I have a player who wants to play a Force user whose Obligation is to stay in balance with the Force. I'm thinking of using the Conflict system from F&D and say that the character must stay between 40 and 60 Morality or feel "out of balance". Also, since gaining 10 Morality in one session is a little much for my taste I'm house ruling the roll down to a 1d5 to better reflect the slow progression and hard work it takes to become a Light Side paragon.

My question to you, oh wise and experienced GMs, is how can this be integrated into the game? What does an Oath/Responsibility/Dutybound to stay in balance look like when the obligation is triggered? What if no obligation is triggered but he goes past the Morality threshold?

Thanks in advance!

Isn't the point of a balance being neither light nor dark?

Maybe I'm reading this wrong but staying between 40 to 60 Morality is being in balance?

I'd recommend them having a second obligation halving the points in them as a result since that would give a reason why his character is involved with the others rather than him being solely a wannabe Jedi in a period where not having another purpose would make games either about him trying to stay in hiding or on the run once they've identified him.

The second obligation would allow this to focus on all the characters and give this character a much needed purpose whilst eventually following their original obligation.

Hope this makes sense!

I have a player who wants to play a Force user whose Obligation is to stay in balance with the Force. I'm thinking of using the Conflict system from F&D and say that the character must stay between 40 and 60 Morality or feel "out of balance".

The problem with this is that being in-balance with the force is pretty much what going up to "light side" is. There really isn't a light, neutral, and dark side to the Force, it's just the Force and the dark side of the Force.

To put it into game terms, let's say a player is 100 on the Morality scale. They go and kill a Tusken Raider village to rack up 50 conflict to help bring them back down to 51-60 Morality. That's not really being in-balance with the Force. On the other hand, constantly increasing Morality by avoiding Conflict (not avoiding people in need, avoiding dark side powers that are an inherent perversion of the force, avoiding causing unneeded pain and suffering), which eventually knocks somebody up to 100 Morality, is being in-balance with the Force.

I have a player who wants to play a Force user whose Obligation is to stay in balance with the Force. I'm thinking of using the Conflict system from F&D and say that the character must stay between 40 and 60 Morality or feel "out of balance".

It might just be easier and less complicated to use Morality instead of Obligation. It's already got a mechanic for triggering, and functionality. The "keeping balance" thing would then just be a player choice, and character motivation. Staying in the 40-60 bracket is kinda his thing.

So if he' gets to close to 60, he's free to be a real jerk for a little while. If he drops below 40, he's gotta behave himself.

Also, since gaining 10 Morality in one session is a little much for my taste I'm house ruling the roll down to a 1d5 to better reflect the slow progression and hard work it takes to become a Light Side paragon.

I really think you need to re-read the rules how Morality works. By RAW, gaining 10 in a single session is pretty much impossible unless your Emotional trigger pops and the encounter is early in the session. Otherwise unless the player is going out of his way, and even nerfing himself, to keep his conflict low, it's a good bet he'll be getting roughly 2-5 conflict every session. Giving you a roughly 50-50 chance of your morality going up or down.

One of the things about Morality is that (like obligation) it's designed to be manipulated by the player to achieve his own character objectives. For someone wanting to keep balance it applies even more.

Sounds more like a motivation rather than an obligation. This let's the player take more responsibility for how the motivation works, in that there is no actual mechanical process for how it works.

This doesn't cut it as an obligation in my mind, obligations deal with our characters relationships to NPCs around them. A more natural obligation for a force user would be that they are hunted or have a bounty on them. Thus when the obligation triggers they could expect to be harassed by some Troopers or attacked by a Bounty Hunter.

I would be careful even allowing this one as a motivation, or at least making it measurable mechanically.

Keeping a morality between 40 and 60 would mean that after a few sessions, where the player had just a modest increase in his morality score, you will then have an almost rogue player. Who is then actively doing some despicable deeds to artificially reduce his morality.

I think you could be opening yourself up to a troublesome player down the line who then claims "character background" as the reason for being troublesome.