A stack of questions (not suggestions) about morality

By quicksabre, in General Discussion

Hi, all!



First, I want to apologize for making my debut here by starting yet another morality thread. I have read all of the morality threads I could find, and I have read the morality and conflict sections of the rulebook several times. I very much do not want to be, as Donovan Morningfire called them, one of those “OPs [who] didn’t want to bother learning how it actually worked”



Despite that, I still have a few questions about the morality mechanic, how it is supposed to work, and whether the places in which I find it lacking are my fault or the mechanic’s fault. There are four questions below, answers to any or all of them are appreciated.



Before I dive in, I should mention for context that I have GMd one brief (1-session) tabletop game, but I predominantly GM a PBEM game - we started with EotE but are trying to bring the party’s force user into the new system.



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The first question is, ‘how do I define a ‘session’ a PBEM game?’ With Obligation I just rolled when it felt appropriate, and if a ‘session’ was a little longer or a little shorter, so be it. But with Morality I am worried that the choice of when to roll that D10 will have a much bigger and potentially biased impact.



We have come up with two ideas, but I’m not happy with either of them - 1) roll ‘per encounter’ and use a smaller die - probably a D4. 2) Don’t roll at all and use some kind of ‘anti-conflict’ to generate positive morality. The first option is workable but I worry about balance (at the very least, it reduces variability). The second option has some appeal (see the third question, below), but ultimately I agree with the many posts opposing this idea in other threads - it is easy to game the system without adding anything to the narrative. Before FAD my group actually house-ruled a system for force-using EotE characters to fall which did involve a random element in part for this reason.



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I have reviewed the table on page 220, but I don’t understand how certain situations are supposed to play out. For example, recently, our Force user (a Smuggler:Thief/Force Sensitive Exile) broke into an office to steal some things to help oppressed farmers resist a tyrannical local regime. Her motivation for this was partly to help and partly for the reward (it was not monetary but the person who gave her the job hit her motivation right on the mark). She got caught by a loyalist, and promptly started trying to lie her way out of the situation, first to extract herself and try again, then to protect the person who had gave her the job and then finally just to protect herself. Turns out, all of it was unnecessary, the loyalist wanted no part of any fights, and as their conversation progressed, it became apparent that the situation was much more complicated than the PC had previously thought, and in fact her actions, even if wholly successful, might actually make things worse for the people she was supposed to be helping. The loyalist simply showed the Force user to the door and she left to figure out how to proceed with this new information.



So my question is, where do I assign conflict here? She was attempting to steal something, which is 2-3 conflict, but this can be mitigated if she is stealing from a corrupt authority to give back to those in need, which she thought she was doing… even if she had some ulterior motivation as well. Plus, ‘mitigate’ does not mean ‘annul’. Further, her later revelations indicated that her altruistic motive was not so straight forward, and she may actually have been stealing something from people who could ill-afford to lose it, which is supposed to increase conflict. Of course she never managed to steal anything at all. Additionally, she told lies which were entirely unnecessary and at least partially motivated out of self interest (get out of here and back to the job, save myself, don’t get in trouble, etc), which suggests 1 conflict to me, but they were also lies as a means to avoid violence as a first resort, which is also 1 conflict and, in my opinion, much worse, so I feel that she should suffer less conflict than if she had pulled her blaster even if the rules suggest otherwise (to me).



In short, I have no idea how much narrative conflict should be applied here. Suggestions?



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All that is required for good to triumph is for men to do nothing.



I understand and generally agree with the problems inherent in using some kind of ‘anti-conflict’ to drive Morality up, but it still bothers me that the way to become a paragon of light is only to avoid darkness, even if you never do anything worthy of ‘light’. One of my players pointed out that the fastest way to become a light side paragon is simply to mind your own business and preferably be somewhat dimwitted so as not to notice what is going on around you. Is this my failing as a GM to provide a sufficient number of difficult choices? Or am I just being paranoid and no player would really do this just to go light side and I’m overreacting to something that ‘feels’ wrong but works as a game mechanic?



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‘Triggering Morality’



I have no problem dealing with the ‘session’ issue in terms of triggering morality - I will do it the same way as I do obligation. But I am underwhelmed by the mechanic as I understand it and am hoping someone will clarify for me. I love obligation because it is appreciated both by my players who like to interact with the system and those who like to role play (I don’t have much experience with duty). But triggering Morality, as far as I can tell, will really only excite the latter group of my players. At first I really liked the idea, because any systemic incentive to role play more is great in my book, but I don’t see this mechanic filling that role. If it isn’t meant to be a ‘systemic incentive to role play’ that’s, fine, too (I'd appreciate clarification there), but I will probably want to modify it in some way if that is the case.



As far as I can tell, when a character’s morality is triggered, the GM puts a situation in their path that will allow them to role play their emotional strengths and weaknesses, and if they do so, the net of the D10 roll minus conflict is doubled at the end of the session. I can't see any systemic incentive to role play a emotional strength if you want to go dark, or a emotional weakness if you want to go light.



I’d like clarification that my above understanding is correct. If so, I am leaning toward the following house rule (yes, it will help people rise or fall faster), but feedback is definitely appreciated - When a character’s morality is engaged and the character's player role plays BOTH to their emotional strengths and emotional weaknesses, the player may choose, prior to the roll, to multiply the morality die roll (not the net result) at the end of the session by 0, 1, or 2. Basically giving players the opportunity to engage with their emotions for a risk/reward tradeoff (if they engage with emotional strengths/weakness and avoid/accrue conflict in the hopes it will be mitigated by the die roll/lack thereof).






Too long, didn't read - Four questions on the application of the morality mechanic separated by dashed lines.



Question #1: I have no experience with this, as I have only ever ran table-top.

Question #2: These are harder to deal with, but I let my group know that if they activated any of the conflict reasons, they would get conflict. Theft: In the case described 1 point (2-3 normal, but for a good reason), Lying: 1 point. 1 point because pulling the weapon and going to town isn't JUST solving a problem with violence, but what if it was an innocent NPC security guard. Then you could make the argument that it was unprovoked Violence which is 4-5 points. If the lying got her out of it, then its 1 point instead of 4-5 or more. (ie: Players attacks innocent security guard (4 pnts), rolls some threats or despairs, damaging or destroying items in the warehouse (this adds 3-4 more: unnecessary destruction) before she knows it, conflict is sitting at 10+ instead of 2 or 3, which an average roll is 5.5, meaning she'll gain 2 or 3 Morality after she meditates on what she has done in regards to the "Living Force".

Question #3: There's still an argument that being "dim-witted" is still ignoring the plight of others, gaining conflict. In that regard though, it would be a pretty boring session if you just sat in your chair doing nothing so you wouldn't have to interact with the rest of the galaxy. As a GM, we can place them into situations that they cant ignore. If they do, they gain conflict. (ie: The party is walking down the street when they see a group of street toughs beating a droid. Bashing it into the walls, attempting to pull it's appendages off. If they continue to walk by, that would be a 6 point offense, (3 for ignoring it) I found in the adventure in the book, inaction seems to award 1/2 the conflict for the offense.

Question #4: Triggering Morality, seems to me anyways, to be much more involved. When my players triggered, I made note of which way the player was leaning (Light or Dark), then built the triggered event to be easier to accomplish by using the opposing Morality trait. The last one I used was: My player is leaning very Light (towards his strength of Compassion) and so I started the trigger with a man running towards them in an imperial uniform (His weakness is hatred of Imperials). The man asks for their help because he's stolen a list of names from the local ISB agent, and he's been found out. Unknown to the players at the time was the man is a deep cover Rebel agent, but is wanted by the rebellion for selling information to a crime lord that ultimately resulted in the decimation of a Rebel Battalion. The easy way out was give in to his hatred and off the Imperial/Rebel, but the converse was MUCH more involved, almost leading to a whole session by itself.

Hope this helped

That helped a lot, thank you! I do have a couple of follow-ups.

#2 - This explanation makes a lot of sense for the situation, so thank you! I really appreciate the help working through this. It seems pretty common for people to say 'the GM isn't using the table on p220!' but when my group encountered a situation that actually created conflict for the player (never mind the character) I had no idea how to interpret that table.

If you don't mind, I'd like to ask a followup about how you interpret the various levels of violence in that table. So, for example, if someone starts shooting the PC from an alley, and she shoots back rather than try to get them to stop first, that is violence as a first resort? If she is trapped and surrounded by guards and tries to shoot her way out, that qualifies as 'unprovoked violence?' i.e., in your interoperation, it is 'unprovoked violence' rather than 'violence as first resort' if the NPC simply tries to capture her and she tries to fight violently to get out? At what point do you think said NPC stop being 'innocent'? When he pulls a gun? If he is known to torture captives? If his organization is known to torture captives? If he is actively hunting the PC (say if she is setting an ambush for a persuer)?

#3 1/2 conflict for inaction in the prefab adventure is a good catch, I hadn't seen that one. I don't like the idea of creating a situation like the one you describe just to force the PCs to act on morality, but you are right, if the PCs are being that ridiculous, it is justified.

#4 Hm... I didn't mean for my simplified distillation of the rules to suggest a simplified encounter. I'm happy to make the encounter involving the characters emotional strengths and weaknesses deep and engaging. The problem I have is that there is nothing mechanical to encourage that PC to engage with his emotional weakness - he can just run with his emotional strength and get the best of both worlds. This may not be ideal role playing, but it isn't something as egregious as we described in #3 and it would be hard for me as a GM to feel justified penalizing him for it the way I might if someone broke an Oath obligation. There is no bounty hunter who is tracking him down, or betrayal by a trusted NPC, etc, and the player can simply ignore it if he chooses and still be playing the game and even, possibly, role playing justifiably well (after all, he is light and his strength is compassion, so of course he overcame his weakness hatred!). That all said, your example is MUCH better than the one given in the rule book for the same emotional pairing, and I can see how it can work as written if the GM is creative. Is there a way to do this besides quick and easy (weakness) choice vs involved (strength) choice? Or is that sufficiently thematic that it is fine? Given that your players didn't know how involved it would get, would it really have been seen as a 'quick and easy' vs 'involved' choice? Or might they both have been seen as relatively easy initially, construing the player's choice (especially if he was slightly less inclined to role play)?

Out of curiosity, how did said encounter turn out? I imagine that the involved path would include a number of additional points to accrue conflict?

Thank you again!

I have always held that the players can defend themselves without accruing conflict. This gives us the opportunity to get our players out of the D&D mindset, see an Orc, kill an Orc. They have to think about their actions before they jump in with both feet. In your first example, this is clearly self defense, she's being shot at. If the assailant leaves or breaks off combat and the player pursues with the intent on killing the NPC, that's by the definition murder (10 conflict) as they are no longer threatening the player. If they pose a threat to those around them ie civilians, crowds ect, you could award conflict if they don't pursue, but in that case YOU have to make it clear that by letting them go, "many more could suffer." Surrounded by guards and they fight their way out, giving up and escaping later is always an option, or my son's method was to Force Jump into the rafters and escape. If he had fought his way out, I would have awarded conflict (resorting to violence, at minimum) because there's other methods to escape. The awarding of conflict is also circumstantial, and a judgment call on our part as GM's. Surrounded by who? Imperials, known to torture or murder prisoners, no conflict, as its self-preservation. Local law enforcement, because you broke into a building to steal records? At minimum unprovoked violence, unless circumstances dictate otherwise.

#4: The option to leave it go and ignore the set up is and should always be left up to the player. By ignoring the set up, they have ignored the trigger so therefore gain nothing outside of the norms (no doubling of morality points) as the rules state in the book. The fun of designing some of these encounters is the players (and sometimes the GM) never know where something is going to lead, or which is the involved choice. This also gives US as GM's additional material. The player in question chose to help the agent escape from the ISB. In a later combat with troopers and the ISB Agent, 3 of my players used force powers (and one his lightsaber w/training emitter). At the end of the encounter, after the ISB Agent fled, the group ransacked the Agent's office and the player that triggered spent a Destiny point to find crystals in the office's safe. I said yes with the condition that they take a 40 point Obligation "Hunted by Inquisitor", to which they all agreed. So now I have more material to plan with, ratchet up the drama and suspense in future sessions. In the last session, they found out that the Rebel Agent is also wanted by the Rebellion, and that is where I ended the session. I also find that if a Obligation/Duty or now Morality trigger turns out to be more interesting than the current adventure, I put the current adventure aside, then bring the group back to it later.

Again, thank you so much for your thoughtful and comprehensive responses.

Thankfully, none of my players are in said D&D mindset...

So in the scenario I described the PC was caught by the most prominent loyalist so not exactly innocent law enforcement doing its job but also not quite the Imperials themselves (and, as it turns out, not someone who was inclined to hurt her at all). But both the character and the player thought there was a real and immediate threat to her mission and her person and that the only nonviolent solution was to lie about it (the player had originally tried for the window was unable to get it open).

Regardless, I think you are right, 2 conflict 'feels' right for the episode, which, given that I feel it was mildly shady but not too bad, means that perhaps, with regard to my first question in the OP, 2-3 such episodes would make good baseline after which to roll for morality, which will leave the character relatively stable around 50 if that is how she treats most situations.

The fun of designing some of these encounters is the players (and sometimes the GM) never know where something is going to lead, or which is the involved choice.

I do love this about GMing generally, especially with obligation. The problem I have with applying it to morality is that there is no encouragement for the players to role play both sides of their emotions if they don't want to do so. I know that if they ignore both sides of their morality, they don't get the double morality at the end of the session. But if the net result after the roll is doubled, there is actually an incentive to avoid the emotional weakness and focus only on the emotional strength if the PC is trying to go light (and vice versa), because giving in to the emotional weakness will both accrue conflict and potentially double the negative impact of that conflict. I was hoping for something that would encourage players to engage with both sides of their morality, not just one. Unless I'm completely misinterpreting the situation, the choice presented to your PC was fairly black and white, and given that he was 'light' he would quite reasonably take the 'white' option. The only way that choice becomes more complex is if it is clear to him that the option he is not inclined to pick is the 'easy' option - of which he was apparently unaware at the point of decision, giving him almost no incentive (except for fun, which I suppose shouldn't be discounted!) to follow the dark option. Thus his emotional weakness seems to be little more than fluff, and not particularly relevant fluff at that.

All of that said, I loved the description of the adventure that followed. It just gave me a new idea...

Your part two isn't exactly correct. So in the scenario given, he decided to help the rebel, but that doesn't end the session. So building off of the Rebel, you could add into the situation, markers that he can accrue more conflict. If your player uses her Force Powers a lot, a good way to do this, is temp her yourself. ie: Makes a Sense roll. gets 2 white and a black. "You know if you spend the black pip, you could activate the ranged, which would increase your range to sense things around you. (gaining 1 conflict if she spends it). Throw things at them that they have to make good and bad decisions about, potentially gaining more conflict. I usually throw things like that at them, essentially becoming that inner voice of the dark side of the force.

Which part isn't correct? The part where there is no incentive if the choices are not presented as being a different level of difficulty or the part where the PC was unaware of the different levels of difficulty? Also, your solution, while fun, does not mechanically encourage a player to engage with his or her character's emotional weakness.

And my player is extremely conservative with force use. The character only has FR1, and the player generally won't even roll unless she is willing and able to use the DS point. I do love the idea of being the 'voice of the dark side,' though. It will be harder over email, I think, but I'll give it a try. I can probably tempt her with the roll itself when she might otherwise not roll, since she is used to using the force whenever she rolls.

Again, thank you very much for your replies! I do understand the mechanic much better now, and I'm pretty happy with it. I will probably see if my players are fine with modifying slightly the mechanical consequences of engaging triggered morality, but after hearing your explanations the RAW seem much stronger than I had thought after my first attempts to apply them.

Edited by quicksabre

My own take on the questions (though Danudet did pretty good already):

#1) That's entirely up to you, but I'd suggest that any time the group hits a significant milestone in the adventure, call that a "session" and let any "once per session" talents refresh while making Morality checks for those PCs using Morality.

#2) For the example you gave, I'd assign the PC a single Conflict for breaking into the office, though I'm not sure I'd assign a Conflict point for lying as she was trying to avoid a needless confrontation and protect an ally (even if it wasn't right away), since from what she knew the break-in was for a good cause and she was trying to avoid a confrontation (much as Obi-Wan did when he mind-tricked those stormtroopers into thinking "these aren't the droids your looking for).

We've got Jedi in the films, such as Obi-Wan in ANH as well as Qui-Gon in TPM, using less-than-upright methods to accomplish their goals; for instance he mind-tricked the Gungan leader to give them a transport, telekinetically rigged the outcome of Watto's chance cube (though it's a good chance he suspected the cube was rigged to begin with), or even attempting a mind-trick to get Watto to take the Republic credits. And there is of course Obi-Wan's infamous "Jedi Truth" about what happened to Luke's father, but was done so as to not cause the boy undue stress and confusion at a time when Luke would have need of his wits (similar to the various lies that parents tell their children about difficult or uncomfortable subjects).

Then again, in some instances, particularly the lower value Conflict penalties, the GM is left with a degree of wiggle-room on how bad certain things should be. For instance, Murder starts at a 10, but can can higher since it's entry in the chart has a plus sign included. So simply slitting someone's throat in the heat of the moment would be 10 Conflict, but setting up a death trap on par with those seen in the Saw movies or the acts performed in the Hostel films would rate much, much higher.

#3) If a PC takes no dark-themed actions, then I don't see a problem really with their Morality increasing. If the PC was completely inactive and pretty much was a passive observer, then I'd invoke GM fiat and not let them roll at all.

A lot of the low Conflict earning actions fall into the realm of Standard Operating Procedure for a lot of gaming groups. For instance, using a ligthsaber to slice through a door when there were other readily available means (such as a rogue-type that could pick/slice the lock or even having the access codes to unlock the door) counting as "unnecessary destruction" and thus the PC being assigned Conflict points; if they did the lightsaber thing as a means of last resort, I'd probably not give them any Conflict as they were willing to try means other than violence to solve the problem.

For a lot of Force users, Willpower is going to be one of their better Characteristics, meaning they're going to be better at Coercion than Charm or Deception usually, so they'd get Conflict for using said skill to make an NPC do what they want. Personally, I'd assign the full 2 points if the Force user jumped straight to intimidation. But I'd probably not assign any Conflict they simply played the role of "bad cap" to another PC's "good cop" with that other PC being the one making a Charm check, such as Obi-Wan almost gleefully explaining to Jar Jar in TPM what would happen if the Trade Federations' droid forces caught them. If they played "bad cop" and where making threats but had zero intent on actually following thru on them, then I might assign a single point of Conflict, as they were using Coercion but weren't going to make good on their implied threats.

I don't know if it's so much a "failing" as a GM as some players may well fell inclined to not take the darker options. I've got a group of players in a FaD Skype game that are pretty much acting like a bunch of Paladins (as one player rather aptly put it) when in an EotE game most of the group are pretty nasty sorts and won't hesitate to use threats or outright violence to accomplish their objectives. In one game, play a Minor Jedi who rarely raises his voice and would balk at the idea of resorting to physical threats or causing undue mental anguish, though he will resort to violence right away if an innocent person or somebody he really cares about is threatened with immediate violence; thus my PC hasn't really earned all that much Conflict ever since the GM employed the Morality rules back in August. And yet in another game I'm playing a Zabrak Enforcer that's about as nice as Jules Winfield was prior to his "moment of clarity" in Pulp Fiction, and had no problem making it very clear to a group of thugs that if they didn't stop tailing my allies, I'd shot them dead (and later did follow through on that threat when they attacked us later in the session), and had one goon "relay a message" after blasting one kneecap to cripple him during the fight, and very much insinuating I'd shoot the other; if working under a Morality system, he'd probably definitely be hovering around 40 points at least; he is trying to improve as he's had that "moment of clarity," but he's not there yet.

#4) You've got the nuts and bolts of when Morality triggers, as it does work similar to Obligation or Duty in that the GM should provide an opportunity for the PC to engage their Emotional Strength and Emotional Weakness during the course of the adventure. I think changing the multiplier might very well, as you said, lead to too large gains/reductions in Morality, which has been a constant complaint about the Morality system.

Personally, I'm leaning towards the player having to wrestle with both their Emotional Strength and Emotional Weakness if they want the Morality boost; as you noted, if the PC just "skipped over" actively engaging their Strength or Weakness, even if it was to overcome the later through roleplaying rather than dice rolls, then they really haven't done anything to deserve the reward.

Hope these answers are of some help in getting a better grasp of Morality.

Thank you for the response, Donovan!

#1) None of my PCs have any 'once per session' talents, so that hasn't come up yet. I worry because the choice of when to roll has at least as large an impact on PCs' morality change as whether to give them 1 or 2 or 3 conflict for a particular action, and it is far more arbitrary. Your suggestion makes sense, though.

#2) Right now none of my PCs are going for the higher-end conflict actions, so I'm mostly worried about the lower end ones and the line between higher end and lower end. Both yours and Dunadet's explanation makes sense, though, and I think the combination gives a good range of what a player might expect from their GM. So both of your explanations are very helpful, and together they give me a very good idea of how this mechanic works in practice.

#3 I see, so the 'Paragon of Light' isn't so much earned by being a philanthropist as consistently being exposed to darkness, and making the choice to avoid it. When I think of it that way, it actually seems very thematic. And it does a lot to assuage my fears about failing to provide sufficient explicit opportunities for conflict generation. I run very sandboxy games and it can be hard to put clear light/dark choices in character's paths. But players are constantly presented with opportunities to follow the dark path during normal play, and the rejection of that path is, thematically and mechanically, what leads to light.

One thing I would want to think through a bit more, though, is what a 'paragon of light' is supposed to represent. You give Qui Gon as an example of a jedi using slightly unsavory means to do good, but I always assumed he would be pretty neutral on this scale - nowhere near the dark side threshold, but far from the light, too. (I'm thinking of Obi Wan admonishing him for not following the Jedi code). Even someone like Yoda resorted to violence first at times (clone troopers on Kashyyk in RotS), and demonstrated a complete lack of understanding of normal, mortal emotions (when Anakin went to him for help dealing with his existential crisis and Yoda basically told him he was being weak and needed to let go), leading me to wonder at some of the other things he might do off screen. But he would probably be a 'light side paragon' anyway? Is that the model we are looking at?

#4 I think you are right that moving the 2x multiplier to the roll rather than the net will be too big an impact, but as a player given the requirement to engage with by my strength and my weakness in order to double my net roll-conflict, I would probably pass - any reasonable wrestling with an emotional weakness is likely to generate 3-5 conflict, and if I generate another 1-2 during normal play, that leaves me with a very high likelihood that said 'bonus' would end up hurting me if I was trying to go ligh. I'll probably use 0.5 (round up), 1, and 1.5 (round down) as modifiers to the roll itself, if the player engages with both to a satisfactory level, which should mitigate the conflict generated from triggering the emotional weakness without making it possible to change morality too much on a single roll. It also leaves a certain element of risk when it comes to engaging your weakness, since if you accrue 3 conflict engaging your weakness and roll a 1, you are still at -2.

Again, huge thanks to both Donovan and Dunadet! You have taken morality, toward which I was lukewarm and understood on the surface but not in depth, and turned it into a mechanic with which I feel very comfortable and very happy.

As far as Qui-Gon goes, he's probably not a Light Side Paragon, or at least he's not in the upper echelons of being a LS Paragon as he's more of a "spirit/intent of the law" in contrast to most of the prequel Jedi having a "letter of the law" mindset, up to and including Obi-Wan and Yoda.

As for Yoda (who probably is a Light Side Paragon with a Morality score of 90+), his advice to Anakin was very simple, namely to accept that death is part of the natural order of things rather than obsessing over it, even if trying to prevent it, and is ultimately going to do more harm than good; too bad Yoda didn't know just how right he was in that statement. Unfortunately, while it was what Anakin needed to hear (the boy had serious ego and self-entitlement issues), it wasn't what he wanted to hear. Yoda at the time was a bit too focused on the big picture and to younger Jedi deferring to his centuries of experience and wisdom (though at least in the RotS novelization, he did come to realize he was part of the problem and why the Jedi Order had ended up demolished) to see that Anakin wasn't going to take his advice. Not sure where I read it (thought it's certainly Legends at this point), but Yoda had spent part of his exile reflecting on where they'd gone wrong with Anakin, and accepted that the Jedi Order had become far too inflexible and detached from the common folks under his stewardship as Grand Jedi Master, hoping that the "new hope" (aka Luke) that he was preparing for would, with a more normal upbringing, be able to avoid making those same mistakes.

With attacking those two clones on Kashyyyk, but this point Yoda knows that Jedi are dying by the dozens, and the clones themselves had enough time to consider the implications of Order 66 and form an opinion of it, tipping Yoda off that his life was in immediate danger, which combined with his knowledge that the clone troopers always follow orders, pretty much left his options as "try to run and flee" or "cut them down before they kill me." And it earned him a point of Conflict, it'd pretty much have no real impact on his Morality score. Same with Force slamming those two guards prior to his confrontation with Sidious in the same movie, particularly if it counted as a different "session" than the Kashyyyk incident.

I know we are getting off topic now (hope no one minds!), but I disagree a bit about Yoda with Anakin - what Yoda told Anakin may have been the optimal thing for Anakin to understand and internalize, but it was not what he 'needed' to hear. He had undoubtedly heard it many times before. At that point a more human reminder that he was not alone and that his fellow Jedi could help him achieve that ideal, rather than, as it felt to me (I admit it has been a while since I've seen the movie), chastising him for being unable to do it on his own, would likely have been a lot more effective.

That is very interesting about the novelization. I love Yoda's character, but i think I have to agree with him on that one :P