35 minutes ago, Garran said:

As has been suggested elsewhere, a far simpler solution to the underlying pips problem is to drop the requirement to spend a destiny point. The strain and conflict cost is sufficient by itself.

That doesn't solve the problem in any way. Destiny points are not meant to be a limited resource the GM makes you run out of, they are supposed to be a fluid resource that the GM tries to keep in balance. If you're actually running out of Destiny points at your table your GM is abusing the system to disable some of the player's powers instead of applying the cost of those powers correctly as the negative results of a fluid Destiny pool. Destiny points are supposed to be kicked back and forth all the time, not hoarded away or made scarce.

Strain and Conflict on the other hand pile up pretty quick if you're trying to play a character who actually fights with force powers at a low force rating, and the only real way to get to the point where you can feasibly do it is to just rush force ratings.

It's interesting, but to me it forces focus. No longer can a low Brawn character use Enhance to be more balanced, meanwhile the Brawn 4 Wookiee can thump harder than anyone at character creation.

its not balanced is what I'm saying

4 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Sure, but if you're trying to build a force power heavy character who uses something like Move to attack you need to generate 3 pips every time you want to hurl an object of Sil 1 or above at a target that is at medium or above distance, so this whole notion that you can just always flip pips and take the conflict to make low force ratings work for you is just bunk. It depends entirely on what you're trying to do with your character. If someone wants to play a "force wizard" type character who fights with force powers you can't afford to flip half a dozen pips every single time a fight breaks out. You wind up with two options: spend your XP to learn some other ways to be useful in a fight, and make it take much longer to get the abilities you want, or rush force ratings and get to the point having to flip is the exception, not the rule.

Simply stating that low force ratings don't hinder anyone is simply false. It depends on what powers you're trying to develop and how you envision your character applying them. Especially in games where everyone is supposed to be a full force user it's very easy to come up with concepts that can't just flip every time they use their powers.

But even within the setting what you're describing here is exceedingly powerful. Lobbing around Sil 1 objects every turn? That's Yoda/Palpy stuff there, not just some random space hobo wizard stuff. Damage-wise that's roughly the same as walking around with a blaster rifle that can't exactly be taken away, dropped, or lost. The only restriction is you'll have to have Sil 1 objects to chuck, which isn't hard to find in most locations. So requiring FR3 for that is pretty balanced.

And three pips? Every time you roll one die you've got around a 25% chance of 2 White pips and 50% of 2 Black. And on two dice the odds of 3 pips of any combination of color is a little less than 50%. So really not too bad. And yeah, you can flip plenty of pips, because that's the system. If you need to force to do anything and everything, you'll be flipping pips and earning conflict for using the force as a crutch.

If someone wants to make a "Force wizard" that fights with nothing but the force they can do it, just not by relying on Move and move alone. They'll have to use every power they can, not to mention Talents.

I get where you're coming from. FFG took a really conservative Film-oriented view of the force with the Original trilogy as primary inspiration. Not all the novels, and comics, and video games. So really using the force for wild and amazing things is hard. But that is the setting and it is pretty well balanced, and once you get used to it, it works even when talking prequel-type stuff.

If everyone in the party wants to be space wizards your plan isn't so bad as the GM can adapt the difficulty to match you. But if you want a conventional Jedi, or a non-force user in the party, what you're proposing is pretty broken.

2 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

It's interesting, but to me it forces focus. No longer can a low Brawn character use Enhance to be more balanced, meanwhile the Brawn 4 Wookiee can thump harder than anyone at character creation.

its not balanced is what I'm saying

Why does tying Enhance to Willpower enforce focus on Brawn? In the base system you also get gargantuan dice pools if you combine something like high brawn + enhance + skill ranks, while a character who doesn't have the brawn and skills can use Enhance to get away with not being extremely athletic or resilient while having to crawl through jungles looking for Jedi ruins. I don't see how this essential balance would change just because people start out being able to roll a few more force dice. In fact, with the alternate advancement you'd have to choose whether to raise your actual b Brawn or your Willpower when you hit dedications, while with the base system your Enhance gets stronger even if you buy only Brawn with dedications.

The only way in which it enforces focus is that not everyone will have Enhance, because the number of powers you buy is more limited, but it also stops the characters who did take Enhance from buying other powers, which are a heck of a lot more potent in a system where you don't need hundreds of XP before you can effectively use something like Protect/Unleash. By the time you start hitting the Force Rating boxes and get to unlock additional powers you can always choose to get Enhance as well.

1 hour ago, Ghostofman said:

I get where you're coming from. FFG took a really conservative Film-oriented view of the force with the Original trilogy as primary inspiration. Not all the novels, and comics, and video games. So really using the force for wild and amazing things is hard. But that is the setting and it is pretty well balanced, and once you get used to it, it works even when talking prequel-type stuff.

If everyone in the party wants to be space wizards your plan isn't so bad as the GM can adapt the difficulty to match you. But if you want a conventional Jedi, or a non-force user in the party, what you're proposing is pretty broken.

I don't agree with you at all that what I'm proposing makes things way more powerful than they are supposed to be, because you're just looking at character creation and go "OMG, these characters roll force dice like they have 300 XP!", ok, yea, they do. The thing is, when the characters in my system hit 1000 XP they are still rolling 2-6 Force dice at the various powers and can't have every power, while the base system characters are rolling 6+ Force dice on absolutely everything and can buy up all the low ranks in powers that give big boosts for just having 30-40 XP in.

It's an alternate form of advancement that skews the power curve in the game, starting it out much higher, but having it start to level off pretty quickly, and eventually hit a cap. FFGs base system on the other hand starts the power curve off very low, and then it just keeps going up and up and up the longer you play. Neither is necessarily wrong, but if you wanted to powergame FFGs system would definitely be the better system to do it in, while my alternate idea would be more useful for playing a game where everyone gets to experience the Jedi fantasy from the getgo, but you never roll more than 6 force dice at anything.

Apologies about Enhance, I thought I remember it being tied to Brawn. You still have a problem though of a 4 Brawn (or Agility), 3 Willpower character absolutely owning Enhance. You can't easily invest in diversity with your system.

Do you seriously think a playable character with FR 6 and most Force Powers can be made for 1000xp? That's one seriously deficient character there.

15 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

It's interesting, but to me it forces focus. No longer can a low Brawn character use Enhance to be more balanced, meanwhile the Brawn 4 Wookiee can thump harder than anyone at character creation.

its not balanced is what I'm saying

12 hours ago, Aetrion said:

Why does tying Enhance to Willpower enforce focus on Brawn? In the base system you also get gargantuan dice pools if you combine something like high brawn + enhance + skill ranks, while a character who doesn't have the brawn and skills can use Enhance to get away with not being extremely athletic or resilient while having to crawl through jungles looking for Jedi ruins. I don't see how this essential balance would change just because people start out being able to roll a few more force dice. In fact, with the alternate advancement you'd have to choose whether to raise your actual b Brawn or your Willpower when you hit dedications, while with the base system your Enhance gets stronger even if you buy only Brawn with dedications.

The only way in which it enforces focus is that not everyone will have Enhance, because the number of powers you buy is more limited, but it also stops the characters who did take Enhance from buying other powers, which are a heck of a lot more potent in a system where you don't need hundreds of XP before you can effectively use something like Protect/Unleash. By the time you start hitting the Force Rating boxes and get to unlock additional powers you can always choose to get Enhance as well.

I don't agree with you at all that what I'm proposing makes things way more powerful than they are supposed to be, because you're just looking at character creation and go "OMG, these characters roll force dice like they have 300 XP!", ok, yea, they do. The thing is, when the characters in my system hit 1000 XP they are still rolling 2-6 Force dice at the various powers and can't have every power, while the base system characters are rolling 6+ Force dice on absolutely everything and can buy up all the low ranks in powers that give big boosts for just having 30-40 XP in.

It's an alternate form of advancement that skews the power curve in the game, starting it out much higher, but having it start to level off pretty quickly, and eventually hit a cap. FFGs base system on the other hand starts the power curve off very low, and then it just keeps going up and up and up the longer you play. Neither is necessarily wrong, but if you wanted to powergame FFGs system would definitely be the better system to do it in, while my alternate idea would be more useful for playing a game where everyone gets to experience the Jedi fantasy from the getgo, but you never roll more than 6 force dice at anything.

11 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

Apologies about Enhance, I thought I remember it being tied to Brawn. You still have a problem though of a 4 Brawn (or Agility), 3 Willpower character absolutely owning Enhance. You can't easily invest in diversity with your system.

Do you seriously think a playable character with FR 6 and most Force Powers can be made for 1000xp? That's one seriously deficient character there.

Richard pretty much nailed it. No matter what, your proposed system is way too unbalancing and really pushes for characters that are way too focused on only one thing. This game system is not designed for that. It's designed to encourage diversity of skill and abilities, not overspecialization.

14 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

Do you seriously think a playable character with FR 6 and most Force Powers can be made for 1000xp? That's one seriously deficient character there.

Well, thing is you don't need all of the powers maxed out to gain their biggest benefit.

I mean, let's see what you can get on the cheap:

Foresee, the entire power costs 90XP to develop, but the biggest benefit in that power, the ability to roll your force dice for all initiative checks, comes in at 20XP. If you play an all Jedi game there is no reason why anyone shouldn't get this, so there is no reason to pick up all those upgrades that let you spread the extra initiative around.

Then there is Influence, yes, you can spend 120 XP to master it, or you can just spend 30 XP to add force dice to all social checks, giving your character a huge boost that scales on force ratings, without having to really delve into the rest of the power.

Seek, you pretty much only need to spend 10XP for the base power to gain the ability to get a general bearing on something you're looking for and gain the ability to see through force illusions. Both super useful abilities at base level that only get marginal improvements if you spend the 135 additional XP to actually master Seek.

Sense, for a mere 20XP you gain the ability to read the thoughts of a person you are engaged with. If you have a situation where you really need to read someone's mind you can make that happen without spending more XP than that easily.

Manipulate, you can just drop 25 XP here to add force dice to all Mechanics checks, so a high force rating just replaced the need for a mechanic in the party to make mods on attachments.

Farsight, 20 XP to throw Force dice on all Vigilance and Perception checks. With a high force rating you just mastered two of the most frequently used skills.

35XP worth of Enhance buys you force ratings in Athletics, Coordination, Resilience, Brawl, Piloting (Planetary), and Piloting (Space)

So, 160XP to roll force dice on all Charm, Coercsion, Deception Leadership, Negotition, Athletics, Coordination, Resilience, Brawl, Piloting (Planetary), Piloting (Space), Mechanics, Vigilance and Perception checks. Roll Force dice on all Initiative checks, be able to roll Discipline to see through force illusions, be able to ascertain the general location of something you're looking for, and read the thoughts of a person you can touch.

That is a huge amount of power you've gained on the cheap just from going ankle deep into a few force powers, because these abilities all either scale purely on your force rating, or because the power is insanely useful without even having to invest into it heavily.

If you're single minded about it you can make an FR6 character on 500XP, throw in those 160 to throw force dice at half the skills in the game, and then spend the remaining 340 points on buying up a power or two that does require deep investment and raise your discipline skill.

That's my issue with high force ratings. If you spend your points smart it's inevitable that you wind up with a character who can throw a fist full of dice at all social, physical, piloting, sensing and crafting checks without actually being specialized in any of those things. Now granted, a true specialist is still way better at those things, but going strictly after a high force rating, which should be hyperspecilization actually produces some of the most versatile characters in the system.

Uuuuuuuuhhhhh No.

There is a distinct lack of unique talents there, you haven't even tried to make a character. It's also just a character who can add dice to skill checks, and other than basic Sense or Seek your doing none of the unique things the Force can actually achieve. It's a stat block with a name

If this is a huge problem, I would handle it eithe by having adversaries with talents that add boosts to their pools (and have those turn into setbacks in opposed checks) or I would deal with it a bit narratively.

when Thrawn knew a force user would steamroll him he got a magic counter-magic lizard. Smart foes will do the same, or find friendlies who can suppress or employ force-hunting beasts.

Obviously not at first, but by 1000 XP you should have a rep, and people will respond.

Another idea, again only for groups with only Force Users is this: add an additional 5 or 10xp cost to basic Force Powers per previously purchased force power.

ie Power 1 costs standard, power 2 costs 10+Standard, power 3 is 20+Standard.

i know it's not very cannon, but it will ensure diversity in Powers with the party whilst also encouraging unique talents and yet still maintain the core balance of the game mechanics.

On 2/17/2017 at 10:59 AM, masterstrider said:

Hrmm...What if you could purchase Force Rating like any other Ability with your starting XP?

For example, if you start with a human, your starting Ability line is 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, and you have 110XP to start with. All characters start with 0 FR, and it cost you 20XP per rank, similar to Ability upgrades during character creation - so for 20XP for FR1, 40XP for FR2, and so on.

While that you will give you a higher Force rating at character creation, the downside is that you will sacrifice other Abilities.

An example, the same Human may have a starting FR2 (40XP), and BR3, AG3, IN2, CN2, WP2, PR2, for a total XP cost of 100, with 10-20XP remaining for Force powers, skills, Talents, etc.

At the risk of repeating myself...I'm going to repeat myself.

What about the above suggestion instead of messing about with assigning Force powers a dedicated Ability score? It's neat, and there is -- well I think so anyway -- a fair trade off for going down that pathway.

The other thing to think about is that someone got an official answer saying the Influence control upgrade does not work with Scathing Tirade, and by extension similar active skill-based talents. That should eliminate the worst of the possible rolling 10+ dice situations.

It occurred to me this is all being over-thought. If you feel Force users have to spend too much XP getting to higher ratings and are therefore losing ground to muggles, just give FR3 as the base line and be done. That way you get what you want and don't have to change the mechanics.

10 hours ago, Rossbert said:

The other thing to think about is that someone got an official answer saying the Influence control upgrade does not work with Scathing Tirade, and by extension similar active skill-based talents. That should eliminate the worst of the possible rolling 10+ dice situations.

On the other hand, the logic behind the ruling made zero sense...

18 hours ago, Aetrion said:

If you spend your points smart it's inevitable that you wind up with a character who can throw a fist full of dice at all social, physical, piloting, sensing and crafting checks without actually being specialized in any of those things. Now granted, a true specialist is still way better at those things, but going strictly after a high force rating, which should be hyperspecilization actually produces some of the most versatile characters in the system.

This is the one place where I would disagree with you, Aetrion. Why should going after a high force rating count as hyper-specializing?

The Force users we see in the movies are all among the most versatile, across-the-board-powerful characters in the series. By the time he becomes a Jedi, Luke is basically amazing at everything. Same goes for all the prequel-era Jedi, perhaps even more so. What are Obi-Wan's weaknesses? What has he specialized in?

I don't think we ever see a character in the movies who has specialized in one or two Force powers and is weak or untrained in the other ones. Kylo Ren might be the one debatable example, but I think that's only because we've only seen him in action in a few scenes. Does he have the power to do everything we see Luke do in ROTJ? I'd bet on it.

In the world portrayed in the movies (and other Star Wars properties too, especially new-canon ones) one's connection to the Force has some level of overall strength, and that determines how good one is at essentially every Force-related ability. Anakin is stronger in the Force than Aayla Secura, so once he's trained, he can do anything Secura can do with the Force, but better. The system is just portraying the reality we see in the movies. The Force doesn't work the way you suggest. Force users don't have to specialize.

Well, let me clarify: In this game going after high force ratings early is a form of hyperspecialization, because you go for very specific trees and pump all your XP into them, for a huge payoff when you get there. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I've seen players do it so many times now that I wrote up this alternate advancement idea for games where people want to play with powerful Jedi characters without the constant temptation of spending a few hundred XP early on just chasing those force ratings and foregoing a more natural development of their character for a big payoff later.

1 hour ago, Aetrion said:

Well, let me clarify: In this game going after high force ratings early is a form of hyperspecialization, because you go for very specific trees and pump all your XP into them, for a huge payoff when you get there. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I've seen players do it so many times now that I wrote up this alternate advancement idea for games where people want to play with powerful Jedi characters without the constant temptation of spending a few hundred XP early on just chasing those force ratings and foregoing a more natural development of their character for a big payoff later.

Right, that makes sense. That one issue, by itself, can be fixed by starting at a higher XP level or granting additional FR at the start of the game, though. It seemed the other like part of your strategy in the OP was to fix the issue of rushing for FR by having PCs specialize more in their strengths and weaknesses vis a vis the Force. My point is, the lack of heavy Force-power specialization in the core rules is a feature and not a bug, if you want to reproduce the movies' picture of how the Force works.

Actually, Aetrion, no it isn't. That is because as they "race" through to get to that Force Rating, they are still forced to take a broad range of often very diverse talents. Therefore, no character is ever that hyper-specialized.

Thing is rushing through all those talents creates characters that have a really questionable identity outside of "I have a lot of force ratings". Sages with no social or knowledge skills, Hermits who don't really care for animals or living in the wild, Seers who don't really care about charting possible futures... These characters pop up all the time just because that's the path to having a huge force rating early in the game.

Not really, because the talents they need to get to to reach those Force ratings are al tied into those other abilities. For example, for a Sage to get to his first Force Rating, he needs to get through Kill With Kindness, Researcher, Smooth Talker, and a Grit talent. To then get to the next one, he has to get through Preemptive Avoidance and at least one Knowledge Specialization. Both of the bolded talants are key to the core of a Sage: the pursuit of knowledge. And both Kill With Kindness and Smooth Talker are huge boosts to Social skills. Therefore, the talents a Sage needs to take in order to get to those Force Ratings are key to developing other abilities which are the core of that specialization. This is true of all of them.

I feel like you might have a somewhat exaggerated picture of how good the +2 FR specializations are for Force users compared with specializations that grant +1 FR and 1 Dedication. If a PC doesn't take a Dedication or two in Willpower, he/she will not have good enough Discipline to use that awesome Force Rating to the fullest. And of course you'll be missing out on any lightsaber skills whatsoever, which provide some of the most powerful things a character can do with a high FR.

EDIT: Although thinking about it further, if a PC started with 4 Willpower and rushed to FR 5 with Seer + Sage, and bought 5 ranks in Discipline, that would give you some dang powerful Force capabilities in probably the quickest way possible. But there's no way to ever roll 6 dice on Discipline without taking a couple of Dedications.

The thing is that no matter the game some players will race to optimised builds. A Gadgeteer Heavy with 6 Agility and 5 in Ranged Heavy/Gunnery is less than a 500xp build and dominates. Any 2 specs that mesh well will provide an over powered monster... if that's what the table expects.

On 2/16/2017 at 4:51 PM, Richardbuxton said:

Another question would be how do you balance the Force talents, Intuitive Shot for example? Some Specialisations rely on high a Force Rating but don't use force powers.

How many dice can be committed?

Committed dice could be limited to how Force rating currently works with RAW. Starting you can only commit 1 force die, pick up a Force Rating talent and then you can commit two dice, etc.

Same as Force talents, since you're already rolling skill checks. Just keep them the same.

misread context, meaningless post