1 hour ago, KungFuFerret said:

That would work too, though I guess it depends on how often the GM wants the issue to come up in play. Threat/Advantage come up almost every single roll of the dice, whereas having a contested roll would be less often. If every minion group can notice the weird effects in every encounter, it might completely negate the whole point of trying to be subtle about it, simply by getting a couple advantage.

I don't mean every roll of Threat or Advantage and it's definitely not an automatic thing, like you roll 4 Threat and BAM you are noticed. It should be an option to spend Threat/Advantage, when it makes sense.

I guess I'm thinking like, say there's an Agent Kallus-type enemy that is engaging the heroes. And rolls Advantage on a check. With the Advantage, he can realizes that there's something fishy about the way this shield-wielding character is fighting. It's too accurate, or it is kept in flight for too long, or the attacks seem almost prescient. Something sticks in his mind and he wants to get to the bottom of this, but for now, he has a fight to deal with. He's not going to waste precious time by actively studying the hero in combat. Perhaps he'll sic a probe droid on them, if he gets out of the fight alive.

Or, say there's an Inquisitor fighting the heroes. When he rolls the same amount of Advantage, he can immediately spot that the hero in question is using the Force.

Or, say the hero in question is tossing the shield in one of the ways described above with the Move power (long range especially, or keeping it flying over multiple rounds). Threat on such an attack roll could have a similar effect to Advantage on an enemy's attack roll, if there's an important NPC present. If they're just fighting minions or other inconsequential enemies, I wouldn't even bother with it.

If the hero is trying to be subtle with it, you've gotta be careful not to step on the toes of the Shroud talent. Perhaps introduce some Setbacks to her combat checks (or upgrade the difficulty) to represent her holding back, and then require more Advantage/Threat rolled to produce the effects above. But if the PC is using a Force power, then she's going to be noticeable to some degree...unless, again, she's got the Shroud talent active.

Well the examples you gave would be Rivals or Nemesis, so I'm fine with that. I was just concerned about the idea of it coming up every fight, even if it's just mooks being fought. But yeah, in the spirit of minimizing rolls, having it be a threat/advantage result would help streamline things. And having the threshold for it be something like 4+threat/advantage, that would help keep it in the less likely range.

Thanks for all the input! Your ideas are very helpful and I like the high threat option of having an NPC notice something being off.