Has anyone dealt with a story situation where a PC might be able to suddenly access a Force Power they haven't already trained? I'm thinking perhaps it's not well controlled because the player is under duress, and that power suddenly manifests. As an example, in Star Wars Rebels when Ezra calls a massive Force Push out of nowhere to throw a baddie against a wall, to keep him from killing his friend.

I don't see any RAW, or even RAI, to support this idea. From a house rule perspective, I could see a GM setting up a situation where a PC could spend a Destiny Point, take some strain, and then gain temporary access to some Force Power of his choice that fit the scene. Has anyone experimented with something like this?

There is a rule for partially learned powers I think, where you have to flip a pip to use them and take double the conflict/strain if you need to flip for it. Don't know where that is though, or if I read it on these boards somewhere.

There is an optional rule on Page 74 of Keeping the Peace titled "Learning as you go" and it has several suggestions for using powers your character doesn't have yet. It does mention however the requirement of spending some exp to partially buy the power. So for example spending 5 exp instead of the 15 or 20 it would normally cost.

Its in the Guardians book.

There is also a Talent in the Teacher Spec that allows a player to use the force power of another player. (Rules still fuzzy)

I see, that's page 74 of "Keeping the Peace". That's close to what I'm thinking, but more restrictive in that it says a PC should only have access to one partial Force power at a time. But it does lay out good guidelines for the cost to PC in terms of strain, Destiny Points, and difficulty dice. I'm thinking of a more "buffet" approach, perhaps a once-per-session or encounter. And I wouldn't think you could go wild and have someone with no Heal/Harm purchases suddenly bring someone back from the dead, but using some dramatic license along with paying a hefty price seems interesting. If nothing else, it gives players a chance to dabble in Force powers they're not sure they really want to commit XP to.

In a non-mechanical sense, I'd allow it in only two instances 1) primarily for light-siders in extreme emotional distress (loved one dying, etc) calling on the dark side (the short and easy way), but requiring a destiny point flip and a massive hit of conflict - well over 10 - to guarantee moving closer to the dark side and 2) utilising a powerful vergence (dark for darksiders and lightsiders, light only lightsiders) but in the case of the dark vergence remembering that the dark side of the force is treacherous and calling on it may lead the person to ruin.

A Force Vergence could have the effect of learning a power temporarily, probably with additional strain cost

Edit: I could imagine one where everyone gets Force Leap

You could probably manage it with a combination of the "Learning As You Go" rules in Keeping the Peace and allowing the player to spend banked XP to suddenly gain the desired Force power/effect.

Prime example of this would be Ezra suddenly doing a Force push to hurl Agent Kallus away from a downed Zeb in Season One of Rebels, as would Rey using Influence against that First Order trooper.

I'd suggest not letting players get away with doing this too often though. Suddenly demonstrating a new Force power is something that should be special and only occur in situations of intense stress/danger.

Yeah, you're basically cooking up your own house rule if you are going to let them have access to any power they want, on a limited basis. Which is fine as far as I'm concerned, but there should be a price for it. The examples from the Learn as you Go entry are good, but if this is a Force specific thing, you might try another option that I just thought of.

Have the player make some kind of roll (I would choose Discipline for this personally), or have to flip a DP to do it, take strain, or extra strain, or any combination of these things. They still roll their Force die as normal, and are under the regular Light/Dark pip rules as anyone else....buuut. You also roll a Force die yourself, and if the result comes up with Dark pips, they gain that much additional Conflict.

20 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

Yeah, you're basically cooking up your own house rule if you are going to let them have access to any power they want, on a limited basis. Which is fine as far as I'm concerned, but there should be a price for it. The examples from the Learn as you Go entry are good, but if this is a Force specific thing, you might try another option that I just thought of.

Have the player make some kind of roll (I would choose Discipline for this personally), or have to flip a DP to do it, take strain, or extra strain, or any combination of these things. They still roll their Force die as normal, and are under the regular Light/Dark pip rules as anyone else....buuut. You also roll a Force die yourself, and if the result comes up with Dark pips, they gain that much additional Conflict.

I like this idea much better than burning XP for a temporary use. In my opinion, XP should be reserved for permanent changes. In the DnD days, I thought it was dumb to have to burn xp to scribe a scroll, for example.

3 minutes ago, Volt80 said:

I like this idea much better than burning XP for a temporary use. In my opinion, XP should be reserved for permanent changes. In the DnD days, I thought it was dumb to have to burn xp to scribe a scroll, for example.

I don't think the mention of spending xp was a temporary idea from the books. I think it was more like, say the player wants to use Move to yank something out of an enemies hands. Well that requires buying the base power, and several upgrades down to the perk that allows you to violently pull things. I think, the spirit of that mention of xp investment is like "Ok, so that's 55xp total you'd have to spend to actually unlock that Player 1, you only have 10 at this moment. So, spend that 10 xp now, and [invest] it into Move, and I'll let you do that trick now. You will however, have to continue spending your xp as you get it until you actually buy off the power" Or at least that was always how I read it.

Personally, I don't require the player to make a down payment of xp at all, they just get access to ONE new talent/power/skill with this method, and by allowing them to use it ahead of time, they are essentially agreeing to allocate all future xp earned, to buying off the power they now have access to. Once it's bought off, they can spend xp as normal. But that's my table, you do your own thing, though I would never force a player to burn xp on a temporary thing, at all. Not with how this system works. I'd let them burn strain, or possibly even inflict wounds on them, Conflict, etc, for temporary power, but not xp.

12 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

I don't think the mention of spending xp was a temporary idea from the books.

I'd let them burn strain, or possibly even inflict wounds on them, Conflict, etc, for temporary power, but not xp.

Oh yeah, I get that you and the book are talking about investing, not flushing, XP, but some other posters here sounded to me like they were advocating a one-time XP burn. That would be a non-starter unless the GM is handing out gobs of XP.

Before I knew of the learn as you go rules, I told a player they would be able to access the base power of any power they would normally have access to by flipping a destiny point first, as long as they spend the xp to buy that power at the end of the session with the xp they have earned. I think that was used once by the player only. Then I learned of the learn as you go rules and I've allowed it for pretty much any player (as the rules can be applied not just to force powers & upgrades but also skill ranks & talents) as long as they buy it at the end of the session. It has been used a couple times for cool moments, I really enjoy that extra rule.

6 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

Before I knew of the learn as you go rules, I told a player they would be able to access the base power of any power they would normally have access to by flipping a destiny point first, as long as they spend the xp to buy that power at the end of the session with the xp they have earned. I think that was used once by the player only. Then I learned of the learn as you go rules and I've allowed it for pretty much any player (as the rules can be applied not just to force powers & upgrades but also skill ranks & talents) as long as they buy it at the end of the session. It has been used a couple times for cool moments, I really enjoy that extra rule.

Yeah it's a great rule, my only adjustment to what you stated was the "you have to buy it at the end of the session". For me, let's say you have a player that wants to use Move, but not just Move, they also want to use the upgrade that lets them yank weapons out of people's hands. Well, that's like, what, 40+ xp to get there? It's unlikely they will have enough xp to buy it outright at the end of the session. So, what I do, is whatever point on whatever tree they pick for their "Learn as you Go" power, they basically have themselves locked into that power progression, for purchases. If they can't buy it outright, then they basically agree that all of their upcoming xp will be put towards unlocking that ASAP. So even if it takes a few sessions, as long as their are buying towards it, I'm fine with it.

I'd honestly go with 1/3 to 1/2 the xp going towards it to allow for other purchases.

2 hours ago, Decorus said:

I'd honestly go with 1/3 to 1/2 the xp going towards it to allow for other purchases.

To each their own. That's not an unreasonable approach, to allow some flexibility.