I apologize for my bad english in the begining:

There was an old chart in the D6 WEG Star Wars for "Dark Side Costs"
It gave you the possibility to add some more flavour to the fallen characters. Dark Side Users where not really indended as player characters.
I looked through the results and thought some would perfectly fit into Force and Destiny. So if a character falls to the dark side, you roll a d100 and get one side effect of the dark side. Maybe something minor like grey skin or yellow eyes or maybe something drastic like beeing possesed by force sensetive parasites or sith ghosts.

Here is my modified list. Its not enough for twenty results, but maybe someone has further ideas or want to use it any way:

Dark Side Costs


1-10
Advanced age: The character starts to age rapidly
11-20
Pale Flesh: The characters skin starts to turn pale/greyish/unhealthy.
21-30
Memory loss: The character suddenly forgets many things.
31-40
Tremors: the character develops nasty, pain full tremors on the face, and small twitches. making it seem that the character is on the verge of breaking at any moment.

41-50
Mute: corruption of the dark side makes the character no longer able to speak.
51-60
Dead Eyes: The eyes of the charakter gain an unhealthy colour (ig yellow for humans) and is an unpleasend encounter. Increase the difficulty of every charm the test by one, but decrease the difficulty of any coercion test by one.
61-70
Destabilizing Aura: Every character (enemy or ally) which is engaged to the dark side user feels uncomfortable and adds one threat to any roll.
71-85
Blood thirsty: The character gains one rank in „Frenzy“. The GM may spend any time one destiny point to drive the charakter in blood rage. He spills blood as much as possible until he suceeds at a difficult discipline test.
86-90
Possession: Influenced by the dark side, the character is forced to have his body periodical possessed by the dark side spirits that make him do their bidding. The GM may spend any time one destiny point to take over the charakter for one round
91-95
Parasites: The character picks up some nasty forcesensetive parasites. They live within the characters body, and cannot be removed. Any attempts at removal causes death. The parasites make the character hungry, or tired but help him using the dark side of the Force. The character loses permanently one point in Brawn, but gains one point in Force as long he has the parasites.
96-100
Third eye: Soon after going to the dark side, he/she is able to “see” apparitions of dark side ghosts, or other phantasmic forces. They haunt/tease the character. The GM may spent one destiny point to „call“ such a „ghost“

I rather like this idea of Dark Side "Criticals". Some of these seem much worse than others, especially those that relinquish control of the character or cause permanent damage.

You could broaden the scale, so your chances of being permanently hindered are reduced. Then, like Critical hits, add modifiers depending on how many times the character has fallen or the severity of the Conflict result which brought them under 30 Morality.

1-20: Pale Flesh

21-40: Dead Eyes

41-60: Advanced Aging

61-80: Tremors - once per session when GM flips a DP to upgrade the difficulty of a physical check, it is upgraded twice

81-100: Memory Loss - add one Setback to Knowledge rolls

101-120: Destabilizing Aura

121-140: Mute

141-160: Possession - If an attack generates two Despairs, it automatically targets an ally instead

etc.

Add +10 for every time the character has fallen below 30 Morality. Add the Conflict modifier that made the character fall.

Okay, so for falling to the Dark Side, it's one Dark Side critical, but they only begin to stack and multiply if the character begins "redemption" by going above 30 Morality and falls below again?

How about an alternate Morality trigger for the GM to roll at the start of the session (depending on the era of the campaign). If the Dark Side character's Morality is triggered, he/she becomes the target of bounty hunters/Jedi Peacekeepers/Sith masters or apprentices for the duration of the campaign or until they're dealt with

I have to admit that I have never been a big fan of the dark side corrupting character's face/body somehow. I like the idea only when there is... well "proper" reason for it. But hey, people like different things.

Personally, I feel like this is the sort of thing that should be worked out between player and GM, and certainly not determined randomly. (Specific penalties for doing dark rituals not withstanding, of course.)

So this isn't really to my taste. But if you really like it, that's fine! I still wouldn't suggest doing it randomly, or via criticals. Instead, you could use a track. Every time a player with a Morality score that's bottomed out (at 1, IIRC) loses Morality, they progress along the track instead. I'd suggest the first effects be only cosmetic; if a player actually gets to the mechanical penalties, they've earned them.

A lot of the whole "dark side corrupts/corrodes your appearance" was based on early authors trying to justify why Palps looked such a feeble old wreck in RotJ, and coming to the conclusion (based on what little info they had to work with at the time) that since the dark side could corrupt a person spiritually, that it also did so physically, especially since the ghost of Anakin we saw in the original version of RotJ was simply an older man in good health as opposed to the pasty white cyborg that expired before Luke got them off the second Death Star.

With RotS pretty much debunking that (Palps looks deformed because he took a huge blast of Force lighting to the face), the whole notion of "falling to the dark side = hideous appearance" should probably also be set aside. After all, we've got Darth Maul who was certainly a dark side Force user in TPM and this guy was in peak physical condition, and Dooku was doing pretty good for a dark sider of his advanced age (benefits of being portrayed by Ray Park and Christopher Lee respectively). Closest we got to physical deformation from going dark side was a brief scene of Anakin's eyes going Sith yellow during his massacre of the Separatist leadership in RotS.

Snoke is pretty hideous, and is presumably a master of the dark side of the Force, but we don't know his story; could very well be all those physical scars are just that, scars that he received during his life (maybe even after a run-in with Jedi Master Luke Skywalker that Snoke counts himself lucky to have survived, and explains why he's so worried about Luke being found during TFA, up to being okay with the map fragment being destroyed instead of reclaimed).

Mechanically, going to the dark side (Morality dips under 30) already has a negative impact on the PC, in terms of a reduced strain threshold, which is generally more detrimental to a PC (just ask an EotE group with an Obligation total high enough that somebody's Obligation gets triggered each session) than having those couple extra points of wound threshold is going to help.

It is fair to say you do get the eyes.

It is fair to say you do get the eyes.

But it also wasn't a permanent thing, as we have later shots of Anakin with his eyes looking normal, even in the midst of his rather heated fight with Obi-Wan. Been a while since I watched RotS, so not sure if he had the Sith eyes after getting the majority of his limbs lopped off. So it may just be something that occurs when the person has fully embraced the power of the dark side, something that Anakin never did until after he'd been forced to don Vader's iconic mask. And next time we saw him on the screen without the mask, he'd already turned away from the dark side.

It is fair to say you do get the eyes.

But it also wasn't a permanent thing, as we have later shots of Anakin with his eyes looking normal, even in the midst of his rather heated fight with Obi-Wan. Been a while since I watched RotS, so not sure if he had the Sith eyes after getting the majority of his limbs lopped off. So it may just be something that occurs when the person has fully embraced the power of the dark side, something that Anakin never did until after he'd been forced to don Vader's iconic mask. And next time we saw him on the screen without the mask, he'd already turned away from the dark side.

Fair point.

Going by examples in legends¹, the eyes probably only change "in-the-moment".

¹Cade Skywalker

In the case of Maul it's worth noting that when we see him again in Rebels he's pretty spry for an old man who has been using the darkside most of his life. Rebels portrays him just as good in old age was he was in his prime during TPM. That's not to say that corruption isn't a bad idea, just that if you institute it it really should be story based as was the case for Palaptine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRlTex_spIw

A lot of the whole "dark side corrupts/corrodes your appearance" was based on early authors trying to justify why Palps looked such a feeble old wreck in RotJ, and coming to the conclusion (based on what little info they had to work with at the time) that since the dark side could corrupt a person spiritually, that it also did so physically, especially since the ghost of Anakin we saw in the original version of RotJ was simply an older man in good health as opposed to the pasty white cyborg that expired before Luke got them off the second Death Star.

With RotS pretty much debunking that (Palps looks deformed because he took a huge blast of Force lighting to the face), the whole notion of "falling to the dark side = hideous appearance" should probably also be set aside. After all, we've got Darth Maul who was certainly a dark side Force user in TPM and this guy was in peak physical condition, and Dooku was doing pretty good for a dark sider of his advanced age (benefits of being portrayed by Ray Park and Christopher Lee respectively). Closest we got to physical deformation from going dark side was a brief scene of Anakin's eyes going Sith yellow during his massacre of the Separatist leadership in RotS.

Snoke is pretty hideous, and is presumably a master of the dark side of the Force, but we don't know his story; could very well be all those physical scars are just that, scars that he received during his life (maybe even after a run-in with Jedi Master Luke Skywalker that Snoke counts himself lucky to have survived, and explains why he's so worried about Luke being found during TFA, up to being okay with the map fragment being destroyed instead of reclaimed).

Mechanically, going to the dark side (Morality dips under 30) already has a negative impact on the PC, in terms of a reduced strain threshold, which is generally more detrimental to a PC (just ask an EotE group with an Obligation total high enough that somebody's Obligation gets triggered each session) than having those couple extra points of wound threshold is going to help.

So, I may be completely misremembering, but I thought a novel or something had stated that the "force lightning deformed him" thing was a lie, and that really he just had a Sith Alchemical Mask that the lightning dissipated, and he didn't feel the need to bother with it anymore after that point. That's how I've played it, because I think Lightning making you look like an old man is rock stupid. Also, I swear, didn't they say or imply that Palpatine is several hundred years old? That's probably a better reason for him looking like he's, well... hundreds of years old in Jedi.

I do like the idea of the dark side ravaging your body, though, at least in theory. They don't all have to be something that makes you look ugly though, like maybe the dark side can give you hysterical muteness, giving you only 1 line in the movi- I mean, session, or it messes with your mind, convincing a beloved character actor to take on a role that he was far too good for. For example

Yeah, I always figured Palpatine was hella ancient, and kept himself alive through weird sorcery. Of course, I really don't accept the Prequels as an explanation for anything at all, ever. I tell my players: The Prequels are basically the Star Wars version of Braveheart. Most of the characters existed, there was a conflict, and everything else was a heaping pile of Mel Gibson's horse puckey.

The whole "alchemical mask" bit was from a Star Wars Tales comic, which itself was largely non-canon even before the creation of Legends. The canon story is "lightning to the face left him deformed."

As for his age, closest we got to a proper explanation was the novel Darth Plagueis, which covered Palpatine's introduction into the Sith and eventual murder of the titular character, and pretty sure that he wasn't centuries old when we met him in TPM. He may not even have been a century old (though likely very close) when he met his demise in RotJ.

Physical changes and red lightsabers? How the frik do people not know you are Dark side?

Physical changes and red lightsabers? How the frik do people not know you are Dark side?

Agreed! However, remember from canonical history, Darth Vader went to Manaan in disguise prior to Episode VI, and started a coup with his Dark Side Selkath squad.

Manaan is an underwater planet, so Vader swam with a rebreather, too.

Maybe we look to the Dark Side to explain away how someone like the Dark Lord of the Sith can just go incognito...

Anakin momentarily had darkside eyes while taking out the Separatist leaders. He then had them after Obi-Wan cut him up and he burned alive. When he received medical attention/got the suit at the end, his eyes were the normal color and then in Rebels his eyes are fire colored again. It was kind of inconsistent as to when they appeared. Palpatine was a constant as soon as he fried his own face. Maul's eyes are supposedly just that color from birth, which is a weird inconsistency.

The whole "alchemical mask" bit was from a Star Wars Tales comic, which itself was largely non-canon even before the creation of Legends. The canon story is "lightning to the face left him deformed."

As for his age, closest we got to a proper explanation was the novel Darth Plagueis, which covered Palpatine's introduction into the Sith and eventual murder of the titular character, and pretty sure that he wasn't centuries old when we met him in TPM. He may not even have been a century old (though likely very close) when he met his demise in RotJ.

Ugh. Okay, I accept that it's cannon... But only because I de-canonize the prequels in my games anyways.

I swear he threw around a general date for Darth Plagueis' reign, something like 100-300 years ago? During the opera scene? Or did I tune out and imagine a better movie?

The whole "alchemical mask" bit was from a Star Wars Tales comic, which itself was largely non-canon even before the creation of Legends. The canon story is "lightning to the face left him deformed."

As for his age, closest we got to a proper explanation was the novel Darth Plagueis, which covered Palpatine's introduction into the Sith and eventual murder of the titular character, and pretty sure that he wasn't centuries old when we met him in TPM. He may not even have been a century old (though likely very close) when he met his demise in RotJ.

Ugh. Okay, I accept that it's cannon... But only because I de-canonize the prequels in my games anyways.

I swear he threw around a general date for Darth Plagueis' reign, something like 100-300 years ago? During the opera scene? Or did I tune out and imagine a better movie?

My impression is that Darth Plagueis was far older but that doesn't really say that Palpatine himself was equally as long lived. That would be my read of the scene from Ep III.

The whole "alchemical mask" bit was from a Star Wars Tales comic, which itself was largely non-canon even before the creation of Legends. The canon story is "lightning to the face left him deformed."

As for his age, closest we got to a proper explanation was the novel Darth Plagueis, which covered Palpatine's introduction into the Sith and eventual murder of the titular character, and pretty sure that he wasn't centuries old when we met him in TPM. He may not even have been a century old (though likely very close) when he met his demise in RotJ.

Ugh. Okay, I accept that it's cannon... But only because I de-canonize the prequels in my games anyways.

I swear he threw around a general date for Darth Plagueis' reign, something like 100-300 years ago? During the opera scene? Or did I tune out and imagine a better movie?

My impression is that Darth Plagueis was far older but that doesn't really say that Palpatine himself was equally as long lived. That would be my read of the scene from Ep III.

Okay...My memory was that he said that Plagueis had DIED 100 years ago or whatever, therefore making him at least that old (well, obviously a bit older, since it's not like he killed him as a baby). But again, good chance I imagined this whole section of dialogue.

The whole "alchemical mask" bit was from a Star Wars Tales comic, which itself was largely non-canon even before the creation of Legends. The canon story is "lightning to the face left him deformed."

As for his age, closest we got to a proper explanation was the novel Darth Plagueis, which covered Palpatine's introduction into the Sith and eventual murder of the titular character, and pretty sure that he wasn't centuries old when we met him in TPM. He may not even have been a century old (though likely very close) when he met his demise in RotJ.

Ugh. Okay, I accept that it's cannon... But only because I de-canonize the prequels in my games anyways.

I swear he threw around a general date for Darth Plagueis' reign, something like 100-300 years ago? During the opera scene? Or did I tune out and imagine a better movie?

My impression is that Darth Plagueis was far older but that doesn't really say that Palpatine himself was equally as long lived. That would be my read of the scene from Ep III.

Okay...My memory was that he said that Plagueis had DIED 100 years ago or whatever, therefore making him at least that old (well, obviously a bit older, since it's not like he killed him as a baby). But again, good chance I imagined this whole section of dialogue.

Nah.

"

• ↑ Tarkin indicates that Darth Sidious was born approximately 65 years before the rise of the Galactic Empire, as depicted in Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith. Using simple math, we can deduce that Sidious was born 84 years before the Battle of Yavin, which was depicted in Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope and took place 19 years after the events ofRevenge of the Sith.

Besides, Sheev most likely never fried his own face, but instead just stopped using a sith illusion to hide his true appearance. The sith seem to just use the force for infiltrations to hide their true nature, Palpatine for sure did influenced the whole jedi council as well to cloud their judgement.

Okay...My memory was that he said that Plagueis had DIED 100 years ago or whatever, therefore making him at least that old (well, obviously a bit older, since it's not like he killed him as a baby). But again, good chance I imagined this whole section of dialogue.

Don't forget the context of the scene. He's trying to sway Anakin away from the Jedi Order and tempt him with dark secrets. Implying that the story itself is far older than it really is allows Palpatine to tempt Anakin without revealing he's Sith yet. If he makes the story sound like it happened a decade or so ago then it has less gravitas and kinda points to Palpatine being Sith well before Anakin is open to corruption. By making it sound like a legend he's able to plant a seed without self incrimination.

Besides, Sheev most likely never fried his own face, but instead just stopped using a sith illusion to hide his true appearance. The sith seem to just use the force for infiltrations to hide their true nature, Palpatine for sure did influenced the whole jedi council as well to cloud their judgement.

As Donovan has pointed out he did in fact fry his own face. That's the in canon reason for it.

You know, FFG clearly made it 'a thing' by RAW that 'dark side' doesn't equal 'puppy-eating child murderer' and that 'Dark Sider' is a perfectly valid PC option. It's the difference between 'reckless' and 'enthusiastic' rather than between Mother Theresa and Hannibal Lector. .

The rules state the 'does not play well others' penalty, and that feels like its enough.

I guess you could house-rule it to make Darksiders look like something from a horror movie, but that seems to be defeating the object of what they were trying to do with F&D.