So I was glancing over the basic character sheet, and noticed that only three skills use Willpower as their Characteristic. Three.

And, trying to think of any talents that directly improve Discipline checks (providing Boost die/removing setback, letting you turn Triumph's into successes, etc), the closest I can think of off the top of my head, is the one that reduces the difficulty of any Fear checks you make.

Now granted, I haven't done a deed dive on the books, which are at home right now to see if there is one, but I can't think of any specializations that provided benefits along this line?

Are there any that I'm just missing? Stuff like "spend some strain to upgrade a Discipline check/downgrade opposing Disc check" or "remove 1 setback for each rank from and Disc checks" etc etc. You know, the usual kinds of talents, but for Discipline.

letting you turn Triumph's into successes

The sucesss can be cancelled by a failure but the triumph extra bit can't be cancelled.

I can't think of and talents that directly manipulate discipline however I am AFB.

That said you shouldn't need to often if you're doing a lot of discipline checks simply put a good number of ranks in, if you're playing a Will and Disp heavy character put some starting exp in and ramp a few ranks, 3 WP and 3 Disp and you're rolling trip Yellows which ain't bad.

letting you turn Triumph's into successes

Triumphs alwways count as successes but also get the extra triumph bitbon top.

The sucesss can be cancelled by a failure but the triumph extra bit can't be cancelled.

that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the talents that let you convert the extra benefit of a triumph into an extra success. There are many of them in other spec trees. Basically letting a Triumph = 2 successes if you so choose, instead of being able to introduce some awesome feature.

I can't think of and talents that directly manipulate discipline however I am AFB.

That said you shouldn't need to often if you're doing a lot of discipline checks simply put a good number of ranks in, if you're playing a Will and Disp heavy character put some starting exp in and ramp a few ranks, 3 WP and 3 Disp and you're rolling trip Yellows which ain't bad.

Yes but you could say that for every other skill, and yet the talent trees are replete with "remove setback die from Ranged Light" or "spend strain to upgrade any Charm checks" etc etc. And if you are playing a Force heavy character, Discipline is your money skill. It's the one that you will pretty much always be using, if the power requires some kind of check, or if you are using a power against a Rival or Nemesis.

I'm aware that having multiple yellows is good, but being able to offset negative dice, or adding positive dice, is also good. Good enough in fact, that pretty much all the talent trees have at least 2-3 different kind of talents (sometimes with multiple ranks) that do this very kind of thing.

Given that Discipline is the "go-to" skill for Force power usage, it's entirely deliberate that you don't see any talents that allow a PC to directly boost up their own Discipline checks. Otherwise, those PCs that focus on Force usage would gravitate heavily towards specs that include such a talent, more so if it's low-hanging fruit and can be grabbed from the first or second row of said hypothetical spec.

The only talent that really allows for a boost to Discipline is Command, which synergizes quite nicely with Field Commander and Inspiring Rhetoric (as both of those require Leadership checks to function), and Command only boosts up an ally's Discipline check, not your own.

You see something like Knowledge Specialization and Smooth Talker because the skills that those two talents impact (Knowledge skills and social skills respectively) don't see as broad a usage. Even then, those talents require at least two ranks to really be of value; about the only time a single rank is truly valuable to have is when your short that one success needed to pass a check.

Considering that while all three books may not have been released at the same time, they were designed with the others in mind, so it's no mistake that the talents with directly impact a Discipline dice pool for a PC focus on the difficulty, such as Confidence knocking down the difficulty of fear checks, and though I didn't spot it in my own quick skim-thru, there may well be a talent that removes setback dice from Discipline checks. The reason for this is that the designers were generally aware that opposed Discipline vs. skill was going to be a thing when it came to the Force; we already saw it with Influence in EotE in regards to the mind trick, and it became an official part of the rules with the release of FaD and that little sidebar about resisting Force powers, with the acting Force user typically rolling their Discipline.

Given that Discipline is the "go-to" skill for Force power usage, it's entirely deliberate that you don't see any talents that allow a PC to directly boost up their own Discipline checks. Otherwise, those PCs that focus on Force usage would gravitate heavily towards specs that include such a talent, more so if it's low-hanging fruit and can be grabbed from the first or second row of said hypothetical spec.

The only talent that really allows for a boost to Discipline is Command, which synergizes quite nicely with Field Commander and Inspiring Rhetoric (as both of those require Leadership checks to function), and Command only boosts up an ally's Discipline check, not your own.

You see something like Knowledge Specialization and Smooth Talker because the skills that those two talents impact (Knowledge skills and social skills respectively) don't see as broad a usage. Even then, those talents require at least two ranks to really be of value; about the only time a single rank is truly valuable to have is when your short that one success needed to pass a check.

Considering that while all three books may not have been released at the same time, they were designed with the others in mind, so it's no mistake that the talents with directly impact a Discipline dice pool for a PC focus on the difficulty, such as Confidence knocking down the difficulty of fear checks, and though I didn't spot it in my own quick skim-thru, there may well be a talent that removes setback dice from Discipline checks. The reason for this is that the designers were generally aware that opposed Discipline vs. skill was going to be a thing when it came to the Force; we already saw it with Influence in EotE in regards to the mind trick, and it became an official part of the rules with the release of FaD and that little sidebar about resisting Force powers, with the acting Force user typically rolling their Discipline.

I don't see how focusing on Discipline as the "go to skill" for Force users is any different from say, a Bounty Hunter using Ranged Light as a "go to skill". I mean, all of the specs have a skill or two that they focus on, making it pretty much a guarantee that if you are going to take that spec, you are going to use that skill more than any other. Piloting Planetary/Space for Ace Pilot for example, Computers for Slicer, Medicine for Doctor, etc. Discipline seems the same to me. I mean, if you want to be a badass melee fighter, you don't take Politico for example You gravitate as you put it, to the specs that actually improve melee skill checks.

I guess I get the idea that if there was one spec that did give that, it would be the one spec that all Force users would gravitate towards, and I guess that makes sense. Still, just find it kind of odd, that they have no way to offset what could end up being a significant amount of negative dice, or adding bonus dice to what would be their primary skill roll, like other specs can.

Maybe the introduction of various Force power upgrades and/or Force talents that let you convert pips to success/advantage is the offset perhaps? 'Cause as I'm typing this I'm remembering there are a decent number of talents that do exactly that. So maybe that's the balancing factor. Yeah you don't get any extra dice on the roll, or remove negative dice, but you get to directly convert extra pips you dont need to help with the final result.

Well, how many talents do you see that directly affect combat skills by bolstering up the attacker's dice pool?

There's True Aim, which requires the PC to use the Aim maneuver (something they may not always be able to do) and is limited to ranged attacks. There's also Frenzied Attack, which costs strain equal to ranks to use and is limited to Brawl and Melee attacks.

Both also come with built-in restrictions, with True Aim requiring a PC to have a ranged weapon, and Frenzied Attack being limited to a category of attacks that are generally deemed as sub-par in terms of damage output with a small handful of exceptions (vibro-ax topping the list).

There's also the matter that with Force and Destiny on shelves, a Discipline check to use a Force power carries a far broader array of possibilities. Generally speaking, a Ranged (Light) or Ranged (Heavy) combat check is going to carry one primary result, namely the target takes an amount of damage that is defended against by their soak value. A Discipline check for a Force power can run the gamut from hurling objects with your mind (Move), overriding a person's thoughts (Influence), restricting their range of action (Bind) to straight-up damage (Unleash) or stopping damage cold (Protect). So in that respect, Discipline is far more varied in what it can do, on top of it already being a defensive skill in social combat (used to resist Coercion and Deception), used in strain recovery (very handy thing for those PCs that rely on Parry and Reflect to keep from taking too much damage in a fight), and is what is used to defend against enemy Force powers as well as resist the effects of Fear (which frankly doesn't get used nearly as much as it probably should in a lot of games).

So it's not a fair comparison, as Discipline already does a whole lot more than the combat skills do, and a good chunk of that of that was long before FaD was released.