Now that my players are starting to poke around the edges of the Force, I'm liking the mechanics a little less. One glaring hole that is missing: to active a Force power you just roll your Force dice, and often that is all you need. There are vague rules about how and when and by what these powers can be resisted, but it's a bit willy nilly.

Here's why it's a glaring hole: the rules have tossed aside the narrative dice and gone back to a binary result. This seems like a missed opportunity.

What I'm considering that every roll of Force dice be accompanied by some skill test. This will often be Discipline, but can easily be other skills. By default the check is a Simple check, meaning no negative dice. This retains the default of success (unless you blank out, in which case I'd allow it, but cause Strain or some other effect), but opens up the door to other possibilities.

1. the GM can now apply setback dice to any situation.

2. the GM can flip a DP and "upgrade" zero difficulty to 1 purple

3. the GM can apply other difficulties if necessary, and the situations can be more consistently codified

4. narrative results can now be applied. Threat might cause Strain; Advantages might trigger extra effects; Triumphs might even allow a temporary upgrade to be used, or convert the Action to a Maneuver, or...

For my own use, it also means I can more easily adapt my own Morality framework and get rid of that **** Conflict system. Dark pips might be more interesting if they created complications rather than causing Strain.

This does mean reviewing the powers and making a lot of notes. But as a general concept: shouldn't the Force roll have included a default skill test?

I agree that the binary nature of most force use compared to rolling the narrative dice is a missed opportunity. Especially in F&D where often your most important rolls will be using force powers. As you say, the GM is currently restricted from increasing difficulty on most force use which is odd. If a PC is trying to harness the force during a pitched battle or some other stressful and distracting environment shouldn't there be lots of setback dice? Yoda told Luke to concentrate, sometimes that is hard to do. I think it would be a great house rule to try out. Please let us know how it works out in practice. Strain will become more of a risk to a force user, but that might be a good thing. Discipline seems like the best choice of skill to use for the test but you could always use a custom skill. Just thinking about some force users and their notable lack of discipline, but there is no anger skill.

I don't see how it's "binary" with Force Dice.Some powers call for just force dice being rolled, in which case you have no chance of failing to activate the power + upgrades unless you do not have enough force points.

In a lot of cases, however, you need to roll Discipline against the target's Discipline. This is true when targeting important Rivals, Nemesis adversaries & other Player Characters. Some power upgrades even call for a Discipline check, such as the Control: Emotion/Belief upgrade for Influence. In that case, you apply it even against Stormtroopers & other minions.

As far as it being binary, you can still spend your advantage/threat as normal, so I don't see how it is Binary in either respect. It's actually either singular, as such with only force dice or it is the same as other checks & factors in the other dice results as normal.

Unless you're targeting someone else, the only thing adding an extra skill check on top of rolling Force dice does is add yet another roll.

Besides, many of the major offensive Force effects already require a skill check to start with, so what said house rule really only does is penalize the players of Force users for having chosen to play such a character.

As for concerns of balance, the primary balance for Force users is that any XP they are spending on Force powers is XP that's not being spent on skills or acquiring talents. From the games I've played what featured Force users, it was the mundane PCs that had better skills ranks and a broader variety of options, while the Force users that focused on Force powers, be it Move or Influence or Enhance tended to have a much narrower area of expertise while not really being all that much more competent than the muggles.

Unless you're targeting someone else, the only thing adding an extra skill check on top of rolling Force dice does is add yet another roll.

Skill checks as part of force checks are not another roll, it's just a larger pool.

In my now finished Force & Destiny game I came to the conclusion to only allow one Force roll per scene/day/session depending on the nature of the power for the more narrative powers. This largely was for powers such as Forsee and Seek. Another idea I had was to flip a Destiny Point to make Force rolls have a skill check that would otherwise not so as to add tension and represent risk without discounting how much experience such Force powers already cost. Generally speaking, I almost always allowed Discipline to be used but also encouraged other skills. Appropriate knowledge skills were great for some powers. Ranged (Light/Heavy/Gunnery as appropriate) for Move. Streetwise and Survival for Seek.

My concern is your adding an easy source of Advantage which can be used to recover Strain, something that's rather difficult in this system.

For my own use, it also means I can more easily adapt my own Morality framework and get rid of that **** Conflict system. Dark pips might be more interesting if they created complications rather than causing Strain.

I think this should be the focus. Converting dark pips doesn't cause the needed immediate negative impact I don't think. In fact the impact it does cause is pretty much irrelevant imo. A couple Strain and a couple Conflict aren't going to matter much in the typical session.

Something more like for every dark pip converted for use with a power check there is an upgrade to the Difficulty for any associated Skill check per converted pip. If there is no Skill check the PC accrues a Setback per for the remainder of the encounter. Something that mirrors a bad mechanical effect to go with a bad narrative decision.

The conflict system is kind of weak, It's ridiculous that a character who habitually lies and steals for money is more likely to actually become a darksider than a character who murders a child for fun but only does it once or twice. There are some actions that should do more than just give you conflict IMO, they should permanently decrease your maximum morality, with redemption only being possible in death at some point.

I think force use should cause more strain, not less for a lot of powers. There should be some kind of resource involved in going all out with the force to encourage people to think about the most subtle ways to get what they want more, or do things the regular way if possible.

My concern is your adding an easy source of Advantage which can be used to recover Strain, something that's rather difficult in this system.

This also adds an easy source of Threat, which can be used to inflict Strain. Though this is partly why I tied flipping a dark side Destiny Point

For my own use, it also means I can more easily adapt my own Morality framework and get rid of that **** Conflict system. Dark pips might be more interesting if they created complications rather than causing Strain.

I think this should be the focus. Converting dark pips doesn't cause the needed immediate negative impact I don't think. In fact the impact it does cause is pretty much irrelevant imo. A couple Strain and a couple Conflict aren't going to matter much in the typical session.

Something more like for every dark pip converted for use with a power check there is an upgrade to the Difficulty for any associated Skill check per converted pip. If there is no Skill check the PC accrues a Setback per for the remainder of the encounter. Something that mirrors a bad mechanical effect to go with a bad narrative decision.

The Force Exile has a talent that causes complications based on the wrong pips being rolled. Of course that was developed long before the Morality system. It would be more interesting if more powers had that sort of mechanic, where there is a risk in use of the Force. Personally, I have ended up liking how Force results is basically a third axis instead of just replicating an advantage/threat type situation. For that reason I prefer more powers to have alternative side effects from spending the different pip types. The strain and morality cost is usually minor, but I have found that to encourage more willingness to flip Destiny Points and use emotion/balance.

The conflict system is kind of weak, It's ridiculous that a character who habitually lies and steals for money is more likely to actually become a darksider than a character who murders a child for fun but only does it once or twice. There are some actions that should do more than just give you conflict IMO, they should permanently decrease your maximum morality, with redemption only being possible in death at some point.

I think force use should cause more strain, not less for a lot of powers. There should be some kind of resource involved in going all out with the force to encourage people to think about the most subtle ways to get what they want more, or do things the regular way if possible.

Murder is at minimum 10 conflict. That means Obi Wan would have earned 10 conflict for executing Darth Vader at the end of RotS, instead of just the 1 for inaction to not save him. For murdering a child just for fun I would be tempted to assign a ridiculous enough amount of conflict to guarantee a dark side result even for someone at 100 morality. A couple of scenes of lying for personal gain even every session should be a long slog towards the dark side.

Still, I do agree the Conflict system could use some improvement. I have made no real moves towards it, but the thought I had was instead of session based accumulation and rolls, to have rolls triggered by acts of Mercy and acts of Depravity. Acts of Mercy have to be major selfless occurrences to trigger a roll, such as intentionally accepting a big loss to benefit someone else, allowing an enemy to go free, a nonviolent sacrifice that risks life and limb for others ect. Essentially the character would have to seek out deeds of calm and respecting life to bleed off Conflict when it is at low levels to hopefully gain morality. For acts of Depravity basically anything of 6+ Conflict will trigger the roll. It is possible to feel guilty and to actually gain morality with an act of Depravity, but usually the roll will result in lost Morality. This also means more selfish but not abhorrent characters can walk the line for a long time... but eventually they be force into hard choices and the temptation the dark side may catch them. This could lead a character that accumulates a lot of minor conflict to lose morality when performing an act of Mercy as they are weighed by their selfish past. Also, no more hermitage to become a paragon, though a paragon can go isolated to maintain it.

Another thought I had on Conflict was just eliminate the d10 roll. You tap into the dark side you keep it, there's no gaming the system by only doing one pip conversion a session.

My concern is your adding an easy source of Advantage which can be used to recover Strain, something that's rather difficult in this system.

Technically Strain recovery is only during combat, as it's on the combat chart. No reason each power couldn't be accompanied by a similar chart that doesn't include strain recovery...that would be a lot of work I'm not prepared to do right now but I'll have to make notes as it comes up.

Unless you're targeting someone else, the only thing adding an extra skill check on top of rolling Force dice does is add yet another roll.

Skill checks as part of force checks are not another roll, it's just a larger pool.

An unnecessarily larger pool, one that takes additional time for the player to determine what the end results are, thus slowing down the overall game each time the Force is used, even more so if there are multiple Force users in a group as is often the case with a Force and Destiny campaign.

The entire notion reeks of the GM not wanting to be hassled to deal with Force users, and thus implementing a method to discourage Force using PCs without banning them entirely. That or impose a restriction where one really isn't necessary.

To say nothing of the fact that unless the GM keeps scaling up the difficulties, for the majority of non-opposed checks, the Discipline check to "succeed" on activating a power is going to be trivial once a PC hits a Discipline dice pool of 2 proficiency.

The entire notion reeks of the GM not wanting to be hassled to deal with Force users, and thus implementing a method to discourage Force using PCs without banning them entirely. That or impose a restriction where one really isn't necessary.

That's not it at all, I often have to remind them it's a tool in their kit, and when they do use them I've been running those events using the default rules (my own basic Move isn't much different).

The accusation doesn't make sense anyway. I'm not that passive-aggressive. If I didn't want Force users I'd just say so.

Besides, why would anyone spend all this time on mechanics if they didn't want it to be used? I'm well aware that the player who rolls a stellar result on the narrative dice is going to want to be able to use it effectively, and a Simple check is going to almost always be positive, so the baseline remains available, with a hard skew towards the positive. How that got translated to "discouraging" is hard to fathom.

whafrog,

I'm calling it like I see it. Maybe it's not your intention to be "passive-aggresive" about it but that is very much the vibe this house rule presents by adding an artificial restriction to successfully using Force powers. Given your past diatribes on how the Force in this system is at least poorly designed if not outright broken (Move being a favorite horse of yours to beat on), it's very easy to read the intent behind this proposal as "I don't like Force powers, so I want to discourage their usage."

Currently, unless an opposed check, successfully using a Force power is one step process: Roll Force dice and see if you've got enough Force points for at least the basic effect, and in many of those cases the core effect of a power for a required Force Rating of 1 really isn't super-impressive.

By adding a skill check for every usage of a Force power, you're now adding an extra degree of complexity, effectively requiring the PC to succeed at two separate checks, that being to generate sufficient Force points as well as score at least on uncancelled success on the Discipline check. Which thus makes successfully using a Force power have an extra degree of difficulty. When the PC has a low Discipline dice pool and a Force Rating of 1, it can now become a source of frustration if they happen to roll double light side pips but fail the Discipline check, making those 2 force points they generated worthless and leaving the player rightly frustrated. And when they have bought up their Discipline, having to roll said skill anytime they want to use the Force becomes a monotonous chore.

Move is broken.

By adding a skill check for every usage of a Force power, you're now adding an extra degree of complexity, effectively requiring the PC to succeed at two separate checks, that being to generate sufficient Force points as well as score at least on uncancelled success on the Discipline check. Which thus makes successfully using a Force power have an extra degree of difficulty. When the PC has a low Discipline dice pool and a Force Rating of 1, it can now become a source of frustration if they happen to roll double light side pips but fail the Discipline check, making those 2 force points they generated worthless and leaving the player rightly frustrated. And when they have bought up their Discipline, having to roll said skill anytime they want to use the Force becomes a monotonous chore.

I agree, it is more complex, and it's probably not worth the trouble it would take to "make it right". That's the point of opening up the discussion, so I appreciate the analysis. The pip roll should be enough to settle success/failure, so letting narrative failure influence that would indeed be the wrong approach. I just think a narrative aspect is missing, along with flexibility when using the power that isn't solely a byproduct of upgrades. Weapons have "qualities" that can be triggered with advantages, why not Force powers?

We could discuss this stuff more easily if you could simply take the question at face value and leave your psychoanalysis behind. We may never agree on Move, but we do agree on plenty of other things so I don't know why you let that one thing get so far under your skin.

It's a pity there isn't a die with only Advantage and Threat on it, it would be perfect for this

I just think a narrative aspect is missing, along with flexibility when using the power that isn't solely a byproduct of upgrades. Weapons have "qualities" that can be triggered with advantages, why not Force powers?

The more I've run games the more I've come to wish Force powers would have just been handled as skills. The advancement path is off when you have Force users and non Force users, with the former having 3 avenues and the latter only 2. It's just not worked for me at my table.

I agree the powers would have been handled as skills/weapons, then various control/str/mastery stuff, could have been handled as effects generated by successes, advantages, and triumphs like weapon effects. You could have further finessed them with Talents, which they do somewhat, but that would've kept it in line with how non Force users finesse themselves.

It is what it is and thankfully there isn't much interest in Force users at my table, and it's because of the realization that it's more effort to advance them and by the time they get anywhere particularly cool we are retiring non Force PCs.

One moderating point here, at least in the games I’ve seen, is that rolling the Force dice isn’t the end of the question as to whether or not the power is activated. Every single player I’ve ever seen will never, ever use the black pips, if that’s what they roll. So, in order for the power to effectively activate, for these players you have to roll enough white pips, and not just enough pips overall.

After a while, you accumulate a high enough FR that you’re almost guaranteed to roll a certain minimum number of white pips every time, at which point it becomes a lot easier to assume that you can do certain things without having to worry about the dice roll.

Maybe the solution to whafrog's dilemma isn't adding a skill test along with rolling a Force die when using Force powers, but perhaps to instead just eliminate the Force die entirely and have something akin to a "Use the Force" skill like Saga Edition had. Just without the inherent problems that Saga Edition had due to how skill checks interacted with defense scores, especially at lower and very high levels.

Now Force Rating would still be used for the sake of using ongoing effects as well as a gateway to accessing the higher-end powers like Battle Meditation and Protect/Unleash, so those Force Rating talents can still be nice but there's less incentive for a player to boost their Force Rating.

You'd either be using Discipline or you create a new skill that is automatically considered a career skill for any PC with a Force Rating of 1 or more. Personally I'm leaning towards Discipline, but YMMV since a number of FaD careers and specs don't offer it as a career skill.

As for how it might work, the base difficulty to activate a Force power would be 1 difficulty die, +1 die for each point of Force Rating above 1 needed to be able to buy the power. So for Sense and Influence (requires FR1 to purchase), the base difficulty would be 1 purple, while Bind (FR2) would be 2 purple, and so on. You also declare ahead of time which (if any) of the upgrades you want to use, with those upgrades that require Force points to activate adding 1 setback die per FP required. If you succeed, then you get the desired result, and if you fail the check then you don't, and you can spend 2 Advantage to activate an additional FP-requiring upgrade even if you didn't declare it. If the check is opposed, then that base difficulty gets replaced with whatever the target is using to resist, with setback dice for desired Upgrades being added.

Also, activating ongoing effects still requires committing Force dice, and if your effective Force Rating is 0 because you've committed all your dice, then you can't activate other Force powers, as all your focus/concentration is on maintaining those ongoing effects.

Some examples, for which, I'll be using a PC with Willpower 3, Discipline 2, Force Rating 1 and the Move (with 2 Range upgrades, 1 Strength upgrade, 1 Magnitude upgrade, and the hurl and the fine manipulation Control upgrades) and Sense (defense Control Upgrade and Duration upgrade) powers.

Example #1: PC wants to avoid getting too badly clobbered, and so wants to activate Sense for the defense Control Upgrade. There's no Force Points required for committing a Force die, so no skill check is required. But since that lowers the PC's effective Force Rating to 0, he can't use Move.

Example #2: PC wants to sense the emotions of a minor NPC he's talking with at engaged range. Sense has a FR requirement of 1, so the PC rolls Discipline vs. 1 difficulty (YYGvsP). He easily succeeds, and spends any advantage generated as he sees fit.

Example #3: PC has wound up in a jail cell with metal bars, and sees that one of the guards foolishly left the keys on a table that's at medium range, along with the travel pack that the PC carries their heavy blaster and other gear in. As Move as a FR requirement of 1, base difficulty is 1 difficulty die. The PC wants to grab both objects, so he's looking at a Range upgrade for distance and Magnitude upgrade for the second item, adding two setback dice for a final difficulty of 1 purple and 2 black dice. The PC succeeds but with a couple threat, which the GM uses to inflict strain, but the PC now has the keys and their travel pack.

Example #4: PC is still trying to be stealthy in getting out of that prison, and instead of using their blaster decides to slam the two guards (2 person minion group) at short range that are blocking his path into a wall to knock them out. So again we're looking at Move, with a Strength upgrade (guards being Silhouette 1) and a Magnitude upgrade (2 guards)*. So the difficulty is 1 purple (base difficulty to use Move) with 2 setback dice (2 upgrades). The PC succeeds with 2 advantage, dealing 10+successes to each guard, and the PC decides to use their advantage to activate the Range upgrade to send the guards further down the corridor and out of his way.

*I know this is a point of contention for some as to how using Move to hurl a minion group works, with different methods of handling it. I'm taking the simplest route and saying they count as two separate 'objects' for this example.

Example #5: The PC has run into the prison's warden, and as a result of some unluckly rolls has lost his heavy blaster pistol, and so decides to instead hurl a large chair at the warden with the Force. Again, this is Move on a Silhouette 1 object, but this time it's a proper ranged attack as the PC is targeting the Warden, who is at medium range but has Adversary 2, so that upgrades the base difficulty of 1 difficulty die, setting the final difficulty at 1 challenge, 1 difficulty and 2 setback die. The PC spends a Destiny Point and narrowly succeeds at the check with 2 advantage, and asks if instead of the chair he can use the warden's much larger desk (Silhouette 2). The GM frowns at this, and the PC decides not to be quite a cheese head and instead spends the advantage to gain a free maneuver to dart past the warden and make his escape.

Now, the wrinkle with this notion is those Force powers that add the Force dice to skill checks, such as the bulk of Enhance as well as Foresee's initiative Control upgrade and Influence's social skill Control upgrade. Since those are skill checks to start with, you could keep the existing mechanics, or simply change them so that each Force die the PC has available to roll counts as a single success/advantage (as per the power's description).

The above would probably need a lot of refinement, but it's a possibility.

That looks like a really solid foundation, thanks. One of the things I like about it is it could more easily explain sudden "insights" in the use of the Force where someone does something unexpected, eg Anakin using Choke on Poggle, Ezra bowling over Agent Kallus, Savage Oppress connecting with his "hatred" to lift some stones. Using the Force should be a little more fluid, allowing the PC to be more inventive where necessary...at some cost of course (DP, Strain, or even Wounds). You could still spend XP to permanently reduce setback or downgrade difficulties, eg the Range upgrade on Move gives one setback removal, etc.

The other is it takes Morality out of the equation and puts that directly on the action rather than the Force die.

Perhaps the skill-enhancing talents simply give a boost die per FR.

Re: Morality, Conflict, and using DS pips

I've played and run in games where it ran the gamut, with some PCs avoiding using dark side pips like it was the plague in order to avoid "calling on the dark side" and treating a single point of Conflict with the same fear and dread that most PCs treated Dark Side Points in WEG's system, some only using those dark side pips if what they were attempting was really important, and some not worried about "just a little Conflict" and using those dark side pips without concern, with the middle circumstance being the most common occurrence at the tables I've played at.

If you just want to add advantage and threat to Force power rolls, how about this for a house rule:

After rolling Force dice, subtract the dark side pips from the light side ones. If the result is positive, that's your advantage. If negative, that's your threat. So 4 light 2 dark would give two advantage.

Or invert the algorithm if you want it to tend toward success with threat and failure with advantage like the skill dice do.

Or invert the algorithm if you want it to tend toward success with threat and failure with advantage like the skill dice do.

Who says more Dark Side is a failure

But not a bad idea actually otherwise