I miss the days when Jedi were just normal people with monastic training, instead of being special midichlorian babies. I really hope midichlorians get retconned out with the new Star Wars movies. Maybe make it so that you're not born with them so much as they just hang out with people or something and people who are more likely to possess monkly attributes are more likely to accumulate them, I don't know.

These days live on at my gaming table.

Our reconciliation for midichlorians (not that we needed one, but it was fun to come up with) is that regular or powerful Force Use attracts them. Thus they can provide a useful indicator, if you know what to look for.

Well we have a bit more canon information about what can be done with the Move power now. I'll put specifics in spoilers for those who haven't seen the first episode of the new season of Rebels, but we can see Vader is capable of much more than we saw him do in the OT or Anakin did in TCW.

But once a rule system gives something away, it’s virtually impossible to get it back. So, if you’re going to have one and only one set of rules that are either weaker or stronger in this regard, it’s much better to default to the weaker set and let individual GMs come up with their own FU-compatible enhanced versions.

If the official rules are FU-strength out of the box, then you’ve got a problem.

The thing is, "out of the box" if it's some sort of default. But it is not. No more than a level 22 character in D&D 4th Ed is the default. D&D 4th Ed. and EotE/AoR/FaD all have rules for such high levels "out of the box", but in the former case no-one complains about how absurdly over-powered something is, but in the latter case, people are. And I think the reason is because no-one is accepting how far beyond a regular character such a level of investment is. Many people ran 4th ed. D&D games in the Heroic tier quite happily and were not interested in going to Paragon or Epic levels. The same is easily done in EotE and I find making that sort of decision much more efficient than writing multiple rules systems.

To the levels of hurling around multiple YT-1300's that have been talked about in this thread, it's like talking about an Epic tier character in D&D 4.0 or similar. You don't need two parallel rule systems for separation. You just need to decide if you're running a regular game or a really high level one.

Note that I’ve not said anything here about how many points have to be spent to get where. That is actually not relevant to this discussion. What is relevant to this discussion is the extreme points where things end — if you’re going to be the most powerful Force user in the galaxy, how far can you go?

It's crucial to the discussion. An argument about whether it's desirable characters should be able to do something which disregards whether they're actually able to do it or not, is nonsensical. What is really being argued, is that it shouldn't be conceivable for these things to be possible. The objection is to the idea that these things are possible. And I see no grounds for being so limiting. The rules should allow a GM to include what they wish. Just because stats for a Star Destroyer are published, does not mean that the players must have one or even encounter one. The GMs who don't need it, can ignore it. But if a GM wants to emulate the latest Rebels episode, or the Mortis episodes of TCW, find it useful.

Ultimately, those who aren't interested in something can not use it if it's there. Those who do want something, can't use it if it isn't. My problem with these objections are that they are upset that something is conceivable, regardless of whether or not something is obtainable. It's not an objection based on anything that directly impacts their game, it's an objection that something should be possible.

And if you can go way beyond where any other character that we have seen in any of the movies, TV shows, or games has ever gone, then why? And why didn’t those characters go that far themselves?

Is there any reason we have to suppose that the canon characters are "maxmimum level"? I mean really, must Palpatine have dedicated himself to perfecting his ability to move things around? We have plenty of evidence that Force use is not some linear progression.

This is where “Willing Suspension of Disbelief” totally fails. And it fails long before you actually get to that end described above. Instead, it fails when you can see that point at the end of the tunnel. So, you might only be a Padawan with a single specialization and FR1, but once you realize how completely imbalanced the game is, well that’s kind of "Game Over, Man!” You might as well go play Chutes and Ladders, and maybe cook up your own ladder to add to the game.

How is the Move power "completely imbalanced". Even if you max out everything in it, it remains hugely situational compared to other things one might have spent such a fortune in XP on.

Sure the GM can try to rein things in and keep that from happening, but they shouldn’t have to do that.

Well your argument is akin to saying stats for a Star Destroyer shouldn't be published because a GM shouldn't have to rein in the potential damage that a player could do with one. It's still a very big leap from someone having a character to them owning a star destroyer.