47 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Haven't you and whafrog pretty much just been posting here about how Move can be "abused" in various ways, all that are within line of how the power was written in the book? If there wasn't an issue with Move as written being abused to in some shape or form sour the gaming experience, why exactly would whafrog feel it was necessary to create a revision of the Move power that scales down what it can do? Or your own recent post about simply raising the krayt dragon up to extreme range and then just letting it plummet, which is itself a pretty through abuse of the intent of the rules for Move if not the exact letter of the rules.

There's Letter of the Rules, and there's Spirit of the Rules. If one goes strictly by Letter of the Rules, then really nothing in any RPG can be "abused" since it's all rules-legal. Prime example would be autofire; using it as the rules are written in the book isn't abusing the rules themselves, but there's been a slew of posters that have complained about how it's skewed combat encounters and there's probably been more suggested "fixes" posted than we have active GMs posting to this forum. But spirit of the rules (i.e. what the designers most likely intended), autofire and Move have been horrifically abused by players.

But, that itself is a philosophical discussion that is neither here nor there.

I'm not whafrog, and citng him is just more proof of a straw man red herring argument on the matter. I'm not discussing people's opinions of the word abuse as it relates to RPGs and I am not discussing abuse at all, actually you are. I am discussing the specific mechanics of how Move is written, nothing more.

I am pointing out using a RAW is not abuse. An FR3 PC is easily achieved in the game, and can be done with single specs in F&D. We aren't talking about the tool that stacks ranks of Enduring from wherever they can get them, regardless of character concept. Move as written is OP. That is what I am saying, because it actually is my opinion. Like I said you saying that you'd have a 'talk' with PCs about abuse of the power is no different than making a house rule to adjust its mechanics, it's the same, it means there is an issue with the RAW because a power that isn't OP doesn't require a 'talk' or a houserule.

Flowery statements about "spirit" and "letter" of the rules etc, is more deflective non sense. I am not discussing the spirit or intent, I am discussing the specific application of the mechanics of this one power.

The assertion that not allowing a PC the ability to juggle sil 8 objects with a FR3 equals I am unwilling to allow PCs to be awesome is more baloney, and more straw man/red herring foolishness. As if having that avenue of power usage closed off with a houserule equals a lack of ability be awesome, effective, or fun.

The implication is that use of the RAW is acceptable, since you're so adamantly opposed to a houserule, which means juggling a sil 8 object with a FR3 is doable. By your own standard that would fall under things you need to have a 'talk' with your PCs about in regards to how all systems can be abused. If the RAW is fine, then that's how the rule can be used, and if you don't want to rule to be used that way, then you have a talk. Essentially in essence you're contradicting yourself because if you need to have a talk then the rule is not ok how it's written.

58 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Depends on what you think of as "awesome". Hurling a Krayt Dragon is not awesome to me, it completely violates the sense of "within-the-movies-verisimillitude" that I'm going for. My players wouldn't even like it if they could do it, it would make the whole thing smell of cheese. They get plenty of "awesome" in ways they can relate to which aren't only about how much POWAH! one can bring to bear on a question. So based on that feedback I'm comfortable with the level of "awesome" I'm providing. YMMV.

I don't begrudge anyone who likes the RAW Move power. But these threads are created by people who have a different take. Sweeping those concerns under the rug with arguments like "impose narrative/Conflict penalties for that flashy display" or "it's no more broken than auto-fire" or "Weee! It's Force Unleashed all over again!" entirely misses the point. I don't like solutions to a problem where you take something away that the rules have given, which is what is sometimes proposed for auto-fire (use Despair to break their gun): that smacks of the GM being arbitrary on a situational basis. I'd much rather not give too much away to begin with, than find out mid-campaign that something is broken.

This is the only Force power that generates this level of conflict. FFG could do everybody a favour and release both a "utilitarian" and a "Force Unleashed" version...or even have one lead into the other...or even for once break that *$&$ 4x5 grid and do something a little more inventive.

I also don't care how people play the game at their table. The assertion though there isn't a problem when it keeps being raised over and over is just dumb.

I also don't like the fiat and other uses of different mechanics to suppress an item or power. It's all still just proof that the item or power or whatever has an issue. I'd rather fix an issue than ignore it, and there is an issue or people wouldn't keep bringing it up. To each their own.

3 hours ago, 2P51 said:

There's nothing abusive about using the RAW, and if there needs to be a 'talk' about the mechanics, that's a tacit acknowledgement there is an issue with the mechanics. Whether it involves a 'talk' or a house rule changing the power, it's the same thing. I'd also rather focus on having fun, and I'd rather just have a Move Power that isn't broken.

You are not using raw with that sil 8 object, because based on raw it is exactly zero damage, the debris might trap our heros, they might create difficult terrain, but just miraculously do no damage. Now the 40 damage from throwing a freighter at the heros. Jup, that's real. And it might be less damage than a sharpshooter/gunner deals with an repeating blaster or heavy shatter gun. Soak and all. ;-)

All the force powers have the ability to be abused...

as for the hitting people with it, 2P51, if they don't have the control upgrade, they miss. Period. RAW, they cannot hit someone with it unless they have that upgrade. And if they do, it's an opposed roll, except against minions, but killing minions by the dozen is a stock part of high level play in the FFG SW engine.

6 minutes ago, AK_Aramis said:

All the force powers have the ability to be abused...

as for the hitting people with it, 2P51, if they don't have the control upgrade, they miss. Period. RAW, they cannot hit someone with it unless they have that upgrade. And if they do, it's an opposed roll, except against minions, but killing minions by the dozen is a stock part of high level play in the FFG SW engine.

The control upgrade is a Ranged attack using Discipline and it's not an opposed roll. You don't even know wtf you're talking about.

5 hours ago, 2P51 said:

The assertion though there isn't a problem when it keeps being raised over and over is just dumb.

From what I've seen, the vast majority of "Move is Broken!" posts come from folks who have yet to see it in play. Hell, I made one of them myself. The general consensus is that the crazy abuse isn't really happening in-game for most people, therefore, not worth fretting about for the new GM.

3 hours ago, 2P51 said:

The control upgrade is a Ranged attack using Discipline and it's not an opposed roll. You don't even know wtf you're talking about.

He worded it badly, but he's right (at least about what I think he's trying to say). RAW, without the control upgrade, you can't attack with the power, therefore you can't pull the trick of lifting the mountain and dropping it on your enemy.

The opposed roll comes up if you're trying to Move your enemy off a cliff or throw him as a weapon.

Baloney. If you pick up a sil 8 object and drop it and then require your PCs to roll anything to squash someone under it that is ridiculous. If rules allow for Blast to automatically trigger in a confined space I find it a little silly that a Star Destroyer falling from the sky needs to make a roll to hit the ground....

I love the Move argument, it's so polarising! For that reason I think there is some really great advice from both sides, groups just need to decide which side of the fence they are on.

Move is a big flashy power, at the extreme it's really over the top and that's the crux of the issue. If a group is comfortable with the extreme, or not interested in using the extreme, then there are ways to make Move narratively interesting. If on the other hand you don't like the extreme, or are concerned about a min/max player, then these guys have some excellent house rules to use.

So, to the OP, your group needs to decide which side of the fence your on so that you can actually ask the important question of how to include Move in your game.

8 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Baloney. If you pick up a sil 8 object and drop it and then require your PCs to roll anything to squash someone under it that is ridiculous. If rules allow for Blast to automatically trigger in a confined space I find it a little silly that a Star Destroyer falling from the sky needs to make a roll to hit the ground....

The 8 difficulty for that check isn't to see if you can actually hit, it's to see if you can even grab a hold of it. I do agree it's ridiculous it's even possible, but there are other issues than just attempting this.

Extreme personal range doesn't even begin to cover the entire length of a Star Destroyer. So even activating Range to Extreme Personal you can't even control the entire ship. Then there's the issue of accuracy. As GM I can't see a situation where you don't hit yourself with that mountain while trying to hit someone so close to you. I'm upgrading every one of those 8 difficulty dice.

My problems lie in the middle ground, Silhouette 4. Where it's not out of the realm of possibility or plausibility, and yet Yoda could hardly shift a stuck Silhouette 3 vehicle.

But then I also consider the insane damage an x-wing can cause to infantry and I feel a little better.

Really it's only if someone decides to abuse a part of the system that you ever have a problem and personally I'm happy dealing with that on a case by case basis.

There is no Difficulty for just picking an inanimate object up, moving it to whatever range you have upgrades for, and dropping it.

But when you drop it its either hitting you and your target, or its missing both of you. The things so dam big you can't just drop it and hope it's falls just right. If you want it to be a precise hit you have to make the check.

If you have range upgrades you can be at extreme range from something when you pick it up.

Yeah fair enough, but that's still within Close of an ISD, and there is no way to extend Move range into Planetary scales. That creates a number of very large problems for you.

Now I don't know about you but in my mind an entire vehicle Combat could be run on the surface of an ISD. It's far bigger than The Close range band. It's like standing at extreme range from one end of the Golden Gate Bridge and trying to claim "I can lift the entire things because this end is close to me." Sorry but that's just BS, the entire object needs to be within range to actually move the thing. Sure you can lift one end a bit like lifting one end of a giant log, but there's no control, no precision, just lift and drop.

Then there's the problem of how big an area is hit when it lands. Basically it's the equivalent of bringing a thermal detonator to a bar fight. You can't move it precisely enough to even hope to hit a person, except perhaps with the enormous amount of dirt thrown out from the impact... which is hitting you too.

Next, what are they doing within Close of an ISD? Where's the rest of the Imperials blasting the PC to bits?

Then finally someone just lifted an entire mountain and dropped it, that's sending enormous ripples through the Force, it's scaring the pants off every witness, it's bringing so much heat that characters way they gonna burn.

Again, I don't like that players can consider this a possibility, I would have preferred the rules where less open and more rigid. But I also prefer to come up with rational reasons why it's improbable rather than simply changing the rules. It's a far more constructive conversation at the table than "because I said so"

2 hours ago, 2P51 said:

Baloney. If you pick up a sil 8 object and drop it and then require your PCs to roll anything to squash someone under it that is ridiculous. If rules allow for Blast to automatically trigger in a confined space I find it a little silly that a Star Destroyer falling from the sky needs to make a roll to hit the ground....

But it is raw. And if a star destroyer is falling on you, you actually have a very high chance not to get hit by it, because the hull should be stable enough to shelter a whole building below it. Murpheys Law after all said that a star destroyer always falls with its bridge tower side onto the ground. ;-)

Furthermore, how many star destroyer wrecks you have laying around in your adventures? ;-)

With an object of the size and stability of a star destroy, being under it might be a safer place than being in the blast wave radius from the impact . Gz the force user might have caused more issues for himself than for others. Still zero damage ;-)

40 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Yeah fair enough, but that's still within Close of an ISD, and there is no way to extend Move range into Planetary scales. That creates a number of very large problems for you.

Now I don't know about you but in my mind an entire vehicle Combat could be run on the surface of an ISD. It's far bigger than The Close range band. It's like standing at extreme range from one end of the Golden Gate Bridge and trying to claim "I can lift the entire things because this end is close to me." Sorry but that's just BS, the entire object needs to be within range to actually move the thing. Sure you can lift one end a bit like lifting one end of a giant log, but there's no control, no precision, just lift and drop.

Then there's the problem of how big an area is hit when it lands. Basically it's the equivalent of bringing a thermal detonator to a bar fight. You can't move it precisely enough to even hope to hit a person, except perhaps with the enormous amount of dirt thrown out from the impact... which is hitting you too.

Next, what are they doing within Close of an ISD? Where's the rest of the Imperials blasting the PC to bits?

Then finally someone just lifted an entire mountain and dropped it, that's sending enormous ripples through the Force, it's scaring the pants off every witness, it's bringing so much heat that characters way they gonna burn.

Again, I don't like that players can consider this a possibility, I would have preferred the rules where less open and more rigid. But I also prefer to come up with rational reasons why it's improbable rather than simply changing the rules. It's a far more constructive conversation at the table than "because I said so"

Again, it's irrelevant, coming up with rational reasons why it's not possible or making a houserule to prevent it are just either sides of the same issue, and that's addressing something that's wrong with the rule. I'd rather have mechanics that work than explanations for ignoring ones that don't.

1 minute ago, 2P51 said:

Again, it's irrelevant, coming up with rational reasons why it's not possible or making a houserule to prevent it are just either sides of the same issue, and that's addressing something that's wrong with the rule. I'd rather have mechanics that work than explanations for ignoring ones that don't.

You are first stretching the rule to absolute awesome levels, than apply common sense instead of raw to achieve damage and thus a motivation to use the rule in the way you bend it in step one, and afterwards refuse to apply rational reasons to keep it in line?
I admit, that is creative. I am sure it is not your table approach either.

For mechanics that work. see my erata suggestion above. ;-)

3 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

I'd rather have mechanics that work than explanations for ignoring ones that don't.

Completely agree. This is where every group needs to make a decision on their approach, then they can ask how best to implement it here.

4 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

You are first stretching the rule to absolute awesome levels, than apply common sense instead of raw to achieve damage and thus a motivation to use the rule in the way you bend it in step one, and afterwards refuse to apply rational reasons to keep it in line?
I admit, that is creative. I am sure it is not your table approach either.

For mechanics that work. see my erata suggestion above. ;-)

I'm not going to see anything of yours because I'll be honest, you're nearly unintelligible. Is English a second language? I'm not being sarcastic because I am simply not understanding any of your posts.

Ok. Let me rephrase it while I am a little more careful about my english.

With taking all the strenght updates and applying them twice with the use of two force pips you are applying the rules already beyond their scope. The rules allow you to increase silhouette of the objects used with move to be increased by 1 per strenght update and this works good enough on smaller scales, but it really breaks down on larger scales, because a simple silhouette increase of 1 can mean a increase weight of the object by 10 times and more. Allowing players to do so without even asking for discipline checks is not reasonable, even when technical raw allows it.

On the next stage of your example, you assume that something like a silhouette 8 object dropping onto the players must do incredible high amounts of damage. Reasonable assumption, but not covered by raw. This is a break in consistency between your first decision to follow raw and allow moving extreme heavy objects, just because raw allows it.

If you want to strictly follow the rules than there is no damage involved when dropping a star destroyer over characters. It becomes merely a narrative event without damage. And if you don't want to follow to rules in a strict way, why allow such a drop in the first place?

Do you see the dissonance in the example of dropping a star destroyer wreckage with move onto your enemies?

I hope this makes my point more clear.

3 hours ago, 2P51 said:

If you have range upgrades you can be at extreme range from something when you pick it up.

I don't believe this to be true. The power states it lets you move an object from short range to your maximum range (which starts at short), and the Range upgrades upgrade your maximum range only.

10 minutes ago, Darzil said:

I don't believe this to be true. The power states it lets you move an object from short range to your maximum range (which starts at short), and the Range upgrades upgrade your maximum range only.

The developers once clarified that the intention of the Strength upgrades was to increase both the beginning and end range, it's just a badly written power

1 hour ago, SEApocalypse said:

With taking all the strenght updates and applying them twice with the use of two force pips you are applying the rules already beyond their scope.

Unfortunately that seems to be the rule. The Strength upgrades say they can be applied multiple times.

Not sure where the rules that let you extend beyond personal range are, though, that some mention above. I think if I were running all this I'd at a minimum take into account speed, which at long ranges may allow time to move out of the way unless the move is maintained, in which case character will be suffering strain as per side bar. I'd also bear in mind that generally you don't cause the same damage to the thing crashed into as the thing that crashes, so the thrown dragon may just be angry and hurt.

Just now, Richardbuxton said:

The developers once clarified that the intention of the Strength upgrades was to increase both the beginning and end range, it's just a badly written power

Strange, they put a lot of effort into writing the reverse !

41 minutes ago, Darzil said:

Unfortunately that seems to be the rule. The Strength upgrades say they can be applied multiple times.

Applying strength updates multiple times is imho absolutely intentional, because this allows less experienced Move users to brute force their way into heavier objects, while skilled masters just have spend enough xp into the power. The issue arises when you get into objects beyond sil 4, because you pay linear increasing costs for bigger silhouettes while the the size and weight increases exponentially.

Silhouette 2 covers 6m ultra tiny starfighters like the My'til.
Silhouette 3 covers already 12m long starfighters like the X-Wing.
Silhouette 4 covers 24m long freighters like the YT-1220.
Silhouette 5 has ships like the VCX-100 with a length of ~45m. And silhouette 5 covers as well 150m long corvettes already.
Silhouette 6 includes 300m long frigates and cruisers
Silhouette 7 has behemoths like the 800m Munificent-class.
Silhoutte 8 covers 900m victory-class star destroyers and 1600m imperial class star destroyers alike.
And Silhouette 9? Super Star Destroyers, starting at about 3200m with the smallest ship with silhouette 9.
(If we keep going here than Death Star 1 is 10, while Deathstar 2 might be tuned to 11.)

The schema works fine for starship combat to keep things simple, but if you want to keep the move power simple, you can not just increase the cost for the strength updated based on out many updates you have applied already.

Silhouette 4 requires four strength upgrades and one pip, while silhouette 8 requires 4 updates and two pips. So you get basically from 160m ships to 1600m ships for just double the force pip costs, iirc roughly 1000 times the volume and weight covered (hurray for cubic increases of volume). Now if you want to account for that, you could naturally house rule that the cost increase rapidly. sihoutte³ would be very harsh, but a square increase works fine.

Silhouette 0 is free.
Silhouette 1 would be then require strength 1.
Silhouette 2 would cost 4, that are 4 pips with 1 strength upgrade or one pip with 4 strength updates.
Silhouette 3 would cost 9.
Silhouette 4 would cost 16, that's all the strength updates and 4 pips into them.
Silhouette 5 would cost 25.
Silhouette 6 would cost 36.
Silhouette 7 would cost 49 and so on.

This would make starkiller freaking awesome and gives him a force rating of around 10. Just another suggestion to keep nearly as is in the game.

You're wrong. 1 pip activates all

7 hours ago, Darzil said:

I don't believe this to be true. The power states it lets you move an object from short range to your maximum range (which starts at short), and the Range upgrades upgrade your maximum range only.

Question asked by Kaosoe :

The Range upgrade says I can spend force points to increase maximum range at which he Force user can move an object. There is some disagreement between me and my players with what this means.

By default a Force user can move an object at short range. If I activate all three range upgrades, would my character be able to move an object that is starting at Extreme range from my character, or just move an object from short range all the way to extreme range if I want?

Answered by Sam Stewart :

To your second question, range upgrades increase the range that you can start effecting objects.