Hi folks

One of the many things I love about this system is how easy it is to just make someone up off the cuff; you have a ballpark idea for their abilities and you roll the corresponding dice. Having not read the beta, I was wondering if there's a swift way of thinking up a Force user and their power(s) and a quick sort of catch-all mechanic to use their ability in combat. Any suggestions?

Many thanks.

Pac_Man3D

Just check the back of the books under Adversaries. The adversary upgrade is already pretty strong. 2-3 is scary. There is also another force power that upgrades dice further. A simple melee check becomes red purple ...than upgrade twice more? Two red one purple...defensive stance and 2 melee defense? Red red purple black black black and than if he has a defensive weapon? Another black...OWCH...

Adding minions to that hot mess? That's a painful fight. Even if you added rivals with force push. They could be knocking PCs left and right while the Nemesis tears them up. So...it comes down to how the fight is made up. The baddy can be tooled up but adding narratives and other baddies or mechanics can make one or two baddies super hard and memorable

In the adversaries section of the FaD beta book, there's a section on creating Inquisitors. They're Force-using nemeses, and they have a fairly simple collection of options and ranges of skills and characteristics. You could use those rules as a starting point for creating your own Force NPCs.

If you think you're going to be doing this sort of thing often, what I might suggest is create a series of pre-set Force Power arrays, not unlike what the Beta lists for building an Inquisitor, or what's been listed for Force using Adversaries in prior books such as the Forsaken Jedi and Emperor's Hand in EotE and the Jedi-in-Hiding from AoR.

Write them up on an index card, listing the basic effect of the power, what upgrades they've got and what those upgrades do. That way, you can just grab an index card with whatever Force power array you think best fits. For the cases of powers like Heal/Harm and Protect/Unleash, I'd go with only letting the NPC access one side of the power; for dark siders, go with Harm and Unleash respectively.

In building those array though, I'd suggest keeping in mind that the more XP you spend on crafting them, the more potent the potential effects will be, especially if this NPC has a Force Rating of 3 or even higher. I'd suggest for a low-tier threat, don't spend more than 30 XP on the array, mid-tier no more than 50, and high-tier around 75 XP.