So, I have a player that has decided to be a "Jedi". I've been sticking to the core rules where lightsabers are rare and even she doesn't have one (which will change, since we do play in the Old Republic... cortosis is going to be common soon).

So far it's been fine. I have noticed a potential problem though. She has heavily invested in the "Move" power tree and can roll 3 force dice when activating a power. If she gets enough pips she has the range and capability of easily lifting a humanoid and throwing them around.

My problem with this is when I want the party to face a very difficult foe. If all she has to do is lift him up and drop him off a cliff, it destroys what I was trying to build and push into the narrative.

I don't want her to feel like the XP she has invested wasn't worth it. She can do some amazing things with that power (one time she moved another party member into melee range of an enemy). But I dislike the idea of being able to one-shot anything in the game.

Has anyone run into this? Or does anyone have suggestions on how to handle it?

My current thoughts: Minions are no problem. Rivals, maybe. Maybe with a destiny point? Nemesis... Maybe after the nemesis has been significantly weakened. Otherwise I'd allow throwing stuff *at* them, but not tossing them around like rag dolls.

I know exactly how you feel, One of my players has a 'Jedi' character with Move maxed out. He has a force rating of 3 just as she does, and if he manages to score 4 LS pips, he can lift a Sil 4 Starship, throw it to Extreme Range, doing 40 damage to anything over there in a single action. However, he has a problem, see my player has very bad luck, so with a FR3 he manages probably 75% of the time to throw 3 single black pips and fizzle out, much to all of our amazement.

As for how to handle it? Force a discipline check to see if the target can overcome through sheer willpower, and give the minion or whatever an AoO [Attack of Opportunity] to discourage use in that way. Which honestly is a terrible thing, nevermind about that AoO..thats just bad juju.. Make her a little hesitant by throwing a force user back at her with Unleash, or his own move, or even Influence. My player had the very bad fortune of walking around Kashyyk and finding a very imposing man in black armor, who breathed through a mask. He started to back off of throwing his force powers around all willy nilly, so as to not draw attention to himself.

Four pips seems a bit low to be able to throw a large object that far. You sure he's spending those correctly?

It's my understanding that for every single power on the talent tree, one must spend a pip (if you've unlocked that talent on the tree). It takes four or five pips just to throw a humanoid-size object to medium range.

Does she want to be a Light side user? If she does I'd personally tell players that killing someone for any reason using the Force directly is a major no no and will earn 10 Conflict on the spot. If she's Dark side, they're supposed to throw people off cliffs with the Force.......

Does she want to be a Light side user? If she does I'd personally tell players that killing someone for any reason using the Force directly is a major no no and will earn 10 Conflict on the spot. If she's Dark side, they're supposed to throw people off cliffs with the Force.......

Conflict?

I believe I have read it correctly, if I recall it states that for every range upgrade you have if you spend 1 extra pip you can throw to your max range upgrade. The same with the strength upgrades.

Conflict is the new morality system in force and destiny

Does she want to be a Light side user? If she does I'd personally tell players that killing someone for any reason using the Force directly is a major no no and will earn 10 Conflict on the spot. If she's Dark side, they're supposed to throw people off cliffs with the Force.......

Conflict?

I believe I have read it correctly, if I recall it states that for every range upgrade you have if you spend 1 extra pip you can throw to your max range upgrade. The same with the strength upgrades.

Conflict is the new morality system in plume need in force and destiny

Yes, using the Force to murder people would be considered mucho bad for a Light side user.

Jomero, are you playing an Edge of the Empire game where one player is using one Force Exile?

I believe I have read it correctly, if I recall it states that for every range upgrade you have if you spend 1 extra pip you can throw to your max range upgrade. The same with the strength upgrades.

Conflict is the new morality system in force and destiny

Right but I don't have access to any of that material, I even asked if it was out yet and everyone said no. So I have no idea how it works yet.

As for the force, I don't read it that way. I think the Rules as Intended is that for every branch you've unlocked in the talent tree you are allowed to spend another white pip to amplify the power. Which means that not only do you have to unlock the talents, but you also need to gain enough force dice (aka become super strong in the force) to do some incredible things. A total of five or six force dice with some incredible rolls would allow a force user to do some of that insane stuff, which is on par with what we've seen in the Star Wars universe.

Jomero, are you playing an Edge of the Empire game where one player is using one Force Exile?

Yes, combined with AoR.

Here's how I read the Move power:

1 point to move an item of silhouette 0 from short to short range

+1 point to increase size to silhouette 1 (person-sized)

+1 point to increase range from short to medium

+1 point to increase range from medium to long

So if a person was standing within short range of the Force user and within medium range of the edge of a cliff, it would take 3 Force points to pick that person up and throw them over the edge of the cliff. It'd take 4 Force points to throw them off a cliff that was long range from them.

(EDIT: Never mind this stuff above, I was mistaken about how the Force Upgrades work!)

Seems reasonable to me.

You might consider your encounter design... if there aren't cliffs or chasms then they can't drop them down them.

Or make one enemy who's a Force-based enemy, with a second Nemesis or a couple of Rivals who threaten the rest of the party. The Force-based enemy could resist the Move power at the point where they're about to go over the cliff or into the chasm, and strike back at your Force user.

Alternately make Nemeses whom it's important to keep alive. You need information from them, you need a key or a secret MacGuffin that only they have access to.

And finally, as others have suggested, implement consequences for a Force user (who wants to be a Jedi) to be just murdering people by constantly throwing them over cliffs. Reduce strain threshold, give them frightening dreams or visions, have them attract the attention of evil Sith or dark Jedi-type characters who want to recruit them to the Dark Side.

He has a force rating of 3 just as she does, and if he manages to score 4 LS pips, he can lift a Sil 4 Starship, throw it to Extreme Range, doing 40 damage to anything over there in a single action.

I believe the force move action works on personal scale so as long as you are throwing that freighter to extreme personal range you would be right. For planitary range bands though they wouldn't even be able to move the ship a full range band which I bbelieve is just beyond extreme at personal scale.

Directly read from the book:

Basic Power: THe User can move small objects [sil 0] by spending 1 LS or DS pip.

Strength Upgrades read as followed: Spend Force pips to increase silhouette able to be targeted EQUAL to Strength upgrades purchased.

Range Upgrades read as followed: Spend force pips to increase power's range by number of range bands equal to Range upgrades purchased.

In my eyes, that reads that with 1 extra pip she can throw to extreme, and with +4 strength upgrades make it a Sil 4 attack. And it only shows 1 pip on each of those upgrades.

You can house rule it all you like though! <3 I'm just saying how I read it.

He has a force rating of 3 just as she does, and if he manages to score 4 LS pips, he can lift a Sil 4 Starship, throw it to Extreme Range, doing 40 damage to anything over there in a single action.

Could you elaborate how you arrived at this?

I gave an example of how I interpret the Move power to work above. It seems to me like with 4 Force points, the best you could do would be:

1 point to move an item of silhouette 0 from short range to short range of you

+1 to increase the target from silhouette 0 to silhouette 1

+1 to increase the target from silhouette 1 to silhouette 2

+1 to increase the target from silhouette 2 to silhouette 3

So, the nearest I can figure, 4 points would let you pick up a TIE Fighter or an X-Wing and move it from short range to short range ...

Is that not correct?

Oh I see what you mean. Hmm...

I dunno, Progressions. It's however the GM wants to call it in this case. -shrugs-

The power's write up is conspicuously vague, I'm doubtful it's unintentional. I require a pip per silhouette as a means of reining in the OP-ness of the power.

So this is more like how the rule is written?

1 force point to move a silhouette 0 from short to short range

+1 force point (with 4 ranks of Strength purchased) to move a silhouette 4 from short to short range

+1 force point (with 4 ranks of Magnitude purchased) to move 5 silhouette 4 objects from short to short range

+1 force point (with 3 ranks of Range purchased) to move 5 silhouette 4 objects from short to extreme range

and with the first Control upgrade purchased:

4 points allow a PC to throw 5 silhouette 4 objects from short to extreme range?

I guess it's a lot of XP spent on that power, but it does seem quite intense. I know getting 4 Force Points isn't necessarily easy, especially without courting the Dark Side, so I guess that's a balancing factor.

So this is more like how the rule is written?

1 force point to move a silhouette 0 from short to short range

+1 force point (with 4 ranks of Strength purchased) to move a silhouette 4 from short to short range

+1 force point (with 4 ranks of Magnitude purchased) to move 5 silhouette 4 objects from short to short range

+1 force point (with 3 ranks of Range purchased) to move 5 silhouette 4 objects from short to extreme range

and with the first Control upgrade purchased:

4 points allow a PC to throw 5 silhouette 4 objects from short to extreme range?

I guess it's a lot of XP spent on that power, but it does seem quite intense. I know getting 4 Force Points isn't necessarily easy, especially without courting the Dark Side, so I guess that's a balancing factor.

It needs to take more than FR3 imo, just too OP, that's why I do it how I do it. When you benchmark it against what kind of xp someone needs to have invested in Protect, and the fact Protect has a FR3+ prereq, I just don't think Move was intended to be that powerful personally.

Do you change the mechanics for all Force powers, or just Move?

Many of them seem to use the "spend [FORCEPOINT] to do a thing equal to the number of these upgrades purchased".

Just Move. The whole idea that an FR2 Exile/Emergent could juggle 5 AT-ATs and hurl them as weapons pushed my 'No F-ing Way' button as soon as I bought the game.

So this is more like how the rule is written?

1 force point to move a silhouette 0 from short to short range

+1 force point (with 4 ranks of Strength purchased) to move a silhouette 4 from short to short range

+1 force point (with 4 ranks of Magnitude purchased) to move 5 silhouette 4 objects from short to short range

+1 force point (with 3 ranks of Range purchased) to move 5 silhouette 4 objects from short to extreme range

and with the first Control upgrade purchased:

4 points allow a PC to throw 5 silhouette 4 objects from short to extreme range?

I guess it's a lot of XP spent on that power, but it does seem quite intense. I know getting 4 Force Points isn't necessarily easy, especially without courting the Dark Side, so I guess that's a balancing factor.

This is how our group does it. Our Force user regulary needs only 3 pips to throw one dude into another.

1 to use the Move power

+1 Strength to pick up Sil 1 or larger (he likes throwing Stormtroopers into Stormtroopers)

+1 Range to throw the object up to range band. (Although, I think we've been doing this wrong. Object must be within short range to pick up and you can move them up to maximum range which is increased by Strength upgrades.)

+0 Control to deal damage throwing stuff into stuff. Both the target and the object take the same damage.

I worry for the day he realizes that with +1 more pip and Magnitude he could pick up more targets and throw them into each other. So, for 4 points a Force User could pick up 5 silhouette 4 objects from short to extreme range, or pick up a squad of 5 Stormtroopers from short and throw them into a group of 5 more Stormtroopers at extreme range, all taking 10 damage if enough advantages are rolled with the autofire rules. Also, while outside, picking them straight up and letting go is quite deadly.

Another annoying part for the GM is that RAW is the player takes a Force Move action, rolls the Force dice, then decides what to do with the pips rolled. So, if they only roll one white pip they can use Control to move a trashcan into a Stormtrooper, but if they roll 3 they can decide to move the Stormtrooper out to extreme.

Here's one thing that you as the GM can think about. Just rule that Move Object can't pick up people. There is an inference to this in the FnD Beta. Move Object refers to Objects while another power, Misdirect I believe, refers to Objects and Persons. Are they calling out Person in Misdirect because a Person isn't an Object, or are they being blunt by calling out the power works on living things too where they didn't feel it was necessary to call it out with Object. Your call as the GM.

If I was a GM I'd do it this way and talk with my Force user outside of the game first. Minions, anything goes. Rivals... Eh, probalby anything goes with them too. We'd see how the game goes and how balanced it feels. Nemisis, call for an opposed Discipline vs Discipline check and add adversery dice. That'll keep them in place a little better.

Forgot to add, also think about the socal conotations for the Force user's actions. Is this an Edge game? There's gotta be a large bounty on Jedi. Someone sees them using Move, a very blunt power, and they'll be dropping a dime on them. Soon there will be Imperials and Bounty Hunters crawling over the place looking for the idiot Jedi who sticks out like a sore thumb.

I've read a few posts about people advocation limiting Force using PCs beyond what the system already has in place because they think it's too powerful. Well I think people are getting a little sidetracked by the fluff of the Force and it's making it feel more powerful than it really is, at least compared to other Career abilities.

Look at it like this. As a GM are you complaining about how your non-Force using PCs are taking out baddies with one roll the same way you're talking about Force users?
How much EXP does it cost for you're typical Marauder PC with a Heavy Blaster Rifle to consistently one shot a typical non-minion baddie at Medium range? Or to Melee one in half with their Vibro-Axe? Now how much does it cost in EXP for a Force user to consistently throw a guy off a cliff?

Anyone here want to do the math?

Oh, I concur completely Greg, My Kill-bot PC can dish out, on an average to good roll, 30-70 WOUNDS in 1 shot, Piercing 5 damage. So I know ALL about how powerful guns are in this game. My first gig as a GM and the players made death characters that can't be stopped by anything thats not a stat-line of 4s or better.

You might consider your encounter design... if there aren't cliffs or chasms then they can't drop them down them.

My problem with this is when I want the party to face a very difficult foe. If all she has to do is lift him up and drop him off a cliff, it destroys what I was trying to build and push into the narrative.

I don't want her to feel like the XP she has invested wasn't worth it. She can do some amazing things with that power (one time she moved another party member into melee range of an enemy). But I dislike the idea of being able to one-shot anything in the game.

As mentioned elsewhere, how is this different from a PC with a heavy sniper rifle doing functionally the same thing?

Try setting up situations where just killing one or two people doesn't solve the problem. The evil imperial governor is extorting the helpless townsfolk? If she's murdered, the empire will just send someone worse who'll have a mandate to crack down on the terrorists and reactionaries. The PCs are trying to steal the valuable jewel: killing the seller will just bring more police attention. The big bad isn't the problem: the problem is stopping the stolen Alliance plans getting to the Empire