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.

Well, it's narrower until they buy the right upgrades to Enhance, Influence, Foresee, and maybe some of the right Force talents, and they get up around FR3 or so. Then they're adding all those Force dice to half their skills. And they get to choose whether to use Force pips as success or advantage. If they're willing to draw on a few dark side pips, they get an absolute minimum of one success/advantage for each Force die--no chance of rolling a blank. That's what I call being a jack of all trades in this game.

If you have Brawn 3 Agility 3, for example, which would you rather have: Enhance plus FR3, or 4 ranks each of Athletics, Brawl, Coordination, Pilot, etc? I'd say you want the Force dice. I'd rather be rolling six dice total with at least three guaranteed successes or advantages of my choice.

And when you get to the end of the Enhance power tree with FR4, you can throw six green for any Brawn or Agility based check you want as long as you have the opportunity to commit those Force dice first, even if your base characteristic is just 2. It takes a while, but once they get built up, Force users have broader options for strong skill rolls across the board than anyone else. Spending XP on each skill one by one just can't compare.

(To be clear, I'm not saying the Force is imbalanced. I am saying the weakness of focusing on the Force isn't that you don't get to be a jack of all trades with skills. You do once you level up your FR and powers with a couple hundred XP.)

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

Well, for a Dark Side user you'd want to invert the algorithm, whichever version you choose.

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

Can I suggest rolling a pool where success is a forgone conclusion, so only Adv, Thr, Tri, and Des are the outliers? I do this with Fear (Discipline) checks...

On 1/15/2017 at 8:18 AM, Donovan Morningfire said:

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.

Has anyone tested this?

I haven't playtested it but I have reviewed it and compared it to the existing force powers and talents and think it may work.

These are the rules I will playtest, what do you think? Most are straight from Donovan, the ability to add Force Die to skill checks caused some trouble especially for the lightsaber form talents.

• Force Rating: Is used to determine what Force Powers you can learn, how many you can have active at the same time and how potent some abilities are.
• Force Powers: Are purchased using experience and using the layouts as written in the books. Skill checks and Force Points required to activate have been changed
• Force Power Checks: When activating a Force Power that is not a combined check you make a Discipline check with a difficulty equal to the Force Rating requirement for that power. For example 1 difficulty for Move and 2 difficulty for Bind. For each upgrade you wish to activate beyond the base power or any control upgrades you add a setback die. Meaning if you wanted to Move a silhouette 1 object the difficulty would be 1 difficulty die for the power and one setback die for the strength upgrade. Two advantage can be spent to activate an additional upgrade that you have purchased. A triumph can be spent to activate an upgrade that you are eligible for but have not purchased.
• Opposed and Combined Force Power Checks: For combined or opposed force power checks use difficulty and skills listed but count force points generated as being equal to your Force Rating. As above, upgrades the user wishes to activate would add setback die to the check.
• Committing Force Die: Committing Force Die works exactly as listed in the book. Additionally if your Force Rating is lower than the requirement for the Force Power you cannot activate that power.
• Added/Subtracting Force Pips: Anything that would cause you to have more or less force points on a check such as a vergence would add or subtract successes from checks made to activate force powers.
• Dark Side: Using dark side versions of the powers or abilities generates 1 conflict per use plus an additional conflict for each upgrade activated. This is in addition to any conflict generated by what you are using the power for if any.

I actually like whafrog's original idea much better than this. Since the Force powers weren't balanced with this system in mind, it's going to make some of them much worse in comparison with others. The ones with a high FR requirement especially will become close to useless unless you have Discipline completely maxed out.

5 hours ago, JinFaram said:

are straight from Donovan, the ability to add Force Die to skill checks caused some trouble especially for the lightsaber form talents.

I'm a little confused here, are you suggesting also changing the rules for those form talents?

Sorry for the confusion. For talents such a saber throw, you would make a combat check (without rolling the Force Die) and just count it as if you rolled Force Points equal to your Force Rating. So with a Force Rating 2 you could always count on it coming back to you. The more I think about it I am not sure these would work.

7 minutes ago, JinFaram said:

Sorry for the confusion. For talents such a saber throw, you would make a combat check (without rolling the Force Die) and just count it as if you rolled Force Points equal to your Force Rating. So with a Force Rating 2 you could always count on it coming back to you. The more I think about it I am not sure these would work.

Yeah, I'm not sure I like how that would work with talents like Hawk Bat Swoop.