The Niman Disciple's Draw Closer talent seems like an "I-win button" in foot chases, if you're the one doing the chasing--once you get within Medium range, all you need is to roll two Force pips to pull the enemy from medium to engaged and the chase is over, no resistance roll allowed. Am I misunderstanding something here? If not, any thoughts about how to house rule it to keep chases interesting?

2 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

The Niman Disciple's Draw Closer talent seems like an "I-win button" in foot chases, if you're the one doing the chasing--once you get within Medium range, all you need is to roll two Force pips to pull the enemy from medium to engaged and the chase is over, no resistance roll allowed. Am I misunderstanding something here? If not, any thoughts about how to house rule it to keep chases interesting?

This is where the role of the GM comes into play. A good GM would require you to still roll against the opponents Discipline or Resilience or whatever is applicable to resisting what is essentially the Move power. Or they make the Force check hard to make due to the people or obstacles in the chase scene get in the way of the view of the player character.

Besides, there are better abilities for singlehandedly ending chases - such as Bind which is also easier to use if your goal is just 'capture running target'. To put it simply, the Force is overpowered in mundane situations.

The same could essentially be said about Seek with the 'commit []: Autotrack your target constantly' as the 'I can just skip past investigating a bounty and just find him based off of Force premonitions or provided information and biometrics' power.

The thing with seek though is that you have had to meet your target before to actually know who to follow; photographic and holorecordings don't work, thus to track someone that has never been met before requires this. And even then I imagine the force only provides a general direction; e.g. A character would know distance and direction, but not necessarily position which means a bounty could still surprise them.

That being said, Gand Findsmen are valued for a reason.

1 hour ago, LordBritish said:

The thing with seek though is that you have had to meet your target before to actually know who to follow; photographic and holorecordings don't work, thus to track someone that has never been met before requires this. And even then I imagine the force only provides a general direction; e.g. A character would know distance and direction, but not necessarily position which means a bounty could still surprise them.

That being said, Gand Findsmen are valued for a reason.

The base power of Seek only says that one has to know about the target. What the Force user has to know and what can be a source of their knowledge are unspecified. But yes, the power only provides a 'general direction', even with the relevant upgrade.

1 hour ago, LordBritish said:

The thing with seek though is that you have had to meet your target before to actually know who to follow; photographic and holorecordings don't work, thus to track someone that has never been met before requires this. And even then I imagine the force only provides a general direction; e.g. A character would know distance and direction, but not necessarily position which means a bounty could still surprise them.

That being said, Gand Findsmen are valued for a reason.

If Seek only worked if you met the target in person once, then it would basically become a highly-situational basically useless power.

I don't see the issue addressed in the OP as a bug, but a feature. It's a fun way to end a chase and makes the player feel like a BAMF.

1 hour ago, Arctanaar said:

The base power of Seek only says that one has to know about the target. What the Force user has to know and what can be a source of their knowledge are unspecified. But yes, the power only provides a 'general direction', even with the relevant upgrade.

But I've assumed that the knowledge requires more then just a name. I guess if players were provided information to have a idea who to look fori t would make sense. Just narrative speaking the player would somehow have to detect his signature within the void, something that would get much harder in densily populated areas. More my point is that theres plenty of scope for the players not being able to track the guy down immediately, as they have to know their target. Consdiering there are people like Boba Fett, the Pirate queen and others with crazy Alius's like Cobra Talon Bane, it isn't inconceivable that some people would be harder to track down then others, though seek would provide a mighty fine headstart.

1 hour ago, Cvltvre said:

If Seek only worked if you met the target in person once, then it would basically become a highly-situational basically useless power.

How many reoccuring NPC's do you have in your campaign? And how often to the characters fail to stop a major bad on their first go? In my campaign it's very rare that we kill an inquistor in the first clash due to imperial reinforcements that we later tracked down, imperial officers often appear to us but are curiously out of range. Meeting someone in person can also vary depending on the setting; like at the empire day parade we were able to meet an rear admiral that would become a major antagonist in a later campaign and because we had met him it narrowed down his location dramatically. Situational? Yes, but there are a lot of situations where a meeting can occur.

Likewise in Friends Like These, there was several opportunistic to observe characters that had yet to be introduced as nemesis or characters of interest. It requires a certain amount of book keeping, but if one is delviing in mystic magic then a spell book should be natural! Ahahahah!

That and Seek can dispel illusions. That ability is arguably even more conditional then the first considering relative rarity of force types.

2 minutes ago, LordBritish said:

But I've assumed that the knowledge requires more then just a name. I guess if players were provided information to have a idea who to look fori t would make sense. Just narrative speaking the player would somehow have to detect his signature within the void, something that would get much harder in densily populated areas. More my point is that theres plenty of scope for the players not being able to track the guy down immediately, as they have to know their target. Consdiering there are people like Boba Fett, the Pirate queen and others with crazy Alius's like Cobra Talon Bane, it isn't inconceivable that some people would be harder to track down then others, though seek would provide a mighty fine headstart.

You said this:

3 hours ago, LordBritish said:

The thing with seek though is that you have had to meet your target before to actually know who to follow; photographic and holorecordings don't work, thus to track someone that has never been met before requires this.

My point was that that is not necessarily correct.

5 minutes ago, LordBritish said:

That and Seek can dispel illusions. That ability is arguably even more conditional then the first considering relative rarity of force types.

It is more situational, sure. Is that relevant?

Hmm, fair enough. Just the key thing would be what is considered enough information? A name probably not because those can quite easily be falsified, would a holoprojection really be enough?

2 minutes ago, LordBritish said:

Hmm, fair enough. Just the key thing would be what is considered enough information? A name probably not because those can quite easily be falsified, would a holoprojection really be enough?

This is why I said an image or biometrics. These would be the scrying equivalent of some hair or a face to use the spell.

Ahhh that would work then. Fair play.

On 3/17/2017 at 11:40 PM, DaverWattra said:

The Niman Disciple's Draw Closer talent seems like an "I-win button" in foot chases, if you're the one doing the chasing--once you get within Medium range, all you need is to roll two Force pips to pull the enemy from medium to engaged and the chase is over, no resistance roll allowed. Am I misunderstanding something here? If not, any thoughts about how to house rule it to keep chases interesting?

Well,first off as people mentioned giving them a roll to resist (or, more likely, upgrading the difficulty of the lightsaber check) to reflect the fact that they're actively running away from you and have some momentum wouldn't be amiss. Also, keep in mind that this takes an Action, no Chase roll allowed. Essentially, if they flub the check, the target will widen the gap. Finally, there's the question of: do they want the target undamaged/alive? It IS an attack, after all, and lightsabers generally do an appreciable amount of damage. If the NPC in question isn't a combat type of character...you might have just killed the lead you were (literally) chasing down. Whoops!

10 hours ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Also, keep in mind that this takes an Action, no Chase roll allowed. Essentially, if they flub the check, the target will widen the gap.

That doesn't apply, though, to chases that happen as part of a larger encounter. In those ones, the chasing characters get to take a turn after each chase roll. (And I often run my regular chases the same way, because I like characters to be taking potshots and trying different tricks in the middle of a chase--just rolling the dice eight times in a row is boring IMO.)

4 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

That doesn't apply, though, to chases that happen as part of a larger encounter. In those ones, the chasing characters get to take a turn after each chase roll. (And I often run my regular chases the same way, because I like characters to be taking potshots and trying different tricks in the middle of a chase--just rolling the dice eight times in a row is boring IMO.)

That fair enough. I would probably impose penalties on those actions to reflect that the player is trying to do them "on the go," or conversely impose a penalty on the chase check if the player wants to slow down enough to remove those penalties from the actions.

Another thing that occurred to me is line of sight. Ducking around corners, closing doors, anything that can make it impossible for the PC to just yoink the enemy directly to them in one go might help.

1 minute ago, Benjan Meruna said:

Another thing that occurred to me is line of sight. Ducking around corners, closing doors, anything that can make it impossible for the PC to just yoink the enemy directly to them in one go might help.

Good idea. Seems like a good thing to spend advantage/threat on in a chase.