What do you think the phrase "a character's involvement" implies? Being engaged? Line of sight? or could they just use it in conjunction with a blaster shot? Like, "I saw the motivator on top of the turret arcing and knew one little charge should short it".

How about we steer this back onto topic and away from yet another, "this game sux" thread jacking?

It’s a once-per-session thing, right?

If they can find a way to make the scene that much more epic, and entertaining to both me and them in the process, and they can find a plausible way of explaining how they noticed it, then why not?

I mean, at the end of the day, we’re doing this to have fun, right? And not just fun for ourselves, but fun for everyone involved, right?

Now, I would put some reasonable limits on it, like not affecting an entire ship across the board. One subsystem on the ship, in the same manner as a critical hit, that sounds good.

And if they did it every single game, then that would start getting real old, real quick.

But only used every once in a rare while, and helping to make the story more epic and fun? Sure.

I doubt I'd allow a power like this at all... the ability to simply reach out and force something to fail "for raisins" is contrived to say the least.

Okay, I'm curious - would you allow the Contraption talent? (That's the one where once per game you can cobble together a device to overcome any problem using just the parts at hand).

Would a ship be too much to use it on? Just one system on a ship? or the whole shebang? Not destroy it of course, but say take all power offline or something.

I would probably say that you would need to target specific ship systems. Shields, landing gear, hyperdrive, guns (and then probably only "Well, you got the missile launchers, but the dorsal turrets are still on line") and that sort of thing.

Would a ship be too much to use it on? Just one system on a ship? or the whole shebang? Not destroy it of course, but say take all power offline or something.

I would probably say that you would need to target specific ship systems. Shields, landing gear, hyperdrive, guns (and then probably only "Well, you got the missile launchers, but the dorsal turrets are still on line") and that sort of thing.

Probably appropriate as it does say "device" and a ship is a bouquet of linked device(s)...

I doubt I'd allow a power like this at all... the ability to simply reach out and force something to fail "for raisins" is contrived to say the least.

Okay, I'm curious - would you allow the Contraption talent? (That's the one where once per game you can cobble together a device to overcome any problem using just the parts at hand).

Yes, in general (depending on the situation, no making a blaster out of bubble gum) -- because it's something that affects the character using it, and gives rather than takes.

So yeah, I'm failing to see why one is ridiculous and one is not. Being able to tinker together anything from nothing to (in order to bypass a story point) and being able to kill a bit of technology (to deal with a story point) are the exact same thing, just on the other sides of the coin.

How is banging together a Molecular Meson Ram to unlock a vault and saying "I seem to recall reading that the X7 vaults of this vintage are prone to fail if you run 1.21 gigawats through the lock" different?

I doubt I'd allow a power like this at all... the ability to simply reach out and force something to fail "for raisins" is contrived to say the least.

Least ironic username ever.

Anywho, our tech used it to shutdown a particularly nasty Trandoshan slaver's personal deflector shield. Caught the GM by surprise as he forgot he even had the talent. The GM wasn't even mad that it made his end boss significantly easier to take out, but it's definitely on his radar now. It's a fun talent and that's really the point of the game isn't it? To have fun and tell great stories?

So a GM uses this Talent against a player and... what? Why did the player's device fail? Does the GM get to retroactively decide that a PC forgot to charge the batter or do maintenance or didn't notice it break when they fell over last session?

As a player, would you consider that "fun" or a "great story"?

Because I wouldn't consider it fun, but I would consider it contrived.

That is the star wars fluff. Stuff breaks all the time. Ships hyperdrive fail, droids motivators go puff, shields fail in the worse moment, etc

Half of the EU is using this constantly as a plot device, and I fear that was actually the good part of it. And the movies? They all have it.

Probably appropriate as it does say "device" and a ship is a bouquet of linked device(s)...

Now, what you could do is - well, lets lets say, for example, that an Imperial drop ship is coming in on the PC's position and the Tech knocks out the repulsors, forcing the ship to land well away from the landing zone. The Stormtroopers are all still aboard and they are still coming to the target - they just have to walk. The Tech has delayed the landing by half an hour, but the problem still remains.

That seems reasonable to me.

Probably appropriate as it does say "device" and a ship is a bouquet of linked device(s)...

Now, what you could do is - well, lets lets say, for example, that an Imperial drop ship is coming in on the PC's position and the Tech knocks out the repulsors, forcing the ship to land well away from the landing zone. The Stormtroopers are all still aboard and they are still coming to the target - they just have to walk. The Tech has delayed the landing by half an hour, but the problem still remains.

That seems reasonable to me.

It's a sufficiently ambiguous Talent to allow a lot, and with a once a session cap, a Mechanic is likely to agonize over when to pull the trigger on it each session. It's worded open ended enough I don't think range is a huge issue. I do have a question in on 'It's Not That Bad' in regards to range, mostly out of curiosity.

Hard check, 1/session with GM override?

For a narrative game, if it is cinematically and dramatically appropriate, I am all for it. If it makes a good story better, then by all means.

Whoops - missed this on my first pass!

What do you think the phrase "a character's involvement" implies? Being engaged? Line of sight? or could they just use it in conjunction with a blaster shot? Like, "I saw the motivator on top of the turret arcing and knew one little charge should short it".

Probably line of sight (or enhanced line of sight, watching a landing ship with Macrobinoculars or the like). Hmmm, I'd have to think if I'd allow it over vid screens or the like. "Hey, General - you might want to attend to that sparking sensor panel behind - oh, never mind. Forget I said anything!"

Boy, thinking about it, how about over sensor displays? "I wonder if that freighter captain realizes that he's heading right into a Charged Vacuum Emboitment? It'll almost certainly knock out the shields for a few minuets while the backup kicks in. Better send the fighters now, commander!"

In short - I have no idea.

The holonet has the speeds of 1989 dial-up and is clogged up with cute pictures of nexu.

Cute!? That thing looks like a spider, a cat, and a venus flytrap had one of those "what happens in Nar Shaddaa stays in Nar Shaddaa" weekends and the Nexu was the result.

The holonet has the speeds of 1989 dial-up and is clogged up with cute pictures of nexu.

Cute!? That thing looks like a spider, a cat, and a venus flytrap had one of those "what happens in Nar Shaddaa stays in Nar Shaddaa" weekends and the Nexu was the result.

It's still kewt if someone makes a meme of it:

'I'M IN UR ARENA EATIN UR JEDI! LOL!'

I would guide its use as follows:

1) Player involvement - the player does something to a device of complexity up to a ship's subsystem. This something could be kicking it, spitting on it, flicking random switches until terrible things happen, shooting it, dropping a wrench into the working bits, loosening fasteners, sticking bubblegum where it doesn't belong, potatoes in tailpipes, sugar in the gas tank, calibrating the sensor array to emit a techno-babble pulse at something, etc. Almost anything here goes, but the player must come up with something that fits the current narrative beyond, "I look at it, it breaks." I like this part of the talent for major alterations to the narrative. Things that would make a scene's perceived challenge much simpler, or bypassed entirely. In structured time, these actions would simply be the narration of the Bad Motivator action, I wouldn't force more actions to pull this off.

2) Player notices something about to fail - I would use this for minor alterations of the narrative, resulting in an effect that makes a changes the perceived challenge of a scene slightly, without bypassing the event or undermining it. For example, the player notices an electrical panel about to short out, and it does, while another player uses said distraction to lift a code cylinder off of a mark. Or if during a speeder chase, they one of the engines on the speeder they're chasing is starting to overheat due to lack of care, so the speeder gets its speed reduced by 1. The chase is still on, but not exactly undone. Here I would require no more from the player than, "That thing looks like it's on its last legs," or similar statements, but I would make it less useful than full on interaction.

TL;DR: The big difference for me between the two is that involvement means the player is actually interacting with the device in some meaningful way, is more involved (hehe) and possesses a wider range of utility, while noticing allows the player to narrate simply, cause something minor to occur, and move on without too much thought, but would be limited to minor effects.

Let's not forget that this awesome talent provides our friendly neighborhood GM's the opportunity to flip a DP, and turn one of those purple dice red.

Wonder how the Tentacled Horrors got loose in the latest movie? This sounds like a perfect example of this talent going horribly wrong.

"Sure, you can cause the blast doors to malfunction... Ooops... wrong doors."

The story just got more complicated, more interesting, and more fun. Win all around.

Well, unleashed my first Bad Motivator tonight. We were holding our own with some battle droids when I spotted some reinforcements coming down a corridor behind a big ol door. Ran over, smacked the door controls with my Gaffi stick and shorted the whole thing out, sending it crashing closed (and crushing a couple of droids in the process, thanks to my double triumph).

Now it's not as flashy as bringing down a landspeeder so it stops at my feet - but we would have been overrun and in bad shape if not for it, so it was still an awesome usage. I approve of this Talent!

You know you don't need to actively smash the controls right? The talent is sort of deus ex machina, you look over and say "that door looks defective..."

Oh, I know - I just thought smashing the controls was more cinematic and dramatic.

Spoilers for Chronicles of the Gatekeeper:

Yeah, pretty epic.

So how would a character defend against this?

The same way an enemy does. Destiny point flipping and hoping the dice go their way.

The same way an enemy does. Destiny point flipping and hoping the dice go their way.

I include "enemy" under the category of "character". It's just that some of the descriptions make it sound, to me , that it's just a point-and-effect ability.

Aside from destiny point flipping (and I would say the GM is within their rights to apply the Adversary upgrade if they are targeting a nemesis's personal equipment), the talent description requires the GM to approve the target. This is a great place for the "yes, but" philosophy, as a GM might say "Yes, the lightsaber shorts out, but only for two rounds."

As far as targeting PC's with the ability goes, the fact that it's a once per session should be taken into account. A GM should hesitate before copying any per session ability, as their NPCs, who will probably only be involved in one encounter per session, don't have to worry about rationing their resources the same way a PC does. If a PC is trying to use this against another PC, then you're probably looking at an escalating intra-party conflict where the GM should step in to cool things off and perhaps remind the player's that it's not a good idea to expend such limited resources trying to undermine each other.

So how would a character defend against this?

There's flipping a destiny point and/or perhaps throwing a black at it. And while the rules don't say this is applicable, it's not unreasonable to apply the Nemesis upgrade.

'side from that? That's about it.