For the Draw Closer talent it says u can add force dice no greater than ur force rating and then it says spend (then it gives the simple for light/dark side pips) To move target 1 range band closer or to add (success symbol) to check. so what i was wondering was can i spend multiple force points to move them closer? Like for example can i spend 2 force points to move them from medium to engaged? This kina goes for all the lightsaber combat checks where u incorporate the force die as well.

Since the talent description states "within Medium range" I'd say yes, you could spend two Force pips to draw them into Engaged range. As a matter of fact you would have to do this, since if you don't generate enough Force pips to draw them to Engaged you can't make the attack.

Draw Closer is an Awesome talent. Once you get it, it will become your default Talent to use whenever you hit someone with a lightsaber. Especially when you get Force Rating 2. At that point as long as you are willing to use DSPs and take Conflict, any opponent out to Medium range can be brought into Engaged range.

Even if your target is already at Engaged Range, roll your Force Rating in dice with your attack and use those Force Points for more successes as you use the Force to pull your opponent off balance.

Its sort of that crest in the tree where the Legends fluff text says that every modern Jedi studied Niman, and it was considered a bland, unimaginative, easily overcome fighting style but the Niman Masters were forces to be reckoned with.

From Wookieepedia:

Overall, Niman had a fairly relaxed focus on bladework, designed as a simple, easily mastered fighting form for Jedi who preferred to devote most of their time to study and diplomacy. Despite this, it could be absolutely deadly in the hands of a skilled practitioner, as demonstrated by such notables as Exar Kun.

That is an awesome endgame talent (I'm not sure any of my players have really exploited it... yet) and thanks noting Exar Kun was a practitioner of this form. It's funny, many of my players remember Form VI /Niman from the rather useless Feat in RCR (I think it allowed you to use Diplomacy skills while fighting) and even the fluff text did not give it much thought. Glad it has become a more useful style within this system's framework.

I was always impressed with the Draw Closer damage boost, particularly because a Niman Disciple is likely to end up with a pretty impressive Force Rating well before his other lightsaber-focused buddies. Then something occurred to me: If i'm using, say, a double-bladed lightsaber and fighting an Engaged enemy, and I generate a couple of Advantage to trigger Linked, do all those extra successes count for BOTH hits? Because that is a one-way ticket to Beat-Down Town, my friends!

I was always impressed with the Draw Closer damage boost, particularly because a Niman Disciple is likely to end up with a pretty impressive Force Rating well before his other lightsaber-focused buddies. Then something occurred to me: If i'm using, say, a double-bladed lightsaber and fighting an Engaged enemy, and I generate a couple of Advantage to trigger Linked, do all those extra successes count for BOTH hits? Because that is a one-way ticket to Beat-Down Town, my friends!

Nope. IIRC this was changed back in the EotE beta. You get to pass around extra damage from extra successes to your individual hits as you see fit, but not to all of them. For example if you activate the linked 1 property and had 5 extra successes, you could add +3 damage to the first hit and +2 to the second, or all 5 to the first hit. Each hit does *not* get +5 damage.

Though as far as I can tell the only time it matters is when your target's soak exceeds your weapon's base damage.

I'm not in front of my book, so I can't provide a citation, but I'm pretty sure that's how it should work.

Yeah that's correct. My bad.

Kinda figured, as a lot of damage-adding talents work like that, but it was worth a shot.

I was always impressed with the Draw Closer damage boost, particularly because a Niman Disciple is likely to end up with a pretty impressive Force Rating well before his other lightsaber-focused buddies. Then something occurred to me: If i'm using, say, a double-bladed lightsaber and fighting an Engaged enemy, and I generate a couple of Advantage to trigger Linked, do all those extra successes count for BOTH hits? Because that is a one-way ticket to Beat-Down Town, my friends!

Nope. IIRC this was changed back in the EotE beta. You get to pass around extra damage from extra successes to your individual hits as you see fit, but not to all of them. For example if you activate the linked 1 property and had 5 extra successes, you could add +3 damage to the first hit and +2 to the second, or all 5 to the first hit. Each hit does *not* get +5 damage.

Though as far as I can tell the only time it matters is when your target's soak exceeds your weapon's base damage.

I'm not in front of my book, so I can't provide a citation, but I'm pretty sure that's how it should work.

Incorrect.

The write up for Linked in F&D states "Each hit deals the weapon's base damage plus the total uncancelled Successes scored on the check." (pg 164) Same thing with Auto-fire (pg 162) and Two-weapon fighting (page 217).

Damage off the additional hits are base damage + all uncancelled successes. So if I hit with a Double bladed lightsaber (unmodified) with 5 extra successes and get to activate Linked somehow, that target is taking two hits for 11 damage (Breach 1).

Likewise, someone rolls two success and 6 advantage with a light repeating blaster rifle that they took the increased difficulty to auto-fire, they deal four 14 Damage hits.

Might you be thinking of bonus damage from talents like Deadly accuracy, that only add to one hit per combat check? So you can't use Deadly Accuracy (Lightsabers) with 3 ranks in Lightsaber to add 3 damage to both hits from a Link-activated Double-saber.

I just realized I had read LethalDose's post wrong, as I was pretty sure Linked let you double up on successes for damage (and I was right! Woo!). My primary suspicion was that the Talent would only allow those successes on one hit or the other. Which... it doesn't? I think Niman just became my favorite Lightsaber style. Particularly nice if you're not out to kill your enemy, since you'll be blowing your advantage on damage rather than crits, which will eat up their Wounds (and Strain) very quickly. Finish them with Strain, and they ain't even Injured. Finish them with Wounds, well, they'll probably take one mild Crit. As opposed to something like Makashi, where you get to slap more and more vicious crits on the guy until you kill him with half his Wound Threshold still intact..

It's the little things like that which I like about this system...

I just realized I had read LethalDose's post wrong, as I was pretty sure Linked let you double up on successes for damage (and I was right! Woo!). My primary suspicion was that the Talent would only allow those successes on one hit or the other. Which... it doesn't? I think Niman just became my favorite Lightsaber style. Particularly nice if you're not out to kill your enemy, since you'll be blowing your advantage on damage rather than crits, which will eat up their Wounds (and Strain) very quickly. Finish them with Strain, and they ain't even Injured. Finish them with Wounds, well, they'll probably take one mild Crit. As opposed to something like Makashi, where you get to slap more and more vicious crits on the guy until you kill him with half his Wound Threshold still intact..

It's the little things like that which I like about this system...

Sam mentioned at one point that Niman was under heavy scrutiny for being the "Go To" spec for Lightsaber combat. It's got a few cool features, a ton of utility powers, and is the only tree to give Lightsaber skill, Dedication, and Force Rating.

But man, you gotta dig deep for all that awesome. And that's what balances it (almost...it's still pretty Boss).

Sam mentioned at one point that Niman was under heavy scrutiny for being the "Go To" spec for Lightsaber combat. It's got a few cool features, a ton of utility powers, and is the only tree to give Lightsaber skill, Dedication, and Force Rating.

But man, you gotta dig deep for all that awesome. And that's what balances it (almost...it's still pretty Boss).

Not to mention its lack of improved reflect or improved parry. But it does give you 3 ranks of the basic reflect and parry. Which is pretty nice.

I just realized I had read LethalDose's post wrong, as I was pretty sure Linked let you double up on successes for damage (and I was right! Woo!). My primary suspicion was that the Talent would only allow those successes on one hit or the other. Which... it doesn't? I think Niman just became my favorite Lightsaber style. Particularly nice if you're not out to kill your enemy, since you'll be blowing your advantage on damage rather than crits, which will eat up their Wounds (and Strain) very quickly. Finish them with Strain, and they ain't even Injured. Finish them with Wounds, well, they'll probably take one mild Crit. As opposed to something like Makashi, where you get to slap more and more vicious crits on the guy until you kill him with half his Wound Threshold still intact..

It's the little things like that which I like about this system...

Sam mentioned at one point that Niman was under heavy scrutiny for being the "Go To" spec for Lightsaber combat. It's got a few cool features, a ton of utility powers, and is the only tree to give Lightsaber skill, Dedication, and Force Rating.

But man, you gotta dig deep for all that awesome. And that's what balances it (almost...it's still pretty Boss).

Well, Niman is supposed to be the most balanced and refined form, paring well with the more aggressive styles. I think they achieve that here just fine. It's a great "second form" to take with the likes of Forms I, IV and V and their wicked signature moves. In that case, one can mostly hug the sides of the Niman tree, picking up parries and reflects along the way.

Wow awesome read. I was conflicted on which lightsaber style tp get into but now after reading all these posts im definitely gunna choose Niman. Thanks guys!

Yeah, Niman Disciple is pretty nice as a secondary spec for PCs that started in any of the other LS Form specs. True that there's no Improved Parry or Improved Reflect, but just the fact you get three extra ranks of each, two ranks of Defensive Training, adding Discipline as a career skill (something that not all the LS Form specs have) and a boost to your Force Rating... yeah, can see why Sam said it went under pretty heavy scrutiny. Also has some pretty decent social-based talents to let your PC serve as a back-up to the party face, such as Nobody's Fool and Sense Emotions.

And like Phil said, you've got shell out a lot of XP to get to those really nifty talents like Draw Closer and Force Rating. I'm playing a Shii-Cho Knight (house-ruled version of the spec), and took this spec for all the reasons I listed above, as it'll let me pile on the lightsaber-related talents (plus some more Toughened and Grit) as well as letting him take on a bit of the role of party face for those times when our main party face isn't available.

Sorry about my confusion above. The linked/autofire rule got changed in the EotE beta, and then got changed back.

Sorry about my confusion above. The linked/autofire rule got changed in the EotE beta, and then got changed back.

That confused me as well. I remember the changes but we had always been playing as full damage for a Linked attack (so if I do 10 points with the first attack, the second is 10 as well). Why Linked and Autofire can be so deadly, but as pointed out above a number of specs, abilities and talents can have devastating effects. That, combined with the narrative interpretation of results and narrative style, is what gives this system so much flexibility in play styles (if players are willing to branch out. I still have trouble with the min-max players but even they have relented to an extent).

Since the talent description states "within Medium range" I'd say yes, you could spend two Force pips to draw them into Engaged range. As a matter of fact you would have to do this, since if you don't generate enough Force pips to draw them to Engaged you can't make the attack.

My understanding is that you have to use a maneuver to change the range from medium to short allowing the draw closer skill to pull them the distance of short to engage. Reading in the talents section states the person may spend force pip "to move the target one range band closer to the character." It does not have any language about being able to spend more force pips like many of the other skills do. I didn't see any language that would suggest the person can pull them further than that.

Since the talent description states "within Medium range" I'd say yes, you could spend two Force pips to draw them into Engaged range. As a matter of fact you would have to do this, since if you don't generate enough Force pips to draw them to Engaged you can't make the attack.

My understanding is that you have to use a maneuver to change the range from medium to short allowing the draw closer skill to pull them the distance of short to engage. Reading in the talents section states the person may spend force pip "to move the target one range band closer to the character." It does not have any language about being able to spend more force pips like many of the other skills do. I didn't see any language that would suggest the person can pull them further than that.

It's not much of a stretch to allow the player to use two force points to pull the target closer, although it can't be denied that this interpretation implicit. Without this interpretation, allowing the player to activate the power on targets at medium range seems kind of silly.

Other force talents like Strategic Form and Saber Throw don't explicitly allow the player to spend multiple force points to activate the additional abilities of these talents, but again, allowing it seems very reasonable.

Finally, the Force power rules state that, unless otherwise stated, a basic power or upgrade can be activated multiple times on a single check (p 281), and while the "Draw Closer" action isn't a force power check, it seems reasonable to extend the rules to activating abilities from talents as well.

But ultimately, you should find an interpretation that works for your group and then be reasonably consistent with it.

If a FR2+ was to Combine the Draw Closer Action with the Force Leap Manoeuvre (upgraded) and you could close from Long to engaged in a single round and attack... It may even be possible to get to extreme with a generous GM! That's an amazing talent.

Edit:

A Force User could potentially draw on the force 3 times in a single turn with this combination!

Would be a great way to surprise a PC with a Nemesis