Talking about non-Force characters branching out into other specializations as a balance to Force-users gaining more Powers (and upgrades) isn't entirely accurate. Force powers don't get more expensive the more of them you learn (unlike Specializations). Also, there is far less 'fat' on the Force Power trees than on the majority of Specs. In short, Force Powers are much more efficient in terms of XP than bouncing around a lot of Specs.

A relevant artifact from the Edge of the Empire beta:

Both non-Force users and Force-users will need to invest in specs. The NFUs will be doing it to expand their abilities. The FUs will need to do it to expand their abilities and gain a higher Force rating. So they will both be about equal there. On top of that, FUs will be spending XP on powers. With XP spread out in such a way, I get the feeling things will stay on par. To a point, of course. All games seem to have their tipping point.

And as has been shown in order 66...Jedi do great against individuals and small groups. But when everyone decides to shoot at them all at one they die like turkeys. Jedi also need other people to fill in the holes in their abilities. As they cannot do it all.

Man, if I could either play in or GM a game where we had to worry about what was happening at 1500-2000xp, that would be a great problem to have.

Between 2-hour sessions biweekly with players missing occasional sessions because of various life things, we have been playing for 7 months and our highest-XP character has 220xp.

Yeah, I hear you. We've been playing since the beginning of March and we're at 115 XP. I'd love to see what 2000 XP Edge characters would be like

There's also the fact that while the Force users are boosting up their Force powers, the other PCs are branching out into other specializations and picking more and more talents as well as raising both essential and non-essential skills. A Force user is generally going to focus on Discipline, at least one combat skill, and probably not much else. A non-Force user is going to be able to focus on more skills, both in their defined role and outside of it.

This sounds like the same problem you can get now if you have a one-dimensional combat-oriented character that blows away enemies with frightening efficiency, but is useless in pretty much every other situation. Just like one of these mundane killing machines, you're not going to want a one-dimensional Force user that sleeps during most of the game, then clears a room full of bad guys with Force lightning on the first round of combat; he'll ultimately be a boring character to play, unless all you want to do is roll dice and kill things. Force users should still be well-rounded characters, which means that we'll probably see more non-combat Force powers, such as Enhance and Foresee, as well as complementary Force-oriented specializations that work well with the generalist school of character design.

Another way they could balance would be to require more than 1+ Force rating in order to access some of the more potent abilities. For instance, Force lightning may require 4+ or 5+ FR since we see only the most powerful Force users being able to use it (outside of video games, anyway). In that way, game-changing arch-mage-like powers won't even be available until higher XP's.

But this is probably a discussion for another thread. In short, I don't disagree with you that there's cause for concern, but at this point I'm willing to trust the FFG design team to know what their doing and that they'll have enough foresight to avoid the worst of the Jedi issues that plagued prior Star Wars RPGs.

Totally agree, Donovan. FFG have certainly done all they can to minimize the power creep and seem to have a keen understanding of the issues at hand.

Yes, but from those 2 to 3 Force dice it scales up quickly to absurd levels, and that's essentially the cost of a Dedication bonus. Not looking to rehash this argument but no one is convincing me Move isn't OP.

So someone got to the bottom of multiple trees. shouldn't they be able to do a lot with that? and that is not including the cost of the powers and upgrades

Yes, but from those 2 to 3 Force dice it scales up quickly to absurd levels, and that's essentially the cost of a Dedication bonus. Not looking to rehash this argument but no one is convincing me Move isn't OP.

So someone got to the bottom of multiple trees. shouldn't they be able to do a lot with that? and that is not including the cost of the powers and upgrades

Define a lot. Because pick up and destroy 4 walkers goes a bit beyond my definition of a lot into absurdly OP.

Yes, but from those 2 to 3 Force dice it scales up quickly to absurd levels, and that's essentially the cost of a Dedication bonus. Not looking to rehash this argument but no one is convincing me Move isn't OP.

So someone got to the bottom of multiple trees. shouldn't they be able to do a lot with that? and that is not including the cost of the powers and upgrades

Define a lot. Because pick up and destroy 4 walkers goes a bit beyond my definition of a lot into absurdly OP.

You are assuming rolling all lightside points and multiples of them on every die. Spend some time and see how many force points you tend to end up with being able to spend.

65+175=240 XP to do that plus assuming you get enough force pips to spend to do it. To just be able to do that trick, I am going to make a wild assumption the character is going to have a lot of XP in other areas and thus fairly powerful. But to tully know if it is overpowered you need to compare with a non force using PC of the same number of XP and see what they can do. Which I suspect is a lot.

You don't need to roll all lightside. You can flip a DP and convert all the DS you want for Strain. Plus you only need 3.

I wish they'd done it the way I want so I wouldn't have to pirate it. Guess they don't want my money.

Right... cause the answer to this is "Do it my way or I'll just steal it..."