I absolutely agree. The narrative consequences of mechanical actions is the best aspect of this system - the dice themselves connote narration rather than numerals. Parties tend to attract arch-villains (or nemeses if you will) who can provide counter-point to their behavior either directly or indirectly. I quite enjoy a video I saw posted in another thread of an HK droid explaining how to kill Jedi in KOTR2 - those kinds of tactics work especially well on all kinds of characters, but most particularly Force-sensitive ones. Things like spontaneous changes in tactic, the use of extremely heavy weaponry, vast numbers of troops, and (my favorite) luring melee-focused lightsaber users into a minefield are great challenges for players who must come up with something better than adding a couple advantages or successes to their combat rolls. But the source of the challenge must be, in my opinion, clearly delineated as belonging to a master strategist that can ultimately be overcome using a different application of the skills the PCs already possess (or else the extra employment of skills readily available for the PCs to learn). Simply making your stormtroopers smarter isn't really logical narratively, and it feels like a cheap way to try to handicap the PCs.

On that note, it might be worth throwing an Inquisitor with a team of rivals or minions in and have the Inquisitor use battle meditation themselves. Having the PC get a taste of his own medicine might bring about an interesting plot twist (especially if the Inquisitor has more minions to manipulate with their battle meditation than the PC has allies). Just make sure it's not clearly vindictive in its presentation. Evil versions of a PC are especially good for this (and common throughout this kind of storytelling - Dark Link and Evil Kirk springing to mind off the top of my head).

Dark Link,

Evil Kirk,

Negaduck,

The Clone of Luke Skywalker (EU Thrawn Triology)

Luke Vader (In the Cave of Dagobah)

Bizzaro (DC)

Venom (Marvel)

Mortal Combat Mirror Matches (^^)

Just to call on some that flew in my mind just now.

And now that I think about it... some evil clone of our pasifistic healer ... that could be awesome...

F&D Page 282, Break out box at the top.

If a player chooses to commit force dice and keep them committed over extended periods (multi encounters or even into other sessions), the GM can stop the player from recovering strain at the end of each encounter. This remains in effected until the player uncommits all dice and leaves them uncommitted until the beginning of the next encounter.

Not an insta-fix, but eventually, between Threat, extra maneuvers, and combat, his Strain will Cap out and then the hilarity will ensue... He'll be KOed. Unless the players can successfully use medicine to recover his strain (only a once per encounter thing itself), he's probably unconscious until the end of the next encounter. Possibly longer if the dice aren't cooperative.

On a related note. Don't forget to track encumbrance. A character's unconscious body has an Enc of 5+the character's brawn. Also remember that encumbrance reducing gear only works for the character wearing it, and that armor only gets the -3 on the wearer. So to drag an unconscious person around you'll have to add up the Enc of their meat, as well as the enc of all their gear, armor clothing, ect. All of it. So yes, that 2 Brawn, Enc 7 Person could easily have a carry weight of well over 14 Enc.

That optional committed force-die rule is the gold standard at my table. It prevents players from being cheesy. One of my players was so upset at the slight nerf to his strain recovery he asked to respec, I allowed it since it was a change to the rule after we were a month into the game.

Another method might be to use the threats to target the battle mediator, regardless who is being hit; after all he is having to coordinate all these people under him which may be rather stressful. I wouldn't make it a hard rule mind you, nor would I always target that player but in especially hectic situations that they are also fighting in I might periodically use despairs to target that player to make a daunting discipline check to maintain the focus.

Battle Meditation doesn't really do anything to increase staying power. Sure, the guys with BM can hit harder, but can they take it any better? I don't think so.

It doesn't increase defense, either (which may have been part of what you meant, but I felt it important to clarify).

They are neither harder to hit nor can they take more hits. So increase one (or both!) On the opponent's side to compensate, if you want to go the escalation warfare route.

By staying power, I'm including Defense, Soak, and increases to WTT and/or STT. Battle Meditation doesn't do anything for any of that.

My question is: if you allow a character to keep Battle Meditation up forever via committing force dice, don't you remove the inherent limitation of rolling force dice for pips in the first place? What would stop the character from, out of combat, continually rolling his/her (minimum FR3) dice until he/she gets all LS pips then commits--thus always having Mastery, plus Range/Magnitude/Strength/Base with 5 white pips, then committing?

My question is: if you allow a character to keep Battle Meditation up forever via committing force dice, don't you remove the inherent limitation of rolling force dice for pips in the first place? What would stop the character from, out of combat, continually rolling his/her (minimum FR3) dice until he/she gets all LS pips then commits--thus always having Mastery, plus Range/Magnitude/Strength/Base with 5 white pips, then committing?

Technically? Nothing at all. That's why the GM should stick to the "encounter only" rule, and personally, I stick to the "Combat only" rule. It's far too broken otherwise, to just be running around using it 24/7 whenever the player thinks they should be able to. It's BATTLE Meditation. Not USE WHENEVER I WANT TO BECAUSE I WANT TO BE SUPER AWESOME AT EVERYTHING Meditation

My answer would be similar to the above: there had to be a shared goal that a group of people are working towards for Battle Meditation to apply. Typically, this will mean an encounter of some kind, which will be in structured time and the issue is nonexistent.

However, those conditions can also exist in narrative time. So I would say that the player can either take average Force Points for their FR but they don't get to make checks or assist other checks themselves (I have charts with the average result for each Force Rating up through FR 10; I'll post 'em here in a little while) to represent rolling every turn, or they can take max Force Points, but they're suffering 3 strain every 5 minutes and they can't recover strain until they've not used Mediation for at least an hour, representing getting that great roll and committing. Someone with a strain threshold of 20 will barely make it half an hour before they're exhausted from the effort of linking a bunch of minds together.

And remember those narrative effects: it's a subtle ability, but people can notice is happening and that can cause problems, and there needs to be multiple people working together to solve a problem or perform a task, or else it's of no help at all.

Remember that some non-battle encounters happen in structured time too. Slicing encounters, chase scenes, some social encounters... I think I would tend to allow Battle Meditation in all of these, as I can see how better coordination of player actions might lead to more success.

So I don't think combat is where I would draw the line. Rather I think that if I have an encounter where I think that no matter how well-coordinated the players act, that doesn't improve their chance of success, well, then battle meditation doesn't help either. Say they have a couple of completely separate tasks (a repair job, an astrogation job, and a piloting job) that don't have jack to do with each other and where coordination would not help at all.

Just leave me be, you annoying telepathic voice. I'm trying to work here.