I have a player who wants to play a miraluka, and be useful in ship-to-ship combat. He wants to take ranks in gunnery, but I don't know if their force vision extends to close range on the planetary scale. I asked if he wouldn't consider upgrading force rating to 2 and buying battle meditation, but he viewed that as "If we're in ship combat I sit in a corner and think?" Now, of course that's not what battle meditation is, but is there a better role he can fill? Can he make gunnery checks on the planetary scale?

The Miraluka relied on this power constantly to compensate for their physical blindness. They could not perceive colors but could distinguish organics (even dead) and their alignment from the surrounding environment by their characteristic aura. Most objects, including doors and walls, appeared translucent, allowing to see through them. The Miraluka were the most skilled experts of the technique. Thanks to it, their reflexes were strengthened enormously.

Sounds to me like a Miraluka should be fine with gunnery, especially as fights on planetary scale are reyling on reading sensors and not eyeballing a shot at that cruiser in 100 km distance. A color-blind mode for the ships UI might be needed, which should be a minor thing and potentially even a standard option.

Generally speaking, I prefer to embrace a character with a fundamental flaw then mitigate it (Your telling the blind one to shoot for ya? Sure, just tell me if I'm hitting too many greens!). That being said an entire race that sees with the force is pretty funky anyways. Heheh

But in all seriousness I would probably say thats fine, a gunner control can easily be fitted with some warning sensors for friendlies. I just wouldn't allow the character to see finer details. After all, I imagine beyond close range it's mostly sensors and opportunistic snap shots.

Yeah, I was on the Rogue Trader forum, addressing ships escaping combat, without one always needing to be destroyed/hulked (it can be rather annoying to always know either yours, or the BBEG's irreplaceable ship WILL be destroyed, in every battle, or they can never meet, in space, till the end) and was reminded about the scale of space combat, there. The vessels are clumps of kilometers apart, well out of "sight range" of the human eye, even if you don't subscribe to the "windows are a structural weakness; Geth ships do not have them, Sheppard-Commander" philosophy of the Mass Effect series; everything you are doing, pretty much, is on a sensor screen, in a corner of the bridge. When one ship, even the bigger, slower one, wants to withdraw from combat, they will try to jam out the others' sensors, and creep away; it may work, it may not, but if the ship can't "see", and you certainly can't, at that range, then escape is possible. With this being the set-up, either the Miraluka can as easily monitor this screen as they could their bank records, or any other information source, for which the galaxy is prepared for a huge diversity of species, or there would be audible feedback, and they'd have learned to respond to that in appropriate time. I've never seen the Miraluka as one of the Star Wars galaxy's most central, referenced alien species, certainly, but if this sort of thing would keep them down so much, I think they'd be a much more minor race, even with their racial, latent Force ability (not every Miraluka can USE the Force, like an FS does, but they all can "see" through it). I'd say, one way or another, it shouldn't be an issue, really.

Otherwise, if you think it will, ask the player what about the Miraluka makes them really want to play it; the Force sight thing? A big Visas fan, from the KOTOR II days? Decide which is more important to them, that, or being a great gunner, assuming ship combat will even be critically important, compared to, say, ground action, and pick a different race, or a different focus. Still, I'd say I've never heard of the Miraluka's "deficiency" being that severe of an impediment, any more than it proves to be for Astropaths, in 40k, and I'm sure there has to be some other, maybe subterranean, races in Star Wars, to whom vision is actually not their primary sense, but whom could adapt to circumstances, once they make the leap into space.

why can't you just say they have "normal sight" with a twist. you don't need to get funky just say the sauce is different.

As a player I've played Miraluka snipers before and in a system where you don't have their stats you can just fluffy it.

why can't you just say they have "normal sight" with a twist. you don't need to get funky just say the sauce is different.

As a player I've played Miraluka snipers before and in a system where you don't have their stats you can just fluffy it.

I pretty much agree with this.

Though if you want some sort of crunch, you could just throw in some setback dice and call it a day.

A good example here is Stick and Daredevil from the Daredevil Netflix series. they both have ways to see without seeing and they don't seem to be hampered too much from their disability.

basically you can consider it allows them to see in pitch black which is the same as if you were wearing some goggles. You also depending on your game get to play with as they see through the force and give them glancing impressions of things which can add to the plot if done nicely.

Sith crypt might have a spirit and who knows it might give the group a little notce if the miraluka sees movement in the corner of their eye and helps the group. but then maybe in a bad encounter the same "spirit" blinds them because or a wash of force.

you can really just roll with it as a normal vision with extra bits for plot, you don't need to make them special because people can use technology to see other things too.

we had long long....long discussions about this on the forums at wizards of the coast when they made starwars d20. and we had lots of these discussions, did i mention they were long? anyways the game developers over there finally weighed in and said "treat it like normal sight, its just an interesting description, the real interesting situation is that miraluka start the game with the force sensitive feat automatically." I expect the same sort of rules will occur for FFG. even though in edge of the empire and age of rebellion purchasing force sensitivity meant purchasing a... i forget what it was called but i know it wasnt a feat.

I don't expect them to start with a Force rating. Just vision that has a bonus due to the Force. The easiest way to handle them is to say that thier vision works as normal vision only they can see through obstacles because of the Force. I wouldn't give them a free Force rating and based on how FFG handles species I'm confident they wont either.

we had long long....long discussions about this on the forums at wizards of the coast when they made starwars d20. and we had lots of these discussions, did i mention they were long? anyways the game developers over there finally weighed in and said "treat it like normal sight, its just an interesting description, the real interesting situation is that miraluka start the game with the force sensitive feat automatically." I expect the same sort of rules will occur for FFG. even though in edge of the empire and age of rebellion purchasing force sensitivity meant purchasing a... i forget what it was called but i know it wasnt a feat.

Force Exile and Force emergent. Though technically it worth less than those, as you do not need to get access to the three, just one force dice. Allows you to skip that if you want to grab later a force spec. So its basically worth a little less than 20xp + whatever sounds right for the vision advantage.

Iktotchi who are in Keeping the Peace have what amounts to a watered down version of Foresee without any need to have a Force Rating, thats probably the way they will go with Miraluka. When Savage Spirits comes out and we get the new Force Power (Quote: Farsight, that enables PCs to see at great distances even when their eyes cannot) in that we may get a better idea (assuming Miraluka are not in that book!) But it would be safe to assume it allows vision in zero light and through smoke/fog etc, weather it allows "X-Ray Vision" who knows.

Miraluka can see just fine, but through the force. Wookiepedia has a good description of it: The Miraluka relied on this power constantly to compensate for their physical blindness. They could not perceive colors but could distinguish organics (even dead) and their alignment from the surrounding environment by their characteristic aura. Most objects, including doors and walls, appeared translucent, allowing to see through them. The Miraluka were the most skilled experts of the technique. Thanks to it, their reflexes were strengthened enormously.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Force_sight

With that being said, I have yet to see any actual listing in the books, but I have been running a Cold War Era Old Republic and one of my players wanted a Miraluka character. I use Ogg Dude's builder to create any races that I want to add or the players want. Use the basic formula of 300 points and it usually works fine. My Miraluka are as follows:

100 xp

Brawn 2

Agility 2

Intellect 2

Cunning 3

Willpower 2

Presence 1

Special Abilities: Force Sight: The Miraluka rely on their ability to perceive their surroundings by sensing the slight force vibrations emanated from all objects. In any location where the force is some way cloaked, the Miraluka are effectively blind. Vigilance and Perception checks gain a Boost die to all rolls unless something is blocking the Force.

Bonus Skill: 1 Rank in Perception.

I know this might seem a bit vanilla, but I feel being conservative is the better option for game balance. However, I always tell my players that if Fantasy Flight releases a book detailing the species, making it official, that their character will be adjusted accordingly. So far I have made Miraluka, Barabel, Coynite and Teltior. This was mostly the result of us converting over old D6 system characters.

I really like your Miraluka description, I would just decrease the starting xp to 90 or even to 85.

As an example, pls check the Iktotchi from 'Keeping the Peace' with some minimal force power.

Miralukas would be immune to any darkness, flash or smoke modifiers. Although if you allow them to see through walls & doors, I would even go at 80 or 70 starting xp.