Hi,

I imagine this scenario: A character stands in front of a building with various enemy forces in it. The character then uses Sense to learn about how many guys are in there. Let's say he is successful and chooses to use Influence immediately after the first check to inflict strain on the nearest enemies. Is this possible without even seeing the targets? I mean speaking theoretically a player could take out dozens of enemies without a lot of effort and without revealing himself.

Your thoughts? Would you allow that on your table? I mean there a examples in legends, but it sounds VERY powerful for the game.

Thanks in advance

So, you have to have a way to target the, well, target, in order to affect them with a Force power.

In what I know of canon, Force users need to be able to actually see their targets to affect them, but I dislike this idea, so I don't use it . My opinion would be...yes. If they can sense the targets at all, whether by sight, sound, or mystical ESP, they should be able to target them with other abilities.

This, really, is a question about what the "sense living beings" ability of the Sense power can actually do. Something I like to use is, surprisingly, the Mutants & Masterminds (3e, if it matters; I've not played any other edition) description of sensory qualities. Senses can be accurate, they can be acute, they can be both, or neither.

Accurate senses can pinpoint people, and are specific enough to be used to target them with attacks, follow their movement, and generally know exactly where they are, within the limits of the observer's knowledge.

Acute senses can detect subtle variations in impressions, and can be used to identify what something is to a high level of detail. On a personal level, you can identify who someone is if you can sense them with an acute sense, assuming you knew who they were already.

So sight is both accurate and acute. Hearing is acute (we can identify the differences in people's voices just by pitch and timbre, and detect pitch in general like we detect color), but its not generally accurate. Touch is accurate but not acute (we can usually determine some details, but not enough to positively identify a person by touch), while smell and taste are generally neither.

Bringing this back 'round, I would classify the Sense power to sense living beings as Acute, but not Accurate. You can't pinpoint the target enough for physical attacks, but you can learn a person's...aura, if you will, well enough to be able to know them by Sense if you spend enough time with them. With this idea, physical attacks, probably including Move, would not be able to be targeted with Sense. Influence, however, is purely mental, and you only need a mental fix on the person to use it, which Sense conveniently provides .

Often, I'd make characters roll Perception checks along with Sense power checks, with Success/Advantage spent to learn things, like what range band a particular target's in, or what general direction, or to separate them out into general groups, typings, etc. You might be able to tell the difference between a togruta and a rodian by Sense, just like a trained musician can tell the difference between a viola and a violin, but when there are dozens of instruments playing in cacophonous harmony, it can be difficult to pick out those individual refrains. Both their simple presence, and what the heck they're actually playing!

So there you go! My long-winded, but hopefully helpful, answer!

Of course they need the appropriate Range Upgrades, but I would allow it.

But remember, Strain is allowed a roll to be recovered after just 1 minute. If you're capable of resting/taking a break. For Minions (no Strain Threshold), I'd probably just consider them back to 100% if more then a couple minutes elapse.

Then if they really began to abuse it, I'd probably give them 1 Conflict (possibly per "Group"(?), or what would otherwise equate to an "Encounter" were it handled in another fashion - Stealth, Combat, whatever) for a "Resorting to Violence First" style infraction. Even "just" a mental attack is still an attack, and violent - even if just mental abuse/violence - if you're causing someone enough emotional or mental stress to Strain them, not to mention it's a grasping at power kind of behavior.

Bu, yea, I'd allow it.

And/or, I would flip a Destiny Point to have a random patrol come upon them

I'd say you could Influence targets you see with the Farsight power, since that power basically allows you to see through objects, in all directions, slightly over a kilometer away (my definition of Close range on the planetary scale), microscopically and with extreme detail all while not actually needing eyes that work. You'd still need to be in range for the Influence check though.

9 hours ago, Vader is Love said:

Hi,

I imagine this scenario: A character stands in front of a building with various enemy forces in it. The character then uses Sense to learn about how many guys are in there. Let's say he is successful and chooses to use Influence immediately after the first check to inflict strain on the nearest enemies. Is this possible without even seeing the targets? I mean speaking theoretically a player could take out dozens of enemies without a lot of effort and without revealing himself.

Your thoughts? Would you allow that on your table? I mean there a examples in legends, but it sounds VERY powerful for the game.

Thanks in advance

I am going to assume this is more theorycrafting that it is something that is actually happening at your table. But for purposes of diving down this rabbit hole:

Let's start with the Sense power. Basic power I assume you are using here is "Sense all living things within short range."

1.) Short range isn't very large at all; basically the inside of a room. So if you want to "Sense" the entire building you'll need long or even extreme range. That means Range upgrades, and you'll either need to active one of them 3 times (+3 Force Pips), or you'll need three Range Upgrade talents, or some combination thereof

2.) The power "senses" all living things. So you are picking up all the sentient life in the building, but also their pet chubba birds, and potted plants too. Note there is nothing said about whether you can tell the difference. If I were adjudicating as the GM, I'd probably require a Discipline or Perception check to 'filter' the results. Optionally you could use the control upgrade to read current thoughts of a found target. But this would need range and magnitude upgrades, so you need even more Force Pips to activate this super cool detection power.

3.) Now on to Influence. Basic power lets you inflict one strain on an engage target per pip used. That's it. So again, you need range upgrades to even reach those newly found sentient folks in that building. Plus you will need magnitude upgrades to target more than one person, and to make it really effective you need the Strength upgrade so you can do 2 points of damage per pip used. All in all, you still aren't doing that much strain damage. Finally, if you are using this power against a Nemesis or plot important Rival, they can force an opposed check, which means your Influence check might just plain fail.

If you want to do more analysis and get really crunchy, create a hypothetical Force Using character who has Influence & Sense basic powers + all range, magnitude and strength upgrades. + a Force Rating of 4. And then just roll some dice and spend them to see what you can do. I think you'll find its not really all that powerful. Oh, and for kicks and grins I just totaled up the XP to get the aforementioned FR4 and Influence and Sense Talents. My build requires 455 XP, which is a lot, and it is sunk into a very specific purpose.

I' think sense is a little too general for this example but I'd agree that farsight or perhaps seek would do. With either or you should be able to use a fair number of powers on the targets to a large degree... just my 2 cents.

Thank you for all the answers!

Sounds great so far. I guess I will combine the force power check with a normal one, to smoothe this up. I think the thought, that distinguishing all the lifeforms could be tricky in a building full of people... and chubba birds

Conflict would be a thing too, but as long as the targets are evil mofos, I would hesitate to give conflict to the acting char.

On 10.1.2018 at 7:13 PM, emsquared said:

And/or, I would flip a Destiny Point to have a random patrol come upon them

Though I like this.

22 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

I'd say you could Influence targets you see with the Farsight power, since that power basically allows you to see through objects, in all directions, slightly over a kilometer away (my definition of Close range on the planetary scale), microscopically and with extreme detail all while not actually needing eyes that work. You'd still need to be in range for the Influence check though.

14 hours ago, jayc007 said:

I' think sense is a little too general for this example but I'd agree that farsight or perhaps seek would do. With either or you should be able to use a fair number of powers on the targets to a large degree... just my 2 cents.

Farsight could be another approach, or even Seek. I will talk this through with the players. Sense, Farsight, Seek do all have a strong narrative component, so let's see what comes around.

14 hours ago, Magnus Arcanus said:

I am going to assume this is more theorycrafting that it is something that is actually happening at your table. But for purposes of diving down this rabbit hole:

Let's start with the Sense power. Basic power I assume you are using here is "Sense all living things within short range."

1.) Short range isn't very large at all; basically the inside of a room. So if you want to "Sense" the entire building you'll need long or even extreme range. That means Range upgrades, and you'll either need to active one of them 3 times (+3 Force Pips), or you'll need three Range Upgrade talents, or some combination thereof

2.) The power "senses" all living things. So you are picking up all the sentient life in the building, but also their pet chubba birds, and potted plants too. Note there is nothing said about whether you can tell the difference. If I were adjudicating as the GM, I'd probably require a Discipline or Perception check to 'filter' the results. Optionally you could use the control upgrade to read current thoughts of a found target. But this would need range and magnitude upgrades, so you need even more Force Pips to activate this super cool detection power.

3.) Now on to Influence. Basic power lets you inflict one strain on an engage target per pip used. That's it. So again, you need range upgrades to even reach those newly found sentient folks in that building. Plus you will need magnitude upgrades to target more than one person, and to make it really effective you need the Strength upgrade so you can do 2 points of damage per pip used. All in all, you still aren't doing that much strain damage. Finally, if you are using this power against a Nemesis or plot important Rival, they can force an opposed check, which means your Influence check might just plain fail.

If you want to do more analysis and get really crunchy, create a hypothetical Force Using character who has Influence & Sense basic powers + all range, magnitude and strength upgrades. + a Force Rating of 4. And then just roll some dice and spend them to see what you can do. I think you'll find its not really all that powerful. Oh, and for kicks and grins I just totaled up the XP to get the aforementioned FR4 and Influence and Sense Talents. My build requires 455 XP, which is a lot, and it is sunk into a very specific purpose.

Actually a player asked me about this.

Didn't think about Stats or XP, but you'd need definitely a solid force rating together with a lot XP to pull this off, I guess.

On 1/10/2018 at 11:56 AM, Absol197 said:

In what I know of canon, Force users need to be able to actually see their targets to affect them, but I dislike this idea, so I don't use it .

Well lucky for you, the OT supports your "you don't use it" stance!

Remember in Empire, Luke reaches out with the Force to speak to Leia, and he most definitely couldn't see her. He even had his eyes closed when he did it. And of course, later in that same sequence, Vader only sees the shuttle that Luke is in, and is able to reach out to him and speak to him via emotions. So there is precedent for the "you don't need Line of Sight" methodology.

OT: I have no problem with someone using Sense to well, sense someone, and then using a follow up power to try and effect them remotely. I would probably require a Discipline check (if the Force power doesn't already require a difficulty check, some do), to reflect that this is a bit tougher than the normal use of the power. If the power in question already requires a check to accomplish, I'd just bump the difficulty up a bit to reflect it being a harder task.

Beyond that, I wouldn't worry about it too much. It is still requiring the user to take 2 actions over 2 turns, and a lot can happen in 2 turns, and roll enough Force pips on both rolls to accomplish the task, not even counting the difficulty check on top of that, and likely spending strain too. So it's hardly a free ride for the PC. It is however, a good outcome for a player who is that crafty, and able to think laterally about how to solve problems, instead of taking the direct approach. I'm all for encouraging player creativity when it comes to solving challenges, and this is hardly an idea without precedent in entertainment.

@Vader is Love

RE: " Conflict would be a thing too, but as long as the targets are evil mofos, I would hesitate to give conflict to the acting char."

I think this is a flawed way of looking at Conflict. Its not at all about the targets. Murdering a murderer (who is defenseless, and isn't threatening you or anyone, for example) is 10 Conflcit the same as had you murdered Mothering Teresa. And if Mother Teresa attacked you, it'd be ok to kill her.

In this instance, IMO, it's about the way in which they're using the Force.

And drawing on the Force again and again and again and again to essentially torture people's minds is dark stuff. No matter how you cut the cloth. It's a power hungry pursuit of dominance over others through the Force .

That's Darkside.