14 hours ago, awayputurwpn said:

This. It's not an issue of canon, nor an issue or rules, but an issue of awesome. "I want to play a character who can do this awesome thing...remember that one video game?" That is cool. That gets me going, "Okay, how can we accomplish this awesome thing you want to do?"

Except it's neither cool, nor awesome. Thankfully none of my players want that kind of "moar powah!" game.

Nor is it Star Wars, since, last I checked, TFU isn't canon, thank the starry void.

It's ironic to me that even those arguing for the current Move power use house rules out the wazoo: requiring a difficulty check just to pick up something large; requiring enough range band upgrades to encompass a giant object; house ruling the effects of dropping an SD anywhere from "automatic miss" (which is hard to justify) to "you need a roll because it's a throw effect"; rulings about adding Knockdowns and other weapon qualities; and many more etceteras.

All while claiming "it's fine!"

If FFG had provided a more interesting canon-Move, and an extra TFU-tree that had the first (and maybe FR3) as a prerequisite, this topic wouldn't come up near as often. Canon-Move could retain the difficulties and replace many upgrades, getting rid of all but one Strength upgrade, with more interesting things. The TFU tree could add Strength back in, difficulty reductions, and abilities to expand to planetary range bands, etc. Getting there would require a significant amount of XP, but if you wanted to play it out of the gate the GM could just grant a bunch for free.

Then the only house rule would be whether the GM wants to allow the TFU tree or not. Simple.

2 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Except it's neither cool, nor awesome. Thankfully none of my players want that kind of "moar powah!" game.

You do realize that's simply an opinion right? Not fact. I know this because I find that scene quite cool and awesome.

3 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Nor is it Star Wars, since, last I checked, TFU isn't canon, thank the starry void.

Since when has something not being canon ever actually stopped anyone from doing it anyway when it comes to Star Wars?

14 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

You do realize that's simply an opinion right? Not fact. I know this because I find that scene quite cool and awesome.

Of course. I was simply stating it in the same terms it was initially delivered. It's not a fact that it's awesome either.

Given how much "Move is OP and broken" comes up and how many questions it gets it seems pretty obvious it could have been written better.

Even some of the clarifications seem odd (like Sam Stewart's on the Order 66 Podcast that in order for the PC to activate Auto-fire with the Hurl upgrade they ALSO have to activate Magnitude upgrades to cover the number of targerts).

I don't think it's too powerful even with RAW. It's a fair point - by RAW - that if in a single round you're using the Move power to move an object (or being) with the intent to damage them then it requires the Hurl control upgrade. It's gray area rules wise if you're just picking someone up, moving them over a cliff or gaping chasm and letting them drop - but it is RAW that the GM is well within the bounds of the RAW to require an opposed check of some kind for this.

It's still not clear to me how RAW applies to moving around very large Sil objects works and how that interacts with where the PCs are etc. I'm not convinced RAW really supports pulling Star Destroyers down from the atmosphere (but I think a GM can easily accommodate such a thing at the table) as I don't think the power has the Range to do it (Extreme personal range is not good enough for the Planetary Range needed for atmosphere, but the Range Band stuff is really wishy washy so who knows for sure). But what if the Star Destroyer is docked and the PC is in Medium or Long Range from it? How far can the PC move a Star Destroyer "in range"? Well they can move it up to Extreme (Personal) range so...not that far but enough to do serious damage in some circumstances. Doesn't seem broken to me. There's also the oddity in the way the rules are written that if you take them literally and rules-lawyery that you can only Move an object that starts within Short range of you and that Range upgrades only affect how far you can move that object (e.g., if you activate Range upgrades to Long you cannot Move an object at Long, but only a an object at Short and move it to Long).

There's also the Control upgrade that allows for the power to fairly easily disarm opponents - but again according to RAW the GM can call for an opposed check meaning the PC will need a significant investment in Disicpline and Wilpower to pull it off (reliably) against high caliber Nemesis.

I agree with the general assessment that by the time a PC gets around to doing awesome things with Move other PCs are already outshining them in most ways (including destructive potential). The amount of XP needed to make Hurl shine as an attack option is massive compared to the XP investment a soldier needs to make Auto-fire shine (and the soldier will regularly to a lot more damage). And the rare circumstances where a PC can by RAW use Move to attack opponents without the Hurl upgrade don't make it overpowered.

6 hours ago, whafrog said:

It's ironic to me that even those arguing for the current Move power use house rules out the wazoo

Who ever said that, unless a situation in game is run strictly by RAW, it's a house rule?

Please let's not conflate house-rules with GM fiat (which is a power specifically granted to the GM by the rules). House rules are rules amendments for a specific gaming group. GM fiat addresses unusual or unique situations. And, to my estimation, these "problems" of players wanting to move silhouette 5+ objects is "unusual" in scope and "unique" in the intent behind moving such an object (unless we're talking about a rules-lawyer player who continually insists on lifting mountains up to long range range and then letting them drop on villages, and is also somehow in control of all rules in the game instead of you?). I gave multiple answers as suggestions based on the specific situational criteria that were given. I didn't say I use such measures in my games as "house rules."

My players are usually very reasonable with their Force usage, and IMO there are many different ways a GM could handle such a situation as "the players happen upon a lot of unsupervised AT-ATs and want to try and play a game of ten-pin with them using the Force, but they don't have the Control upgrade that allows them to use the Move power to attack," and that's just one instance! Unless such a situation is a common occurrence in your game, it doesn't need a house rule . I mean, you can give it one...it's simple enough for the GM to just nerf a power by removing upgrades, like you suggest @whafrog . A very clean solution.

If a player is making a habit of moving capital ships around with the Move power and dropping them on stuff to cause mass destruction, like our imaginary disruptive rules-lawyer power gamer that somehow disallows GM fiat and also can't be kicked out, then I suppose a house rule would make the most sense. But I've never had a player like that, and it sounds like you haven't either. So all I can do is speak from experience and in-the-moment thinking about how I'd handle the situation if it came up in game. For me, the Move power has only ever been fun.

5 hours ago, whafrog said:

Of course. I was simply stating it in the same terms it was initially delivered. It's not a fact that it's awesome either.

You were contradicting my opinion with your opinion. I understand. My bad for not including a disclaimer as to my post being an opinion and not an established fact

However, as it happens, pulling a Star Destroyer out of the sky with one's mind falls directly under the definition of "awesome" - extremely impressive or daunting; inspiring great admiration, apprehension, or fear.

I feel like under RAW itself, what is claimed to be OP really isn't so terrible or even possible in the way people are thinking. Let's take a look at an AT-ST stat block. 15 Hull, 12 System Strain, 3 Armor. Let's say we do what was suggested and use Move to bring it up to Extreme range, (roughly a Kilometer in height I'd say) and let go. Firstly, we cannot apply the damage rules of the Control:Hurl upgrade if we are not using it, so we can't rely on that scale of damage. Let's take a look at the next possible rule.

Page 221 of F&D describes the rules for Falling Damage, specifying that this is what happens when a "character falls", not when "anything falls". At the Extreme height, the character is instantly incapacitated & takes a Critical Injury with +75 to the roll, in addition to 40 Strain and in some cases is just dead. There are no rules for just how much actual damage is being taken past Medium range, which is 30 damage or 3 damage to a Vehicle. So right here we can't apply it to a vehicle or (large silhouette object). It's both applied to characters only and it is very specific in how it works regarding characters.

For Vehicles, we do have the collision rules on page 248 of F&D. There it gives us rules for minor and major collisions. These rules are for vehicles running into terrain and other vehicles so it seems appropriate to apply these rules. It's likely a major collision to fall from 1km height into the ground, so let's go with that. The vehicle takes a critical hit subtracting the vehicles's defense (GM chooses which side) x 5 from the roll.

So at worst, your AT-ST is taking a critical hit each time it is dropped and any other vehicle it comes into contact with is also taking a critical hit. If you roll particularly well, it would eventually be destroyed but otherwise it doesn't seem to suffer any Hull Trauma or System Strain because those are not part of the Collision rules. Beyond that it is up to the GM exactly what else happens in the scene, as Star Wars doesn't really have proper physics and by the rules of the game itself, the worst that happens is AT-ST takes a crit for each time it's dropped. It's taking a minute for each time you do so. You'd need at the very least 5-6 minutes to completely destroy the AT-ST in question.

So yeah, destruction of a vehicle using Move to drop it from height is possible by the collision rules but it isn't really applicable in the same way to a large chunk of rock. Rocks can't take critical hits. If you aren't using the Hurl upgrade then it doesn't deal damage as such. You also can't apply the falling rules to it since it's not a character.

So to drop a mountain or boulder or whatever onto the ground, you're running into house-ruling territory. By RAW, there is nothing specifically written that applies to large non-vehicle objects being dropped. That's all per the GM's discretion.

I just think about what Darth Vader said "The ability to destroy a planet, is insignificant, next to the power of the Force" Well, apparently not, according to those who feel acts like pulling a SD out of orbit is too OTT. I would say that being able to do things like blow up a planet, or suck an entire star's worth of material into an area smaller than a planet, and then shoot it out at hyperspace speeds to blow up multiple planets is indeed more significant than the Force.

But if indeed Size Matters Not, then the idea that a handful of people could take on an army and win, due to being able to do things like shove their cap ships into each other and blow them up, makes the Force actually sound on par with the level of engineering that's apparently ok in the Star Wars 'verse.

1 hour ago, KungFuFerret said:

I just think about what Darth Vader said "The ability to destroy a planet, is insignificant, next to the power of the Force"
...
But if indeed Size Matters Not, then the idea that a handful of people could take on an army and win, due to being able to do things like shove their cap ships into each other and blow them up, makes the Force actually sound on par with the level of engineering that's apparently ok in the Star Wars 'verse.

Nice! Quotes from Darth Vader and Yoda help to put things in perspective. They could have both been speaking figuratively, of course.

Now...this brings up an interesting point. Note how at the end of Rogue One , Vader just slaughters all those guys effortlessly, but he doesn't use the Force to grab the fleeing Tantive IV. Is that because it was beyond his limits? Was it the powerful sublight engines, or was it already too far away? Was it the size? Yoda and Vader's statements from Episodes V and IV would have us believe that such things are insignificant.

35 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

Nice! Quotes from Darth Vader and Yoda help to put things in perspective. They could have both been speaking figuratively, of course.

Now...this brings up an interesting point. Note how at the end of Rogue One , Vader just slaughters all those guys effortlessly, but he doesn't use the Force to grab the fleeing Tantive IV. Is that because it was beyond his limits? Was it the powerful sublight engines, or was it already too far away? Was it the size? Yoda and Vader's statements from Episodes V and IV would have us believe that such things are insignificant.

He didn't grab it because Rogue One needed the ship to get away to link into New Hope. That's pretty much it as far as I'm concerned. They had an end goal, and just painted by numbers until they got there.

12 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

He didn't grab it because Rogue One needed the ship to get away to link into New Hope. That's pretty much it as far as I'm concerned. They had an end goal, and just painted by numbers until they got there.

Of course I understand the movie-making concerns, but what is the in-universe reason? Is it another "They let us go! It's the only way to explain the ease of our escape" moment? Is Vader playing a long game? Or is it because he cannot telekinetically overpower a starship?

This will likely require speculation and is not in any way definitive, of course.

Just now, awayputurwpn said:

Of course I understand the movie-making concerns, but what is the in-universe reason? Is it another "They let us go! It's the only way to explain the ease of our escape" moment? Is Vader playing a long game? Or is it because he cannot telekinetically overpower a starship?

This will likely require speculation and is not in any way definitive, of course.

Well I mean, if we HAVE to come up with some in-universe reason, he never bothered investing in Move's Strength upgrades, and instead focused on lightsaber fighting styles and...whatever Force Choke is in the FFG system. I mean he could do that from across a vid screen, from one cap ship to another. Did they ever actually establish how far away Vader was from that guy he choked via Facetime? I always got the impression he was in like an entirely different star system.

2 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

Well I mean, if we HAVE to come up with some in-universe reason, he never bothered investing in Move's Strength upgrades, and instead focused on lightsaber fighting styles and...whatever Force Choke is in the FFG system. I mean he could do that from across a vid screen, from one cap ship to another. Did they ever actually establish how far away Vader was from that guy he choked via Facetime? I always got the impression he was in like an entirely different star system.

Force Choke is simply using the Bind power with Dark Side Points. IF you use DSPs, it causes wound damage instead of Strain.

And just how far away was he from that officer anyway?

He had line of sight and he has the Talent Mary Sue.

16 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Well I mean, if we HAVE to come up with some in-universe reason, he never bothered investing in Move's Strength upgrades, and instead focused on lightsaber fighting styles and...whatever Force Choke is in the FFG system. I mean he could do that from across a vid screen, from one cap ship to another. Did they ever actually establish how far away Vader was from that guy he choked via Facetime? I always got the impression he was in like an entirely different star system.

I'd say the Tantive IV was out of Range for Move (being of the opinion that by RAW Range upgrades only extend to Extreme personal scale so it's trivial for a moving vehicle to go beyond personal range (e.g., Close Range Planetary scale being just outside Extreme range Personal scale).

As for Vader force chocking a guy...GM license. I let players do "non-RAW" things fairly often if it's cool and cinematic, usually in how they spend Triumph. Though, the way this system is written, with the GM being told over and over again to do things as they see fit and the narrative dice system being open ended to accomplishing whatever the players agree too most anything can fit into RAW.

16 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Force Choke is simply using the Bind power with Dark Side Points. IF you use DSPs, it causes wound damage instead of Strain.

Bind has a lot of awkward wording but I think it only allows the user to inflict 1 Wound. The Mastery ability allows the "force choke" to inflict a Critical Injury and spend FPs to add +10.

5 minutes ago, Jedi Ronin said:

I'd say the Tantive IV was out of Range for Move (being of the opinion that by RAW Range upgrades only extend to Extreme personal scale so it's trivial for a moving vehicle to go beyond personal range (e.g., Close Range Planetary scale being just outside Extreme range Personal scale).

As for Vader force chocking a guy...GM license. I let players do "non-RAW" things fairly often if it's cool and cinematic, usually in how they spend Triumph. Though, the way this system is written, with the GM being told over and over again to do things as they see fit and the narrative dice system being open ended to accomplishing whatever the players agree too most anything can fit into RAW.

Oh I'm fine with ignoring RAW due to Rule of Cool, I do that stuff all the time at my table, and don't lose a wink of sleep over it. But I was asked to come up with an "in-game" rationale for why he didn't grab it. So, aside from just saying "Because movie", which I already did and it wasn't a satisfactory answer , I went with RAW. He probably didn't have enough upgrades in Move to pull it off, or maybe he rolled lots of Light Side pips and couldn't flip a Destiny Point and suffer the strain to actually use them.

Honestly, I really don't care I don't really care for Rogue One, like at all, so I don't really spend much time thinking about it. But Armchair GMing, on the spot decision based on the scene, that's my call for why the movie worked like a movie, and not a game table.

52 minutes ago, Jedi Ronin said:

Bind has a lot of awkward wording but I think it only allows the user to inflict 1 Wound. The Mastery ability allows the "force choke" to inflict a Critical Injury and spend FPs to add +10.

Bind can do more than 1 wound. It says that it inflicts 1 wound per pip spent (if you used the Dark Side). So, say for example you trigger the base power, and then spend the two pips to trigger the Magnitude upgrade. That's three pips spent on the check, and therefore three damage ignoring soak.

22 minutes ago, Underachiever599 said:

Bind can do more than 1 wound. It says that it inflicts 1 wound per pip spent (if you used the Dark Side). So, say for example you trigger the base power, and then spend the two pips to trigger the Magnitude upgrade. That's three pips spent on the check, and therefore three damage ignoring soak.

That's one reasonable way to interpret it - and I sent in a question to the devs to clarify it several weeks ago and haven't heard back - but this interpretation breaks with how every other power and ability functions in this game. I could be missing something but I can't think of another example where you get a free effect like this when paying for something else. It also makes the power work awkwardly: a PC activates the Range upgrade as many times as they can even if they don't need it just so they can inflict 1 wound "per FP spent".

Things like Improved Reflect and Counterstrike in the F&D BETA were stated in a way that "by RAW" you didn't have to actually spend the Threat/Despair to activate the Talent (the Talent just mentioned it can be used if 3 Threat/Despair are generated) but it was updated in the actual release to say you had to spend the Threat/Despair. The BETA version of Bind does not have a limiting factor on how many FP can be spent when activating the basic power - so you could spend as many FP as you generated to increase the Wound damage. It looks like the actual release kept the BETA text and just added a sentence stating you could only activate the base power once. Seems like an editing error to me.

The Master upgrade also contains the same wording (BETA and release) where you get +10 to the Critical "per FP spent on the check". I think this also was intended to mean you had (and could) spend FP to fuel that part of the power and that it's not a reference to how many FP you'd spent in total activating the power and any upgrades.

3 minutes ago, Jedi Ronin said:

That's one reasonable way to interpret it - and I sent in a question to the devs to clarify it several weeks ago and haven't heard back - but this interpretation breaks with how every other power and ability functions in this game. I could be missing something but I can't think of another example where you get a free effect like this when paying for something else. It also makes the power work awkwardly: a PC activates the Range upgrade as many times as they can even if they don't need it just so they can inflict 1 wound "per FP spent".

Things like Improved Reflect and Counterstrike in the F&D BETA were stated in a way that "by RAW" you didn't have to actually spend the Threat/Despair to activate the Talent (the Talent just mentioned it can be used if 3 Threat/Despair are generated) but it was updated in the actual release to say you had to spend the Threat/Despair. The BETA version of Bind does not have a limiting factor on how many FP can be spent when activating the basic power - so you could spend as many FP as you generated to increase the Wound damage. It looks like the actual release kept the BETA text and just added a sentence stating you could only activate the base power once. Seems like an editing error to me.

The Master upgrade also contains the same wording (BETA and release) where you get +10 to the Critical "per FP spent on the check". I think this also was intended to mean you had (and could) spend FP to fuel that part of the power and that it's not a reference to how many FP you'd spent in total activating the power and any upgrades.

As a GM, I'd prevent my players from spending FP that they didn't need to. For example, if the only target is in Short range, I wouldn't agree to letting them spend FP on the Range upgrade 3 times just purely to increase damage. That might work by RAW, but in my opinion, it breaks RAI, and would not be okay at my table. Thankfully, my players don't try to be power gamers in that regard, so it's not an issue that will ever come up.

The way I see it, the base power and the Master upgrade both support the idea that spending multiple FP increases the effect of the power. So the way I interpret it is that all the FP you spend on upgrades, such as Range or Magnitude, contribute to the damage done by the base power, and increase the bonus to the crit. If my players ever actually take this power and I find some issue with that interpretation in game, I might end up eventually doing a homerule for it. Personally, I'm not a fan of how this works, and would have prefered if Bind dealt damage in a way more similar to Harm and Unleash, but for now I'm going with what the book says.

1 hour ago, Underachiever599 said:

As a GM, I'd prevent my players from spending FP that they didn't need to. For example, if the only target is in Short range, I wouldn't agree to letting them spend FP on the Range upgrade 3 times just purely to increase damage. That might work by RAW, but in my opinion, it breaks RAI, and would not be okay at my table. Thankfully, my players don't try to be power gamers in that regard, so it's not an issue that will ever come up.

The way I see it, the base power and the Master upgrade both support the idea that spending multiple FP increases the effect of the power. So the way I interpret it is that all the FP you spend on upgrades, such as Range or Magnitude, contribute to the damage done by the base power, and increase the bonus to the crit. If my players ever actually take this power and I find some issue with that interpretation in game, I might end up eventually doing a homerule for it. Personally, I'm not a fan of how this works, and would have prefered if Bind dealt damage in a way more similar to Harm and Unleash, but for now I'm going with what the book says.

If you figure a ruling could you please post It? The rules for unleash and this somewhat fuddle me up.

2 hours ago, Jedi Ronin said:

It looks like the actual release kept the BETA text and just added a sentence stating you could only activate the base power once. Seems like an editing error to me.

You can't just spend Force Points on nothing for Bind, and use them to increase the damage. This was clarified by the developers. The Force points have to be spent to actually activate the basic power or a specific upgrade, in order for them to increase the power's damage.

22 minutes ago, awayputurwpn said:

You can't just spend Force Points on nothing for Bind, and use them to increase the damage. This was clarified by the developers. The Force points have to be spent to actually activate the basic power or a specific upgrade, in order for them to increase the power's damage.

Where did they clarify that? Order 66 podcast F&D core episode?

I'd assume then that for the Crit Master ability you cannot spend FP to increase the Crit you'd only be able to increase the Crit by how many FP you spend activating other portions of the power?

Seems really odd to me - that a core part of the dark side aspect of power is dependent on secondary spending of a FP - but it wouldn't be the first time a dev ruling did that.

23 hours ago, awayputurwpn said:

Nice! Quotes from Darth Vader and Yoda help to put things in perspective. They could have both been speaking figuratively, of course.

Now...this brings up an interesting point. Note how at the end of Rogue One , Vader just slaughters all those guys effortlessly, but he doesn't use the Force to grab the fleeing Tantive IV. Is that because it was beyond his limits? Was it the powerful sublight engines, or was it already too far away? Was it the size? Yoda and Vader's statements from Episodes V and IV would have us believe that such things are insignificant.

Jedi are notorious liars. Yoda needed to prove a point to Luke that his doubts affected his abilities.

Vader was trying to act both indifferent to the Death Star's power as well as menacing to fellow Imperials to keep them fearing him. It's why he killed so many officers.

7 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

Vader was trying to act both indifferent to the Death Star's power as well as menacing to fellow Imperials to keep them fearing him. It's why he killed so many officers.

Vader is so image conscious.

I bet he practices his menacing walk, too.