About Jedi and the Force I had to say that when a dictatorship rules like the Empire, they use to focus on "rewrite" the story quickly and so effectively. This happened in Spain with Franco and the Second Republic. My grandmother told me that in less than 15 years people had tons of misconceptions about the Second Republic and also people easily tend to ignore "irrelevant" things (irrelevant because the dictator made the irrelevant). People that came after that effect was even stronger.

In hour actual days, 3X years after the dictatorship ended in Spain, most people that doesn't know that before Franco existed a Second strong and stable Republic.

Sorry for the semi-off-topic

15 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Tell that Kanan, tell that the Inquisitors, tell that Maul, it does not seem at all that the empire cares about witnesses of lightsaber use. You are going here imho one giant leap too far and once your identity as force user is lifted, showing your lightsaber just means that the dogs of the inquisition will be faster on your trail, but that can be of little concern when you are not planning to stay much longer and running from the empire anyway.

I kind of disagree about it being of little concern. I mean there's being wanted by the Empire for smuggling, wanted for suspected Rebel activity, wanted for _known_ Rebel activity...and then there's being wanted for Force Sensitive/Jedi. In fact, if you're planning on running from the Empire, it should be an incentive NOT to show a lightsaber or the Force, because that means they're likely suddenly much more interested in you. Not because the Empire wants to uphold a ridiculous Masquerade, but simply because you've just made yourself a priority target.

4 minutes ago, Benjan Meruna said:

I kind of disagree about it being of little concern. I mean there's being wanted by the Empire for smuggling, wanted for suspected Rebel activity, wanted for _known_ Rebel activity...and then there's being wanted for Force Sensitive/Jedi. In fact, if you're planning on running from the Empire, it should be an incentive NOT to show a lightsaber or the Force, because that means they're likely suddenly much more interested in you. Not because the Empire wants to uphold a ridiculous Masquerade, but simply because you've just made yourself a priority target.

Oh I absolutely agree on the different stages of being wanted. I was implying that the inquisition is already behind you, with photo, id and all. And I had explicitly stated that they will be still faster on your tail if you show that lightsaber, because it makes identifying and locating you easier.

Just now, SEApocalypse said:

Oh I absolutely agree on the different stages of being wanted. I was implying that the inquisition is already behind you, with photo, id and all. And I had explicitly stated that they will be still faster on your tail if you show that lightsaber, because it makes identifying and locating you easier.

Aha, I misread you on that, sorry.

12 hours ago, Aetrion said:

The point isn't that punishing the people is a great way to keep knowledge of the Force suppressed, the point is that it's a great way to keep force users from revealing themselves. Even in Rebels one of the biggest concerns for the characters is that the Empire is going to punish the local population of any planet where they make a base, or show themselves, which to the Empire proved to be a more effective means of driving the Rebels off Lothal than trying to actually capture them.

The Empire massacres people or works them to death in labor camps all the time and gets away with it because their control over the flow of information in the Galaxy is pretty absolute. It's sort of the same as Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. Of course people were aware that people were disappearing and heard rumors that they were being killed or used for forced labor, but what do you do? It's hard to get actual evidence without putting your own life on the line, you can't complain about it to anyone, and you're afraid to even talk about it. Reality is, in a real autocratic state people are happy to go along with whatever you have to say to stay safe. Living in the Empire isn't supposed to be like the current political climate where people scream their head off about how evil this or that government is but nothing bad ever happens to them. It's supposed to be like living in one of the early 20th century dictatorships where anyone who spoke out against the government wound up dead or in prison, and the secret police would impress on absolutely everyone that they were expected to turn in anyone who says seditious things, just so that everyone would be afraid of their own friends and family turning them in.

Wait...how can the Empire be relying on Force Users knowing that using the Force or a lightsaber will get themselves and any witnesses killed...if the Empire always kills all the witnesses?!

And while the Empire certainly got away with massacring people, that sort of thing draws attention. The Empire was able to make people skeptical of the Force because so few had ever met a Jedi in person. Now even fewer people are seeing the Force in action...but there's a world of difference between "Hey, I totally saw this guy use the Force!" and "Hey, I totally saw a guy use the Force, and the Empire tried to kill everyone there to cover it up!" In the first case, people brush the witness off: "You were drunk. It was a charlatan. The Force isn't real/is dead/etc." In the second case, though, the Empire's own actions lend credence to the story. It's classic Streisand effect: putting more effort into covering something up only draws more attention to it.

It sounds like the north korean way to do things. Everyone knows that great leader is an idiot, but you are to hungry to revolt anyway. It does not sound like Palpatine's way to manipulate public opinion at all.

In answer to the original question: no additional balance mechanism is necessary for lightsabres. Each career and weapon choice is pretty well balanced when looked at in total. Some careers and weapon choices shine very bright is some situations but overall they even out, the key is to change up combat types (long, short, lots of cover, little to no cover, crowds, tight spaces, poor visibility etc.). The only exception I've found after playing for a couple of years is Auto-fire when/if it modded to a single Advantage to activate and that's an easy one to fix (I rule that only the first activation is lowered to one the rest are a minimum of two).

1 hour ago, FuriousGreg said:

In answer to the original question: no additional balance mechanism is necessary for lightsabres. Each career and weapon choice is pretty well balanced when looked at in total. Some careers and weapon choices shine very bright is some situations but overall they even out, the key is to change up combat types (long, short, lots of cover, little to no cover, crowds, tight spaces, poor visibility etc.). The only exception I've found after playing for a couple of years is Auto-fire when/if it modded to a single Advantage to activate and that's an easy one to fix (I rule that only the first activation is lowered to one the rest are a minimum of two).

You never meet a Demolitionists with a jetpack, a lot charges of proton grenades, Detonite and maybe a kilo or two of Baradium, all combined with a loose attachment to his allies lives and a "heck, why not attitude". Explosives are really, really sick stuff, starting from grenades, but extending all the way down to a 600 credit, 150 damage, extreme range crater. Well or just go the easy route, set a Baradium charge, roll 3 successes or so and watch the battlefield get cleared of all soft targets in long range radius with that easy check. That stuff is actually even more scarry than bringing a tank, because a lot of tanks might get blasted away by a few Protons or even larger Detonite bombs. And price for those bombs is basically pocket change. I have found a new kind of fear from mechanics.

37 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

You never meet a Demolitionists with a jetpack, a lot charges of proton grenades, Detonite and maybe a kilo or two of Baradium, all combined with a loose attachment to his allies lives and a "heck, why not attitude". Explosives are really, really sick stuff, starting from grenades, but extending all the way down to a 600 credit, 150 damage, extreme range crater. Well or just go the easy round, set a Baradium charge, roll 3 successes or so and watch the battlefield get cleared of all soft targets in long range radius with that easy check. That stuff is actually even more scarry than bringing a tank, because a lot of tanks might get blasted away by a few Protons or even larger Detonite bombs. And price for those bombs is basically pocket change. I have found a new kind of fear from mechanics.

Fair enough
I have avoided this because I have a deal with my Players, if they don't use Grenades I won't use them. I've never liked them in a SW game because I'm not running a military type campaign (and it just doesn't feel Star Wars-y to us). Explosives are available to them but they haven't used them as a battlefield weapon.

1 hour ago, Benjan Meruna said:

And while the Empire certainly got away with massacring people, that sort of thing draws attention. The Empire was able to make people skeptical of the Force because so few had ever met a Jedi in person. Now even fewer people are seeing the Force in action...but there's a world of difference between "Hey, I totally saw this guy use the Force!" and "Hey, I totally saw a guy use the Force, and the Empire tried to kill everyone there to cover it up!" In the first case, people brush the witness off: "You were drunk. It was a charlatan. The Force isn't real/is dead/etc." In the second case, though, the Empire's own actions lend credence to the story. It's classic Streisand effect: putting more effort into covering something up only draws more attention to it.

That's not how it works at all. Read up on something like Operation Anthropoid, where the Czech assassinated the SS leader Heydrich. The Nazis implemented a "collective reprisal" plan against the Czechs, putting 15000 of them in concentration camps, killing an estimated 5000 before the war was over. An entire allied plan to implement an assassination campaign against German leadership was scrapped outright when they realized just how absolutely brutal the reprisal on civilians would be.

You have to realize that an actual dictatorship operates on the principle "If violence doesn't work you're not using enough".

So let's say a Jedi uses the Force in public, the Empire isn't going to roll up and start killing everyone immediately, but they will have ISB on the ground listening to what people are saying. If anyone is trying to spread the word they will arrest the person, tell them to recant their story or face reprisal against themselves or their family. The people who keep telling Jedi stories eventually just disappear along with their families, so most likely fear sets in among everyone else, so everyone just shuts up about it, pretends it never happened. If on the other hand the people get angry instead and start protesting, and won't shut about how a Jedi was there and won't go back to being docile and compliant they simply get wiped out.

Same if the Empire knows a Jedi but has trouble capturing them, they wouldn't go after the Jedi, they would instead start going after their friends and family, and if that doesn't work after everyone who even just remotely interacted with them. There is a reason why Jedi went into exile during the years of the Empire instead of trying to lead the fight.

You'll notice that the Nazi's didn't execute 15,000 people related to the assassination plot, but just chose random civilians to try and deter further attacks.

In THIS scenario, however, just executing random civilians isn't enough; you have to reach the ones that are talking. The Empire isn't omniscient, there isn't an ISB guy for ever random Joe Blow in the galaxy. And the means to do what monitoring can be done takes up an IMMENSE amount of resources, resources that would be better spent trying to uncover actual Rebels. The Empire's concern with Force users is ferreting them out so that they can be recruited or killed, not forcing them underground.

As for the Jedi joining the fight: All those Jedi who survived Order 66 under Legends are no more, and so far the only ones who have popped up in Canon are Kanan and Ezra. Kanan survived by basically ditching the Force for years. Now that he and Ezra are overtly fighting the Empire, they've been constantly bringing down heat on their friends far in excess of what they would normally get even for being Rebels. It's pretty much a guarantee that one or both will die by the series end so that what Yoda told Luke will be true: "When I die, the last of the Jedi will you be."

There's no canon to support the Empire maintaining a "scorched earth" policy when it comes to Force-Users and the Force, because that draws public eye to the matter and the Empire wants people to forget about the Jedi and the Force.

Bear in mind, FFG already establishes that at least some Jedi survived in their own 'mini' canon - SPOILER - Elaiza from Jewel of Yavin, for example.

Still, it's a small number.

There is even canon support that the empire is doing anything but "scorched earth". They maintain still in many words the look of the legitimate government, heck they are, and most importantly they make it clear that they never could hope to establish a successful occupation of the millions and millions of worlds. Their least interest is incite more rebellion, they need to suppress this as effective as possible, because a million capital ships is not much in a galaxy of 20 million homeworlds and uncounted colonies.

Alderaan is indeed a try to rule by fear, a try to apply more violence to the problem, but the threat needs to be legitimate as well. Seemingly random massacres are the polar opposite to that when the Rebellion offers a free ride off world and out of reach of the empire and worlds in the core and even some in the expansion have planetary shields and incredible wealth. The empire has to threat them as citizen and not as occupied words. Hey, they actually are citizens and have senators and representation in the senate and all. Next rebel episode might be fun to watch to see a little more of that.

I can understand playing it Aetrion's way if you're going for a more grim feel in your campaign. Might turn the atmosphere into something like the old Dark Horse SW: Legacy comic series.

The Empire is certainly evil enough to impose this kill-em-all policy, but we've never seen any evidence that they do so in the canon. The Tatooine sandtroopers didn't seem inclined to massacre the whole cantina in Ep IV.

11 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

You never meet a Demolitionists with a jetpack, a lot charges of proton grenades, Detonite and maybe a kilo or two of Baradium, all combined with a loose attachment to his allies lives and a "heck, why not attitude". Explosives are really, really sick stuff, starting from grenades, but extending all the way down to a 600 credit, 150 damage, extreme range crater. Well or just go the easy route, set a Baradium charge, roll 3 successes or so and watch the battlefield get cleared of all soft targets in long range radius with that easy check. That stuff is actually even more scarry than bringing a tank, because a lot of tanks might get blasted away by a few Protons or even larger Detonite bombs. And price for those bombs is basically pocket change. I have found a new kind of fear from mechanics.

You just described my Saboteur/Demolitionist droid named Lookout. Once, the local building security force refused to remove the magnaclamps from our ship - The Trump Card - because we were wanted fugitives (surprise, surprise!). I did ask them nicely. Once. When they refused a second time, I blew the top twelve stories off the building - where the power generator was located - and flew off. The explosion was so bright, it lasted for around two minutes, confusing local bystanders on the time of day.

Addendum: actually, the proton grenades only cost me around 300 credits per extreme range explosion (60cr each x 5 grenades = 300cr). I used to spend a full day building the bombs, putting in safeguards so that they would only detonate by trigger. Twas a work of art.

I'm not saying it's canonical that they kill absolutely everyone who sees a Jedi, I'm saying that Force and Destiny games are more interesting when you're running any Imperial opposition based on the idea that they will hurt civilians to punish the player characters. Inquisitors that only attack the PCs aren't an effective deterrent to open force usage, because everyone knows that the GM can't simply kill off the PCs without effectively ending the campaign, and violating the unspoken rule of GMing that above all else your players should have fun. Players will never accept a danger to their character as being truly high stakes, because they fully expect that the GM only places challenges that can be overcome in their path. It's not a good dynamic for a game that's supposed to be about a hidden world full of secrets and danger if people know in the back of their mind that their characters can't die without the story that took the GM hours to develop coming to an abrupt end.

The second you start introducing ways for the players to lose big time without losing their characters you start having an actual high stakes game that compels serious thinking about action and consequence without having to cheapen the narrative with disposable characters. That's why the empire should go after civilians when force sensitive characters start acting like superheroes. Hey, there are dozens of sectors with their own Moffs that never show up in the movies, and who knows how the Inquisitors we haven't seen in Rebels act. There is definitely room for someone who understands the power of collective reprisal in the galaxy.

Uhm, the base range of proton grenade charges is short. And it only starts adding to the blast range AFTER you maxed out the damage at 150. At least that is how I remember it.

Back to topic: We play btw by the unspoken rule that your character dies when he screws up, because stakes are fun.And the biggest screw up is underestimating the stakes. Guess that is the reason why combat consists with us of 95% planning before combat is even on the table and 5% dice rolling when actually combat happens. PCs do not die often, but it does happen. Strangely enough my characters usually die by a party kill. From screwed up medicine checks to catching a bullet which was aimed for the guy my character was engaged with …it just happens and that's good, because it keeps the tension in the game.

If your players don't accept the danger, you might just kill someone to make a statement about the stakes of the campaign, that is if you think your players can handle it. The unspoken rule of not killing players is certainly a good rule on some tables.

4 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Uhm, the base range of proton grenade charges is short. And it only starts adding to the blast range AFTER you maxed out the damage at 150. At least that is how I remember it.

This is correct. If memory serves, I would strap two clusters of 5 together. I think I got the credit cost incorrect.

3 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

I can understand playing it Aetrion's way if you're going for a more grim feel in your campaign. Might turn the atmosphere into something like the old Dark Horse SW: Legacy comic series.

The Empire is certainly evil enough to impose this kill-em-all policy, but we've never seen any evidence that they do so in the canon. The Tatooine sandtroopers didn't seem inclined to massacre the whole cantina in Ep IV.

The thing is, there's grimdark, and grimderp. Genociding entire populations at the mere mention of the Force invokes the brutality of the 40k Imperium with none of the grim purpose behind it because the Force doesn't turn people's bodies into twisted portals to Hell or worse. That just makes it being edgy for the sake of edgy.

48 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

I'm not saying it's canonical that they kill absolutely everyone who sees a Jedi, I'm saying that Force and Destiny games are more interesting when you're running any Imperial opposition based on the idea that they will hurt civilians to punish the player characters.

Ok, that's a bit of a changeup from:

On 2/27/2017 at 5:47 PM, Aetrion said:

To me Force and Destiny adventures in the rebellion era work a lot like Vampire: The Masquerade. The absolute worst thing that can happen is if the public finds out that magic is real, and not just because people who are far more powerful than you will try to kill you, but also because those people will murder everyone who saw it.

The idea of the Empire using civilians against the PCs is nothing new to Star Wars (or Rebels, for that matter). No one is going to argue that you shouldn't have the idea of anyone even remotely friendly to the PCs under threat from the Empire if words gets out. It's just confusing when you start talking about "kill all the witnesses" and "15,000 civilian deaths" instead of the common story thread "Stop hiding or we'll kill your friends."

Destroying an entire town to punish a small group of people just isn't outside of the Empire's character. You raise the stakes to whatever they have to be to make the players take note that their actions have consequences, and that there is a reason why Jedi are in hiding and the only effective rebellion is using capital ships and starfighters and not lightsabers.

The reason I brought up Operation Anthropoid is to show that this isn't without examples in history. A small number of resistance fighters strike a blow and the reprisal is so horrible that assassinations by insurgents were practically scrapped as a plan of action out of pure fear of this.

15 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

Destroying an entire town to punish a small group of people just isn't outside of the Empire's character. You raise the stakes to whatever they have to be to make the players take note that their actions have consequences, and that there is a reason why Jedi are in hiding and the only effective rebellion is using capital ships and starfighters and not lightsabers.

The reason I brought up Operation Anthropoid is to show that this isn't without examples in history. A small number of resistance fighters strike a blow and the reprisal is so horrible that assassinations by insurgents were practically scrapped as a plan of action out of pure fear of this.

Punish, hell yeah. Silence the town just because some glow sticks? Unlikely. Besides, the empire does destroy whole planets because of starfighter and corvette attacks, which makes sense as the priorities are on the real danger: Common people rebelling. The few jedi and their powers are insignificant compared to the 20,000,000 species of the civilized galaxy.

I like the idea of making the Empire get personal where it fits and makes sense and maybe even some wider scale retribution but I don't want to overdo it.

I still want the game to be fun and keep that swashbuckling feel and if the PCs feel like if they cross a certain line then I'm just going to have the Empire do something that's really outside of their ability to stop to "punish" them. Increasing the dramatic tension and the sense that there are consequences that the PCs care about is good but if used too much or if it's too severe then it can easily come across as me being adversarial and petty ("You defeated my encounter so I'm just going to destroy every town you go to!").

We do see the Empire do some of this stuff - in Rebels, the Inquisitors killed everyone aboard a transport carrying a force-sensitive baby they were stealing and there are other examples - but it's not a typical response and it provides more of a back drop for the story or is a specific plot point the characters are meant to deal with (like the Empire blockading and starving a planet). If this was a typical sort of thing we'd see the Empire lay waste to Ryloth and Lothal in order to get the Rebels to surrender or to draw them out.

I think Rebels has a good balance of this. Mostly the Empire is hurting people the main characters care about and know not as retribution but just as a natural course of action of the Empire (kicking farmes off of land, enslaving Wookies, etc). But there is some retribution - Vader orders Tarkintown destroyed to send a message to the Rebels crew (and we see Ezra looking at the smoldering ruin of town).

30 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Punish, hell yeah. Silence the town just because some glow sticks? Unlikely. Besides, the empire does destroy whole planets because of starfighter and corvette attacks, which makes sense as the priorities are on the real danger: Common people rebelling. The few jedi and their powers are insignificant compared to the 20,000,000 species of the civilized galaxy.

From a strategic standpoint a lone Jedi might be insignificant, but you're ignoring two major factors here:

1. "The Jedi were an unhinged cult that manipulated the senate and caused our disastrous performance in the clone wars with their unqualified meddling" is one of the major justifications for the Empire to even exist. The Jedi are public enemy #1, and letting one walk around makes the Empire look weak, and incites rebellion all by itself.

2. The Empire is headed by a Sith Lord who put wiping out the Jedi and gaining full dominion over the Force at the top of his to do list. It may be a goal that is irrational in the greater strategic context of the galaxy, but Palpatine is hellbent on doing this and the Empire does his bidding.

15 minutes ago, Jedi Ronin said:

"You defeated my encounter so I'm just going to destroy every town you go to!"

This is definitely another reason I wouldn't run a game where anyone who so much as breaths the word "jedi" is killed, it's pretty much a one-way ticket to Apathyville. One death is a tradgedy, 15,000 is a statistic. You eventually pass the point of caring what happens to NPCs because why bother? The Empire is always behind you like some perverse psychotic maid, sweeping entire towns into the dustbin just because someone noticed your lightsaber while you were passing through.

19 minutes ago, Jedi Ronin said:

I think Rebels has a good balance of this. Mostly the Empire is hurting people the main characters care about and know not as retribution but just as a natural course of action of the Empire (kicking farmes off of land, enslaving Wookies, etc). But there is some retribution - Vader orders Tarkintown destroyed to send a message to the Rebels crew (and we see Ezra looking at the smoldering ruin of town).

This is pretty much how I feel as well. I've never seen the Empire as afraid to target civilians they know the PCs care about (such as a town they brought supplies to) but they're not razing places right and left just for having brief contact with a Force Sensitive.

Just now, Aetrion said:

"The Jedi were an unhinged cult that manipulated the senate and caused our disastrous performance in the clone wars with their unqualified meddling" is one of the major justifications for the Empire to even exist. The Jedi are public enemy #1, and letting one walk around makes the Empire look weak, and incites rebellion all by itself.

No, the Clone Wars themselves were the justification for the Empire. The narrative for the Jedi were that they were plotting schemers who tried to overthrow the Empire and had to be put down. Now they're all extinct. Rumors of a Jedi or two kicking around doesn't hurt the Empire: the very fact that the Empire is still around is proof that whatever shattered remnants of the Jedi yet remain, their power has been broken and their fire gone out of the universe. This is true to the point where Palpatine actually chastises Vader for going after Jedi while on other missions. The Jedi just plain aren't considered a threat by the Empire at large anymore. The fact that there's a bounty on Jedi drives the point home: the Empire is relying on civilian bounty hunters to do the footwork for them and uncover where Jedi and Sensitives may be hiding, then they swoop in and kill or recruit the target. They don't kill the person who gave them the information; who in their right mind would try to collect on a bounty that no one ever lives to collect?!

3 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

The Empire is headed by a Sith Lord who put wiping out the Jedi and gaining full dominion over the Force at the top of his to do list. It may be a goal that is irrational in the greater strategic context of the galaxy, but Palpatine is hellbent on doing this and the Empire does his bidding.

Again, Palpatine was more than content to let the last few Jedi live out their years in misery and irrelevance, because he was at that point confident that they posed no threat to his plans.

I think it makes sense for the Empire to take notice and respond when a Jedi pops up (Vader and the Inquisitorius and the ISB etc) but for a game there is such a thing as overkill. I think it helps immersion for NPCs to react to a Jedi doing stuff (whether it's the Empire or others) but if the Empire had a scorched earth policy to a Jedi popping up and that if half or a quarter of the time the Jedi PCs pulled out there lightsabers some city or planet got levelled I think it would break immersion as the PCs are essentially being told that if they play the characters they designed (and I approved; I should note I'm running my game in a somewhat altered Star Wars setting during the Rebellion Era and playing an actual Jedi is an option) cannot be played and they'll lose interest in the story. I'm not saying there shouldn't be any consequences but I think they should add to the story and draw the players in more to the story. I agree that the Empire responding with it's might can do this and add needed tension to the story and a sense of consequence and the might of the Empire but I want to find that balance that still maintains the swashbuckling fun and space opera feel of Star Wars.