Per RAW, could you use Bad Motivator on Darth Vader's legs?

I'd prefer HD's modified house rule.

Per RAW, could you use Bad Motivator on Darth Vader's legs?

I'd prefer HD's modified house rule.

Why not use it on Darth Vader's respirator?

I look at it as a Mechanics ability to quickly assess a device and be able to tell from the sound, the brakes are about to fail, noticing the way a wheel is turning, it's about to fall off, or seeing that the access panel to a set of hydraulics is off and the workings appear fouled so that a handful of dirt should do the trick. That would be the kind of narrative stuff of course.

I don't think it need to be direct contact with the device like I said, but it is a combination of observation, and then causing some situation, be it direct manipulation, or creating a condition that leads to a failure. The Difficulty represents whether or not the given Mechanic's assessment was correct, obviously with a higher skilled one being able to more quickly and accurately determine how a given piece of gear can be made to fail with that quick down and dirty assessment.

I do think it requires input in some way, direct or indirect. The comdey of errors thing I would let anyone do when they are staring at the four Triumphs they just rolled and trying to figure out what happened. Of course as always to each their own.

Would you guys allow Bad Motivator to be used on a group of minion's Blasters?

if allowed and successful would only one blaster be broken or all the blasters belonging to the minion group?

I wouldn't allow it in that case. I wouldn't say I couldn't see a scenario where it could be utilized on a weapon in use, but it would likely be some sort of large turret or such where they disable it by cutting a hydraulic line or something. Not personal weapons in someone's hands being used though.

I wouldn't allow it in that case. I wouldn't say I couldn't see a scenario where it could be utilized on a weapon in use, but it would likely be some sort of large turret or such where they disable it by cutting a hydraulic line or something. Not personal weapons in someone's hands being used though.

I can see cases where it could be used on weapons that are currently in use. The mechanic whispers over his group's commlinks, "Hey guys I noticed that the light repeating blaster that one stormtrooper is using has a cracked thermal discharge coupler. Draw his fire and I'm sure that thing will overheat when he tries to use it".

I will still require that the character actively DO something to make the failure happen.

To me that seems very much counter to what the talent represents and approached fom a traditional rpg mindset, it sort of takes the fun away from the talent to be honest... Mind you, if it works at your table then who am I to judge.

I find the talent extremely funny and have it seen work wonders at our table as a narrative tool.

"The scouts trooper jumps on his speeder, racing back to the squad he wws deployed from."

"The speeder near the gates?"

"Yeah..."

"The gates we just came through?"

"That speeder seemed broken to me. Something wrong with its steering mechanism.... (Will you allow a bad motivator check here?)"

"Sure, go ahead."

<rolls a succes>

"The scout takes off at full speed and runs straight into an enormous tree tossing the body of the sout into the air like a ragdoll!"

"Awesome!!!"

While the outcome as worded here is a little silly for the flavor of my game, this is excactly how I want the talent to work. Happy Daze's hack is absolutely fine but it shifts the talent away from the indie-freeform school of co-narration and into more conventional rpg territory. What I adore about EotE is the integration of a freeform sensibility into a campaign-friendly system.

I wouldn't allow it in that case. I wouldn't say I couldn't see a scenario where it could be utilized on a weapon in use, but it would likely be some sort of large turret or such where they disable it by cutting a hydraulic line or something. Not personal weapons in someone's hands being used though.

I can see cases where it could be used on weapons that are currently in use. The mechanic whispers over his group's commlinks, "Hey guys I noticed that the light repeating blaster that one stormtrooper is using has a cracked thermal discharge coupler. Draw his fire and I'm sure that thing will overheat when he tries to use it".

I think that kind of a use begins to usurp the Sunder effect and weapon damaging options for multiple Advantages and Triumphs.

While the outcome as worded here is a little silly for the flavor of my game, this is excactly how I want the talent to work. Happy Daze's hack is absolutely fine but it shifts the talent away from the indie-freeform school of co-narration and into more conventional rpg territory. What I adore about EotE is the integration of a freeform sensibility into a campaign-friendly system.

I love that aspect of EotE too, it's why I play the game. However, I think blanket "I say so" Talents aren't the place for it, I prefer to limit it to dice rolls and as the result of player actions. Maybe this is selfish on my part, but GMing can be a lot of work, and it's frustrating to be at the mercy of some loophole in an otherwise well crafted scenario. If the players invent a way to exploit the loophole then fine, but to just "make it so" seems both overpowered and a potential detriment to the game. Part of my thoughts on this are also driven by the sense that by the time a character has the BM talent, a "Hard" Mechanics check is usually going to be successful.

I think the safeguard for Bad Motivator is that it needs GM approval, which would prevent spontaneous explosions of death stars or super weapons. The extreme examples that HappyDaze mentions would be things I wouldn't allow anyway, but the speeder example I think is a perfect one. Besides Bad Motivator is a once per session type thing that isn't game breaking from my point of view. Listening to Andy Fischer's comments on it is that it is intended to work precisely as the speeder example shows. However, it really is up to GMs to choose what works best for their campaigns.

I will still require that the character actively DO something to make the failure happen.

To me that seems very much counter to what the talent represents and approached fom a traditional rpg mindset, it sort of takes the fun away from the talent to be honest... Mind you, if it works at your table then who am I to judge.

I find the talent extremely funny and have it seen work wonders at our table as a narrative tool.

"The scouts trooper jumps on his speeder, racing back to the squad he wws deployed from."

"The speeder near the gates?"

"Yeah..."

"The gates we just came through?"

"That speeder seemed broken to me. Something wrong with its steering mechanism.... (Will you allow a bad motivator check here?)"

"Sure, go ahead."

<rolls a succes>

"The scout takes off at full speed and runs straight into an enormous tree tossing the body of the sout into the air like a ragdoll!"

"Awesome!!!"

That's the kind of thing I don't want to see. It can lead to the 'comedy of errors' type situations that I don't find awesome at all. It can also lead to extensions beyond what you've shown - including replacing "speeder bike's steering mechanism" with "Death Star's targeting mechanism" ("The Death Star fires but misses Alderaan entirely," most certainly falls into the comedy of errors issue that I dislike).

Considering that the talent is dependent upon the Mechanics skill of the user and that it requires an Action to do, it seems reasonable to me and my group that the character should actually have to be doing something to interact with the device it is used upon (although I'm now inclined to be more lenient on the range).

"The Death Star points its giant lasers at Alderaan."

"I think there might be wrong with the targting system. (Will you allow a bad motivator check?)"

"(No, I won't the machine is impeccable)"

"(Alright)"

No idea why that would lead to weirdness.

I love this Talent as it stands. I don't read it to mean you have to mess with the "device" in some way, it's more of a collaborative roleplaying Talent (and I love those!)

I mean, just from the name of the Talent, we can assume R2-D2 used this Talent when Owen bought the other droid and R2 was being left behind. By succeeding at the roll, R2's player was able to say the droid broke down due to a bad motivator and then C3PO's player was able to point out R2 as a suitable replacement.

(Unless it was in a highly roleplaying, story driven context, I wouldn't allow it to be used on another PC Droid)

Per RAW, could you use Bad Motivator on Darth Vader's legs?

RAW is too vague to even be counted as a rule. The explicit GM discretion clause would put it up to him, and if that's the kind of game he wants to run, so be it.

As far as weapons or even viechles are concerned I wouldn't allow effects like "the tie bombers fall from the skies" or "The barrel melts", maybe "The power stutters and the pilot is more concerned getting his thrusters working properly to do anything before receiving orders to pull out for repairs" and "The gun jams and the trooper needs to make an easy meechanics as an action to fix it".

When you design an encounter for your players, you should take the time to look at your players skills so you dont leave open loopholes for them to exploit... or put another encounter just before to have them use those talents they have...

For weapons, it could be feasable to allow it on minions groups... let's say your players are on Tatooine and start a fight with a group of thugs... the group tech rolls his bad motivator skill (success) and says "guys, those pirates are using old DT-3000 blasters, they're notorious for failing in dusty dry environments.... " ,,, and the next round, their blasters stop working because of all the dust.... Remember that rounds are abstracts, so you could say, as the GM, that your players exchange shots with the pirates for a 1-2 minutes and a few wind gusts later, their blasters stop working.

I love that your players can really take the game into their own hands... it gives them power and also discharges the GM from providing ALL the fun... just make sure your players use it to have fun and give narrative explanations to make it worthwhile.

Later

I wouldn't allow it in that case. I wouldn't say I couldn't see a scenario where it could be utilized on a weapon in use, but it would likely be some sort of large turret or such where they disable it by cutting a hydraulic line or something. Not personal weapons in someone's hands being used though.

I can see cases where it could be used on weapons that are currently in use. The mechanic whispers over his group's commlinks, "Hey guys I noticed that the light repeating blaster that one stormtrooper is using has a cracked thermal discharge coupler. Draw his fire and I'm sure that thing will overheat when he tries to use it".

I think that kind of a use begins to usurp the Sunder effect and weapon damaging options for multiple Advantages and Triumphs.

There are often more than one way of accomplishing similar effects. I don't think that it is out of line to allow a once per game session talent to mimic Sunder or the same effects of a single roll of Advantages or Triumph. I kind of think that is the point of the talent. Instead of relying on luck and hoping for those Advantages or Triumphs the mechanic can try to purposefully make something fail but only once a game session. In fact that seems to me to be one of the weaker uses of a one shot per session talent that players could come up with. I mean sure you CAN make that blaster rifle fail but why would you want to blow your use on that?

I love that your players can really take the game into their own hands... it gives them power and also discharges the GM from providing ALL the fun... just make sure your players use it to have fun and give narrative explanations to make it worthwhile.

Agreed, I just don't know why there is a Talent for this. You can get the same type of effect from a Triumph, and then it's not limited to the mechanic in the group...

I love that your players can really take the game into their own hands... it gives them power and also discharges the GM from providing ALL the fun... just make sure your players use it to have fun and give narrative explanations to make it worthwhile.

Agreed, I just don't know why there is a Talent for this. You can get the same type of effect from a Triumph, and then it's not limited to the mechanic in the group...

My players have found this talent to be quite useful. One example, the slicer in the group was trying to hack open a door and succeeded but rolled a crap ton of disadvantages. I informed him he had succeeded in opening the door but had set off the alarm. He used this talent to cause the alarm circuit connected to that particular door to fail (his tampering had luckily caused it to short out). That is the type of thing that this talent is intended for.

I love that your players can really take the game into their own hands... it gives them power and also discharges the GM from providing ALL the fun... just make sure your players use it to have fun and give narrative explanations to make it worthwhile.

Agreed, I just don't know why there is a Talent for this. You can get the same type of effect from a Triumph, and then it's not limited to the mechanic in the group...

My players have found this talent to be quite useful. One example, the slicer in the group was trying to hack open a door and succeeded but rolled a crap ton of disadvantages. I informed him he had succeeded in opening the door but had set off the alarm. He used this talent to cause the alarm circuit connected to that particular door to fail (his tampering had luckily caused it to short out). That is the type of thing that this talent is intended for.

I love that your players can really take the game into their own hands... it gives them power and also discharges the GM from providing ALL the fun... just make sure your players use it to have fun and give narrative explanations to make it worthwhile.

Agreed, I just don't know why there is a Talent for this. You can get the same type of effect from a Triumph, and then it's not limited to the mechanic in the group...

My players have found this talent to be quite useful. One example, the slicer in the group was trying to hack open a door and succeeded but rolled a crap ton of disadvantages. I informed him he had succeeded in opening the door but had set off the alarm. He used this talent to cause the alarm circuit connected to that particular door to fail (his tampering had luckily caused it to short out). That is the type of thing that this talent is intended for.

That's a perfect example of what I consider a 'proper' use of this talent. The character had directly interacted with the system he targeted and the result seems perfectly reasonable.

I wonder Happydaze what seperates the talent from plain sabotage in the way you use it?

Wouldn't any character be able to cut loose a brake or break off an important part on a speeder? I don't understand why you would need a talent such as this to do so...

I love that your players can really take the game into their own hands... it gives them power and also discharges the GM from providing ALL the fun... just make sure your players use it to have fun and give narrative explanations to make it worthwhile.

Agreed, I just don't know why there is a Talent for this. You can get the same type of effect from a Triumph, and then it's not limited to the mechanic in the group...

My players have found this talent to be quite useful. One example, the slicer in the group was trying to hack open a door and succeeded but rolled a crap ton of disadvantages. I informed him he had succeeded in opening the door but had set off the alarm. He used this talent to cause the alarm circuit connected to that particular door to fail (his tampering had luckily caused it to short out). That is the type of thing that this talent is intended for.

That's a perfect example of what I consider a 'proper' use of this talent. The character had directly interacted with the system he targeted and the result seems perfectly reasonable.

I wonder Happydaze what seperates the talent from plain sabotage in the way you use it?

Wouldn't any character be able to cut loose a brake or break off an important part on a speeder? I don't understand why you would need a talent such as this to do so...

Okay, as said before, to each his own... For me that would not be a nice way to play but whatever works at your table seems good te me.

I was hoping for "because the dread Dr. Sticky Fingers used his droid control ray on Bob's character so we were trying to disable him".

I hate that guy...

I think in the end the talent is left pretty vague for these discussions we are having to be hashed out by Mechanics and their GMs at their tables.

I think how I going to rule it is NPC droids of rival or minion class it will disable the droid outright Nemesis NPC or PC droids will have "back-up" systems so only part of the droid will be effected (e.g. leg, arm, auditory sensors, etc.)

Also I'll probably allow it to be used without actually interacting with said object provided it's a relatively minor break. So the targeting system on the Death Star could malfunction buying Luke a couple extra minutes while techs fix the system l, but not the reactor overheats and BOOM.