First, no spoilers, I promise. Season 2 just came out on DVD, and I finished marathoning it. Now, I have a few questions inspired by it, or the show, as a whole.

First off, I think I get how the Morale, Temptation, and such works, but if you are new to the Force, and only have a little into it, say one Force die, and the start of one power, is there really a way to feel like "if you let the Dark Side, your anger, and emotions flow, you'll be stronger!" is actually a thing? If you roll a (W), you succeed, good job, and if you roll a (B), you still succeed, with some Strain. Later, when you have more dice, and probably more Upgrades, you could need the (B) to activate them, but is the starting point mostly just a nice "safe zone" for you, to get your bearings? You might get a (B), and need to switch it, but I'm thinking more you want to use the Dark, and feel like it did something you couldn't, already; the temptation the Dark Side offers. Maybe I'm looking too deep into this?

Next, as in much of Star Wars, Ezra, Kanan, and some others, tend to combine punches, kicks, and most often, Force slams with their lightsaber combat. How well can one do this in FFG Star Wars? I would imagine Move, and attacking, would both use up your action for the round, and this game seems to control action economy pretty tightly; can you do this stuff? Is it more thematic, and descriptive, than actually what I'm seeing them do?

Other question, and this is Rebels, as a whole. How might you duplicate the "two ships in one" aspect of the Ghost, and the Phantom? They might, or might not, have the model statted out, but is it possible to do like this, in the game, with rules as presented? Is the Phantom a starfighter? A very small transport?

Okay, I think that'll do for now. Hopefully like I said, no spoilers Not a bad season, and I did get a good laugh out of the number of homages, or such, that they called back to other material, EU stuff, that otherwise is gone, in this season, but I'll let you see them for yourself, assuming I'm not the only person who had to wait for the DVD to catch them; yay night working!!! Have a great one, everyone.

You are missing the when you flip dark to light you get conflict. So ypu succeed and may travel closer to falling.

As to the bunches and kicks. This system is narrative. A die roll is not a single strike. It is about a minutes worth of activity. So say on a roll to hit with a lightsaber you get failure with 3 adv. You can spend that advantage to knock your target prone and narrate it as a kick that knocked them down.

Not covered yet. The stock ship is in Keeping the peace. The shuttle is not in the game yet and the docking system has not been done yet. It could be just a docking bay mod. Or something else.

First, no spoilers, I promise. Season 2 just came out on DVD, and I finished marathoning it. Now, I have a few questions inspired by it, or the show, as a whole.

First off, I think I get how the Morale, Temptation, and such works, but if you are new to the Force, and only have a little into it, say one Force die, and the start of one power, is there really a way to feel like "if you let the Dark Side, your anger, and emotions flow, you'll be stronger!" is actually a thing? If you roll a (W), you succeed, good job, and if you roll a (B), you still succeed, with some Strain. Later, when you have more dice, and probably more Upgrades, you could need the (B) to activate them, but is the starting point mostly just a nice "safe zone" for you, to get your bearings? You might get a (B), and need to switch it, but I'm thinking more you want to use the Dark, and feel like it did something you couldn't, already; the temptation the Dark Side offers. Maybe I'm looking too deep into this?

Looking a tad deep, but also remember it's the usual darkside mumbo jumbo. So it's less of a "do what you couldn't possibly ever do" and more of a "do what you couldn't do if you were concerned with your conflict and morality."

Also remember for the official stories to work you need a little more GM-Player cooperation and dedication to the story over the game than you'll usually see in a typical game. So there's probably a little player derived melodrama going on that the actual dice rolls only kinda match from a certain point of view.

Next, as in much of Star Wars, Ezra, Kanan, and some others, tend to combine punches, kicks, and most often, Force slams with their lightsaber combat. How well can one do this in FFG Star Wars? I would imagine Move, and attacking, would both use up your action for the round, and this game seems to control action economy pretty tightly; can you do this stuff? Is it more thematic, and descriptive, than actually what I'm seeing them do?

Depends on how you want to roll it.

If the players appear to just be generating effects with little damage (Kanan slashes with saber, Inquisistor blocks, Kanan elbows his face and sets up Ahsoka for an attack) you can narrative that out as Kanan made a Saber check with one success and one advantage, Inquisitor made a Parry reducing the damage to just one or two wounds, and Kanan used his advantage to pass a boost to the next player. The elbow wasn't an actual attack but an explanation of how a parried saber attack did 1 wound and gave a boost.

If things get really interesting (Ahsoka sabers Inquisitor and then kicks him in the face knocking him down) That can be down with a two-weapon attack, with a Brawl/Saber attack, and using the Knockdown quality of the brawl attack to... well... knock the inquisitor down. Again, the players are going for drama a little more than your typical player would as most would probably Crit instead of knockdown, but hey, I drove my R2 unit off a 45th story balcony because I totally forgot I had an ascension gun... so inefficient player choices happen....

Other question, and this is Rebels, as a whole. How might you duplicate the "two ships in one" aspect of the Ghost, and the Phantom? They might, or might not, have the model statted out, but is it possible to do like this, in the game, with rules as presented? Is the Phantom a starfighter? A very small transport?

That's EASY. So easy there's actually several RAW ways of doing it.

The official stats have the VCX at Sil 5, so they probably intend it to use the Retrofitted hanger bay attachment to carry another small craft. They might not, it is FFG we're talking about here, but it's a very simple and plausible direction.

If you want to use a different craft (or believe the VCX should be Sil 4, or don't want to use the hanger bay) you can check the EotE core and note that most transports nowadays have docking clamps that allows them to carry a fighter or two around. So just clamping on is an option as well. Some especially nit-picky GMs will require you to EVA to board the fighter, they are all blackhearted political dwarves with rotten teeth who smell of cabbage.

Moving on....

So the Phantom itself has not been officially statted out yet as far as I know, but the broad strokes are pretty simple. It's a Sil 3 craft with a passenger capacity of like 6 or 8. No real complex issues there. Remember things like "Fighter" and "Transport" are designations based on what a vehicle is intended to do, not mechanical special rules or a specific descriptor. So you can have a Sil 3 "utility shuttle" that carries a pair of medium lasers, a handful of passengers or a few dozen Enc, and has a Speed of 4... Heck even in-universe the waters are often intentionally muddied. Consider the Helix Class, that was marketed as an "armed freighter" but BoSS reclassified in no time as a heavy fighter with a bunk and a truck.

Ataru, Juyo and Vapaad mix physical attacks with lightsaber attacks. Sadly this is not included in FFG rules. Yes Ezra is using Ataru, because as usual Kanaan follows the Trope of Jedi bad teacher.

Why is teaching ataru a bad thing? It's a very effective style, especially on open ground and with a good agility level. And i think Kanan taught a mix of shii-cho and Soresu, as that was his most familiar style. The inquisitor even comments on his over reliance on form 3.

Why is teaching ataru a bad thing? It's a very effective style, especially on open ground and with a good agility level. And i think Kanan taught a mix of shii-cho and Soresu, as that was his most familiar style. The inquisitor even comments on his over reliance on form 3.

Qui Gon Jinn is dead because of Ataru. It's cool, quick, flashy and all. And it not a style which wins you fights against duellist who are as experienced as you are. It does not even win you a fight against grunts with guns. Soresu masters are more or less undefeated while Makashi at least provides some huge and easy to cash in benefits in a duel. Ingame it is still awesome, especially if your group can properly support you, though you still want to learn other styles afterwards as well.

Juyo and Vaapad seem to solve the stamina problem of Ataru and make the style more efficient.

Why is teaching ataru a bad thing? It's a very effective style, especially on open ground and with a good agility level. And i think Kanan taught a mix of shii-cho and Soresu, as that was his most familiar style. The inquisitor even comments on his over reliance on form 3.

It does not even win you a fight against grunts with guns.

Explain that to those poor clones that had to face Yoda.

Why is teaching ataru a bad thing? It's a very effective style, especially on open ground and with a good agility level. And i think Kanan taught a mix of shii-cho and Soresu, as that was his most familiar style. The inquisitor even comments on his over reliance on form 3.

Qui Gon Jinn is dead because of Ataru. It's cool, quick, flashy and all. And it not a style which wins you fights against duellist who are as experienced as you are. It does not even win you a fight against grunts with guns. Soresu masters are more or less undefeated while Makashi at least provides some huge and easy to cash in benefits in a duel. Ingame it is still awesome, especially if your group can properly support you, though you still want to learn other styles afterwards as well.

Juyo and Vaapad seem to solve the stamina problem of Ataru and make the style more efficient.

Your personal bias is showing. Qui-gon is dead because he made poor choices. fighting someone who was better than he was and he knew it. The 2 were barely holding their own.

Why is teaching ataru a bad thing? It's a very effective style, especially on open ground and with a good agility level. And i think Kanan taught a mix of shii-cho and Soresu, as that was his most familiar style. The inquisitor even comments on his over reliance on form 3.

It does not even win you a fight against grunts with guns.

Explain that to those poor clones that had to face Yoda.

And all those battle droids.

Maul had also chosen his battleground carefully, luring them in a rather confined space where they couldn't use Ataru's more powerful moves.

And for the record Obi wan defeated Maul with ataru, only later he switched to Soresu. And still used some ataru with the last duel with Dooku to throw him offguard.

As for ataru being inferior Yoda owned Dooku in their fight and Dooku used to be confident his makashi mastery would allow him to easily overcome an ataru practicioner.

In short if Ataru was inferior it would have been substituted by something else, and it wasn't.

Ataru, Juyo and Vapaad mix physical attacks with lightsaber attacks. Sadly this is not included in FFG rules. Yes Ezra is using Ataru, because as usual Kanaan follows the Trope of Jedi bad teacher.

Ataru worked pretty well for Yoda, and the only reason Qui-Gon came to a bad end was that Maul (who was younger, faster, and overall physically stronger, things that Qui-Gon knew and acknowledged in the novelization of TPM) was that he allowed himself to get drawn into an area where using a lot of Ataru's more powerful moves would have been detrimental. Maul knew of Ataru's general flaws and exploited it, same as he would have done no matter what Form that Qui-Gon had fought with, as each of them has their flaws, flaws that Maul had been trained to recognize and exploit. He just got overly cocky towards the end and left himself wide open for a "surprise" attack by Obi-Wan.

Ataru, Juyo and Vapaad mix physical attacks with lightsaber attacks. Sadly this is not included in FFG rules. Yes Ezra is using Ataru, because as usual Kanaan follows the Trope of Jedi bad teacher.

Ataru worked pretty well for Yoda, and the only reason Qui-Gon came to a bad end was that Maul (who was younger, faster, and overall physically stronger, things that Qui-Gon knew and acknowledged in the novelization of TPM) was that he allowed himself to get drawn into an area where using a lot of Ataru's more powerful moves would have been detrimental. Maul knew of Ataru's general flaws and exploited it, same as he would have done no matter what Form that Qui-Gon had fought with, as each of them has their flaws, flaws that Maul had been trained to recognize and exploit. He just got overly cocky towards the end and left himself wide open for a "surprise" attack by Obi-Wan.

I agree. I also think that if Qui-Gon had used Soresu Maul would have worn him down too and finished him in the end. It might have taken longer but the age difference was crucial. Same thing happened with Obi-Wan on the Death Star, he was too old and weak compared to Vader who had both the dark side rage and the cybernetics to make him stronger and more resilient.

If we look at atreue spec I'm afraid there are few in raw who could stand up to a force rating 4 or 5 character with a double blade Saber. The ability to to make 4X+ damage in one attack can be devastating even if you have all the parry talents in the world.

Yes but double bladed sabers were really rare in the movies (and should be so in the game as well, i don't think it's reasonable to have more than 1 player with it in a group). And in Ataru it all boils down on how much strain you can regenerate, it seems to be a very strain hungry spec.

I'm playing a 600xp character with the spec and it's only strain hungry if your opponent doesn't fall in the first 2 or 3 rounds but advantage can always return that.

If we look at atreue spec I'm afraid there are few in raw who could stand up to a force rating 4 or 5 character with a double blade Saber. The ability to to make 4X+ damage in one attack can be devastating even if you have all the parry talents in the world.

However, double-bladed sabres' Linked attribute doesn't stack with Ataru. It doesn't really seem to be relevant. Which also makes the point about how rare they are moot.

If we look at atreue spec I'm afraid there are few in raw who could stand up to a force rating 4 or 5 character with a double blade Saber. The ability to to make 4X+ damage in one attack can be devastating even if you have all the parry talents in the world.

However, double-bladed sabres' Linked attribute doesn't stack with Ataru. It doesn't really seem to be relevant. Which also makes the point about how rare they are moot.

Right, Hawk bat swoop with double saber doesn't give linked 2, so HBS is unseless with a doublesaber. S

Ah k then it's better to have two one handed sabers and doubling the output and giving the paired quality attachment. Sounds even more devastating.

And I'm referring to to Saber swarm talent

To Lareg:

I was referring to saber swarm as well. Otherwise, saying that Ataru is somehow more strain hungry than other specialisations is weird.

To Tassedar:

Also, I don't really see much in terms of synergy between Ataru and paired swords either.

To Lareg:

I was referring to saber swarm as well. Otherwise, saying that Ataru is somehow more strain hungry than other specialisations is weird.

To Tassedar:

Also, I don't really see mych in terms of synergy between Ataru and paired swords either.

True, as you'd need a mountain of Advantage to trigger both the off-hand attack as well as the Linked quality granted from Saber Swarm.

Even with just Linked 1, you're looking at a baseline of 6 Advantage to get all four hits: 2 for the off-hand weapon, +2 for Linked 1 from the primary weapon, +2 for Linked 1 from the off-hand weapon. The Paired attachment from Fly Casual helps as it cuts the Advantage cost for hitting with the off-hand weapon down to 1, but that's still 5 Advantage. Increase the Linked value, and that's even more Advantage you need, since you only get one triggered hit from Linked per 2 Advantage spent; thus for a Linked 3 weapon like a quad laser cannon, you'd need 6 Advantage to get all three additional hits. And you've got an increased difficulty due to using two weapons, which further hampers getting that many hits. Add ranks of melee defense and/or Adversary and the chances of getting enough Advantage to dish out that many hits shrinks considerably.

And using Hawk-Bat Swoop is only going to take you so far; even with Force Rating 5 you can probably only presume to get about 3 or 4 Force Points out of it without having to take strain and conflict to convert dark side pips into Force points, and that won't be nearly enough Advantage to trigger Linked 5 on a single lightsaber, much less two of them.

It looks great in theory, but in reality it's about as impractical as the Inquisitors' spin-sabers would be in real life.

To Lareg:

I was referring to saber swarm as well. Otherwise, saying that Ataru is somehow more strain hungry than other specialisations is weird.

To Tassedar:

Also, I don't really see mych in terms of synergy between Ataru and paired swords either.

True, as you'd need a mountain of Advantage to trigger both the off-hand attack as well as the Linked quality granted from Saber Swarm.

Even with just Linked 1, you're looking at a baseline of 6 Advantage to get all four hits: 2 for the off-hand weapon, +2 for Linked 1 from the primary weapon, +2 for Linked 1 from the off-hand weapon. The Paired attachment from Fly Casual helps as it cuts the Advantage cost for hitting with the off-hand weapon down to 1, but that's still 5 Advantage. Increase the Linked value, and that's even more Advantage you need, since you only get one triggered hit from Linked per 2 Advantage spent; thus for a Linked 3 weapon like a quad laser cannon, you'd need 6 Advantage to get all three additional hits. And you've got an increased difficulty due to using two weapons, which further hampers getting that many hits. Add ranks of melee defense and/or Adversary and the chances of getting enough Advantage to dish out that many hits shrinks considerably.

And using Hawk-Bat Swoop is only going to take you so far; even with Force Rating 5 you can probably only presume to get about 3 or 4 Force Points out of it without having to take strain and conflict to convert dark side pips into Force points, and that won't be nearly enough Advantage to trigger Linked 5 on a single lightsaber, much less two of them.

It looks great in theory, but in reality it's about as impractical as the Inquisitors' spin-sabers would be in real life.

And on top of that a soresu master can still just parry all those incoming hits even on the fluke that you actually roll lucky enough to proc all the hits. At the other hand: Cortosis Armor might make parrying obsolete against such a stream of low damage hits. (I said might, not does always)

As if cortosis armor was common enough. I think that people often believe that if something is in the rulebook it must be readily available, when in universe something might be extremely rare because so very diffcult to find and work, like cortosis, or because they are extremely illegal, like disruptors.

As if cortosis armor was common enough. I think that people often believe that if something is in the rulebook it must be readily available, when in universe something might be extremely rare because so very diffcult to find and work, like cortosis, or because they are extremely illegal, like disruptors.

You mean the rarity stat has meaning? Shocked... Shocked I say!

As if cortosis armor was common enough. I think that people often believe that if something is in the rulebook it must be readily available, when in universe something might be extremely rare because so very diffcult to find and work, like cortosis, or because they are extremely illegal, like disruptors.

You mean the rarity stat has meaning? Shocked... Shocked I say!

I am shocked as well. This idea never occurred to me, especially in context that force users are even more rare and that the stuff was used as part of starship armor. ;-)

Besides, I totally admit that Guardian Armorers are even more rare than cortosis armor, but those characters for sure circumvent the rarity issue at the price of two force dice committed and 3 strain per turn. It is almost like their talent tree is build around the idea of high soak and armor.

Ataru, Juyo and Vapaad mix physical attacks with lightsaber attacks. Sadly this is not included in FFG rules. Yes Ezra is using Ataru, because as usual Kanaan follows the Trope of Jedi bad teacher.