions? Was it just because you needed the space? I think Heroic Fortitude is a good addition to the tree (we see a lot of instances, especially in the EU, of Jedi shunting aside some serious injuries to complete their tasks).
8. Regarding some of the changes to Healing: How do you feel the per encounter usage compares to the per day usage? Was the change made with the assumption that everyone is running around with cargo holds full of stim packs? If not changing to the per encounter version, would you make the rest of the changes (that is, dial Strain healed back from 3 to 1) ?
9. Are there any examples of characters employing the more advanced ranks of your new Message power (like full conversations) aside from KOTOR? That's the only place I can recall coming across such a usage. I'm not sure the power needed to be expanded to a whole tree, since, for the most part, we only ever see this ability used to convey a word or two, an emotion, or an image in the films and most of the EU material that I've been exposed to so far.
10. For Rebuke, the way the Range and Magnitude upgrades are worded seems to imply that you have to activate at least rank 1 Range in order to use Magnitude, otherwise the power's range remains "personal", rather than engaged.
11. Did I overlook it, or is the bit about being able to mask your Force presence (go undetected by Sense) gone?

I like some of the changes, such as the addition of Heroic Fortitude to the Jedi Initiate tree, removal of Build Lightsaber as a talent, making the construction a skill check, splitting Deflect and Reflect up, the additional Healing control upgrade, the expansion of Rebuke, and the reconfiguring of Sense Force to merely be an extension of the Sense power. On the last, though, I feel like there could be a little more added to how this works (in the films, at least, we see characters able to sense not only sensitivity, but also how strongly connected to the Force someone is...I guess that could something like Yoda sensing Anakin over all the other Jedi present).

I feel like the (basically) Absorb Energy control upgrade appended to the end of Rebuke is out of place. If anything, I'd make that into its own tree, perhaps. I'd maybe change the basic power to capping how much damage you can absorb, with Strength Upgrades increasing that number (there are examples in the EU of characters using this ability to take the brunt of some attack, or environmental hazard, but not being able to negate the whole thing), a Duration Upgrade that allows this to be used an additional time per round, a Control Upgrade that allows you to protect an engaged ally, a Control Upgrade that allows you to drain the energy from an energized object or weapon you're in contact with, such as a lightsaber, and maybe an Upgrade that allows you to activate another Force power with a generated Triumph on your Discipline check, maybe limiting the power you can use by restricting you to one Force die, and one additional Force die per Triumph or Advantage generated?

I'd think a more in-theme upgrade at the end of Rebuke would be some ability to channel a successfully Rebuked power into something else--using another Force power, healing, a granted action or maneuver, or something. If this were considered, I would, at the very least, have this only function on a successfully Rebuked power that hasn't been redirected back at anyone. That, or stick in the Sever Force ability?

yeti1069,

I'll answer as best I can, but fair warning that you may not like some of these answers.

1) On the Jedi Initiate, the answer is "Yes, it does need to force you through lightsaber-based talents to get to stuff like Dedication and Force Rating." From the very beginning, it's been "Jedi Training 101" and one of the key elements of Jedi training is proficiency with a lightsaber, both to attack and to defend yourself with. I'd lost sight of that during some of the early revisions, but decided that the original design intent is where I should have stayed in the first place. Besides, the fact that Age of Rebellion will have the Force Emergent (I really don't see FFG removing this from the core rulebook when it comes out next month) means there are already plenty of options for folks that want be Force-users but don't want to bother with lightsaber usage. Quite honestly, there's nothing stopping your PC from calling themselves a Jedi and not even glancing in the direction of the Jedi Initiate tree.

2) Intense Focus is a very potent talent, and the two EotE trees that have it require the PC to either spend a lot of XP (Scholar) or go through a bunch of other talents (Exile) to get it. Plus with the shifting of focus back to being a lightsaber wielder as a primary aspect, providing something as useful as Intense Focus as inexpensively (comparatively) as it'd been didn't seem right. That I'd gotten feedback in the past that having Intense Focus be available that easily pushed the Jedi Initiate a bit too close to the "too good to allow in my games" territory.

3) Honestly, after seeing how the Force Emergent was arranged, it just seemed cheesy that Jedi Initiate should be able to double up on those talents so quickly or inexpensively.

4) That is correct. Having the know-how to build one isn't an automatic thing, but something the player and GM will have to agree on.

5) There was confusion on that, and complaints that a Jedi trying to use Deflect would have a harder time succeeding as they acquired and used more defensive traits. I did a blog post a while back on the basic mechanics of how it'd work, but the short version is as soon as the Jedi is targeted, they can choose to use this talent. The base difficulty is what the attacker would roll against before any defensive traits (Dodge, Side Step, Sense's defense upgrades, etc) would be applied. So it's not purely a competitive check in the usual sense, though conversely any defensive traits the attacker has (namely Adversary but also any Ranged Defense) would get applied to the Jedi's difficulty as well.

6) Normally on a competitive check if the result is a tie, both players re-roll to see who wins. That slows down combat, and the talent is a once-per-round effect, I figured letting the Jedi "win" on a tie wasn't any more of a game-breaker than giving them talents to enhance their lightsaber usage. Technically it probably should only work on a success, with a tied result being akin to a failure, but I'm not that fussed about it, particularly since in several months Force & Destiny will make most of this a moot point.

7) Needed space and having two ranks of Uncanny Reactions (as well as the chance for even more ranks with additional Force specs) was overkill. Having played a PC with two ranks of Uncanny Reactions and Rapid Reactions... yeah, was definite overkill since I rarely needed Rapid Reactions in the first place.

8) Frankly, the per-day bit was clunky. And give how much the amount of potential healing had been reduced, making it a per-encounter effect allows the power to still be useful but not the game-breaker that such powers were in the d20 Star Wars games.

9) There's probably nothing to really validate the whole "having full blown telepathic conversations," but it's existed to some extent in prior Star Wars RPGs, and it could be fun for a player to make use of if they're willing to sink the XP into it.

10) Not true. You could be engaged with an ally and thus use the Magnitude Upgrade to protect them. It's not something that comes up very often, but then Rebuke to protect others is generally an "advanced" form of the power; in Saga Edition it required you to take levels in a prestige class to even have a chance of learning to do that sort of thing, so making it less feasible for a Force user with a low Force Rating makes sense; you won't be seeing many Padawans or self-taught exiles protecting their allies from being Force choked.

11) It's gone, mostly as there's not a whole lot of on-screen evidence of Force users really being able to hide, and the way that application of the Sense power is worded, the person using it only picks up the strongest Force presence. Which neatly covers why Vader only picked up on Obi-Wan in the Death Star docking bay, but completely missed Luke, who'd just begun to awaken his Force abilities.

About Rebuke and absorbing a blaster shot, I'm of the opinion that's exactly what Vader did in ESB; we never saw Yoda do it because he either had a lightsaber on hand (and enough defensive traits that anyone shooting at him would more than likely miss to begin with) or he wasn't being attacked with blasters when he didn't have his lightsaber. Plus, I really don't feel that energy absorbtion would need to be it's own power tree as it's been noted that it's something of a one-trick pony, with Corran Horn (whom I loathe as a character) being able to sidestep the "can't use telekinesis" restriction he normally has or to do self-healing, both of which are things we really don't see other characters doing. That and I'd decided to drop the notion of "micro powers" since the two major ones got expanded into full-blown power trees, so that option doesn't exist. Simply agree to disagree on that one.

yeti1069,

I'll answer as best I can, but fair warning that you may not like some of these answers.

1) On the Jedi Initiate, the answer is "Yes, it does need to force you through lightsaber-based talents to get to stuff like Dedication and Force Rating." From the very beginning, it's been "Jedi Training 101" and one of the key elements of Jedi training is proficiency with a lightsaber, both to attack and to defend yourself with. I'd lost sight of that during some of the early revisions, but decided that the original design intent is where I should have stayed in the first place. Besides, the fact that Age of Rebellion will have the Force Emergent (I really don't see FFG removing this from the core rulebook when it comes out next month) means there are already plenty of options for folks that want be Force-users but don't want to bother with lightsaber usage. Quite honestly, there's nothing stopping your PC from calling themselves a Jedi and not even glancing in the direction of the Jedi Initiate tree.

2) Intense Focus is a very potent talent, and the two EotE trees that have it require the PC to either spend a lot of XP (Scholar) or go through a bunch of other talents (Exile) to get it. Plus with the shifting of focus back to being a lightsaber wielder as a primary aspect, providing something as useful as Intense Focus as inexpensively (comparatively) as it'd been didn't seem right. That I'd gotten feedback in the past that having Intense Focus be available that easily pushed the Jedi Initiate a bit too close to the "too good to allow in my games" territory.

3) Honestly, after seeing how the Force Emergent was arranged, it just seemed cheesy that Jedi Initiate should be able to double up on those talents so quickly or inexpensively.

4) That is correct. Having the know-how to build one isn't an automatic thing, but something the player and GM will have to agree on.

5) There was confusion on that, and complaints that a Jedi trying to use Deflect would have a harder time succeeding as they acquired and used more defensive traits. I did a blog post a while back on the basic mechanics of how it'd work, but the short version is as soon as the Jedi is targeted, they can choose to use this talent. The base difficulty is what the attacker would roll against before any defensive traits (Dodge, Side Step, Sense's defense upgrades, etc) would be applied. So it's not purely a competitive check in the usual sense, though conversely any defensive traits the attacker has (namely Adversary but also any Ranged Defense) would get applied to the Jedi's difficulty as well.

6) Normally on a competitive check if the result is a tie, both players re-roll to see who wins. That slows down combat, and the talent is a once-per-round effect, I figured letting the Jedi "win" on a tie wasn't any more of a game-breaker than giving them talents to enhance their lightsaber usage. Technically it probably should only work on a success, with a tied result being akin to a failure, but I'm not that fussed about it, particularly since in several months Force & Destiny will make most of this a moot point.

7) Needed space and having two ranks of Uncanny Reactions (as well as the chance for even more ranks with additional Force specs) was overkill. Having played a PC with two ranks of Uncanny Reactions and Rapid Reactions... yeah, was definite overkill since I rarely needed Rapid Reactions in the first place.

8) Frankly, the per-day bit was clunky. And give how much the amount of potential healing had been reduced, making it a per-encounter effect allows the power to still be useful but not the game-breaker that such powers were in the d20 Star Wars games.

9) There's probably nothing to really validate the whole "having full blown telepathic conversations," but it's existed to some extent in prior Star Wars RPGs, and it could be fun for a player to make use of if they're willing to sink the XP into it.

10) Not true. You could be engaged with an ally and thus use the Magnitude Upgrade to protect them. It's not something that comes up very often, but then Rebuke to protect others is generally an "advanced" form of the power; in Saga Edition it required you to take levels in a prestige class to even have a chance of learning to do that sort of thing, so making it less feasible for a Force user with a low Force Rating makes sense; you won't be seeing many Padawans or self-taught exiles protecting their allies from being Force choked.

11) It's gone, mostly as there's not a whole lot of on-screen evidence of Force users really being able to hide, and the way that application of the Sense power is worded, the person using it only picks up the strongest Force presence. Which neatly covers why Vader only picked up on Obi-Wan in the Death Star docking bay, but completely missed Luke, who'd just begun to awaken his Force abilities.

About Rebuke and absorbing a blaster shot, I'm of the opinion that's exactly what Vader did in ESB; we never saw Yoda do it because he either had a lightsaber on hand (and enough defensive traits that anyone shooting at him would more than likely miss to begin with) or he wasn't being attacked with blasters when he didn't have his lightsaber. Plus, I really don't feel that energy absorbtion would need to be it's own power tree as it's been noted that it's something of a one-trick pony, with Corran Horn (whom I loathe as a character) being able to sidestep the "can't use telekinesis" restriction he normally has or to do self-healing, both of which are things we really don't see other characters doing. That and I'd decided to drop the notion of "micro powers" since the two major ones got expanded into full-blown power trees, so that option doesn't exist. Simply agree to disagree on that one.

Why wouldn't I like the answers? I'm just curious about your thought process on the changes. If I don't like them, I've got v 1.2.

I wasn't too likely to make the changes to the tree, anyway, since I'm already invested there, although I can make changes to the sections I'm not in yet, and there are other changes I might make, but wanted to see what warranted them.

1. Yeah, fair enough.
2. Ditto.
3. Okay.
4. A good change, I think. It felt kind of clunky as a talent.
5. Can you link me to the blog post? Your response here has me more puzzled about it than I was reading the PDF. I think I'd like to see an example dice pool assembled to see what you're talking about.
6. Not a very big difference between working on a success and on a tie, but it just seems weird to me, since you're reacting here. /shrug
7. I don't think it needed to be there; just wanted to see what instigated the change.
8. Why did you find the per day part clunky? That's how all of the other healing in EotE works. It seemed equivalent to kind of a weak stim pack before, now, it doesn't even appear to be that good. I always found the per encounter system to be kind of weird in Saga. I guess it moves the restriction on usage from the person being healed to the person doing the healing (you only get to use the power as often as you're in encounters throughout a day), but that doesn't seem any less clunky than it was before. Had you considered having the power work like a Medicine check with equipment, but using Discipline, with successes and advantages being used to determine the amount of healing done?
9. Okay.
10. The Range upgrade says that it allows you to protect a single engaged ally, while the Magnitude upgrade allows you to protect a single engaged ally. At their first rank, they do the exact same thing. I didn't word my initial comment on this very well, but that's my problem here.
11. Well, the screen evidence for being able to hide yourself from being sensed in the Force is Palpatine: none of the Jedi in Episodes I-III detect him, despite him probably being the most powerful Force practitioner besides Yoda around, and constant interaction between Palpatine and high-ranking members of the Jedi council. Then, in RotJ, when Luke detects Vader he doesn't detect the Emperor despite his being in basically the same location. You could argue that Luke had a connection with Vader, I guess, but it seems kind of hard to believe that NO ONE could sense Palpatine's strong connection to the Force unless there were some way to block such scrying. And in the EU there's plenty of that. And how did Yoda and Obi-Wan hide from the Jedi pogroms if they were incapable of hiding their presence within the Force? I've seen some arguments for Dagobah's abundant life basically causing a lot of static, but...Tatooine?

How come you don't like Corran Horn? Is it just the way his character is designed (as far as powers go), or the character himself? And, yeah, the absorption ability is pretty rare, though we see some other usage of it by other characters in the EU. Luke and his students use it a few times

, though not to the degree or strength that Corran or his ancestor do.

Vader's absorbing the shots from Han...Rebuke, as you have it laid out is all about blocking or reflecting the Force, then you've got one talent at the end that has nothing to do with defending against the Force. It just seems out of place.

I liked the one-off Force powers you had had before, because they covered things that didn't necessarily have to take up an entire tree, or require a ton of XP, that we see Jedi doing even without too much training, like Force trance, although I could see that getting a whole tree with the basic power working as the one-off power did, and upgrades to allow you to heal critical injuries, place someone else in a trance, deal with poisons/disease, and exposure to vacuum, perhaps with some upgrades increasing the amount of healing/time spent in trance.

Ultimately, I appreciate both the effort you put into crafting this fine material, and that you've put up with my being a nudge. Thanks, Donovan. Keep it up!

*dusts off the cobwebs*

Turns out version 1.3 wasn't the final update after all.

Version 1.4 of Ways of the Force can be found on my blog:

http://jedimorningfire.blogspot.com/2014/08/ways-of-force-deep-breath-before-plunge.html

I've tinkered with various bits and pieces of the file, such as a major revision to Deflect Blasters and some re-arranging of the Jedi Initiate. Message and Rebuke both got revisions, and I've brought back the core idea of "minor Force powers" only this time around as "Force techniques" that are generally attached to one of the existing powers much like a Control Upgrade and simply add a minor usage to the power's core ability.

*dusts off the cobwebs*

Turns out version 1.3 wasn't the final update after all.

Version 1.4 of Ways of the Force can be found on my blog:

http://jedimorningfire.blogspot.com/2014/08/ways-of-force-deep-breath-before-plunge.html

I've tinkered with various bits and pieces of the file, such as a major revision to Deflect Blasters and some re-arranging of the Jedi Initiate. Message and Rebuke both got revisions, and I've brought back the core idea of "minor Force powers" only this time around as "Force techniques" that are generally attached to one of the existing powers much like a Control Upgrade and simply add a minor usage to the power's core ability.

I'm getting a 404 error on DB.

-EF

Murphy's having a field day at my expense it seems

I've fixed the link (Dropbox apparently decided to add an extra character for some odd reason) and tested it, so the issue should be resolved.

Murphy's having a field day at my expense it seems

I've fixed the link (Dropbox apparently decided to add an extra character for some odd reason) and tested it, so the issue should be resolved.

It's working now, thanks for fixing it! I'm at work, but I'll take a look at it when I get home.

-EF

Just a heads-up, but there will be a v1.41 some time next week. No major changes, just clearing up the wording of a couple of talents and the Rebuke main power (it's meant to work similar to the Influence Control Upgrade to affect thoughts, only as an Incidental, Out-of-Turn act but that you'd make the opposed Discipline check and Rebuke power check in the same roll). For now, in the talents that say "character rolls <Force die symbol>" are meant to be read as "character rolls Force dice equal to their Force rating." I had thought that was a given, but apparently that's not the case.