A while back someone asked me if there was a Force-based martial artist talent tree - something in the vein of traditional Eastern hand-to-hand fighting combined with the mystical powers of the Force. I really couldn't point to a particular one, so I decided to try my hand at one, inspired by the Physical Adept from way back in Shadowrun: Second Edition.

At first glance, my biggest concern is that it seems too focused, but I'd be happy to hear what you think of it.

- Physical Adept

Looks like it could use a rank of Toughened in there somewhere. A hand to hand brawler could use some extra WT. Maybe in place of the 10 XP Second Wind and leave the tree with two ranks instead of three?

Also, does Physical Master mean the amount of damage the PC inflicts is essentially doubled because it affects WT and ST? If that's the case, it seems pretty OP. I know it's a 25 XP talent and a bit of a hike to get there, but I can't think of another talent that allows you to do double damage every time. Maybe make it a once per session nova type of thing. That's all assuming I'm reading it correctly.

There seems to be a bit of duplication here steel hands is a force talent that is essentially the same as feral strength which adds to melee and brawl DMG, whereas your talent is a force talent with less scope. I would take a look at similar specs like commando / marauder / infiltrator / gadgeteer / enforcer / and finally warden , all of these have talents that would work

Examples

Improved stunning blow

Crippling blow

Feral Strength

Frenzied Strike

No escape

Dodge

Defensive stance

Grapple

All of the above would work in a brawler build, but to be honest why reinvent the wheel, warden and marauder mixed would do the job. I love the idea though so even as is I like

Also, does Physical Master mean the amount of damage the PC inflicts is essentially doubled because it affects WT and ST? If that's the case, it seems pretty OP. I know it's a 25 XP talent and a bit of a hike to get there, but I can't think of another talent that allows you to do double damage every time. Maybe make it a once per session nova type of thing. That's all assuming I'm reading it correctly.

At once per session, it seems a little weak, but I agree that the ability to do it with every strike might be a bit overpowered. Do you think there is a compromise that could work? For instance...

• Two or three Strain cost
• Once-per-encounter activation
• Spend a Triumph to trigger the effect
• Flip Two Destiny to trigger the effect

The best DMg boosting talents are the ones with wording like spend a dp and add a characteristic score although why nkot just use deadly accuracy, where you select a combat skill and add ranks to the DMG of one hit (to prevent you using it with dual wielding)

Okay, first off the Guided Strikes talent jumps out at me as being way too good. I'm thinking that maybe instead of rolling Force dice, change it so that the PC spends a maneuver, commits a Force die, and gets to add Pierce = ranks to their Brawl combat checks when making an unarmed attack. That and maybe reduce it to three instances in the spec instead of four.

Steel Hands also raises an issue, since it can easily stack with Feral Strength (which adds to Brawl and Melee checks). Maybe instead a damage boost, change it to instead lower the Crit Rating of an unarmed strike? This way, when combined with the revised Guided Strikes above, it allows the character to have a better chance of getting through a target's soak and then inflicting a critical injury as opposed to just being "more damage," which itself in a way is already covered by the Enhance power with the Control Upgrade to add Force dice to Brawl checks.

Vital Strike seems kinda wonky. If I'm reading it right, it's an attack that does no damage to the target, but instead heals strain. I'm thinking that this should be an attack effect, one that can be used once per encounter to make a Brawl check against an enemy target, increasing the difficulty of the attack once, and that with a successful check the target immediately loses a number of strain equal to uncancelled successes.

You could probably do with dropping a rank of Grit and a rank of Second Wind, swapping those out for Toughened as right now this spec is pretty darn squishy, which is not good for a hand-to-hand fighter lacking any inherent defensive abilities. As is, it's a glass cannon that can hit hard, but can barely take a single hit from meatier attacks (like a fairly common blaster carbine or blaster rifle) much less two or three hits from said weapons.

In regards to Sustained by the Force... I think it's more likely the PC is going to be incapacitated by wound damage than strain damage. Maybe change it so that it works that if the PC exceeds their wound or strain threshold, then once per session they can make that Resilience check (Daunting difficulty?) adding Force dice. Success means they heal wounds or strain equal to their ranks in Resilience, and each Force Point spent lets them recover an additional wound or strain (player's choice).

Physical Master borders on being too good, since most adversaries aren't going to have a strain threshold, so as written it effectively lets the PC make a second attack for free. Maybe drop this entirely and replace it with something that adds Linked 1 to unarmed attacks instead?

Also, does Physical Master mean the amount of damage the PC inflicts is essentially doubled because it affects WT and ST? If that's the case, it seems pretty OP. I know it's a 25 XP talent and a bit of a hike to get there, but I can't think of another talent that allows you to do double damage every time. Maybe make it a once per session nova type of thing. That's all assuming I'm reading it correctly.

At once per session, it seems a little weak, but I agree that the ability to do it with every strike might be a bit overpowered. Do you think there is a compromise that could work? For instance...

• Two or three Strain cost
• Once-per-encounter activation
• Spend a Triumph to trigger the effect
• Flip Two Destiny to trigger the effect

Having it as a once per encounter thing would be reasonable. Once someone is that far down the tree, triumphs popping will probably be fairly common.

Okay, first off the Guided Strikes talent jumps out at me as being way too good. I'm thinking that maybe instead of rolling Force dice, change it so that the PC spends a maneuver, commits a Force die, and gets to add Pierce = ranks to their Brawl combat checks when making an unarmed attack. That and maybe reduce it to three instances in the spec instead of four.

Honestly, I think this is more effective than the way I wrote it, unless you're limiting it to the number of ranks a character has in Guided Strikes. Even then, it might be better. In my version, the character spends two strain per Force Die rolled, and uses pips to add pierce up to the number of ranks of Guided Strikes. In your version, he commits a single Force Die, spends no strain, and can get up to 5 points of Pierce if it's not limited by ranks, and 3 points of Pierce if it is. (I'm assuming you'd still want it limited by ranks, since you suggested keeping three instances in the spec instead of four... even though three was all there were in the first place.)

Steel Hands also raises an issue, since it can easily stack with Feral Strength (which adds to Brawl and Melee checks). Maybe instead a damage boost, change it to instead lower the Crit Rating of an unarmed strike? This way, when combined with the revised Guided Strikes above, it allows the character to have a better chance of getting through a target's soak and then inflicting a critical injury as opposed to just being "more damage," which itself in a way is already covered by the Enhance power with the Control Upgrade to add Force dice to Brawl checks.

I like allowing it to do either Strain or Wound. Again, this was an artifact of the original build being Strain-heavy - using Strain as a resource for attacks.

Physical Master borders on being too good, since most adversaries aren't going to have a strain threshold, so as written it effectively lets the PC make a second attack for free. Maybe drop this entirely and replace it with something that adds Linked 1 to unarmed attacks instead?

With my suggestion to Guided Strikes, the intent behind the suggested change was two-fold.

One major part that it seems you overlooked was my suggestion to drop the number of ranks found in the spec down to a maximum of three. Which means a PC with all three ranks would have Pierce 3 when making an unarmed Brawl attack. Given that the talent preclude the usage of any Brawl weapon (since the PC is no longer fighting "unarmed"), adding Pierce 3 gives the PC with this spec a notable boost, as unarmed attacks are by far the weakest form of attack a PC can make.

Falling Avalanche in the Armorer tree is a way to boost lightsaber damage that is fairly balanced.

The strain cost has to be paid before the roll, so if you fail the combat check, you are out the strain unless you rolled a surplus of advantage.

You could copy a similar mechanic for Brawl.

I would nix Physical Master altogether and replace it with something like Falling Avalanche. Steel hands seems redundant when you can equip brawl weapons. How about a rank of Enduring, Durable, or Toughness, to play up the body as a weapon theme? Also, this seems like every talent is combat related. Why not some skill related talents or something to help during the role playing portions between fights?

A player gets bored when they have nothing to do on nights where the group avoids combat. 4-6 of the talents should be useful outside of combat! Armorer has 2 ranks of Gearhead and Inventor, and things like that really round out the theme.

Some examples:

Keep Cool - Boost die on Cool checks, remove 1 setback die from Cool checks

Survival Instinct - Re roll Resilience, Vigilance, or Survival once per session

Will to Live -Remove 1 setback dice from Survival and Resilience Checks, suffer 1 strain to reduce difficulty of a Survival or Resilience check.

I hope this doesn't come across too critical; I do like the general idea but I'm also seeing a few glaring issues in the details.

---Career skills

One thing to note is that you have 2 more career skills for the Force Adept career (8) than any other force focused career, which always have six.

---Physical Adept

You should get rid of the Physical Adept talent, both the name and the talent itself. Remember, it will only have any effect at all on a Nemesis, as rivals and minions have no strain, so it's a low level talent that will only have any effect at all on high level foes. A better ability with a similar effect would be to give your unarmed strikes an ability, something like Stun 2. That way the player will have more choices for how to use advantage, as opposed to a nearly meaningless choice about damage as strain/wounds.

Also, you could change the name to Disrupting Palm, Low Blow, or something else more descriptive, but it's a really bad idea to use the same name of the specialization for the name of a talent.

---Physical Master

This name isn't as bad as physical adept, but it is pretty boring and meaningless. Mechanically, I really like Donovan's Linked suggestion. If you go with that, maybe a name like Flurry of Blows (to steal a bit from d&d...)?

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to look up the plural of Nemesis...

With my suggestion to Guided Strikes, the intent behind the suggested change was two-fold.

One major part that it seems you overlooked was my suggestion to drop the number of ranks found in the spec down to a maximum of three. Which means a PC with all three ranks would have Pierce 3 when making an unarmed Brawl attack. Given that the talent preclude the usage of any Brawl weapon (since the PC is no longer fighting "unarmed"), adding Pierce 3 gives the PC with this spec a notable boost, as unarmed attacks are by far the weakest form of attack a PC can make.

Maybe I'm reading it differently than you, but I only put three ranks in the spec. They are the 5, 10, and 25XP ranks in the far right hand column. Are you seeing another rank I'm not aware of?

Some general comments:

A cool and fitting Force Talent would be one like the the Ataru "Saber Swarm" talent but reworded for brawl checks, giving them Linked equal to force rating.

The other option would be a reworded Guns Blazing talent, allowing the character to suffer 2 Strain to ignore the upgraded difficulty of the next Brawl Two Weapon Combat check.

Sustained by the Force is very long winded compared to the Against All Odds talent it is based off.

I think a Martial Artist is also part Philosopher, some more knowledge based talents could mix it up a little bit.

This could be a Dark Side/Light Side tree, one side focusing on the defence and knowledge part leading to the increased Force Rating, while the other focuses on the Damage dealing, perhaps with a Conflict talent to make Criticals easier or something, all leading to the Dedication

Hmmm...

My suggestion is don't bother with a new Career Specialization but instead build a Marauder and add 15, 20, and 25 EXP Upgrades to the Enhance FP Tree that allow committing a Force Die to Brawl/Melee with each giving an additional die of effect for the die committed (ie. 1st 1FD=1, 2nd 1D=2, 3rd 1FD=3). This along with the Sense Upgrade for Defence and a non-Lightsabre Force User Specialization and you're golden.

At Force Rating 1 the PC will have to choose between using their FD for Offence, Defence or another Power. At FR 2+ they can do both offence and defence. This balances the extra dice added to Attacks.