So one of my players just asked me how he would go about reducing his obligation, and honestly I hadn't given it much thought yet and had no clue how to answer him. He has an Oath: Do not kill obligation. My initial answer was that it would get reduced if he came up with some really good reasons to allow exceptions to that rule, but got some pushback from a different player because he feels like the oath thing should allow them to be rewarded for not killing (it is NOT part of his motivation. friendship to one of the other PCs is). I disagree, so I turn to the forums!

So, question 1: Is this a good way to reduce the oath obligation? Essentially, find a way to make the oath less important to the character? I would think this would apply to obsession as well

Quest 2: Has anyone had any particularly interesting ways to reduce less straightforward obligations? Reducing favors, debts, bounties and the like are easy. Addiction, obsession, duty, etc? Less easy. I'm particularly interested in addiction as two of my players have it and I can't think of an *interesting* way to reduce it (beyond, like, joining space AA)

Choosing not to kill strikes me as more character concept/role playing, and less an Obligation. An Obligation is something that should be owed to someone, or something, saying you aren't going to kill doesn't seem to fit that particularly well. If you don't owe something what makes you stick to an oath pledged to yourself in the first place? It's more or less the same as owing yourself money, not much of an Obligation to begin with.

Addiction is easy, given that it is typically tied to lifestyle, make them choose an out of career spec that has nothing to do with their concept as an effort to 'leave that life behind them'. It doesn't have to be a complete makeover of the character, just some xp to represent distancing themselves from their lifestyle choices that led to the addiction.

My Rodian character has Oath as his Obligation, too, and it's identical: he's a doctor, so he cannot take a life or refuse medical treatment to someone in need. He started with it at the lowest level since we have a large group, plus he split his Obligation with Criminal. But I've thought about this issue a lot, and I think I've come to an answer.

The thing about Obligations that makes them irritating is that they affect the lives of the characters. In my character's case, he's the doctor on a ship full of people who routinely get into combat troubles and come up on the wrong side of the Empire. Playing out an Obligation boils down to finding ways to deal with it. For Bounty, that's getting it cleared; for Addiction, it's getting help and beating your substance abuse problem.

For Oath, it's finding a way to live with your oath despite the difficulties it presents. In the case of my doctor, he frequently has to deal with the fact that his life is in danger, or that the people he's helping are Imperials that are out to persecute him just because he's an alien. (Well, now he's a Rebel, too, but that's still bad.) However, despite everything, he steadfastly refuses to shoot anyone with his blaster, and even if he did, he wouldn't take it off of stun.

So I'd say your player is right, and the way for him to pay down his Oath would be to put him in positions where it's both immediately to his advantage to kill and detrimental to him if he doesn't. If he stays true to his oath, reduce his Obligation by 5 and start thinking up how you can twist the knife further next time. If he fails to uphold his oath, don't reduce it.

This has always been my issue with the concept of Obligation: Oath and Obsession are actually Motivations. 2P51 has it right when he speaks about internalised things like Oath.

'Obligation' shouldn't be stuff the character wants to do. It should be something external that has a meaningful effect on them.

I only count obligations if:

a) not living up to them would upset someone else, an NPC in a position of power that could actually make life difficult for the PC, or

b) an internalised issue that actively hurts the PC if it's not dealt with. Adrenaline Junkie and Addiction give the PC setback dice if not fed, so I allow these.

As an example, two of our very first PCs chose 'Responsibility' when we were new at the game. After a while, I decided it wasn't really an 'Obligation' because it didn't meet the two criteria above. One was a pilot who had a softer side and looked after an orphan space-port gang. I liked it as a concept, but it doesn't work as an Obligation, because if she just decides to abandon the kids, it's only them who get upset, and they can't make her life hard for it. So I switched that to her Motivation, and we decided that her actual 'Obligation' was Favour, to the controller of a big spaceport that looked after then while she was away, and had looked the other way during her smuggling career. The spaceport boss is in a position to make her life hard if she ever reneges on their deal, and may occasionally call in favours for the things he's done for her, and her orphans, in the past.

Likewise we had a droid whose responsibility was 'droid rights'. We switched that to an Motivation, and the 'Obligation' became tied up with her being a runaway prototype model, and her creators trying to get her back. These changes felt more dynamic, and actually felt like an external Obligation rather than something the player just wanted to do.

It rather reminds me of the old White Wolf Vampire games, and their 'Paths Of Whatever I Was Gonna Do Anyway'. Originally, every vampire had to be wary of keeping their Humanity high, and this served to rein them in lest too many nasty acts turn them into feral degenerate monsters. Then, when WW fell in love with the bad guys of their setting, they introduced new 'Paths' which didn't have any drawbacks, because they were things the PCs would want to do anyway. No longer were they measured against a standard set of morals that actually made them think before acting, but everyone had their own personal morality which it was almost impossible to violate, so everyone could happily kill and murder with no consequences. The result was a game of 'evil superheroes' instead of people trying to fight their own darker desires.

I think a Doctor who had a Hippocratic Oath should take that as a Motivation, and his actual Obligation should be something different - perhaps Duty to a particular medical order of pacifists, who get upset if he breaks it. Or the results of consequences when he didn't obey his oath - someone died because of it perhaps, and someone close to the deceased blames him for it.

Maelora, I like where your head is at.

How about this? I already had skinned up a group of rival smugglers that operate out of the same area, and would be triggered by his alcohol addiction (this PC took a ton of credits for the whopping 20 max starting obligation, and split it). I could re-skin the leader to be the wookie who escaped with him. Perhaps he has gone the other way with those memories, and become a merciless killer. He could goad the PC about being such a wamby pamby ***** and could be used to put the PC in a position where he would want to kill. Maybe that idea needs fleshed out a bit more, but there may be some way I can do something to give his oath an external effect on him...

Yeah, Ian2400, that would actually make it mean something a bit more concrete.

I feel that 'Oath' is such a vague and woolly concept, it really doesn't have any game effects. 'Duty' is okay, because it assumes membership of a guild or company or order of some sort that might actually get annoyed if you don't sometimes help them out when they ask. It's concrete, it's external. Oath doesn't have that aspect, which is why it makes a lousy 'Obligation' for me.

... and in answer to your question, I don't see how you could reduce things like 'Adrenalin Junkie' in the usual way. Anger Management Courses? Doesn't sound very Star Wars-y. And god help the shrink who tries to give Reya (our Chiss Hired Gun) anger therapy; that's a braver person than I would be...

The FFG rules for Obligation are so ridiculously woolly and vague. Motivations and Obligations on the same table. Some that give you an 'underworld' drawback, and some that don't.

As 'reducing Obligation' is frequently given as a reward in adventures, there's almost no way to sensibly reduce it in some cases, without silly, non-Space-Opera handwaves like therapy sessions. I guess you could try and role-play it, let someone like Reya see the consequences of her 'appetite for destruction' (good luck with that!). But trying to tie it abstractly to the last reward from 'Jewel of Yavin' or whatever results in a massive disconnect between the rules and whatever's actually happening in the game.

In short, I think Obligation is a cool concept that's horribly thought out and badly implemented in the game.

I'm lucky in that we all sat down and created this setting together, so everything is nice and intricately woven directly into the backgrounds of the PCs and I have a lot to work with. I don't have to deal with the issues of shoe-horning any set of PCs into a pre-fab (which is why I don't like pre-fabs). That said, even in this generous a position it is still hard to conceptualize in a role-playing sense how they can reduce oath and addiction in a meaningful and epic way. Thinking through this wookie captain idea more, I can see him potentially convincing the other guy of his position, leading the guy to not give him as hard a time. That would seem like a notable enough thing to reduce it.

Addiction, you are right, is a tough thing to handle. I mean one guy is addicted to DEATH STICKS. What, am I gonna make deathadone a thing? I can't think of anything *narrative* that reduces it. He is force sensitive, and I'm thinking if he sinks lots of points into that I could say he is learning to keep more control over himself and reduce it, but again that isn't narrative or fun or interesting. Maybe not everything needs to end up being narrative, but I'd sure as hell like it to be!

At least it's possible that an addict might want to change and get clean. That's a theme of films like 'Trainspotting' after all.

It feels much more odd for an Adrenaline Junkie - in a cinematic setting like Star Wars - wanting to be less kick-ass....

Obligation is a classic example of what some role-players call 'disassociated mechanics'. As is 'Duty'. When the rules don't reflect what's actually happening in the game, credibility gets strained.

So at the end of our adventure, one of the rewards is to reduce Obligation. So one guy pays off his Debt, another pulls some strings to reduce the Favours he owes, etc. The guy with Criminal or Bounty maybe gets something to cover his tracks or a secret identity.

What does the Addict or Adrenaline Junkie actually get to reduce their 'Obligation'? What about the guy with an Obsession?

Addiction, you are right, is a tough thing to handle. I mean one guy is addicted to DEATH STICKS. What, am I gonna make deathadone a thing? I can't think of anything *narrative* that reduces it. He is force sensitive, and I'm thinking if he sinks lots of points into that I could say he is learning to keep more control over himself and reduce it, but again that isn't narrative or fun or interesting. Maybe not everything needs to end up being narrative, but I'd sure as hell like it to be!

Suppress the force? No. Sure that's how Cade Skywalker blocked out his dead relatives force ghosts, but you don't want to neuter a character for making an interesting character concept.

Make things hard for him when he uses the force while strung out? Heck yes! Nothing big, just a setback on skill checks made while using the force (including force sensitive only talents), 2 if he's hitting the stuff harder than usual. Many applications of the force don't require skill checks, but those that do should be hindered. To be honest, it may not even have to be Force-related skill checks. It could be all skill checks that require a certain level of coherency.

Rhetorical question. Do not answer if you are under legal age for your country: Have you ever tried performing a task normally requiring a great amount of concentration shortly after consuming a few adult beverages? I have. I either failed miserably, could not concentrate and walked away, or looked back the next day and could tell I was having issues. Absolutely a setback die should be given.

Addiction, you are right, is a tough thing to handle. I mean one guy is addicted to DEATH STICKS. What, am I gonna make deathadone a thing? I can't think of anything *narrative* that reduces it. He is force sensitive, and I'm thinking if he sinks lots of points into that I could say he is learning to keep more control over himself and reduce it, but again that isn't narrative or fun or interesting. Maybe not everything needs to end up being narrative, but I'd sure as hell like it to be!

Suppress the force? No. Sure that's how Cade Skywalker blocked out his dead relatives force ghosts, but you don't want to neuter a character for making an interesting character concept.

Make things hard for him when he uses the force while strung out? Heck yes! Nothing big, just a setback on skill checks made while using the force (including force sensitive only talents), 2 if he's hitting the stuff harder than usual. Many applications of the force don't require skill checks, but those that do should be hindered. To be honest, it may not even have to be Force-related skill checks. It could be all skill checks that require a certain level of coherency.

Rhetorical question. Do not answer if you are under legal age for your country: Have you ever tried performing a task normally requiring a great amount of concentration shortly after consuming a few adult beverages? I have. I either failed miserably, could not concentrate and walked away, or looked back the next day and could tell I was having issues. Absolutely a setback die should be given.

I may or may not have had to go back and tweak or re-write chunks of this campaign because they were written after three or four beers . Fortunately, for me enforcing negative outcomes of the addictions has been super easy, these guys both love roleplaying and never need to be reminded of their obligation. I don't think we had a single encounter last session where one of them wasn't taking setback dice. In fact the biggest combat encounter that took place had them BOTH using setback dice. One was driving stoned and the other gunning hammered. The first because he likes it and the second because he was just put in a position where he needed to be complicit in slavery and felt the need to hit the sauce to cope.

This game is fun.

One way to reduce an oath against killing would be to perform some clever writing where the PC needs to kill to save someone. Another would be to have the PC encounter a hated enemy and succeed on a discipline check to keep this oath. Just some random thoughts...

One important distinction is that Obligation just represents how this aspect of your life or your personality shows up regularly and messes up your business.

The higher the Obligation score, the more likely it is to show up during a session and interfere with you in some way.

There's a character in my EOTE game who drinks all the time. Like, he says "my character starts drinking when he wakes up".

As far as I'm concerned, it's just a bit of color to that character and I'm not going to try to give him setback dice on checks because he's drunk, or to try to represent his character as an alcoholic.

If he wanted to do that, he could take the Addiction Obligation.

Your character could still have an Oath but if it doesn't mess up your character's business, if it's not a specific story point that will recur and cause you trouble, then it doesn't have to be an Obligation.

The "Adrenaline Junkie" may not ever be able to buy down that Obligation, if they don't want to. Or they could go through adventures that give them some perspective on the consequences of always trying to find a bigger and bigger thrill.

Afterwards, they may still enjoy driving fast or getting into danger, but they're not compelled to do it in such a way that it causes them trouble all the time.

Lowering these kinda of Obligations just represents that the player is better able to handle themselves. A player with an Oath not to kill, if put into situations where killing would be beneficial, would be stressed by the reprecussions of their non-lethal nature. When they lower their Obligation, it would represent that these stresses don't get to them the same way. Narativly it's present, but it's not impeeding them, which mechanically is represented by the dimished possiblity of lowering their Strain threshold.

tl;dr A lowered Obligation can be easily summed up by saying the player has gotten better at dealing with the stress that comes along with it.

An important idea (which several people are alluding to but no one has spelled out) is that the Obligation system is based on the assumption of solvable issues . The "problems" that Obligations represent should be things that can both get worse and, more importantly, be overcome and solved .

In order for a proposed Obligation to work as Obligations should, it needs to be possible for the character to resolve the issue and be done with it. This is one of the key reasons why certain kinds of personal issues don't work well as Obligations.

An oath against killing, for instance, doesn't meet this criterion. If a character were to reduce his oath against killing to zero on the Obligation scale, this would mean he no longer has an oath against killing - he no longer cares much whether he kills or not. But that, of course, doesn't really make any sense.

A commitment to droids' rights would be similar. If the character reduced this commitment to zero, this would mean that he no longer has any committment to droids' rights - he is no longer concerned with that issue enough to be bothered by it. Once again, this doesn't really make any sense.

As Maelora pointed out, these sorts of personal issues are better characterised as Motivations - as the sort of personal values and interests that drive someone.

Obligations are those problems in a person's life he is seeking to resolve and overcome . If the issue isn't the sort that can be fixed , then it probably shouldn't be a Obligation.

Put another way, Obligations need to have an end in sight . There needs to be a way (at least in principle) to reduce them to zero and be finished with them. If an issue is going to follow the character forever (the way most oaths, beliefs, and values will), then it probably shouldn't be an Obligation.

To reduce an Oath Against Killing Obligation to 0 would mean that it doesn't show up regularly and mess up the character's life.

It doesn't necessarily mean that the character no longer has an Oath Against Killing.

These things are really designed to track elements from the characters' lives that become story points, which influence the sessions in a big way.

A character can be opposed to killing without it being a story point.

I have to disagree with you too, OverMatt. In the description of Oath, it reads, "a willingness to sacrifice for the betterment of some group or cause." Sounds like droid rights to me. And then later in that it literally says, "...possibly without a truly obtainable end goal in sight."

My group had one character whose obligation was along these lines. She was a Mechanic with an Oath to not fail her crew, or let their ship breakdown. Seems like kind of a silly Obligation. But these internal obligations need some driving factor, just like the external obligations do. Some obligations like Debt, or Bounty may have external forces that are going to punish the PC when they don't deal with it, but with Oath and Addiction the PC is going to punish themselves.

They have to understand when they take these obligations they're taking demons or personality flaws that are going to haunt their characters and make a normal life difficult. So if the Mechanic simply wanted to be a good mechanic, that would be a Motivation and wouldn't work as an Obligation. But my Mechanic's Obligation was caused by a terrible accident on a ship she worked on, she felt the whole accident was her fault and that she had gotten a lot of good spacers killed. This meant when her obligation was triggered she would have intense panic attacks and freeze up at key moments where the group really needed her mechanical prowess. She paid down the Obligation by dealing with the reality of the accident that happened, seeking forgiveness from the victim's families, and learning to forgive herself.

With an Oath: Don't Kill obligation, I'd recommend the character have more than a desire to not kill. I'd say they would need a traumatic event in their past that makes them unable, or strongly unwilling to kill. Perhaps they lived a violent youth, and inadvertently hurt - or even killed - someone they loved. They then made a promise on that person's grave to never hurt another person. So now when their obligation comes into play, they're put into a situation where killing is the only way to protect or save something, but they're haunted by the thought of letting that loved one down a second time. I'd actually say they'd pay the obligation down by holding to their new ideals, because they know they'd be making up for that past mistake. Once they've paid down the obligation their aversion to killing is no longer a crippling demon, but a choice they've decided to make.

For the Addiction, I'd say once again it'd be important the Addiction Obligation is gained to deal with some life-altering event. This would allow the PCs to pay it down by both using Discipline to deny their triggered desire to give in to the addiction, and resolving the original event that caused them to turn to the Addiction.

I too disagree with OverMatt, as without taking on Duty from Age of Rebellion, RAW makes it impossible to ever get rid of all your Obligation completely. If you have multiple Obligations, then yes you can potentially overcome one completely, but that doesn't mean every Obligation needs to be something you can solve. These existential Obligations can be your bottom 5.

With an Oath: Don't Kill obligation, I'd recommend the character have more than a desire to not kill. I'd say they would need a traumatic event in their past that makes them unable, or strongly unwilling to kill. Perhaps they lived a violent youth, and inadvertently hurt - or even killed - someone they loved. They then made a promise on that person's grave to never hurt another person. So now when their obligation comes into play, they're put into a situation where killing is the only way to protect or save something, but they're haunted by the thought of letting that loved one down a second time. I'd actually say they'd pay the obligation down by holding to their new ideals, because they know they'd be making up for that past mistake. Once they've paid down the obligation their aversion to killing is no longer a crippling demon, but a choice they've decided to make.

This is basically the idea here.

The Obligation system is built upon the assumption that each Obligation can somehow be "paid down" (and possibly increased as well by doing things that make it even worse).

My point was that something like an oath not to kill can't be "paid down" in any meaningful or coherent way. It can't, normally, be reduced in magnitude, let alone eliminated, in any way that makes sense. If someone has a 20-point oath against killing and then reduces it to 15, what does that mean? Mechanically, it's supposed to mean that the oath is now "milder" and less of a restriction and limination in his life - i.e. that he's less averse to killing than he was before, making this less of a restriction on his life and behaviour. He's supposed to be 25% closer to no longer having an oath against killing. But it doesn't make any sense for a character who has taken an oath not to kill to think in that way.

Instead, if the Obligation is to work correctly as a mechanic, it needs to be something more like what Shinagani described - e.g. an oath to make amends for specific past misdeeds. For instance, a character's negligence/callousness/greed/etcetera resulted in the death of ten innocent people who had done nothing to him. So he has decided that he must find a way to forgive, and spare the lives of, ten guilty people who have seriously harmed him. Each time he forgives someone who has hurt him badly enough to deserve to die, he reduces his Obligation by 10%. After doing so ten times, his Obligation is settled. Note that such an Obligation could also increase in magnitude if he ever kills another innocent.

This is the structure that Obligations need to have before the ruleset can properly accomodate them. The sorts of "vague" Obligations we've been talking about simply don't work well. You can shoehorn them in, fudge the handling of them, and so forth (indeed I'm doing this in my own game right now); but it quickly becomes apparant that these sorts of "vague" Obligations aren't what the system is designed for.

I too disagree with OverMatt, as without taking on Duty from Age of Rebellion, RAW makes it impossible to ever get rid of all your Obligation completely. If you have multiple Obligations, then yes you can potentially overcome one completely, but that doesn't mean every Obligation needs to be something you can solve. These existential Obligations can be your bottom 5.

You're misinterpreting what the rules mean when they say that a character's Obligation should never quite drop to zero.

It doesn't mean that at least one of his Obligations should be "unsolvable". It simply means that, given the way Edge of Empire is intended to work, the GM should find ways to have characters take on new Obligations (or increase existing ones) faster than they can solve them.

Note, for example, that's it's perfectly legal for a character's only Obligation to be a monetary debt - an Obligation with a clear and unambiguous end goal. And when he pays off that debt, it will be wiped out - reduced to zero. The GM is simply encouraged to find a way to make the character either borrow more money or take on an Obligation of another kind before he ever quite manages to pay the debt off.

OverMatt, I'll mention again that the Obligation score represents the aspect of that Obsession, Addiction, whatever, which is going to recur in the character's life and become a story point on a regular basis until it's 'paid down'.

It doesn't necessarily mean you have to lose your refusal to take a life to reduce your Oath: Don't Kill Obligation.

You can still have the character attribute, you just don't have the mechanical aspect that brings it forward whenever you roll it and makes it a story point the character has to deal with.

I understand what you mean; I'm just claiming that it doesn't really make sense when you think about what's going on mechanically.

What's the difference between, say, a 20-point Obligation of an oath not to kill and that same Obligation reduced to 10 or even 0 points?

One interpretation is that the character is literally less averse to killing as the numbers go down; but as we've said that doesn't really make any sense for someone who has supposedly taken an oath.

Alternatively, as you've suggested, it means that the oath is simply less likely to show up as a plot element. In other words, you're suggesting that the numerical value of an Obligation is essentially a measure of "how much license the dice and the GM have to bring up this problem in the character's life for no particular reason" (and the lower the number the less often the Obligation should be a bother). It's not that the oath itself grows weaker or stronger, but rather that it becomes less or more likely to "show up" as a story complication.

I understand this interpretation; but it's still very odd if you break down what you're saying. For example, with a value of 10 versus 20, the oath is half as likely to be a source of stress or complication in the character's life at this time. Well, why ? What has the character done to make it less likely to bother him, and why is it less likely to bother him? For something like an oath, it's hard to answer any of these questions in a way that makes sense.

The sort of action that should reduce an Obligation like this is, I would think, refusing to kill someone despite the advantages of doing so - i.e. the character willingly accepting risk/cost/hardship in order to uphold his oath. Suppose he does so. Well why would this have any effect on the likelihood of his facing a similar dilemma tomorrow? Why would sparing Bad John in Adventure #1 make it less likely that there would be a temptation to kill someone in Adventure #2? Conversely, suppose he gives into temptation and kills someone anyway, thereby increasing the value of the Obligation. Why would killing someone today make it more likely that another person whom it is tempting to kill would show up tomorrow? There's no logical way I can see to connect the character's behaviour to the change in Obligation value when dealing with something like an oath.

And suppose, hypothetically, that he does whatever is required to reduce the Obligation to zero for the time being. Does that mean that he can never be placed in a situation where there would be an advantage in killing someone? That he can never be tested by his oath again? At least not until he somehow increases the value of the Obligation above zero once more? That would seem to be the clear implication of your interpretation - that a zero-value Obligation cannot show up as a complication for the character. Yet obviously that makes no sense for something like an oath.

As I said before, I'm actually dealing with Obligations of this sort in my own game so I understand where you're coming from. In fact, I'm already using an approach very much like what you suggest. I'm just pointing out that trying to fit this sort of stuff into the Obligation system is a square-peg-in-a-round-hole situation. You can hammer it in and do your best to make it work; but it soon becomes apparant that it isn't quite working the way it should. The mechanics of the Obligation system just aren't designed to handle this sort of thing.

*shrug* it's just a way to create cool story effects, and to help develop ongoing stories for your characters.

The number score is just an easy way to create effects that recur in your stories and mess up your characters' lives.

It makes sense to me, and in my opinion it works as the developers intended.

And the answer to all those "why" questions just depends on what the story is.

You're thinking about this WAY too much. It's not that difficult.