The Pathfinder and the animal companion thread make me wonder what kind of Force dice people are playing with?

We have a Seeker with FD3, allowing her a human-sized pet. Personally I think a bigger companion than that is going to get unwieldy, unless you're riding it.

We're playing a fairly high-level type game where some of the PCs have been Jedi for two decades, but four players have 2/3 Force dice, one has 4 and the party leader has 5 (and is very much supposed to be a 'mage' character).

I don't allow multiclassing, but how are you finding your players are buying Force dice? Are they just multiclassing into every tree and making a direct bee-line for the upgrade?

What kind of Force dice are we seeing with PCs?

I note they've got rid of the previous chart so PCs don't have to feel they need to 'keep up' to be a super special powerful snowflake.

I've also noted that our Exile and Emergents are still pretty potent with only 2 dice - their talents tie in well to their careers, and a full Move tree is still obscenely potent. ,

In the full FaD group that I've got (all entering play as regular starting PCs though with accelerated XP awards), only one character thus far as gotten to Force Rating 2 (which the player beelined for), while the rest of the group are at Force Rating 1 thus far. But the XP awarded thus far is only around 150 total (aka Knight level), so as more XP gets awarded I suspect I'll see a couple other PCs reach Force Rating before long (with the Makashi Duelist being the sole exception until he decides to take another spec that actually offers Force Rating).

Exile and Emergent do make nice "add-on" specs for a Force and Destiny character, as the talents provided are generally useful and offer a way for those PCs that started with a LS Form spec to get to FR 2 without necessarily having to pay the added XP cost for a non-career spec; I could see Emergent with it's ranks of Toughened and Grit being particularly popular with that crowd.

I don't allow multiclassing

For my character, revised once I got the F&D beta, I've beelined for FR a bit, shooting down to that in Advisor, and picking up the cheaper rank in Seer for FR 3...we've been playing about a year, so my character had earned a few hundred XP. My plan is to pick up some more talents in Advisor and then pick up the next FR in Seer. My character is built on social skills and the Force, so getting those FR is more important for me than it would have been if I were combat focused in the slightest.

In my party we have five Force Sensitives.

1.) Recently figured out his sensitivity and is has Infiltrator/Slicer/Artisan. Force Dice: 1
2.) One of our Jedi Knights is a Miralukan and he is doing Niman/Soresu. Force Dice: 1
3.) His padawan has only recently started his journey down the Force Makashi/Scoundral. Force Dice: 1
4.) My Master is heavily focused into the Healer/Sage trees with Force Protect/Unleash and Force Heal/Harm. Force Dice: 3
5.) His padawan/my character is a Pathfinder/Seer recently reaching into Ataru with Move/Seek. Force Dice: 3

On our main game, my player's character is a Jedi Master -> Mystic (Makashi Duelist: 90% / Starfighter Ace 95% / Peacekeeper 30%) with a FR 6 (Plot Extra Rating). Have a few fullfied some powers like Move.

About buying FR, why not, if fits your game go on Also you can give as "Plot Rating" as a reward as I told before.

And don't care so much about "too powerful Force use". My player uses to get 2-4 Pips per roll. Good, but not awesome. Remember that its easier to get DS that LS.

The Pathfinder and the animal companion thread make me wonder what kind of Force dice people are playing with?

We have a Seeker with FD3, allowing her a human-sized pet. Personally I think a bigger companion than that is going to get unwieldy, unless you're riding it.

We're playing a fairly high-level type game where some of the PCs have been Jedi for two decades, but four players have 2/3 Force dice, one has 4 and the party leader has 5 (and is very much supposed to be a 'mage' character).

I don't allow multiclassing, but how are you finding your players are buying Force dice? Are they just multiclassing into every tree and making a direct bee-line for the upgrade?

What kind of Force dice are we seeing with PCs?

I note they've got rid of the previous chart so PCs don't have to feel they need to 'keep up' to be a super special powerful snowflake.

I've also noted that our Exile and Emergents are still pretty potent with only 2 dice - their talents tie in well to their careers, and a full Move tree is still obscenely potent. ,

Why are you not allowing your characters to pick up additional specializations? it already requires a investment of at least 20xp to do so? You are severely limiting players ability to make the character they want for no productive reason.

I think Maelora allows to geat each specialization in a career for free. So you can get three specs but no different careers, except the universal ones.

Also she GMs an alternate universe campaign where the story turned out quite differently from the canon.

Maybe for a "not so long" campaign could be a great choice that let only choice spec from your own career. This helps a lot to create good movie based stereotypes like "smuggler/pilot" and other things from movies, but for long therms games I would open it.

I see absolute coherence that someone with a good and long trajectory can achieve various goals and disciplines.

The game I am playing in is sitting somewhere in the 400xp range and I just hit FR3 last session. Oh, and I am the only force using character in my group.

Just had a player create a Force character for today's session. He settled on a Consular Kel Dor, Niman Disciple. He started at knight level since his previous character had gained over 200xp so he wasn't losing anything. He ended up with FD2, and 5 Willpower. We found that he can keep up with the other players and not overshadow them. In fact he dropped dangerously low in strain from using Reflect to keep from being a red stain on the floor.

He got to start with a basic lightsaber and that wasn't overpowered compared to other player weaponry. The group's mechanic is a better at clearing obstacles than he is, though his method of slicing a blast door is more dramatic. He opted to take some conflict to use Draw Closer once but even with 2 FD he thought twice about it and didn't risk it again in the session. I even gave him a conflict for striking down a Stormtrooper Sargent from behind.

The Conflict mechanic works as intended so far, since he isn't rushing to fall to the darkside, he did gamble on Sum Djem to disarm an Imperial intelligence agent after being shot when his guard was down...nice bit of narrative play knowing he certainly would have killed the NPC if the advantages failed to appear.

By the end of the session he only gained 3 Conflict and managed a net gain of 1 Morality.

My table, my rules. I've never allowed multiclassing in any game I run, be it D&D or whatever and I'm sure as hell not about to start now. They get extra XP for it. They'll be awesome at what they do, but they won't ever have cheesy combinations or Force-use out of the blue.

Anyway, I wasn't trying to debate multiclassing, or its merits, I was wondering what the players at your table for the Beta are playing with it terms of Force dice, are we seeing 6 7, 8s or are most people around 2/3. Just to get a handle on what feels 'normal'.

So thank you Donovan and others for actually answering my question.

he did gamble on Sum Djem to disarm an Imperial intelligence agent after being shot when his guard was down...nice bit of narrative play knowing he certainly would have killed the NPC if the advantages failed to appear.

?? WTF?

My table, my rules. I've never allowed multiclassing in any game I run, be it D&D or whatever and I'm sure as hell not about to start now. They get extra XP for it. They'll be awesome at what they do, but they won't ever have cheesy combinations or Force-use out of the blue.

Thanks, but I'm happy with what I'm doing. One reason I don't make a lot of rules suggestions is because I know what works for MY table may not for anyone else. So I'm perfectly happy throwing out things like Morality that I know, 100%, won't work for me. (The only reason I even mentioned multiclassing was because my house rule puts a hard cap on Force dice)

I like old-school games like BECMI or AD&D where you begin as a warrior and end as one, you don't have a mid-life crisis and become a mage. That kind of sense of entitlement came in with d20, where everyone wants to be a butcher/baker/candlestick maker.

There's a few modern games like One Ring where you are locked permanantly into your class. If you play as a hobbit, you'll always be a hobbit and good at hobbity things. No, you can't be a hobbit mage or whatever - you are not a Special Snowflake, you're a hobbit and you always will be. No, you can't play an orc or an evil character, there are other games for that.

If I recall, SW d20 or Saga had a rule where you couldn't multiclass after 10th level because you were so good at being one thing? This is the equaivalent of that, but starting at 10th level. You will have a powerful and iconic character, but it will make thematic sense at the expense of customisation.

That's really not something I want to debate, any more than Josep's PC starting with 6 Force dice. DIfferent people have different house rules and that's up to them. (and for what it's worth, the PCs are supposed to be the heroes of this movie; the movies villains are dead and the movie heroes are older and moved to mentor roles).

But as I say, not really interested in saying any more about my own house rules, but I am interested in how people's Force characters are progressing in terms of powers, or Force Dice, which was my original question.

Our game ihas just reached 155 XP, and my force rating is still one. The character is a Consular, and has already purchased all three talent tree's, but I have no plans to go outside the Consular careers anytime in the near future. Now that I have all the tree's I plan to get in the near futgure I've more or less decided that it's time to push one of my talent trees down to get a second Force die, so hopefully in the next 50 exp points I'll finally reach a 2 (assuming I'm not distracted by something shiny.)

Once I have a couple force points I'll probably take the Heal power, fill out the tree's a bit more, and buff a few of my skills up a bit. I think she has most of the career skills, but only at a one. Then I'll start looking to add a third Force Point.

I've never allowed multiclassing in any game I run, be it D&D or whatever and I'm sure as hell not about to start now. They get extra XP for it. They'll be awesome at what they do, but they won't ever have cheesy combinations or Force-use out of the blue.

Not trying to start a debate, as I kind of like this, but I'm just curious about it. If you want to take it off-line that's fine. Do you allow eventual progress into all three career specs? What about when the splat books come out, can they go into all six eventually?

Hi whafrog (how DO you pronounce that by the way? )

Yes, I allow any specs within that career. Yes, the bounty hunter is waiting for that one to come out eagerly!

I allow Recruit for AOR characters (in fact I give it free with some extra XP).

I allow Exile if you start with it, otherwise you can't develop Force powers later.

'Emergent' is an in-game character class, the graduates from the Alliance Emergent Project, so AOR characters may start with it, and technically any Force user can gain it by undertaking the program.

Guardian, Sentinel and Consular are Jedi/Sith only careers. To have these, you need to be an ex-Jedi/Sith or trained by an ex-Jedi (Yoda, Ben) or by Lucas Lars.

Mystics, Seekers and Force-sensitive Warriors come from non-Jedi/Sith traditions.

This said at the risk of derailing my own thread! (and yes, the players know I put a lot of detail into my games and are on -board with this.)

he did gamble on Sum Djem to disarm an Imperial intelligence agent after being shot when his guard was down...nice bit of narrative play knowing he certainly would have killed the NPC if the advantages failed to appear.

You said "gamble". Why would you penalize your player for actively attempting to do "the right thing"?

he did gamble on Sum Djem to disarm an Imperial intelligence agent after being shot when his guard was down...nice bit of narrative play knowing he certainly would have killed the NPC if the advantages failed to appear.

You said "gamble". Why would you penalize your player for actively attempting to do "the right thing"?

Ok....post killed my response. To summarize, it is a gamble in that it is not a guaranteed outcome to trigger the talent. Otherwise if the attack is successful you do hit the target. If the intention is to not kill the target there are other, safer, ways to neutralize them....though this way was far more satisfying for the narrative. Still, it held conflict potential because there were other options available.

He did opt for buying Bind at the end of the session, so we'll see how often he can trigger it without using darkside pips.

If the intention is to not kill the target there are other, safer, ways to neutralize them....though this way was far more satisfying for the narrative.

I guess that's what I'm getting at. See over here.

My table, my rules. I've never allowed multiclassing in any game I run, be it D&D or whatever and I'm sure as hell not about to start now. They get extra XP for it. They'll be awesome at what they do, but they won't ever have cheesy combinations or Force-use out of the blue.

Anyway, I wasn't trying to debate multiclassing, or its merits, I was wondering what the players at your table for the Beta are playing with it terms of Force dice, are we seeing 6 7, 8s or are most people around 2/3. Just to get a handle on what feels 'normal'.

So thank you Donovan and others for actually answering my question.

My 3 characters are at 2. one will get to 3 soon. The problem you are going to run into is by not allowing characters to go into new specializations is that they are going to run into a hard ceiling that is not intended to be there and you are really screwing over force users as going up in force rating requires getting additional specializations. If you only allow 1 they will be stuck a 2 maybe 3 depending on the specialty they took. The game design for this system is for people to pick up additional specializations. extra XP won't mean anything when they fill out their tree.

Daeglan you missed the part of Maelora's post when she said

Yes, I allow any specs within that career.

So all her Force users can easily get to FR 3 or 4 depending on their choices.

She also already made it quite clear she's not interested in discussing it. Learning to pick your battles is important.

Thanks for keeping it civil, guys. Daeglan, I assume you're not trying to be aggressive in telling me I'm 'doing it wrong'. But I know what works at my table and didn't really intend to discuss that. When I started GMing this, I sat down with a bunch of 'design briefs' for what I wanted to achieve, and ran through them with my players.

For the record, I'm happy with there being a hard cap for Force dice in my games, because it gives the actual Jedi an edge over the self-taught guys like the Exile. I also rewrote the Morality rules so Force users can have access to both Light and Dark side powers, so these guys have benefits as well as penalties.

Some things are kept deliberately hard to get for campaign reasons - you have to join the Alliance to get the Emergent or Recruit spec, or get actual Jedi/Sith training to get their Force powers. It's a bit like Prestige Classes in Pathfinder or D&D in that regard. And with with 3-6 specs and lots more Force powers, I don't envisage them running out of stuff to spend XP on any time soon.

But to be honest, I only mentioned it in passing and didn't want the thread to become a dissection of my own house rules. I'm interested in seeing how other players are doing. Personally, assuming you let them tap dark side points, you can do some pretty **** awesome things with a full Move tree and 2 Force dice.

My PCs just have the usual ones, they're white twelve-siders with some black and white pips on them.