What are good peices of equipment, cybernetics and rp fluff that would give plausible non-force explanations for force powers, especially the manipulate force power, or the shadow force talents...

Character would use the force unconsciously, and as a natural extension of their sneaky and tech skills.

Hydrospanner, good stealth skill & good mechanics skill.

Extra salvage parts lying around for when you have a genius idea.

A blowtorch.

Quick wit to think of a creative explanation that your character doesn't recognize they are using space magic.

Anything that would explain manipulating computers/mechanics at a distance?

4 minutes ago, TheShard said:

Anything that would explain manipulating computers/mechanics at a distance?

Not at a distance. Mechanics is like you're messing with the mechanisms themselves, such as a car mechanic.

Computers in star wars often require you to be at a station to affect them, which is why they often have r2-d2 use his little SCOMP to hook into sockets to do things.

Even with the Manipulate power, you still need to touch the machine in question.

Not with the range upgrades

19 minutes ago, TheShard said:

Not with the range upgrades

Except that by that point, the character would obviously know that he was tapping into the Force, and everyone around him would too. The base power can potentially be chalked up to some "uncanny" skill, but not necessarily anything "supernatural". But once you start to get into the upgrades, that certainly takes knowledge of the power, and what it entails.

10 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Except that by that point, the character would obviously know that he was tapping into the Force, and everyone around him would too. The base power can potentially be chalked up to some "uncanny" skill, but not necessarily anything "supernatural". But once you start to get into the upgrades, that certainly takes knowledge of the power, and what it entails.

You still don't have to know it's the Force though. It could be he has some superstitions that every time he does certain things then he gets better results. Ultimately there is obviously only so much he will be able to ignore himself, but I would let the story determine that rather than any specific upgrade

But what about electrical interference, transmitter antenna, slicing through a wifi etc?

Maybe he thinks he's created the universe first long distance hacking device?

4 hours ago, TheShard said:

Maybe he thinks he's created the universe first long distance hacking device?

He found a kyber crystal, and he thinks it's the key to his slicing gear. Like it gives off a unique EM signature, or something, and he just thinks it's super advanced alien technology. But he doesn't realize that he's becoming attuned to the crystal, and growing in his own Force abilities as he meditates more and more on it...

Aside from being a kyber crystal, it functions as a "magic feather" (ala Dumbo). It's actually useless for the application of slicing, but the PC just has this hunch about it, and so far he just thinks it's been his "high tech good luck charm."

Sorry

Triple post...

I think the consensus I've seen on unaware Force Sensitives is "Don't take Powers". Obviously, this has two major drawbacks:

1. It's kind of boring.
2. While it's a good rule of thumb that "Talents are unconscious and Powers are conscious", some powers, especially their basic versions, could be used "unaware" while other Force Talents are difficult to justify not understanding.

But, like others have indicated here, you have to get creative when justifying unaware Power use. If you use the Heal power, you'd almost certainly have to have a medpack of some kind and believe you're performing first aid. Even then, that's a bit of a stretch for the Heal power as, mechanically, it doesn't boost Medicine but is an affect all its own. Still, there's no "add Boost die to Medicine" Force Talent, so work wth what you've got. Sense could perhaps be used untrained, though the Talents that tie into it make better use of that. Enhance can 100% be used untrained.

On the other hand, I'd almost think you'd have to be very careful with Mental Tools. Your character would absolutely still carry tolls with them; they probably wouldn't twist metal, turn screws, and manipulate components with telekinesis or whatever. That's a weird talent, anyway, though. The "right tool for the job" may well be a blow torch or a rivet gun.

For Manipulate specifically, though, the Basic Power would work, so long as you flavored it as "my character is working on it with his tools, but he's really also using the Force." However, your GM might say: "If he thinks he's working on it with his tools, why isn't this a Mechanics check"; Powers are designed to be more intentional, after all, and justifying them takes work. You might also be able to get away with the right-hand Control upgrade that commits Force Dice, so long as you attempted to repair the vehicle or use the Basic Power already - as in, so long as he's "worked on" the vehicle recently. You could do a similar thing with the droid repair Control upgrade, actually. I'd avoid Range upgrades or the left side of the tree in general, but that's just me.

There's also a narrative choice that is to be made.

Does the character know about the Force but refuse to believe that they have it, attributing all of their success to their tools and their skills because they are stubborn or an unbeliever?

or

Does the character not actually know about the Force, similar to Ezra at the beginning of Star Wars Rebels, who by the game's rules, would have the Enhance & Sense base powers but just doesn't really put much thought into how he can do things?

I think it's more he is a real good techie, that to find out it's partly the force would be a buzz kill. Also the build shadow-artisan is not reproducible without those force based specs... So it's the quickest way to the rp character flavor....

Well, the beauty about Manipulate's base power is that it only fixes System Strain. That's pretty easy to "rationalize" as the character smacks the ship/vehicle, in the classic "concussive repair job" and it suddenly recovers some system strain.

1 hour ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Well, the beauty about Manipulate's base power is that it only fixes System Strain. That's pretty easy to "rationalize" as the character smacks the ship/vehicle, in the classic "concussive repair job" and it suddenly recovers some system strain.

"ayyyyyyyyy!"

1 minute ago, GroggyGolem said:

"ayyyyyyyyy!"

ROFLMAO!!!!

On 19.2.2017 at 2:34 AM, awayputurwpn said:

He found a kyber crystal, and he thinks it's the key to his slicing gear. Like it gives off a unique EM signature, or something, and he just thinks it's super advanced alien technology. But he doesn't realize that he's becoming attuned to the crystal, and growing in his own Force abilities as he meditates more and more on it...

That sounds plausible. If you give him zero ranks in mechanic, education, lore, computers. And maybe int 2 at best.

Now the good old hammer on the TV to fix it, that is very scientific, proven concept too, that totally would work. Stuff just not breaking when it should is another classic, but the whole idea of not knowing when you mind is fixing stuff gets old und problematic rather fast, especially when you are actually trying to work on the problem and have a rather good grasp about the problem too (High skills)

I know the power description is of manipulating the machinery at the molecular level, but for fun you could change the flavour text. The Force guides the character on making repairs, feeding them the required information they have no right knowing. Sort of an "I know Kung Fu?" moment without the actual revelation.

This would work for quite a few self enhancing and future predicting powers (Enhance, Sense, Seek, Farsight, Foresee, Wardes Foresight) but more than one pc doing it could get tedious and boring.

8 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

That sounds plausible. If you give him zero ranks in mechanic, education, lore, computers. And maybe int 2 at best.

Knowing hardly anything about the Jedi is more than plausible. Especially during the Rebellion era.

A piece of "alien technology" that "works, but I'm not quite sure how—I just know it works" is also plausible. It's all in how you plan to narrate it. Star Wars has a bunch of technology that essentially runs on applied phlebotinum (e.g. refined plasma, tibanna gas, hypermatter, kyber crystals, even the rather mundane power cells that have an incredibly long lifespan), and all you need to do is connect this proposed device's "functionality" to some sort of applied phlebotinum. Just takes a little imagination. "I just had a hunch about using this crystal to stabilize the signal for this remote slicing device I've been working on—it kept overheating, but now it doesn't! (Never mind that it's actually your Force power usage that is keeping the device stable)

Just takes a little planning on the part of the players and GM, and you can suspend that disbelief with just about anything.