Force Leap question

By SSB_Shadow, in Star Wars: Force and Destiny RPG

Actually, there other strong evidence this is how the rules work. Compare the language of Force Leap:

"The user can take a Force Leap action to make an Enhance power check . [...]" (emphasis in the text)/

To ANY talent that provides an action. For example One with the Universe (p 149):

"The character may [...] take the One with the Universe action, making an Average Astrogation check ."

Or Valuable Facts (p 153):

"[...] the character may take a Valuable Facts action, making an Average Knowledge check ..."

All these active skills provide novel, named actions, and the check is a part of that action. The wording for Force Leap is practically identical !!!! It seems pretty clear that the action for Force Leap actually is NOT a "force power check" action as described on pp 280 and 282, so force power activation rules aren't valid or applicable. In all of these cases, the activation, the "attempt", is the action, and again, the interpretation of the dice inform the result.

In fact, there doesn't seem to be a way to use Enhance as force power check action, since "Enhance power checks" are only made as part of checks called by other actions (e.g. Athletics, Coordination, etc.). To clarify, every other power (as far as I can tell) provides a description of the basic power use in the context a force power activation check. Not so for Enhance, the check is only made as part of another action . Additionally, I can't find any other instances where force powers provide a novel, named power in the way Force Leap does. I'm not saying it's not there, I just don't see it.

And this isn't going to convince you. You're going to dig in your heels and say "a force check is a force check, regardless of the context or the wording of the power." It's pretty clear you're not interested in what I have to say.

Edited by LethalDose

Wow man, I see that I have offended you, and I apologize. Condescension and judgment were far from my intent.

I don't think I'm going to be contributing any more to this discussion, so I'll be bowing out. Thanks for reading, at least.

I didn't see that last post. I know I offended you man, and once again I'm sorry. I am indeed interested in what you have to say; that's why I tried to engage you in conversation. But I am not going to try and continue after obviously upsetting you. So again, I apologize, and will try to be more respectful in the future.

Hello guys,

I have just a fundamental question related to Force leap. I am a new GM in this system and I admit I am still learning it. I have two players who have just invested in Force leap in the Enhance tree. Now, I have read multiple posts stating that the general consensus (I know it is a bit of a controversy amongst some) is that Force leap CANNOT be used to automatically engage or disengage (without spending a maneuver). I don't want to re-open that discussion since it has been hashed out in many posts. However, assuming that is the case, what is the use of this Enhance ''force leap' upgrade, what is its value?

If you still have to spend maneuvers to engage/disengage, if you still can use a regular athletics check to 'jump' obstacles (albeit at a higher difficulty perhaps), if it doesn't even let you jump longer than short range (without additional upgrades), how is this really strategically useful in combat? My players are asking me 'why bother with this power at all?' I understand that: a) its useful to cross difficult terrain or obstacles and b) after all the upgrades it can be useful to make jumps at greater distance... but, at the first control upgrade where you get horizontal force leap... its kind of useless right? I am not quite sure how to respond to my players questions on that point. Am I missing something?

My initial assumption was our Warrior could force leap in and out of engagement (and thus get maneuver economy), but if that is not the case, why not just disengage, move, re-engage with no power?

I thank you in advance for your responses :)

On ‎7‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 6:55 AM, kenan03 said:

what is the use of this Enhance ''force leap' upgrade, what is its value?

It allows you to reach locations that may otherwise be unreachable, or allow you to reach said locations without the need for special equipment, or an Athletics check (allowing low Brawl/Athletics characters a leg up). The Bounty hunter needs a ladder, or climbing gear, or ascension gun, or jetpack, or Impossible Athletics check to get from the ground to the roof of a small building with smooth exterior walls. The Force User just jumps up there.

That's the thing with a lot of these force powers, they are utility driven. A force user with a good power suite can do almost anything that a non-force user can do as well. The difference is the force user can do it with nothing but the bathrobe on his back, the non-forcee needs some item to help him out, and all those 1 enc here, 2 enc there items add up.

Don't forget that gear on your non-forces, and to consider actual distances and abilities! The Right Tools for the Job explain how the purpose of a lot of "statless" gear is that it can allow an otherwise impossible task to become possible.

So we're jumping from one building to another 3 stories up. You force leap horizontally. No biggy. Short is "several meters" and 1 meter is 3.3 feet. Standard road width is 3.7 meters, so lets say that's an even 8m (26.4 feet) from this building across a 2-lane street to the other. 8 is certainly "several" and less than "several dozen" so you can just make your Short force leap and be over there. Nice move Trinity.

Now it's my non-force using turn. A normal unloaded human can jump what? Maybe at best half a meter vertically, and with a running start about 2 horizontally? And that's just in passing, no pressure. No way I'm gonna just be able to get a running start and hop over there. Not an "oh... well the difficulty is gonna be really hard" no way, but a hard "No... you can't just jump 27 feet across a two lane street no matter how well you roll." I just plain can't do it without some tool to allow it, and even then it'll be more than a single action.

So you just did something that will take me 2-3 rounds to do.

On ‎7‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 6:55 AM, kenan03 said:

how is this really strategically useful in combat?

Strategically it depends on how you look at it. Jumping up onto a rooftop, or from one rooftop to another across a road or alley... all potentially useful in the right situation. Like mention above, if I'm chasing you across rooftops and you hop across two lanes of traffic 3 stories up, the chase is pretty much over for me unless I've got something like a jetpack that can both get me across AND allow me to catch up.

If it's just about Tactics and the immediate issue of hitting someone with your laser sword... yeah, not so useful unless you're in a really complex terrain setting (which if you're having an epic lightsaber duel all prequel style, you probably should be.)

On ‎7‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 6:55 AM, kenan03 said:

the first control upgrade where you get horizontal force leap... its kind of useless right?

Eh, depends on what you want to get across.

A simple example:

We're in a swamp, which is difficult terrain (x2 all movement maneuvers.) You Force Leap it'll take you one action to cover the same ground it takes me 2 maneuvers to cover. You still have a free maneuver, and a 2 strain maneuver left and I'm all out of maneuvers, period.

On ‎7‎/‎21‎/‎2018 at 6:55 AM, kenan03 said:

My initial assumption was our Warrior could force leap in and out of engagement (and thus get maneuver economy), but if that is not the case, why not just disengage, move, re-engage with no power?

No reason at all.

But you don't need to use the force for everything. Keep it to doing the otherwise impossible (without the appropriate gear) and impressing girls with floating grapefruit-pears.

5 hours ago, Ghostofman said:

It allows you to reach locations that may otherwise be unreachable, or allow you to reach said locations without the need for special equipment, or an Athletics check (allowing low Brawl/Athletics characters a leg up). The Bounty hunter needs a ladder, or climbing gear, or ascension gun, or jetpack, or Impossible Athletics check to get from the ground to the roof of a small building with smooth exterior walls. The Force User just jumps up there.

That's the thing with a lot of these force powers, they are utility driven. A force user with a good power suite can do almost anything that a non-force user can do as well. The difference is the force user can do it with nothing but the bathrobe on his back, the non-forcee needs some item to help him out, and all those 1 enc here, 2 enc there items add up.

Don't forget that gear on your non-forces, and to consider actual distances and abilities! The Right Tools for the Job explain how the purpose of a lot of "statless" gear is that it can allow an otherwise impossible task to become possible.

So we're jumping from one building to another 3 stories up. You force leap horizontally. No biggy. Short is "several meters" and 1 meter is 3.3 feet. Standard road width is 3.7 meters, so lets say that's an even 8m (26.4 feet) from this building across a 2-lane street to the other. 8 is certainly "several" and less than "several dozen" so you can just make your Short force leap and be over there. Nice move Trinity.

Now it's my non-force using turn. A normal unloaded human can jump what? Maybe at best half a meter vertically, and with a running start about 2 horizontally? And that's just in passing, no pressure. No way I'm gonna just be able to get a running start and hop over there. Not an "oh... well the difficulty is gonna be really hard" no way, but a hard "No... you can't just jump 27 feet across a two lane street no matter how well you roll." I just plain can't do it without some tool to allow it, and even then it'll be more than a single action.

So you just did something that will take me 2-3 rounds to do.

Strategically it depends on how you look at it. Jumping up onto a rooftop, or from one rooftop to another across a road or alley... all potentially useful in the right situation. Like mention above, if I'm chasing you across rooftops and you hop across two lanes of traffic 3 stories up, the chase is pretty much over for me unless I've got something like a jetpack that can both get me across AND allow me to catch up.

If it's just about Tactics and the immediate issue of hitting someone with your laser sword... yeah, not so useful unless you're in a really complex terrain setting (which if you're having an epic lightsaber duel all prequel style, you probably should be.)

Eh, depends on what you want to get across.

A simple example:

We're in a swamp, which is difficult terrain (x2 all movement maneuvers.) You Force Leap it'll take you one action to cover the same ground it takes me 2 maneuvers to cover. You still have a free maneuver, and a 2 strain maneuver left and I'm all out of maneuvers, period.

No reason at all.

But you don't need to use the force for everything. Keep it to doing the otherwise impossible (without the appropriate gear) and impressing girls with floating grapefruit-pears.

Thank you very much! I really appreciate the viewpoint. It’s all in the situational utility. I will think more creatively to incorporate terrain and situations where having this might shine.

14 minutes ago, kenan03 said:

Thank you very much! I really appreciate the viewpoint. It’s all in the situational utility. I will think more creatively to incorporate terrain and situations where having this might shine.

The horizontal Force Leap can also be used to simulate the Force Speed we see Obi Wan and Qui Gon do in TPM as well.

Fights shouldn’t occur on flat open ground. Once players get accustomed to the Destiny Point system they will realise they can flip a point to put an obstacle in their way. Then they can use Force Leap to bypass it as if it weren’t there, leaving an opponent in their dust as the pc moves on to more important things.

Additionally them taking the talent tells you the gm that they want to be jumping around a three dimensional environment. You can throw gaps in the ground, have multiple levels, give them a train to leap onto.

On 7/25/2018 at 12:13 PM, Richardbuxton said:

Fights shouldn’t occur on flat open ground.

Unless George is the GM and it's a huge battle between a Clone Army and a Droid Army. :)

1 hour ago, Daronil said:

Unless George is the GM and it's a huge battle between a Clone Army and a Droid Army. :)

Or craptastic speeders and a First Order attack force.

2 hours ago, Daronil said:

Unless George is the GM and it's a huge battle between a Clone Army and a Droid Army. :)

1 hour ago, HappyDaze said:

Or craptastic speeders and a First Order attack force.

Sooo much plot armour ?

On 8/17/2015 at 4:55 AM, SSB_Shadow said:

Thank you for your answers.
Just want to clarify a bit: when I mean extending the range with this power, I mean the difference between Enhance Basic Power and the Force Leap action. Of course I don't mean having a Medium Range Brawn (although an extended Force Punch would be cool).

So basically let's say I'm a Force-user and I want to jump over to the next rooftop. The range is Medium. I do an Athletics check and use Enhance to amass more success/advantages.

Then my Rival wants to do the same. She has Force Leap with Medium range upgrade. She doesn't even need to roll Athletics; only two pips required in order to do it automatically.

Clearly the answer was that it applies only to Force Leap talent (I get it) but now I'm wondering if its actually doable without it. Is it possible?

You left out Improved Free Running which lets you spend 4 strain to move in any direction including straight up to medium range...

On 7/27/2018 at 8:44 AM, Decorus said:

You left out Improved Free Running which lets you spend 4 strain to move in any direction including straight up to medium range...

I posted this question from 2015. The Free Running and Improved Free Running talents didn't exist back then. :)

On 8/21/2015 at 8:11 PM, awayputurwpn said:

Here's what I'm talking about...the "Force Leap" upgrade reads: The Force user can take a Force Leap action to make an Enhance power check. He may spend [1 Force Point] to jump horizontally to any location within short range. Note the order of things: 1) the player makes the power check, which is just his Force Rating dice pool. 2) Then, he may spend a Force point to leap to a location at short range. The upgrade also notes that it allows the user to leap over obstacles and impassible terrain.

Unless the GM is requiring that a skill check be made (perhaps opposed Discipline if another Force user is trying to telekinetically hold them in place? Or spending a Destiny Point to include a Difficulty die in the mix? I'm sure there are situations where it'd be warranted), there's no Success required for the "attempt."

Further, all that's being attempted is an activation of the Force power, which then may be used to cause the player to leap to a location at short range (or medium range, etc, with another upgrade & another Force Point). My claim is that there is no actual risk of failure here: the Force Leap action is not the PC trying to leap ; but rather trying to call on the Force . Once the Force has been called on, the PC may simply leap. And even if the chance for Failure was somehow introduced, the scope of the Force Leap action is such that failure would actually simply signify the PC being unable to call on the Force.

So I stumbled upon this thread, read it, and this post resembles most the confusion this power causes me. It may be according to the rules if you just let the player roll his force die and then determine if he/she can force leap somewhere but... that's actually super lame isnt it? I personally dont like these kind of checks at all and am always prone to combine it with any skill check. In this case it would obviously be athletics. " The Force user can take a Force Leap action to make an Enhance power check." to me, this description doesnt exclude the athletics check of the base power (although that might be what I want to read from it) so I would make a PC do an athletics check (probably not very hard) and use his force pips for the actual leap. if he failed the check, he would probably lose balance or something alike, leading to him making a falling (coordination) check, depending on whether he jumped horizontally, vertically and short or medium range.

The force leap power, as understood in that post, seems very dry and boring to me, am I alone in this? plus, with 2 or more force rating, this check is impossible to fail at as long as you're not roleplaying a character with extreme opinions on the force.

I also let players make combined checks when they use sense (perception/vigilance, depending on what they are wanting to do?) or foresee (discipline, can they actually concentrate or let go to an extend that they will see visions when they intend to?).
as a disclaimer, in my group I am not always GM and I am also player and those rules apply more to myself than any other of the players. But I find just rolling force die extremely devoid of any flavor and narrative, and it's pretty irritating to me.

edit: another thing is that it makes athletics pretty redundant. if you can have brawn 1 and 0 athletics but still be able to jump everywhere, why even bother improving on it? the jedi certainly did have training in athletics and the trial of skill section in nexus of power also has a number of athletics checks, so I think lorewise it is perfectly in line to give force leap at least a little requirements in athletics. For the record, I'd probably say it's an easy check, average if the PC wants to jump two range bands.

Edited by Shizuya
19 minutes ago, Shizuya said:

So I stumbled upon this thread, read it, and this post resembles most the confusion this power causes me. It may be according to the rules if you just let the player roll his force die and then determine if he/she can force leap somewhere but... that's actually super lame isnt it? I personally dont like these kind of checks at all and am always prone to combine it with any skill check. In this case it would obviously be athletics. " The Force user can take a Force Leap action to make an Enhance power check." to me, this description doesnt exclude the athletics check of the base power (although that might be what I want to read from it) so I would make a PC do an athletics check (probably not very hard) and use his force pips for the actual leap. if he failed the check, he would probably lose balance or something alike, leading to him making a falling (coordination) check, depending on whether he jumped horizontally, vertically and short or medium range.

The force leap power, as understood in that post, seems very dry and boring to me, am I alone in this? plus, with 2 or more force rating, this check is impossible to fail at as long as you're not roleplaying a character with extreme opinions on the force.

I also let players make combined checks when they use sense (perception/vigilance, depending on what they are wanting to do?) or foresee (discipline, can they actually concentrate or let go to an extend that they will see visions when they intend to?).
as a disclaimer, in my group I am not always GM and I am also player and those rules apply more to myself than any other of the players. But I find just rolling force die extremely devoid of any flavor and narrative, and it's pretty irritating to me.

edit: another thing is that it makes athletics pretty redundant. if you can have brawn 1 and 0 athletics but still be able to jump everywhere, why even bother improving on it? the jedi certainly did have training in athletics and the trial of skill section in nexus of power also has a number of athletics checks, so I think lorewise it is perfectly in line to give force leap at least a little requirements in athletics. For the record, I'd probably say it's an easy check, average if the PC wants to jump two range bands.

have you have seen someone using the force leap ability miss their landing? I mean look at the battle on Mustafar Obi wan leaps to an unstable surface with no trouble at all. So the power is mirroring how it works in the movies. Obi wan also leaped in to the droid in Attack of the Clones.

Edited by Daeglan
21 minutes ago, Shizuya said:

So I stumbled upon this thread, read it, and this post resembles most the confusion this power causes me. It may be according to the rules if you just let the player roll his force die and then determine if he/she can force leap somewhere but... that's actually super lame isnt it? I personally dont like these kind of checks at all and am always prone to combine it with any skill check. In this case it would obviously be athletics. " The Force user can take a Force Leap action to make an Enhance power check." to me, this description doesnt exclude the athletics check of the base power (although that might be what I want to read from it) so I would make a PC do an athletics check (probably not very hard) and use his force pips for the actual leap. if he failed the check, he would probably lose balance or something alike, leading to him making a falling (coordination) check, depending on whether he jumped horizontally, vertically and short or medium range.

The force leap power, as understood in that post, seems very dry and boring to me, am I alone in this? plus, with 2 or more force rating, this check is impossible to fail at as long as you're not roleplaying a character with extreme opinions on the force.

I also let players make combined checks when they use sense (perception/vigilance, depending on what they are wanting to do?) or foresee (discipline, can they actually concentrate or let go to an extend that they will see visions when they intend to?).
as a disclaimer, in my group I am not always GM and I am also player and those rules apply more to myself than any other of the players. But I find just rolling force die extremely devoid of any flavor and narrative, and it's pretty irritating to me.

edit: another thing is that it makes athletics pretty redundant. if you can have brawn 1 and 0 athletics but still be able to jump everywhere, why even bother improving on it? the jedi certainly did have training in athletics and the trial of skill section in nexus of power also has a number of athletics checks, so I think lorewise it is perfectly in line to give force leap at least a little requirements in athletics. For the record, I'd probably say it's an easy check, average if the PC wants to jump two range bands.

The biggest problem with this is, you're devaluing the Force. You're disincentivizing PCs from using it. If you want to tempt players to use the Darkside (ie if you want to have a functioning Morality mechanic), using the Force needs to be significantly better than any corresponding Skill or Gear.

PCs spend a lot of XP on these Powers, at the expense of Skills and Talents. Don't punish them for that.

Follow RAW - you can require a Skill check if a Rival or Nemesis is trying to oppose that movement somehow (like, of the PC is trying to move into the same area of a Rival/Nemesis), or I'd say you could even flip a Destiny to require a check for some maneuver that has some danger to it (jumping through spinning fan blades, or across the gap of two moving vehicles) but don't devalue this valid Player option "because it doesn't feel right to you". That's BS. There is no need to. There is nothing broken about it.

one more thing to keep in mind getting the power takes exp and if you make the power pointless no one will take or feel ripped off of they do

in a group that's been going on for over a year with 6 force users 3 with enhance NONE have taken force leap (so far we have used gear or gone the long way)

make cool or it might as well not be there

okay, so I see your points and they are ofc valid but I have a few comments about them.

4 hours ago, Daeglan said:

have you have seen someone using the force leap ability miss their landing? I mean look at the battle on Mustafar Obi wan leaps to an unstable surface with no trouble at all. So the power is mirroring how it works in the movies. Obi wan also leaped in to the droid in Attack of the Clones.

Obi Wan Kenobi is one of the most accomplished jedi master s in the entire order and is both mentally and physically very adept and disciplined, so he is a really really bad comparison for your average 200xp padawan-chump in this game. and we see padawans in the clone wars fail at various things all the time. it would feel much more rewarding to simultaneously build up your athletics and see yourself master this ability than buy for 20 xp and never fail at all imho.
additionaly, everytime we see a SW character force leap, they do it in a jumping motion, often times doing frontflips and other stuns while doing it. do you think this is due to their physical training or is it the force just grabbing them by the head and placing them somehwere between midrange? :) enhance is all about imbuing your body with the force, not using the force to not work your body.

4 hours ago, emsquared said:

The biggest problem with this is, you're devaluing the Force. You're disincentivizing PCs from using it. If you want to tempt players to use the Darkside (ie if you want to have a functioning Morality mechanic), using the Force needs to be significantly better than any corresponding Skill or Gear.

PCs spend a lot of XP on these Powers, at the expense of Skills and Talents. Don't punish them for that.

Follow RAW - you can require a Skill check if a Rival or Nemesis is trying to oppose that movement somehow (like, of the PC is trying to move into the same area of a Rival/Nemesis), or I'd say you could even flip a Destiny to require a check for some maneuver that has some danger to it (jumping through spinning fan blades, or across the gap of two moving vehicles) but don't devalue this valid Player option "because it doesn't feel right to you". That's BS. There is no need to. There is nothing broken about it.

I strongly disagree. on the contrary, I think handling force leap that way completely devalues the athletics skill since why would you bother with investing in it at all if you can jump to any location within medium anyway? the conflict aspect doesnt suffer from making force leap an easy or average athletics check at all. also, in our group my own character is the only one at all who even has this ability and it only costs 20 XP to get (without further upgrades) and I'm the one who argues for making it a combined check (like all force powers, really). maybe narratively it doesnt have to be but if I jump to medium in combat why shouldnt the narrative rules (manifested through the die) apply? I dont see how my take on it devalues force leap at all, it still lets you do something amazing that nobody other than a force sensitive can dream of doing (maybe kyuzo). pretty amazing how you can do basically everything better than anybody else just by leveling force rating, totally ignoring the skills like athletics etc.. and btw, I'm totally just stating my opinion here, I'm not saying anybody has to agree or play like I think and I'm also not a dictator at my table, so no need to get personal and calling my opinion BS.^^ I'm sure it wasnt meant to be but it's still a pretty intense reaction imo.

59 minutes ago, Oldmike1 said:

one more thing to keep in mind getting the power takes exp and if you make the power pointless no one will take or feel ripped off of they do

in a group that's been going on for over a year with 6 force users 3 with enhance NONE have taken force leap (so far we have used gear or gone the long way)

make cool or it might as well not be there

like I already said, I'm currently the only person that would be affected and I would be totally fine with it. It would still make my athletic abilities beyond what is physically possible normally and at the same time not make the skill useless. if you think that makes it uncool thats ofc your opinion but tbh experience isnt the biggest issue in our campaign so that argument doesnt scratch me a lot. another point is that honestly there is a ton of talents in regular talent trees that also costs an immense amount of XP to get to that still require the player to do a hard or even harder skill checks to get the effect. one out of a hundred examples: fear the shadows (sentry, my current spec), make a hard deception check to make one rival or minion group flee the encounter. I dont think anyone would argue well it took X amount of XP so it should just work and 'be cool', like it seems to be the case for many force powers that literally let you bypass skills like deception (misdirect, influence?), foresee (perception, vigilance?), heal/harm (medicine), manipulate (mechanics), bind (discipline?) and many more, even though those force powers FAR surpass everything you could do with these skills even at rank 5.

thanks for your replies though, so far I talked with my flat mate who very much agreed with me on this, so we're 2/4 and see how the other 2 think about it on satturday. :)

Edited by Shizuya
4 hours ago, Shizuya said:

So I stumbled upon this thread, read it, and this post resembles most the confusion this power causes me. It may be according to the rules if you just let the player roll his force die and then determine if he/she can force leap somewhere but... that's actually super lame isnt it? I personally dont like these kind of checks at all and am always prone to combine it with any skill check. In this case it would obviously be athletics. " The Force user can take a Force Leap action to make an Enhance power check." to me, this description doesnt exclude the athletics check of the base power (although that might be what I want to read from it) so I would make a PC do an athletics check (probably not very hard) and use his force pips for the actual leap. if he failed the check, he would probably lose balance or something alike, leading to him making a falling (coordination) check, depending on whether he jumped horizontally, vertically and short or medium range.

The force leap power, as understood in that post, seems very dry and boring to me, am I alone in this? plus, with 2 or more force rating, this check is impossible to fail at as long as you're not roleplaying a character with extreme opinions on the force.

I also let players make combined checks when they use sense (perception/vigilance, depending on what they are wanting to do?) or foresee (discipline, can they actually concentrate or let go to an extend that they will see visions when they intend to?).
as a disclaimer, in my group I am not always GM and I am also player and those rules apply more to myself than any other of the players. But I find just rolling force die extremely devoid of any flavor and narrative, and it's pretty irritating to me.

edit: another thing is that it makes athletics pretty redundant. if you can have brawn 1 and 0 athletics but still be able to jump everywhere, why even bother improving on it? the jedi certainly did have training in athletics and the trial of skill section in nexus of power also has a number of athletics checks, so I think lorewise it is perfectly in line to give force leap at least a little requirements in athletics. For the record, I'd probably say it's an easy check, average if the PC wants to jump two range bands.

There's another problem with requiring an Athletics check with Force Leap . Force Leap , specifically the horizontal upgrade, does not just represent actual leaping, but also the Force Speed ability as seen at the beginning for TPM when Qui Gon and Obi Wan run from the Droidikas on board the Trade Federation flagship.

2 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

There's another problem with requiring an Athletics check with Force Leap . Force Leap , specifically the horizontal upgrade, does not just represent actual leaping, but also the Force Speed ability as seen at the beginning for TPM when Qui Gon and Obi Wan run from the Droidikas on board the Trade Federation flagship.

LOL I literally NEVER realized how they were just teleporting away lmao, thanks for showing me that, looks super goofy 😂 not sure how athletics couldnt be applied here

3 minutes ago, Shizuya said:

LOL I literally NEVER realized how they were just teleporting away lmao, thanks for showing me that, looks super goofy 😂 not sure how athletics couldnt be applied here

Simple, you're just running in a straight line. That's not that difficult. Even a Force enhanced leap isn't all that hard to do.

Looking at this from a purely game mechanics perspective your idea of a combined check seems ok at first glance. But if you begin to dig deeper into the possibilities it provides then there’s a major problem it creates in the action economy of the game.

This power allows a character to make a force leap 3 times in a single round, twice as a manoeuvre and then a third time as an action with 2 strain spent. If that character is also using 1 force point of the opposite side for each leap then that’s 3 more strain, for at least 5 strain they suffered in that round.

In your version that character is making 3 Athletics checks each round (already something that’s outside normality for the system), and unless you’re making the difficulty arbitrarily high then most Force Users will easily pass the check anyway. But the bigger problem is with characters with a big Athletics skill pool, perhaps a 4 and a 3, they’re going to be rolling a bunch of Advantages and Triumphs every single round, quite possibly eliminating that strain cost I mentioned earlier, and really messing with the story in the meantime.

1 minute ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Simple, you're just running in a straight line. That's not that difficult. Even a Force enhanced leap isn't all that hard to do.

nobody said it had to be difficult? it could be an easy check for all I care. it's not like this would be a hard accomplishment, everybody seems to think I would like to make this a daunting athletics check with 5 setback die? what's not to understand that I think it's cheesy and more importantly boring to roll your 3 force die and auto succeed at pretty much everything you do? it's throwing all the narrative strength of the game overboard.

4 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Looking at this from a purely game mechanics perspective your idea of a combined check seems ok at first glance. But if you begin to dig deeper into the possibilities it provides then there’s a major problem it creates in the action economy of the game.

This power allows a character to make a force leap 3 times in a single round, twice as a manoeuvre and then a third time as an action with 2 strain spent. If that character is also using 1 force point of the opposite side for each leap then that’s 3 more strain, for at least 5 strain they suffered in that round.

In your version that character is making 3 Athletics checks each round (already something that’s outside normality for the system), and unless you’re making the difficulty arbitrarily high then most Force Users will easily pass the check anyway. But the bigger problem is with characters with a big Athletics skill pool, perhaps a 4 and a 3, they’re going to be rolling a bunch of Advantages and Triumphs every single round, quite possibly eliminating that strain cost I mentioned earlier, and really messing with the story in the meantime.

valid point but I dont see a huge problem. if someone is very good in athletics and makes multiple force jumps in one round (which is btw extremely easy with only force die if you're not at the beginning of the campaign) and has a lot of advantages maybe they are so advanced in this technique that they do not suffer that much strain (=heal strain they got) and triumphs while doing force jumps can ofc be something amazing (and an idea I really like alot) but I'm not sure how it would sabotage the story in any other way than a triumph with any other check?

if we're talking about someone who does 3 force leaps a turn for the sake of creating triumphes, I think that is not in the range of normal play anymore and a case for the judge-GM and I heavily doubt anybody at our table would do that.

Edited by Shizuya

Ok, think of it in another example. A character rolls a force leap check prior to attacking. All those advantages and Triumph can go into making the combat check that much more powerful, as well as getting into the perfect position to attack from. Suddenly they’re throwing boosts and upgrades all over the place, making their already strong combat abilities even more potent.