Okay as i said in the title. I had a set up against my PCs. They are about 650 to 700 xp players, a dark master and dark apprentice who had 2 droidikas. With about 11 minion storm troopers and 6 Super Dark Troopers. Now this is how it went down

1. The Jedi in the group who also doubles as the mechanic goes first. Now he uses force push and rolls enough to be able to push both droidikas into the dark apprentice. Which does a crazy amount of damage. 20 apiece. I gave the DA the ability to at least get out of the way and not take 20 damage twice.

2. PC old Magnaguard Droid IG-100 nickname Igloo, he uses his once a session Last Stand so he can kill all the minions and 2 of the Dark Troopers.

3. DA goes and is able to hit the Jedi MechPC bad but doesn't take him out.

4. Droidikas 1 and 2 are badly damaged but able to fire at Jedi PC and Bounty Hunter PC doing little damage

5. Bounty Hunter PC the UNLOADS able to hit link and hits the DA killing him

6. The last of the Dark Troopers shoot the Magnaguard PC for little damage.

2nd Round

1. Jedi PC Finishes the one Droidikas off and Bounty Hunter finishes the other one.

2. The Dark Master comes forward with lightsaber only to have it short out by Bad Motivator

3. Magnaguard PC has 4 stun gernades set up to go off all at once. He bull rushes the Dark Master pulling the pin so that's 32 stun damage

4. I have it where the Dark Master is able to soak up some of that damage and use harm which i tried to make like force lightning

3rd Round

1. Jedi PC who went first, rolls crazy good even with 3 red dice, which he did roll all blanks on them, hit the Dark Master for a lot

2. Dark Master really is hurt continues to use Force Lightning (Harm) to keep himself alive hurting everyone a little

3. Bounty Hunter rolls like a god and is able to link auto fire on the Dark Master

4. Finally Magnaguard with his electro staff rolls well and links it doing stupid amounts of damage

So there, that was it. This was my first Force battle against my PC's

I was dissapointed because i thought it could have gone more movie like but it went quick. I understand why but I did miss somethings.

1. i gave everyone their soak against the Dark Masters Force Lightning (Harm) so it did very little against them

2. I frankly wasn't fully prepared for force on force powers. When the Jedi Mech PC used his force powers NOT against the Dark Apprentice but against the Droidikas so not sure how to i guess give my bad guys a chance lol.

3. How do you guys work force powers against force powers when like when my PC Jedi Mech goes first then the other Dark Apprentice goes, I know they get opposed checks but when one gets to go first and doesn't use their powers on the other one is it still opposed checks. Just wondering how you guys who have played and GM'd a lot more than i have, work these types of scenarios.

Okay i know it's alot but i like to be thorough.

thank you for help

I can't help too much but say things that are quotes. You could have some move damage like with the Jedi. Though seriously 3 ROUNDS. You need to fix the problems or your PCs will turn to mpowers

I must ask out of curiosity, what difficulty was the Discipline check to throw the 2 Droideka at the Dark Apprentice?

Edit: this was a loaded question and I apologise. I knew roughly what the difficulty should be, but I was hoping to hear the OP's opinion without jumping to wrong conclusions about their GMing.

When you're making an attack with Move your magnitude upgrades do not let you throw additional object at the same target, they let you throw things at additional targets using the autofire rule. (Magnitude increases the number of targets, when you use it to attack the target is what you're attacking, not what you're throwing) You also have to make a ranged attack roll (Discipline) to actually hit someone with move, which has the difficulty of the silhouette of object you're throwing, and has to contend with all ranged defenses including adversary ranks the target has.

Also, letting players simply use enemies as ammunition without penalty is kind of a bad idea. Using force powers on someone against their will compels an opposed check as per the rules on page 283, so if you try to grab one enemy and throw him at another enemy you should have to make an opposed check against their best defense (coordination or athletics for non force targets trying to hold on to something) on top of the attack roll to hit the target, so the chance of failure for that attack should go up significantly, especially when you're dealing with powerful enemies.

Yeah high level PCs can be tricky, as they will never fight fair. The goal however is also not to let the abuse the rules, which I think may have happened here a little bit.

1.) Droidekas are sil 1, and should have done 10 damage, and soak applies to both the droidekas and their target. Also, using two of them against the Apprentice doesn't mean each one automatically hits. Instead the attack now uses the autofire rules, so the difficulty is increased by one, and the attack needs two advantage to hit with the second droideka.

2.) Using "Bad Motivator" on the main bad guy's weapon is a little (but only a little) cheezy. I would have for sure included any ranks of adversary to the check, and probably tapped a DP to upgrade the difficulty. Its a fun little talent, but it shouldn't be used to completely nerf the BBG at the end of an epic campaign with one little roll. At best I would have had it only affect the lightsaber for a round, not the entire fight (not that it mattered in this case from what it seems).

3a.) I am wondering how the Magna droid was able to act in the third round, considering he took 32 stun damage along with the Dark Master with the over the top grenade trick

3b.) Unless the Magna droid has some serious skills with demolitions, tying four grenades together to go off at once isn't really something I would allow. At least not automatically. There would of course still need to be an attack roll (probably a brawl check since it was declared to be a bull rush), and then I'd upgrade the check for the complexity of trying to trigger a grenade bomb at the same time, and upgrade it again because it has been jury rigged (not to be confused with the Jury Rig talent here). To activate multiple grenades I'd probably use the rules for linked.

4.) You make mention of "Linked Autofire". Those qualities do not stack. You can activate them both if you want, but it just means an extra hit for each activation (e.g. a hit plus four advantage spent to activate one instance of each quality is two more hits, not three more hits). I also shudder to think where your PC got his or her hands on a linked autofiring personal scale weapon.

5.) Did the Dark Master have any ranks of Parry? I know his lightsaber got borked by player fiat, but he only needs a melee weapon, and it is entirely reasonable for him to have a back up weapon, even if you have to tap a destiny point to make it "appear". This may have mitigated some of the Magna droids bogus damage with the linked electrostaff.

6.) Speaking of that Magna droid... Last Man Standing requires him to skip his next turn, so he would not have had any actions to use on Round #2. The minions die easy at his hands, but he still needs time to look cool and cinematic doing it!

Just a few observations. Very easy for me to sit here and armchair quarterback your fight. I've run plenty of fights I intended to be epic and either mis-ruled something, or mis-played a bad guy, making the fight far less cinematic than I meant to.

Also, letting players simply use enemies as ammunition without penalty is kind of a bad idea. Using force powers on someone against their will compels an opposed check as per the rules on page 283, so if you try to grab one enemy and throw him at another enemy you should have to make an opposed check against their best defense (coordination or athletics for non force targets trying to hold on to something) on top of the attack roll to hit the target, so the chance of failure for that attack should go up significantly, especially when you're dealing with powerful enemies.

I'd also throw in my two cents that the droidekas would resist the Move Power using Resilience, not Discipline.

1. The Jedi in the group who also doubles as the mechanic goes first. Now he uses force push and rolls enough to be able to push both droidikas into the dark apprentice. Which does a crazy amount of damage. 20 apiece. I gave the DA the ability to at least get out of the way and not take 20 damage twice.

--> Damage would not be 20 per droid unless it is Silhouette 2. They are a humanoid size (Silh 1) so they should do 10 damage - soak each. The difficulty for this would be [Range Band] + [upgrade for Adversary X] + [increased difficulty for multiple attacks via Autofire] + FR: Magnitude + FR: Base Power + FR: Strength + FR:Range.

So at medium range with Adversary 2 the difficulty would be RRP + 4 Force pips to activate. Not exactly easy and hardly that OP.

The problem with Force Move is that the book contradicts itself. It calls for a ranged attack but it doesn't specify if you should use range modifiers or the targets resistance/resilience/discipline to resist being tossed around. Ideally, you'd use whichever difficulty is higher - the ranged mods or the Adversaries resistances to being tossed around. Given you're throwing two droids into a Dark Jedi, I would personally make the difficulty RRRP + Force Points.

Also, I would consider giving the user conflict since they are hurling droids into a living being, which is an aggressive use of the Force. The force should be used for knowledge and defence. Force push against the living, dark Jedi or not, should incur conflict.

2. The Dark Master comes forward with lightsaber only to have it short out by Bad Motivator.

--> The Bad Motivator talent says that the item would have to be faulty or about to fail anyway and the players use a bit of fateful intervention to push it along. The lightsaber of a major villain about to go into battle would not be one of those things; unless there was some prior damage that it suffered. You should've ruled that this was improbable, or at the very least upped the difficulty of the check from hard (3P) to impossible (5P) and added the Adversary penalty to the check.

3. PC old Magnaguard Droid IG-100 nickname Igloo, he uses his once a session Last Stand so he can kill all the minions and 2 of the Dark Troopers.

--> Nice use by the player. But it doesn't say you, as the GM, cannot summon a second wave against the players. Mu.ha.ha.

4. Magnaguard PC has 4 stun grenades set up to go off all at once. He bull rushes the Dark Master pulling the pin so that's 32 stun damage.

--> This is not a legal move. You can only dual-wield grenades, so he could use two at short range. Also, each HIT would have soak applied.

I could go on...The best advice I can give is: if you're players go FULL COMBAT and they have 500+ XP, you need to work a lot harder as a GM to keep control of the game and set the battlefield to YOUR manageable requirements.

You can daisy chain grenades together, but it takes a hard check to attach the first and then +1P to attach each subsequent grenade. Linking explosives should also be an automatic upgrade on every check, because fiddling with explosives is inherently dangerous.

Everyone here has made some good points, but here's the #1 thing I noticed:

2nd Round

1. Jedi PC Finishes the one Droidikas off and Bounty Hunter finishes the other one.

2. The Dark Master comes forward with lightsaber only to have it short out by Bad Motivator

So, in one round, these guys have slaughtered all of his minions, and the Dark Master charges in? Beggin' yer pardon, but you don't get to become a Dark Master without a strong sense of the Better Part of Valor. This is the time where he says, "Time for this bird to fly!" Force leap a range band or two onto a high catwalk, then run down a corridor toward reinforcements. If they want to follow him, they have to get creative or start searching through his lair all over again. Jetpacks? That'll do, as will the Force Leap upgrades of Enhance. Lacking either of those, I would probably allow the Jedi to use Move to lift his buddies, though it would require Range, Magnitude, and Strength upgrades, but he may need to find his own way around.

Notice that we're splitting the party here? The two guys working together should run smack into a crowd of minions, while whoever is stuck by himself gets jumped by the Dark Master, because duels are cool. Give the other two guys a chance to catch up, but whoever's alone should have himself a pretty desperate fight on his hands. If he kills the Big Bad Guy, great. If the Big Bad guy kills him, also good. Just make sure the others are just close enough to see it. Actually, if they're close enough, that's a good excuse for the bad guy not to go for a coup-de-grace, and run off yet again. Then the group has to extract a badly wounded buddy from whatever Dark Fortress they're stuck in.

Yeah high level PCs can be tricky, as they will never fight fair. The goal however is also not to let the abuse the rules, which I think may have happened here a little bit.

1.) Droidekas are sil 1, and should have done 10 damage. They also have 8 soak, which does apply to any damage they and the target take. Also, using two of them against the Apprentice doesn't mean each one automatically hits. Instead the attack now uses the autofire rules, so the difficulty is increased by one, and the attack needs two advantage to hit with the second droideka.

2.) Using "Bad Motivator" on the main bad guy's weapon is a little (but only a little) cheezy. I would have for sure included any ranks of adversary to the check, and probably tapped a DP to upgrade the difficulty. Its a fun little talent, but it shouldn't be used to completely nerf the BBG at the end of an epic campaign with one little roll. At best I would have had it only affect the lightsaber for a round, not the entire fight (not that it mattered in this case from what it seems).

3a.) I am wondering how the Magna droid was able to act in the third round, considering he took 32 stun damage along with the Dark Master with the over the top grenade trick

3b.) Unless the Magna droid has some serious skills with demolitions, tying four grenades together to go off at once isn't really something I would allow. At least not automatically. There would of course still need to be an attack roll (probably a brawl check since it was declared to be a bull rush), and then I'd upgrade the check for the complexity of trying to trigger a grenade bomb at the same time, and upgrade it again because it has been jury rigged (not to be confused with the Jury Rig talent here). To activate multiple grenades I'd probably use the rules for linked.

4.) You make mention of "Linked Autofire". Those qualities do not stack. You can activate them both if you want, but it just means an extra hit for each activation (e.g. a hit plus four advantage spent to activate one instance of each quality is two more hits, not three more hits). I also shudder to think where your PC got his or her hands on a linked autofiring personal scale weapon.

5.) Did the Dark Master have any ranks of Parry? I know his lightsaber got borked by player fiat, but he only needs a melee weapon, and it is entirely reasonable for him to have a back up weapon, even if you have to tap a destiny point to make it "appear". This may have mitigated some of the Magna droids bogus damage with the linked electrostaff.

6.) Speaking of that Magna droid... Last Man Standing requires him to skip is next turn, so it would not have had any actions to use on Round #2. The minions die easy at his hands, but he still needs time to look cool and cinematic doing it!

Just a few observations. Very easy for me to sit here and armchair quarterback your fight. I've run plenty of fights I intended to be epic and either mis-ruled something, or mis-played a bad guy, making the fight far less cinematic than I meant to.

Easy difficulty from the Silhouette of 1.

Increased by one for autofire

Add the defence and Adversary of whichever has the highest out of Droideka and the Dark Apprentice.

Success with 2 Force Pips (basic and Strength upgrade, a third Pip for Range Upgrade if further than engaged) allows you to injure one target for 10+Success damage.

For 2 Advantage and another Force Pip (Magnitude) you can injure a second target.

2 more Advantage allow for a third target to be injured.

Any advantage or Triumph beyond that can be used for critical hits.

So that's a Discipline difficulty of at least Average, with defence and adversary applied

Success with 4 Advantage (triumph can substitute of 2) and probably 4 Force Pips are required to cause 10+Success-Soak damage to each target.

For me the fact they hit each other is merely a narrative flair. Someone may have an alternate option here

All that being said I can see how throwing 5 pebbles at a single target would be fine, but in that case the damage to the pebbles is ignored.

Same goes for throwing 5 Rivals at a wall.

But doubling the damage by throwing one meat bag at another is just cheesy to me.

Edit: then there is the difficulty:

1. The side bar suggests an opposed check just to Move a suitably important opponent, such as a Dark Apprentice.

2. The Hurl Control upgrade says "if the check is not already opposed".

So to me the difficulty of this check would be even higher since it would absolutely be an opposed check, probably Discipline vs Discipline, unless Coordination of the Droideka made more sense.

Thank you everyone. This was my first time trying to use the Force against the Force and yeah i do need to work on this for next time. Thank you for your suggestions. They have helped.

When you're making an attack with Move your magnitude upgrades do not let you throw additional object at the same target, they let you throw things at additional targets using the autofire rule. (Magnitude increases the number of targets, when you use it to attack the target is what you're attacking, not what you're throwing) You also have to make a ranged attack roll (Discipline) to actually hit someone with move, which has the difficulty of the silhouette of object you're throwing, and has to contend with all ranged defenses including adversary ranks the target has.

Also, letting players simply use enemies as ammunition without penalty is kind of a bad idea. Using force powers on someone against their will compels an opposed check as per the rules on page 283, so if you try to grab one enemy and throw him at another enemy you should have to make an opposed check against their best defense (coordination or athletics for non force targets trying to hold on to something) on top of the attack roll to hit the target, so the chance of failure for that attack should go up significantly, especially when you're dealing with powerful enemies.

Spend a force point to increase the number of targets by one.

I always thought this meant target as in target of the power geuss nor

I think your biggest issue was bad tactical decisions on the part of the Nemesis. Like the Grand Falloon said, if the PCs mow down your minions & bodyguards, maim your apprentice, and are preparing to unleash a can of whoop-@$$ on you, why would you charge in, especially without your primary weapon? That's throwing good money away after bad. I know first-hand that it isn't easy, but you have to portray your evil genius as an evil genius.

He'll only fight on his terms. If he wants to engage the PCs in a final battle, it will be after they've worked their way through a gantlet of ambushes, traps, and pressure situations that chip away at their WT & ST and keep them from recovering. Unless your BBEG is an Adamite Tower Paladin, there's no way he/she should fight fair.

That being said, the fight sounds pretty cool. The PCs seemed to have a plan, executed well. And really, three minutes (or so) for a brutal, close-range firefight isn't bad. I try to keep my encounters to about 5 rounds, +/-1, or they eat up too much time, so don't beat yourself up too much.

For me the fact they hit each other is merely a narrative flair. Someone may have an alternate option here

That is a fair point, if you adjudicate hitting one enemy with another as making a move attack against two enemies using the autofire rule it makes sense. The problem is when players simply declare enemies as the thing they throw, and thereby do additional damage to those targets as well, or declare that they are hitting the same thing multiple times, dealing damage to it over and over. That's obviously not in the spirit of the rules. Generally speaking the force rules tend to be kind of loosely written and up to GM interpretation, but the damage potential of Move is terrifying even if you can only collide every object you're moving once per turn.

Honestly throwing a Silhouette 3 object at a target is far worse than 3 or 4 Silhouette 1 objects, because it requires less Advantage and Soak is only subtracted once. It's basically instadeath for most NPC's

Honestly throwing a Silhouette 3 object at a target is far worse than 3 or 4 Silhouette 1 objects, because it requires less Advantage and Soak is only subtracted once. It's basically instadeath for most NPC's

I don't mind if someone drops a silhouette 3/4 object on a droid or NEAR living creatures to block a way / scare them away, but doing it to sentients, even Sith/Dark Jedi, is conflict in my book. Using the Force to KILL is against the Jedi code. Yoda: "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack."

Honestly throwing a Silhouette 3 object at a target is far worse than 3 or 4 Silhouette 1 objects, because it requires less Advantage and Soak is only subtracted once. It's basically instadeath for most NPC's

I don't mind if someone drops a silhouette 3/4 object on a droid or NEAR living creatures to block a way / scare them away, but doing it to sentients, even Sith/Dark Jedi, is conflict in my book. Using the Force to KILL is against the Jedi code. Yoda: "A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack."

I'm definitely not going to argue against gaining Conflict from attacking with the force, I was just talking pure ease of damage output.

I would have absolutely given the PC in the OP a couple of Conflict for that use of the Force. But it's a quick death so not too much. If they had done the old "drop them off a cliff" it would be much more. But this is off topic

Edit: then there is the difficulty:

1. The side bar suggests an opposed check just to Move a suitably important opponent, such as a Dark Apprentice.

2. The Hurl Control upgrade says "if the check is not already opposed".

So to me the difficulty of this check would be even higher since it would absolutely be an opposed check, probably Discipline vs Discipline, unless Coordination of the Droideka made more sense.

I think you might have read that wrong. In the FaD:CRB it says in the resisting force powers side bar on page 283 for Force powers that target a PC or an important NPC and normally don't require a check: "the Force power check becomes an opposed check, if it is not already an opposed check or a combat check."

But in this case, when the PC wants to use the hurl control upgrade, this already requires a well defined combat check, therefore there is no reason to make it an opposed check.

It is a ranged combat check, using the Discipline skill, with a base difficulty defined by the silhouette of the object being thrown. If the PC wants to throw 2 silhouette 1 objects at one or two targets, the base difficulty is one purple, which is increased to two purple dice according to the auto-fire rules.

So the difficulty of the attack would be 2 purple PLUS the highest ranged defense any of the targets (or objects) have PLUS any talents that increase or upgrade the difficulty of a ranged combat check against one of the targets or objects. This includes any ranks in Adversary.

So, if the target in the example had Adversary 2, Ranged Defense 1 and the thrown objects (here the droidekas) had ranged Defense 2, the difficulty of the ranged combat check would be two red and two black dice, the skill used by the PC would be discipline and they could aim as a maneuver.

On success, the target and the first droideka would take (10 + # successes - soak) damage each. I might allow use of reflect (but only for the target, not the objects), because it is a ranged attack and we see Luke kind of do it in Empire when Vader throws stuff at him, but RAW the reflect talent unfortunately wouldn't work.

For two spare advantages the PC can activate auto-fire, i.e. a second hit with the second droideka. This deals (10 + # successes - soak) to the target and the second droideka, but not necessarily to the first droideka.

If the PC doesn't have the advantages to trigger auto-fire, I would rule, that the second droideka doesn't take damage, although narratively it might have been thrown and missed the target. If you deal damage to the thrown objects, regardless of if auto-fire triggers, the magnitude control upgrades become OP.

Although the rules don't give a crit rating, since it is a ranged combat check, I allow a triumph to trigger a crit (or 5 advantages, same as for improvised weapons).

To pull the attack in the example of, apart from the hurl control upgrade the PC needs to have the magnitude and the strength upgrade. They must spend at least 3 Force points on the check, one for base power, one for the control and one for the strength upgrade. Plus Force points on the range upgrade, if ranges beyond short are involved.

This is my take on attacking with the hurl control upgrade. And as I said, I don't see why an opposed check would be used, since it is by definition already a ranged combat check. And you wouldn't normally make shooting the blaster an opposed check.

Now, if the PC doesn't want to use the control upgrade (or they don't have it), but instead they want to use move to lift the NPC(s) up and drop them, I would allow it (unlike many others on the forum). But this would now be be an opposed check (unless they are really unimportant minions). And they can't drop them on someone else, because it is a rather slow lifting.

This is, why lifting the NPCs and dropping them is less attractive than using the hurl upgrade, because it becomes the usually more difficult opposed check instead of the relatively easy combat check.

And to show that lifting and dropping someone is much slower than the hurling/force push, I rule that the lifted NPC falls at the end of their next turn. This is not RAW, but I think it doesn't go against RAI, since the rules say, the normal movement is slow and doesn't cause any injury. (And it doesn't, the fall afterwards does...) So I give the NPCs one turn while lifted and therefore they can still shoot back once, before they fall or do something else, like activate a jet-pack. They also get a free athletics check to reduce the falling damage per standard rules. Though this doesn't help much when you fall from extreme range.

May the anti-grav chute be with you

Fred

Also, remember that your fight would roughly equate to about 3 minutes of "movie footage" or "real time" - some of the big cinematic fights would only translate to about 5-7 combat rounds, more or less.

This is my take on attacking with the hurl control upgrade. And as I said, I don't see why an opposed check would be used, since it is by definition already a ranged combat check. And you wouldn't normally make shooting the blaster an opposed check.

It’s an opposed check to pick the target up. Then it is a ranged combat check to throw them at another target.

It’s not yet a ranged attack until such time as the Force user has managed to pick up the sentient being that is to be hurled.

Otherwise, it would be trivially easy to pick up a Silhouette 1 sentient being and use them as a weapon, because the difficulty would be Easy (♦︎) due to their size. We just don’t see that in canon, not even amongst the most evil people in the galaxy — Vader or Palpatine.

It’s an opposed check to pick the target up. Then it is a ranged combat check to throw them at another target.

It’s not yet a ranged attack until such time as the Force user has managed to pick up the sentient being that is to be hurled.

So do you suggest, that two checks are involved? First an opposed check, then the combat check? This I really don't like. 1 action should require 1 dice throw.

Also, if the attacker uses a sil 1 object instead (e.g. a barrel that previously provided cover) and throws this at the person, the damage to the person would be exactly the same, but there wouldn't be an opposed check to pick up the lifeless barrel...

Okay, the difference between the two cases is, that when the person is thrown, damage could be dealt to two persons. Might be worth a setback or two, because it should be more difficult to throw one person at a second person or one person into a wall than one object at one person.

Otherwise, it would be trivially easy to pick up a Silhouette 1 sentient being and use them as a weapon, because the difficulty would be Easy (♦︎) due to their size. We just don’t see that in canon, not even amongst the most evil people in the galaxy — Vader or Palpatine.

I don't think this is overpowered, since there are lots of weapons that have the same base damage and the same difficulty when fired from short range. (And instead of a difficulty increase you need more force pips for greater range.)

And those weapons have a lower crit rating. RAW actually doesn't say that the hurl combat check has a crit rating at all. So you could simply deny crits, even for triumphs.

Also, soak does apply, so a lightsaber or a weapon with pierce will often do more damage.And you need a rather high force rating to always generate enough light side (or dark side for the Evils) pips or be willing to take Strain and flip Destiny Points.

I think we see sil 1 beings being used as a weapon quite often in the clone wars series where Jedis push battle droids around.

In the films, Vader and Obi Wan try to force push one another, but, you are right, it seems more difficult. I think the rules show this well enough.

For important NPCs it's mainly the adversary talent that protects them.

Force users can protect themselves with the Suppress Force Power or the Sense Force Power. I would even allow the reflect talent, like I said earlier. And I would even allow it for a person being thrown, now that I think about it again, because mechanically the devs designed the whole thing to be treated like a ranged attack, no matter if something is thrown at you or you are the object being thrown.

Non-Force users would have to rely on talents like side step and their ranged defense alone.

May the Destiny Points be with you!

Fred

Okay as i said in the title. I had a set up against my PCs. They are about 650 to 700 xp players, a dark master and dark apprentice who had 2 droidikas. With about 11 minion storm troopers and 6 Super Dark Troopers. Now this is how it went down

Few thoughs and comments. Most important first. Did players have fun? If yes, then there is no problem. If no, then why?

3. Magnaguard PC has 4 stun gernades set up to go off all at once. He bull rushes the Dark Master pulling the pin so that's 32 stun damage

As pointed out already this is against the rules. When doing Last one standing, PC practically skips his next round (i.e. that action takes two rounds). Also, I would have give 32 stun to Magnaguard. After all, using common sense if allowed.

So there, that was it. This was my first Force battle against my PC's

I was dissapointed because i thought it could have gone more movie like but it went quick. I understand why but I did miss somethings.

1. i gave everyone their soak against the Dark Masters Force Lightning (Harm) so it did very little against them

That's incorrect. Harm bypasses soak.

But, more importantly, I thought that fight was fairly cinematic (3 minute fight is good even for action movie), and those broken rules were not a big problem.

2. I frankly wasn't fully prepared for force on force powers. When the Jedi Mech PC used his force powers NOT against the Dark Apprentice but against the Droidikas so not sure how to i guess give my bad guys a chance lol.

I'd say, you were also otherwise not fully prepared. Nemesis class enemies should never play fairly. I.e. they try to cheat and utilize environment as much as possible. If you want to prolong fights or add challenge, have one lieutenant of nemesis for example control lighting of the area. I.e. when nemesis wants, lieutenant turns off the lights. At the beginning that can even be that no one can see anyone so no one can attack. Then nemesis follows his plan and gets environmental advantage, and turns on light again so he can attack. If you are really evil allow nemesis do this as insidental, so lights are on only when he attacks, so PCs get one or more setback dice because of darkness (after all, all actions happen at relatively same time, so total immunity is lame and against the spirit of the game. But this will give incentive to get rid of NPC controlling lights.) Also, remember reinforcements. Do your PCs ever use triumphs to block entrances (instead of taking crits) so reinforcement cannot arrive? If they don't ever, then you should use reinforcements more.

Point being, enemies which GM wants to be tough, should always have a plan. GM can prepare generic plans, which are then used (and modified) or the fly when PCs surprise you and encounter the nemesis when GM is unprepared (just like setpieces)

Also, about force power. Remember NPCs can use them against PCs also. One of my favourites is influence from inquisitor creation (F&D page 421). GM can fairly easily create an inquisitor against which PC(s) have to pass discipline check against 4 red dice, or if failed be at emotional state of rage, fear (IMO apply as if PC would have failed normal fear check) or hatred or believe something untrue is true, for one round or additional rounds if inquisitor force dice gave multiple pips.

Finally. Long combat is not same as cinematic. Long can be cinematic, but so can short. If your player's enjoyed it, then it was done well. One of the most important lessons to learn in this game is for GM to let go his own vision of events, go with what PCs do.

Edit: Also points for you to bringing this issue to public and asking for opinions/help.

This thread has some useful tips as well:
https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/235428-inquisitors-vs-the-pc/

One thing that needs to be mentioned that hasn't been brought up yet is that Harm is not used for Force Lightning. Harm is used for sucking the life energy out of someone like an energy leech or Vampire (without the blood sucking). The power used for Force Lightning is Unleash.

Also, technically, the true Force Push and Force Pull abilities are represented by the Control upgrade for the Bind power which allows you to move a target one range band closer or father away.