So, this strange thought occurred to me over the weekend, so I thought I would ask here.

Toydarians, as they are written up, do not have a mechanical "Sorry, no Force Powers work on me" in their write up stat block, but it is mentioned as resistance in the flavor text.

So, would it be possible to have a Force wielding Toydarian?

KevynnRedfern

Sure. Imo anyway.

If a player is desperate to play a Force-using Toydarian, sure. But seeing as it's supposed to be very rare for Toydarians to be Force-sensitive I wouldn't let him unless he had a really good concept in mind for the character. There's bound to be some sort of genetic mutation or something somewhere in the Toydarian gene pool, and player characters are supposed to be "special".

Why not?

Nothing in their write-up says they are immune to the force. It specifies it for Droids, but not these guys.

They have Willpower 3 to start with, explaining why Watto simply 'made his saving throw' against Qui-Gon. They are stronger-willed than most, and Watto was a particularly cagey, tough-minded specimen who had several ranks of 'Nobody's Fool'.

That whole thing was just an 'ass-pull' by Lucas, when someone wondered aloud why the jedi don't just Influence him into releasing the slaves. Lucas pulls nonsense from thin air all the time, then never mentions it again. *cough* midichlorians *cough*

He was trying to cover the plot holes of a movie, not design an RPG.

Why not?

Nothing in their write-up says they are immune to the force. It specifies it for Droids, but not these guys.

They have Willpower 3 to start with, explaining why Watto simply 'made his saving throw' against Qui-Gon. They are stronger-willed than most, and Watto was a particularly cagey, tough-minded specimen who had several ranks of 'Nobody's Fool'.

That whole thing was just an 'ass-pull' by Lucas, when someone wondered aloud why the jedi don't just Influence him into releasing the slaves. Lucas pulls nonsense from thin air all the time, then never mentions it again. *cough* midichlorians *cough*

He was trying to cover the plot holes of a movie, not design an RPG.

I'm not a big fan of the prequels by any means, but I'll have to disagree with you on this one. A plot hole is something that makes no sense and is never explained. Watto being immune to Influence is a plot POINT, since otherwise Qui-Gon would have waved his hand, been on his way, and the rest of the movie (and both subsequent ones) would not have happened. That's not a plot hole by any stretch of the imagination. You may not like it, or agree with it, but it's far from a plot hole.

No, it's a tired and silly device he used in Return of the Jedi too.

Every time a jedi wants to use Influence and the plot would be derailed, Lucas conveniently dreams up a new race of Influence-immune aliens.

When another of his minions wondered how the Jedi somehow know Anakin is the Chosen One, he pulls more nonsense out of thin air - diabetic blood sugar readings!

And never mentions it again.

So, no real need to incorporate the convenient mental dribblings of Lucas into RPG canon, really.

I have to be clear on this..

I have not seen anywhere where toydarians are simply imune to the force.

Toydarinas are only immune or have a high resistance to mind affecting force powers just like the Hutt. Dose not say sanything about a phyisical force effect.

Good point, Atraangelis.

I can see both Maelora's point concerning Lucas and his deus ex machina writing style when things get inconvenient in his movies, as well as Krieger22's point concerning it being important to the movies.

Considering there is no mechanical limitation written into the Toydarian making them immune to Force mental effects (or other effects) I suspect the FFL guys just used the base 3 Willpower to reflect the fluff of the race being hard to influence with the Force.

Kevynn

Actually, neither EoE or AoR indicate Hutts are immune to Influence either.

Their high Willpower (5) probably makes it tricky, though, and the 3 ranks of Nobody's Fool.

Luke was hardly the finished article after abandoning his training on Dagobah, and so it makes sense that an experienced, hardened crime lord like Jabba could make his save with ease.

I wish I could 'like' that twice, Ghost!

Man, I can't wait for F&D to drop.........

I love Watto. He should have been the star of that movie.

That whole thing was just an 'ass-pull' by Lucas, when someone wondered aloud why the jedi don't just Influence him into releasing the slaves. Lucas pulls nonsense from thin air all the time, then never mentions it again. *cough* midichlorians *cough*

So...he thought of it while he was writing it, but before he got asked about the slaves, then did the ass-pull after it was written?

Every time a jedi wants to use Influence and the plot would be derailed, Lucas conveniently dreams up a new race of Influence-immune aliens.

Er...who do you think is writing both the Jedi and the plot? Is one somehow separate from the other? Do the Jedi exist separately from Lucas' mind?

Anyway, Obi-wan already says not everyone is susceptible early in E4 after the "these aren't the droids you're looking for" moment. The presumption is if someone is not "weak-minded" then the Force won't work as well against them. So there's no ass-pulling going on (at least on that note) that wasn't already well-foreshadowed.

As far as the game is concerned though, the "immunity" statements in the race descriptions do bug me. More resistant is fine...if I adopt a house rule that will be the first to go.

Lucas does it all the time. I love the originals, but it's pretty clear he's just making stuff up as he goes along. In the first one, Luke & Leia are clearly intended to be the romantic leads. Then it was a hit, he got to make further movies, and realised his big-name actor didn't have much to do, so he hooks Han up with Leia. Luke has to be moved aside, so - yay! - suddenly they are brother and sister! Then Lucas says that he'd always intended that to be the case, because he's such a genius.

Remember when he tried to tell us that Greedo had always shot first? "If you look really carefully at the first film, you can see he does shoot first, it's, uh, just silent... and, um, invisible. Yeah, honestly."

And Hutts don't have any immunity in EoE. It's reflected in their high Willpower and Nobody's Fool talents, which makes sense.

Now let's look at this, I can think of four attempts at influencing someone with the force from the movies, the classic "These are not the droids you are looking for", Obi waan gives the famous weak willed line, but it's also worth noting what he was doing was pretty easy to rationalise "It's just some old man and his grandson, no need to see their papers. These can't be the droids There are probably 1000 r2 models on this dirt ball alone, they don't pay me enough to drag in every last on."

Jabba, strong willed and also, Luke was trying to get him to release his prisoners, "Show weakness in front of my men and mercy to my enemy? I'd be kiled in a month!"

Watto, Toydarions being strong willed, a businessman probably being more strong willed then most at least in haggling, "No I'm not going to sell my valuable engine part for currency that's useless in this part of space!"

Drug dealer, probably extremely weak willed, "This guy is way too straight laced to buy from me. maybe this whole dealer thing isn't working out, I'll sleep on it."

So both successful attempt were about things that the victim could have much more easily rationalized as their own thoughts anyway. Add in that the other two targets are in jobs were stubbornness and resolve are virtues and even setting aside species it makes sense.

Lucas does it all the time. I love the originals, but it's pretty clear he's just making stuff up as he goes along. In the first one, Luke & Leia are clearly intended to be the romantic leads. Then it was a hit, he got to make further movies, and realised his big-name actor didn't have much to do, so he hooks Han up with Leia. Luke has to be moved aside, so - yay! - suddenly they are brother and sister! Then Lucas says that he'd always intended that to be the case, because he's such a genius.

Remember when he tried to tell us that Greedo had always shot first? "If you look really carefully at the first film, you can see he does shoot first, it's, uh, just silent... and, um, invisible. Yeah, honestly."

And Hutts don't have any immunity in EoE. It's reflected in their high Willpower and Nobody's Fool talents, which makes sense.

First of all, the mind trick failing happens two times over the course of six movies. That's a very long way from "all the time".

And why did it fail? In Phantom Menace, if Qui-Gon's mind trick had succeeded on Watto, he would have gotten the hyperdrive parts, they would have fixed the ship and been on their way without ever encountering Anakin. Boom, no Darth Vader, no more prequels, no original trilogy. And if Luke had succeeded in influencing Jabba everyone would have left Tatooine quietly, no awesome Pit of Carkoon scene, Jabba still alive and kicking. Would have made for a much more boring move. People don't like boring, people like action and excitiement. If you write a story where all challenges are overcome with, literally, a handwave you're doing a lousy job of it.

Oh, and having Greedo shoot first had nothing to do with Lucas. They had to change that scene when re-releasing the digitally enhanced edition of the original trilogy in order to not be slapped with a PG-13 rating. I suspect Lucas' "Greedo always shot first" remark was just him being a troll - have a look at his T-shirt in this image: http://www.geekologie.com/2008/05/29/han-shot-first.jpg

I always thought that people made up stories as they went along. Writing up ideas, events, encounters and so on ... is there another way?

Lucas does it all the time. I love the originals, but it's pretty clear he's just making stuff up as he goes along. In the first one, Luke & Leia are clearly intended to be the romantic leads. Then it was a hit, he got to make further movies, and realised his big-name actor didn't have much to do, so he hooks Han up with Leia. Luke has to be moved aside, so - yay! - suddenly they are brother and sister! Then Lucas says that he'd always intended that to be the case, because he's such a genius.

Those are different, and personally don't bother me at all.

But you're missing the point. Your mind-trick ass-pull argument makes no sense. The only way for it to make sense is if you assume that Luke or Qui Gon are *real persons* and they wanted to mind-trick somebody, then bad old Lucas came along and said "neener neener, you can't!" It's like you're arguing that some other agency wrote the mind trick attempt, but only Lucas wrote the mind trick failure.

Lucas wrote the mind-trick attempt and failure into the script, presumably with some intention. Maybe to show a more variable universe, maybe to show that the Jedi weren't all-powerful, or always right, or Luke was still in training, or Qui Gon was a bit of a maverick.

It's the equivalent of an 'ion cloud' that prevents the Enterprise from beaming the crew out of danger.

It's not as much fun for the story if the crew can beam out of danger (or mind-trick anybody anywhere in giving them whatever they want).

Also, I'm not convinced Luke and Leia were meant to be the romantic lead.

There's loads of tension between Han and Leia, they are bickering from the moment they meet. Han makes a number of references to trying to get with her, and it flows pretty naturally into their relationship in Episode V, in my opinion.

I'll grant that Lucas might not have known Luke and Leia were sisters when he had Leia kiss Luke in Episode V, but stories evolve all the time.

This question came up on an Order 66 podcast in conversation with Andy Fischer. Andy was asked this question directly, especially in relation to the Toydarians, and by extension the Hutts. While it is mentioned in the rules, they deliberately did not provide a mechanic for it. Leaving it either to the high Willpower of the Toydarians and Hutts, or letting GMs choose for them to be immune to the mind trick. They didn't want to tie the hands of GMs one way or the other, so its represented in a limited way mechanically (willpower), but could also be imposed when the GM needs to make a plot point.

Oh, and Ghostofaman, that picture almost had me shooting diet pepsi out my nose. I think that was absolutely brillant in representing something in the films with how the dice landed. Granted, I think maybe some limited advantage might have been granted, in that Watto didn't kick them to the curb entirely, and still wanted to do business with them.

"[Leia]’s not his sister that dropped in to wrap up everything neatly. His sister was someone else way over on the other side of the galaxy and she wasn’t going to show up until the next episode." - Gary Kurtz

http://www.filmthreat.com/interviews/8/comment-page-1/

Obviously the story evolved, and there is some question as to what evolved when.

I agree that Watto's "immunity" to the force is "lazy writing". The actions from that point seem a little odd. Why don't the Jedi go to a local money changer to get good credits, or at least attempt to find a money changer? Why don't they buy a new ship and come back for the Princesses ship later? Why do they take Watto at face value that he's the only one on that rock with the parts they needed? I would've prefered tighter writing that didn't leave those questions, or at least a shopping montage where they couldn't find a money changer and no one was willing to deal in their credits which would've shown Watto was their only hope.

I had always thought that Watto just straight up said that he was immune, but when I look up the line on imsdb I see there is plenty of room open for how FFG did it. "What you think you're some kinda Jedi, waving your hand around like that? I'm a Toydarian. Mind tricks don'ta work on me-only money." I can totally see their perception that mind tricks don't often work on Toydarian's because they are strong willed. It just would've been an easier link if the line was something more blunt like, "Toydarians are strong willed, not like those weak willed Twi'leks."