This is a bit of a quirk of the RAW for opposed checks:

Suppose I have a character who has the Control: Skills upgrade to Farsight, so that she adds her Force dice to her Perception rolls. So let's say normally the character's total Perception pool is YGWWW

An enemy with (let's say) YYG in Stealth is trying to sneak past this character. This leads to an opposed check. Because of the character's YG in Perception skill, the enemy adds RP to his pool for the opposed check. But unless I'm misunderstanding the RAW, those white dice are *only* added to Perception checks! So when someone is trying to sneak past the character, all that Force perception ability just goes away and the white dice are not added.

Seems like this would be a natural place for a house rule: the white dice are added to opposed checks as well, generating failures or threats instead of successes or advantages. Thoughts?

I personally don't think force dice should go into opposed checks because there are abilities that do stuff like "Commit one force die to upgrade all perception checks", or "Commit one force die to upgrade your strength" which would be entirely invalidated if the ability to throw force dice in perception or athletics checks was automatically leveraged for all opposed checks as well. Why would you ever commit a die to get a permanent passive boost to a skill or characteristic if you get a passive benefit from uncommitted dice as well?

As far as I'm concerned rolling force dice means you are actively using the force. Any passive effect uses the committing mechanic.

Another thing is, if you get a boost to perception or vigilance checks from Uncanny Senses or Uncanny Reaction you also don't add an automatic black to people's opposed checks. There are talents that make opposed checks harder, like Unrelenting Skeptic which add nothing to your active checks as well.

If the PC is the one defending, then I wouldn't let them add the Force dice to the difficulty.

Generally speaking, using a Force power is an Action, one that can't be done as an out-of-turn incidental. The instances where using a Force power doesn't constitute an Action are fairly limited and require Control Upgrades to be purchased to allow it.

Now, for those upgrades that say "add Force dice to checks for Skill X," it seems that the designer intent is those upgrades are part of the Action that's required to make a skill check. When a PC is using their skill rating to oppose an adversary's skill check (such as the Stealth vs. Perception* example you gave), the PC isn't actively making a skill check. Since they're not using an Action, or even actively rolling their skill, then the Force power effect to add Force dice wouldn't be available to be used.

That being said, as a suggested house rule if you wanted to give the Force user some kind of perk for having said Force power upgrade, I'd suggest adding one setback die per active Force Rating. But keep in mind that such a house rule is going to make the Force user much harder to overcome when that skill comes into play. To keep things more balanced, probably better to just apply a single setback die to the adversary's dice pool.

*Personally I'd probably go with Vigilance as the skill the PC uses to oppose the adversary's Stealth, but that's just me.

Depends if you consider an opposed check to being a standard check. Not sure what the devs would rule on this but I reckon that this would fall under standard check, but I am far from certain on this. The opposed check you are still using the skill as part of the using a skill section of the book , it isn't being called out by an ability or a talent, however if it doesnt, if the active skill user were a force user technically since they are using the skill "normally" they would get the benefit of a combined check, which could lead to an imbalance weighted for the active player (example 2 force users with the infuence control upgrade negotiating the active negotiator could benefit and the passive might not, im not sure that would be intended)

Edit FWIW ive submitted a question to the devs on this one as I felt it sufficiently different from the last thread about these enhance type powers and talents.

Thanks! I suspect they'll say that the Force dice have no effect when you're on the receiving end of an opposed check; that follows pretty straightforwardly from the RAW.

I would say the only apply in situations in which the PC is actively using a power that would normally give him a bonus. This for that Perception check vs Stealth if he has Force dice committed to the use of Farsight and he would normally gain that benefit then he gets those dice in the opposed check. But if he doesn't have them committed then he makes the check as per normal. In order to stop PC's from constantly leaving their powers on I would consider imposing strain penalities for every extra scene they keep a power going.

4 hours ago, Aetrion said:

I personally don't think force dice should go into opposed checks because there are abilities that do stuff like "Commit one force die to upgrade all perception checks", or "Commit one force die to upgrade your strength" which would be entirely invalidated if the ability to throw force dice in perception or athletics checks was automatically leveraged for all opposed checks as well. Why would you ever commit a die to get a permanent passive boost to a skill or characteristic if you get a passive benefit from uncommitted dice as well?

Well, in the case of committing dice to Enchance strength or agility, there are lots of reasons to do that (improve your soak and your combat skills, for example). Those are some of the most useful ways of committing dice in the whole game.

In the case of committing a die to upgrade Perception with Seek, I agree that the Farsight ability would basically be strictly better if it applied to opposed checks. On the other hand, that Seek ability is completely awful no matter what--you can commit a die to upgrade your Perception and Vigilance once, cannot be repeated multiple times... that's terrible. You basically get one rank in Perception and Vigilance for the price of 10xp plus a Force die. It's so bad it's not even worth using.

Yea, the Seek thing isn't exactly a great ability, but there is also the Control node upgrade at the bottom left of Farsight that lets you commit force dice to raise perception up to a maximum of 5. That box becomes completely pointless if passive perception allows force dice.

Also let's not forget that the Seek one is a 10XP stepping stone on the path to autocrit annihilation.

I rarely roll as GM using this system (pretty much only in combat), because the way that the system/each roll is capable of taking into account the NPCs abilities. Also because PCs like to roll and I have plenty of stuff on my mind, that if I don't HAVE to roll, I don't.

So I would be making the PC make a Perception roll v. NPC Stealth, never (or very rarely) rolling with the NPC as the "active" party.

So yea, I would give the PC their Forsee die.