I have a player that has picked up strength 1, and has the control ability that allows him to throw objects.

Now, the description of the power seems to indicate throwing objects into people to hurt them, but what about throwing people?

If he picks up a storm trooper and batters him against another storm trooper, does this work? And if so, does it do 10, or 20 damage. (I'm guessing 20, since both the object being thrown (stormtrooper 1) and the object being hit (stormtrooper 2) take equal damage.

And if it does work like this, is it balanced? What about if he eventually nabs magnitude and throws 2 storm troopers into the other 2 (that'd be 40 damage, with 2 relatively easy checks).

thoughts? comments? anything I might have got wrong?

You described pretty much any of our EOE sessions ever.

We call it 'Stormtrooper skittles'.

(A man sized object is SIl 1 so we say it does 10 dmg to each...)

Just wait 'til you can do can do it with ATATs...

It'd be 10 damage + successes to the target (before Soak); it's up to you if the thrown person is just the 10 damage or also the successes.

Throwing multiple objects/people at once follows Auto-Fire rules, so extra difficulty and the need for 2 Advantage/1Triumph; not two separate checks done in a single action.

There really isn't anything rule-wise to stop it for weaker enemies. More just that doing it in public places or leaving people alive means that the Empire will soon be alerted to them.

Force and Destiny includes suggestions for stronger enemies. Essentially any NPC the GM deems fit should be able to have the chance to resist the force power (Nemesis, other Force Users, and other Players, in particular should always have the chance to resist). For Force Move, it basically becomes an opposed Discipline check vs. the target's Resilience (when trying to throw the person), Athletics (trying to pull a weapon from their hands), and target force users can choose the aforementioned skills or their Discipline (basically to represent them using the force to resist the force).

I believe RAW is that both the target and the thrown guy take the same damage, 10 + successes.

Is it balanced? IMHO, no. I don't like that with a single white pip you can pick up a guy without some sort of roll for them to grab ahold of something. This could lead to just picking the guy straight up or over a railing and letting gravity (falling damage) do the work with no roll other than the Force die. It gets even worse when you can pick up a guy and throw them at another guy. All you need is two white pips and succeed at a single Easy roll to do 10 + successes to two targets and move where one of the targets was standing. This I feel is too powerful. The other things that can damage multiple targets (two weapon fighting, linked, autofire) all involve increasing the difficulty by one and requiring two advantages for the second hit.

What we did in my group was to use the rules as written to pick up a guy and throw him. If the Force user wanted to throw him at another guy, we played it as autofire. He increased the difficulty by one and needed two advantages to hit the second target. This was to represent both guys holding onto stuff or dodging out of the way. Failure means the picked up guy is moved to wherever the Force user was throwing him but didn't connect to a hard object. Success but no advantages means that the picked up guy missed the target guy but hit something hard enough to do damage to him, such as crates, a wall, or the floor. Success with two advantages means that the picked up guy hit the target guy and both take the same damage.

Our Force User try to use the rules for picking up multiple objects to throw at multiple targets to throw half a squad of guys at the other half. RAW is to use the autofire rules, but I don't feel this is balanced to easily pick up a squad of guys for damage. I'd probably add a requirement to need autofire advantages to for each guy picked up and target thrown at. 2 advantages = 1 guy thown at 1 target. 4 advantages = 2 guys thrown, but only 1 hits another guy and all 3 take damage. 6 advantages = 2 guys thrown and both hit another guy, all 4 take damage.

I hope this helps.

Jamwes,

Minor correction, but it'd be two white pips; 1 to activate the basic effect and the second to activate the Strength Upgrade. Which for a character with Force Rating 1 isn't going to be a sure thing.

While the Move power on the surface looks to be the most uber thing in this game, in actual application, it's really not. Or least it's not of the GM is using semi-intelligent enemies and decent encounter design instead of just having the adversaries act like lemmings.

Yes, it's fantastic at clearing away minions; grab a minion and then throw him back into the minion group, possibly taking out three or four minions on one go; you see Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan doing this repeatedly to the battle droids in Episode 1. But it's also incredibly blatant, so unless you're playing superheroes in a sci-fi setting, then openly using the Force and leaving witnesses behind is a BAD idea. The Jedi of the prequels got away with such open uses of the Force because being a Force user wasn't outlawed under the Old Republic like it is under Imperial rule, so your PCs won't have that luxury.

Also remember that hurling an object is (with the exception of the difficulty), treated as a ranged attack. That means cover is a factor, as is any Ranged Defense the target of the hurled object might have, and most importantly the Adversary talent. As lathrop noted, the Force and Destiny Beta introduced an option that you can allow any important NPC to make any use of the Force require an opposed check, even if the power normally doesn't call for it. So if you've got a Force user that wants to use Move to crush that major adversary of the adventure in the opening round, you can simply require the PC to make a Discipline check, and select the skill you think would best fit the situation of the NPC escaping the telekinetic grasp of the Force user; Discipline is the default, but you could make cases for Athletics, Coordination, or even Coercion; the NPC fixes the Force user with such a steely-eyed gaze that the PC loses their nerve and focus at that critical moment, and the power fails.

The resistance rolls are critical! Not against minions, or even lesser rivals, but anyone you care about, or that the story dictates is important at that moment, should be allowed to add something to the opposed test! Resilience, Athletics, and Discipline seem to be the go to for that dice pool.

Also, to echo what Donovan said, using the force blatantly in EotE or AoR is a quick way to get an inquisitor to catch your scent. The easiest way to represent this is make every instance where they're spotted using the force add to an Obligation: Inquisitor. When it's rolled, the Inquisitor finds them and you can do something awesome.

Also, to echo what Donovan said, using the force blatantly in EotE or AoR is a quick way to get an inquisitor to catch your scent. The easiest way to represent this is make every instance where they're spotted using the force add to an Obligation: Inquisitor. When it's rolled, the Inquisitor finds them and you can do something awesome.

I like that idea. Might also go one further and that every time a Despair is rolled on either a Lightsaber combat check or a skill check related to activating a Force power, the Inquisitor Obligation goes up by one in addition to the usual effects of the Despair.

Jamwes,

Minor correction, but it'd be two white pips; 1 to activate the basic effect and the second to activate the Strength Upgrade. Which for a character with Force Rating 1 isn't going to be a sure thing.

Thank you for the correction.

But it's also incredibly blatant, so unless you're playing superheroes in a sci-fi setting, then openly using the Force and leaving witnesses behind is a BAD idea.

I agree. Good role playing with a GM who makes concequences for over using Move (or any other blatant Force power) will keep its use in check.

Also remember that hurling an object is (with the exception of the difficulty), treated as a ranged attack. That means cover is a factor, as is any Ranged Defense the target of the hurled object might have, and most importantly the Adversary talent.

However, it isn't considered a combat check. So, as a GM, think long and hard as to if you'll allow the force user to Aim and what they can spend the Advantages on. Can the attack be a crit? If so, how many Advantages does it cost? We ruled it as 5, the same ammount as an unarmed attack. When you crit, which guy suffers the crit? The target or the thrown guy or both?

Also remember that hurling an object is (with the exception of the difficulty), treated as a ranged attack. That means cover is a factor, as is any Ranged Defense the target of the hurled object might have, and most importantly the Adversary talent.

However, it isn't considered a combat check. So, as a GM, think long and hard as to if you'll allow the force user to Aim and what they can spend the Advantages on. Can the attack be a crit? If so, how many Advantages does it cost? We ruled it as 5, the same ammount as an unarmed attack. When you crit, which guy suffers the crit? The target or the thrown guy or both?

"This attack follows all the rules for ranged attacks, including ranged defense and aiming."

I use 5 for critting, I only let the crit apply it to the target(s) since even though you're killing two birds with one stone (so to speak), the guy thrown essentially plays the role of the weapon with the target(s) being the one you're trying hit precisely. Though if a player wanted to spend a separate set of 5 advantages/1 Triumph to also crit the person being thrown, I'd probably allow it.

This is a hot topic and I am new to the game. Could anyone run a demo for me here about a typical combat using these techniques would look like. Showing who do what , and what type of skills they use. thanks on advance.....

Is Force Move really intended to throw around organic beings? I personally don't really remember this application in any of the movies. Even with droids it seemed limited to the unshielded varieties. Bind and Force Choke seemed the more often alternative employed against organics. Do other characters get to add opposed rolls to attempts to move them via the Force?

Correct me if I am wrong but when did "object" come to equal characters. Particularly since a telekinetic method of restraining moving and harming characters is available via bind.

Is Force Move really intended to throw around organic beings? I personally don't really remember this application in any of the movies. Even with droids it seemed limited to the unshielded varieties. Bind and Force Choke seemed the more often alternative employed against organics. Do other characters get to add opposed rolls to attempts to move them via the Force?

Correct me if I am wrong but when did "object" come to equal characters. Particularly since a telekinetic method of restraining moving and harming characters is available via bind.

For the most part, it's something you find in various video games. It could very well also be in various books/comics, and the cartoons, but my brain is especially fuzzy on those right now. But it does actually appear in a few different ways in the Prequels: the most obvious way is when Anakin and Obi-Wan try to throw each other in RotS, and depending on how you interpret the scene, Dooku using Force Lightning in AotC (which could just be fluff added onto how Lightning/Unleash was use, or it could be using Lightning/Unleash and then Move).

The suggestion wasn't added until Force and Destiny's Beta, but yes, important characters are allowed to make opposed checks, see my post above in the last paragraph for the Move-oriented examples in the book.

And sometimes it's easier to just toss a tough jerk off a cliff than trying to slowly choke the life out of him.

Yes but the issue is the description for Move says items and objects, which frankly is not terms in any roleplaying game parlance that has ever been used to refer to characters.

Bind has a Force Push/Pull and Move element to it and does effect targets by moving them one range band closer or further away, which would make it the appropriate power to my mindset.

Yes but the issue is the description for Move says items and objects, which frankly is not terms in any roleplaying game parlance that has ever been used to refer to characters.

In general I'd agree. There are only a few canon references from TCW I can think of where it's just "Move": Mace on Ryloth lifting the two troopers to safety; Ahsoka on the Trade Federation ship lifting Senator Chuchi out of sight; Ahsoka on Onderon trying to save Steela. (It's interesting to me that Ahsoka has to work pretty hard in both cases.)

It might be easiest to make it contested if the target is not "willing", though that doesn't really account for how much apparent work it is even for willing targets. Unwilling targets can be pushed though, for which the current mechanics can be used, but if you wanted to keep the flavour of canon you'd have to ask the player to narrate it that way.

Or you could try this house rule:

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/134430-force-move-canon-edition/

But that might tone down the strength beyond your liking.

And even more recently: Kanan saving Ezra who fell off the ship. He too was more than winded after the ordeal.

Yes but the issue is the description for Move says items and objects, which frankly is not terms in any roleplaying game parlance that has ever been used to refer to characters.

Bind has a Force Push/Pull and Move element to it and does effect targets by moving them one range band closer or further away, which would make it the appropriate power to my mindset.

A biological, material, sentient being is most definitely an object. A body might be called "a thing," a person might be called "an entity." Both are synonyms of object, and object is the easiest catch-all term to use.

This edition is very lax on terminology compared to some games, so I wouldn't get too caught up in minutia of term definitions. Approach the game like you've never read the rules for another RPG, and you will have so much more fun.

1) On a game-mechanical level, the devs have discussed using Move to throw people around. One example comes to mind of the Order 66 Podcast and their "Alarming Questions Part 2" episode, starting discussion of the Move power at about 48 minutes and then coming to the most relevant part of the discussion at time marker 53:40. It is also called out in the FaD Beta as a possibility, at the very end of the sidebar on page 195.

1a) Bind is a specific power used to halt and choke individuals, with a special perk that can allow you to also move them. It differs from Move in that Move is treated as a combat check, whereas Bind is not. So even though Move can be more powerful, Bind can be more useful for its stopping power, its intimidation factor, its ability to be used alongside of Supreme Reflect/Parry, its ability to ignore Soak, its ability to be sustained by committing Force Rating, its ability to cause a Critical Injury, and the fact that you can Stagger an opponent (so basically just leave him alone for a round while you do other stuff). It's a telekinetic power, so there is some crossover with the Move power where you can make them do basically the same thing (just like there might be with certain skill and talent applications), but it's altogether a very different power from Move.

2) On a lore-based level, we have many canon examples of the Force used to lift and/or throw individuals around. Whafrog, who ninja'd me, gives examples of Move being used on "willing" targets in TCW (I'd say, however, that this is an unnecessarily restrictive house rule not based on anything in the actual canon). Ahsoka Tano also Force-pushes Asajj Ventress a significant distance in TCW season 1 episode 9, about 15 minutes in.

Darth Maul Force-pushed Obi-Wan into the bottomless reactor shaft on Naboo. Vader and Obi-Wan negated each other's Force push on Mustafar and both being hurled back (note they were outstretching their hands in a signature "push" style, not doing the grippy-pinchy thing that Vader does elsewhere to "Bind" [or choke] his targets).

As others have mentioned, the prequels have droids getting pushed around left and right with the Force in exactly the same way we see organic beings being pushed in the prequels and The Clone Wars.

HOWEVER, as Yoda says, a Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense—never attack. Using the Force to hurl one stormtrooper into another is, IMO, dipping into dark side, because you're using the Force directly to assault living beings with the intent to cause them serious harm. So if you were a Force user with Morality, you'd most definitely earn 1 or more Conflict for using Move to slam organic sentient beings into each other or other things, especially with the intent of harming them.

I hope the above examples and reasoning were helpful for those with the time to wade through them

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TL;DR the developers explicitly say outright that it's permissible to use Move on people, both on podcast and in published material. Going on design intent alone, it's good to go.

And even more recently: Kanan saving Ezra who fell off the ship. He too was more than winded after the ordeal.

In Kanan's case, I could see that as his player suffering strain to convert one or more dark side pips he'd rolled into usable Force points, since the alternative was letting the kid go splat, something I'm sure Hera at least would have given him no end of grief about. At most Kanan's got a Force Rating of 2, so he'd need at least three Force points to catch Ezra (1 for the basic power, 1 for the Strength Upgrade, and 1 for Range Upgrade depending on how many of those he'd purchased; GM Filoni could have been lenient enough to treat the distance as only Medium Range and thus only need the single Range Upgrade needed to get to the "hurl objects" Control Upgrade), and odds are pretty good that one of his two Force dice came up dark side. However, he wasn't in immediate need of a nap either, so while winded it was a very short-term thing but was within the realm of what Kanan could accomplish.

As for Yoda in ESB, again I assert that he wasn't tired/fatigued from his effort to lift the X-Wing as he was frustrated and saddened that it took such a blatant use of the Force to finally begin breaking through Luke's preconceived notions and somewhat defeatist attitude. Floating the X-Wing was probably a trivial feat for him, out of practice as he might have been after 20+ years of seclusion.

Also in Rebels Kanan slams the Inquisitor into the ceiling of a corridor. (But can't hold him long - maybe he missed his discipline check round 1 but made it round 2)

Sidious picks up and slams Maul and Oppress into the wall at the same time, and holds them there.

There are plenty of examples in the canon. Remember also this game treats Push as a function of Move, and there are plenty of examples of this in the movies. Yoda & Sidious, or the Royal Guards in Ep 3 for example.

Alot of the descriptions for Force Push and Pulls again sound more like the application of Bind, not Move, The Order66 podcast predates the F&D beta, and the description apart from players wanting any target to count as items and objects for throwing via Move.

I appreciate the responses, and I am probably just overthinking it but it probably just comes down to perceptions differences about wording and RAI

HOWEVER, as Yoda says, a Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense—never attack. Using the Force to hurl one stormtrooper into another is, IMO, dipping into dark side, because you're using the Force directly to assault living beings with the intent to cause them serious harm. So if you were a Force user with Morality, you'd most definitely earn 1 or more Conflict for using Move to slam organic sentient beings into each other or other things, especially with the intent of harming them.

This is very important to keep in mind. Sure your Force using players can slaughter groups of stormtroopers, but should they?

Don't point out the whole conflict that would be created by using move to kill people it completely ruins the point of how "unbalanced" the power is.

Don't point out the whole conflict that would be created by using move to kill people it completely ruins the point of how "unbalanced" the power is.

That blasted 10 damage and null crit rating! The bane of all parties who only ever fight with truncheons and light blaster pistols!

Don't point out the whole conflict that would be created by using move to kill people it completely ruins the point of how "unbalanced" the power is.

So is this a move that a force user should do then? I thought it didn't cause problems as long as they didn't initiate the fight?

Don't point out the whole conflict that would be created by using move to kill people it completely ruins the point of how "unbalanced" the power is.

So is this a move that a force user should do then? I thought it didn't cause problems as long as they didn't initiate the fight?

Yeah...there are some considerations to be made here as to whether something is conflict-worthy, and just how dark-side it is.

Jedi are taught to exercise restraint and to conquer arrogance and aggression. It is possible to strike without aggression, but things like clobbering one person with another person is just plain aggressive and excessive, generally-speaking. If you're consciously causing serious harm to sentient beings, and if your actions can be deemed unnecessary (in other words, did you genuinely explore other options before opening up with your telekinetic salvo?), then that is excessive and that is most certainly Conflict-worthy.

These sorts of things are always situational, of course. I do believe the players should be given the benefit of the doubt when possible, but a PC who engages in this sort of tactic as a regular way of doing things is in danger of falling to the dark side. Aggressive, arrogant behavior, characterized by using the Force as a bludgeoning weapon to kill one's opponents (especially when a soft word, a more understated threat of violence, or some other application of guile or stealth might suffice) has Conflict written all over it.