Hello forum,

I'm soon going to start an FaD game, but haven't spent a lot of time in the FaD forums. So I'm sorry if this has been discussed before.

The Heal/Harm Force Power seems to have a way too low Force Rating prerequisite for me. The ability to manipulate 'life force' I've always thought is something that's incredibly difficult for any force user to accomplish (don't see a lot of 'wax on, wax off' healing going on in SW), especially too complex for a Force Rating 1 character. Personally I would put this at the same level as Protect/Unleash (3+). Too harsh?

I feel that this is a metagame 'you have to have healing magic in a roleplaying game' thing. But this isn't a medieval fantasy setting, there is easy to acquire tech healing (as well as the Medicine skill, which helps a great deal).

Maybe I'm reading it all wrong.

Please let me know your thoughts.

There's nothing about the effects of the ability that would justify a higher Force rating. Instead, you could limit the player's access to Heal/Harm rather than just giving it an arbitrary prerequisite (I have a knight-level character that has a FR of 3, and she's far from a Jedi master).

There's nothing about the effects of the ability that would justify a higher Force rating. Instead, you could limit the player's access to Heal/Harm rather than just giving it an arbitrary prerequisite (I have a knight-level character that has a FR of 3, and she's far from a Jedi master).

But she is awesome.

The OP wasn't alone in this line of thinking. During the Beta, my own group wondered if Heal/Harm should have a prerequisite of Force Rating 2, as it seemed (during the Beta at least) to be incredibly useful for a power that PCs could start play with.

With the resorting of the power tree and increases to XP costs, I think it's fine as only needing Force Rating 1 to acquire, as the XP cost of the upgrades and placement of certain talents (like adding Medicine skill ranks to the damage healed or inflicted being much more difficult to reach) have balanced it out enough.

As DM said also keep in mind the cost to Activate each upgrade is effectively a minimum since getting 2+ LS/DS FPs is not guaranteed until a PC is at 2+ Force Rating.

The OP wasn't alone in this line of thinking. During the Beta, my own group wondered if Heal/Harm should have a prerequisite of Force Rating 2, as it seemed (during the Beta at least) to be incredibly useful for a power that PCs could start play with.

With the resorting of the power tree and increases to XP costs, I think it's fine as only needing Force Rating 1 to acquire, as the XP cost of the upgrades and placement of certain talents (like adding Medicine skill ranks to the damage healed or inflicted being much more difficult to reach) have balanced it out enough.

In some playtests, Harm was the only way the PCs could reliably hurt high-Soak beasties. No, this wasn't KL play, so nobody had lightsabers.

So looking at the Heal side of the tree there are some built in limits there already:

• the base power can only be activated once, and only with an engaged target, so unless your significantly invested in Intelect (5) then healing 4 to someone right next to you is easier with a stimpack.
• The upgrades are SUPER expensive, 6 of them cost 20xp each!
• Magnitude upgrades would requires 2 Force Dice to be rolled, so your not healing more than 1 target at a time until you have FR2 anyway, and even then your likely going to be needing to use both LS and DS pips to do it which leads to the next point
• To heal strain requires the Force User to only use LS pips, probably need FR2 to pull that off regularly
• There are only 2 strength upgrades, and the Control upgrade to Heal extra equal to Medicine is a minimum investment of 55xp after base cost for the power, compared to enhance where that would get you 3/4 of the entire list of upgrades.
• Mastery is insanely hard to pull off and can only be attempted once per session, not to mention your probably needing a FR3 to even have a regular chance of it working for you.

Essentially the basics are easy enough to learn, but to get the benefits of the full heal tree is one of the most expensive and focused force powers and has plenty of built in limitations to its use.

The Harm side of the tree has a lot of similar limitations, but the Conflict possibilities is the major limiting factor. Its an amazing BBEG power, Killing one of their own Minions to revive a Rival who just went down? Nasty!

but for a PC there are significant costs,

• 1 Conflict straight up without even considering the situation in which the power is used or the number of DS pips used to activate it.
• Another conflict to heal themselves, again without considering the number of DS pips.
• If they want to inflict strain on their target they must use a DS pip, so guaranteed 1 Conflict there
• If a buddy needs resurrection? gotta kill someone, then both of you gain 7 conflict! Plus the base power activation of 1 conflict, the killing may have conflict cost, and your probably using DS pips to do it, soy your buddy is alive again, but your looking at 10+ conflict for it and they get 7... thats a high price to pay and unlikely your going to want to do that every session.

Conflict isn't really an issue if you want to go Dark.

Definitely agree with you there Happy, but you cant actually use Heal at all if your a Dark Sider which is a major limiting factor on the power, not to mention the simple xp cost and Force Pip requirement still makes it a very expensive force power to master.

I was more addressing the "Grey Jedi" who tries to use both sides of the power, who is concerned about the Conflict cost as they try (In vein hahahaha) to stay above 30 Morality.

Many thanks for the replies on this. I was looking at the power from a more more narrative / canon perspective than a games mechanics point of view (to me, it seemed to be more of an ability that an old, experienced master would have, not a padawan). But having looked at the replies on this thread, I will have to reconsider from a gameplay point of view.

This probably comes down to an aversion to having such a power in the game because of all the times I've been forced to play games like D&D and their reliance on healing spells!