4 minutes ago, GroggyGolem said:

I just referred to it today when telling a player that the roll they made (Heal Mastery to bring back a fallen ally last session) was a 6.25% chance (rolled 4 light points on FR2.)

Yay! I was useful!

Although technically the Heal Mastery is not a separate power action, so it takes at least 5 Force points to use: one for the base power, 4 more for the Mastery...

3 minutes ago, Absol197 said:

Yay! I was useful!

Although technically the Heal Mastery is not a separate power action, so it takes at least 5 Force points to use: one for the base power, 4 more for the Mastery...

I don't see that working that way. Control upgrades vary in whether the can be activated instead of the base power or if they have to be activated with it.

It's tricky. The two clues I look for is whether it's says "As an action," indicating that control upgrade is a separate power action, and whether or references the base power's effect.

In this case, the Heal Mastery does not say it's a separate action, and it says you can spend 4 Force points to "resuscitate one target of the power" back to life. Meaning they need to already be a target of the power before you can spend the extra Force points.

I don't begrudge you the alteration, though; I think making it a separate power is a reasonable thing to do .

Yeah I took a look at the tree for a minute, don't have the book with me. You can also tell by the way the Harm portion of Mastery reads, as it has to kill the target first, meaning it's still part of the base power. Fair enough, I'll just rule it as the proper way from here on out. I had always thought that 4 points seemed a bit low for resurrection, even if the resurrection has a time limit of 1 round and a once-per-session limit.

It's one of those things where you have to read the full upgrade description, and everybody (myself included!) forgets to do that every once in a while .

2 hours ago, Absol197 said:

In this case, the Heal Mastery does not say it's a separate action, and it says you can spend 4 Force points to "resuscitate one target of the power" back to life. Meaning they need to already be a target of the power before you can spend the extra Force points.

Or perhaps they are including the base activation pip in that 4 total?

28 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

Or perhaps they are including the base activation pip in that 4 total?

We should probably move this to its own thread, but it's rare that they combine costs like that (I can't think of any other time they do so).

On 04/03/2018 at 3:23 PM, TrystramK said:

I'm not sure how this makes lightsabers any more silly than they already are though? Unless you are just calling F&D characters lightsabers

.

Not sure if you misread, I didnt say lightsabers, I said lightsiders.

Yes I misread.

Replying to this to give it a bump as I just found it today and I think it's quite useful.

Also, it really opened my eyes up to just how effective talents that give automatic pips, such as Empty Soul in Ascetic, or ones that take them away, such as Calming Aura, are. Especially if fighting primarily Dark Side users, taking one pip away from them, even at a high force rating, is actually quite painful.

2 hours ago, Smoothjedi said:

Replying to this to give it a bump as I just found it today and I think it's quite useful.

Also, it really opened my eyes up to just how effective talents that give automatic pips, such as Empty Soul in Ascetic, or ones that take them away, such as Calming Aura, are. Especially if fighting primarily Dark Side users, taking one pip away from them, even at a high force rating, is actually quite painful.

Yes, it is indeed . Also, Channel Agony is exceptionally powerful, since it can add three black pips to a roll! Hence the cost being so high.

1 minute ago, Absol197 said:

Yes, it is indeed . Also, Channel Agony is exceptionally powerful, since it can add three black pips to a roll! Hence the cost being so high.

Yeah, pretty ridiculous. Honestly if I was going Magus, I'd go straight dark side picking all those talents up, the Unmatched Destiny signature ability with the Unleashed power upgrade, and fill out the Heal/Harm tree. What difference does it make to take damage then? Just heal them back from all the husks left in my wake! ?

Looking at the numbers, the Dark Side seems relatively reliable and predictable. And the Light side seems relatively spiky and more likely to fail you on something that should be simple for you when you need it most. That seems to me to be the opposite of how the Light Side and the Dark Side work in cannon (and legends).

1 hour ago, Murth said:

Looking at the numbers, the Dark Side seems relatively reliable and predictable. And the Light side seems relatively spiky and more likely to fail you on something that should be simple for you when you need it most. That seems to me to be the opposite of how the Light Side and the Dark Side work in cannon (and legends).

I think it works quite nicely to represent the temptation of the Dark Side. Especially when a character's low-level, with a Force Rating of 1 or 2, it's quite likely they'll roll their dice and only get Dark Side pips (58% at FR1, 34% at FR2). If you need two Light Side pips, or you've got FR2 and committed one dice, your odds are even worse. Never mind the character, the player will constantly be thinking "I need to make this roll. I can use a Dark Side pip. It's just this once. It won't matter in the long run..."

It was mentioned you could get FR 10. At what XP cost is this?

It needs 7 specialisations including the 3 with +2FR and 4 with +1FR. That's just 270 xps just to bought 6 specialisations. Between 75 and 100 xps to buy the +FR talent in a specialisation tree add between 25 and 50 xps to buy both +1FR talents in trees with two of them. So it'll cost between 600 more xps and 775 more xps to buy each +1FR for a total between 870 xps and 1045xps.

Not very cheap for too much Force Dice that will be useless without any Force Powers bought, all xps being used to raise the FR.

5 minutes ago, WolfRider said:

It needs 7 specialisations including the 3 with +2FR and 4 with +1FR. That's just 270 xps just to bought 6 specialisations. Between 75 and 100 xps to buy the +FR talent in a specialisation tree add between 25 and 50 xps to buy both +1FR talents in trees with two of them. So it'll cost between 600 more xps and 775 more xps to buy each +1FR for a total between 870 xps and 1045xps.

Not very cheap for too much Force Dice that will be useless without any Force Powers bought, all xps being used to raise the FR.

Which specs give you +2FR? The three universals start with FR1 and have Force Rating, but I always read that as you get Force Rating 1 when you take them, if you don't have it already, not that you get +1 just for taking it. If you can then that seems like a bit of an exploit - just take the spec for the Force point, rather than having to work your way down to the Force Rating talent.

Edit: I think the terminology is important. As I remember, the universal specs say "Gain Force Rating 1", not "Increase Force Rating by 1". It's a bit like Defence - Gain means you get it at the stated value, unless you already have it at a higher value, while Increase means you add to what you've got. This makes sense, these three specs are aimed more at EoE and AoR characters who want to be Force-sensitive than at F&D characters.

Seer, Sage and Hermit have 2 talents giving +1FR but no dedication talent.

2 minutes ago, WolfRider said:

Seer, Sage and Hermit have 2 talents giving +1FR but no dedication talent.

Ah, I hadn't noticed that... Looking at Hermit, it'll take 145XP to get both Force Rating talents. You've also got to take into account that all three specs with 2 Force Rating talents are in different careers, so al least two of them will cost an extra 10 XP to buy in the first place.

3 hours ago, Dafydd said:

I think it works quite nicely to represent the temptation of the Dark Side. Especially when a character's low-level, with a Force Rating of 1 or 2, it's quite likely they'll roll their dice and only get Dark Side pips (58% at FR1, 34% at FR2). If you need two Light Side pips, or you've got FR2 and committed one dice, your odds are even worse. Never mind the character, the player will constantly be thinking "I need to make this roll. I can use a Dark Side pip. It's just this once. It won't matter in the long run..."

The Dark Side should be tempting because it feels more powerful, not because the Light Side failed you. I think that would be better represented if when the dice did come up Dark Side, it was more likely to be 2 pips instead of one. The reason I was searching for statistics on force dice was the Light Side was feeling more powerful to me, and the dark side was feeling more consistent, and I wanted to see if the math backed that up. To me it does, and it feels wrong.

Just now, Murth said:

The Dark Side should be tempting because it feels more powerful, not because the Light Side failed you. I think that would be better represented if when the dice did come up Dark Side, it was more likely to be 2 pips instead of one. The reason I was searching for statistics on force dice was the Light Side was feeling more powerful to me, and the dark side was feeling more consistent, and I wanted to see if the math backed that up. To me it does, and it feels wrong.

The way I look at it is that the Light Side requires more patience, more effort, more training, i.e. a higher Force Rating. It's not that the Light Side failed you - you failed the Light Side. The Dark Side feels more powerful because it's easier to make it work when you're inexperienced; "Look, I do this thing that the other Padawans can't, only the fully-trained Knights and Masters!" It's the quick and easy path, why spend years honing your concentration and inner harmony when anger and hate can get you there right now?

Okay, because I'm supremely bored at work, I've crunched some numbers and I reckon this is the most XP-efficient route to Force Rating `10.

Start as a Seeker, take Hermit as your initial specialisation. You have FR1. There are, as WolfRider pointed out, two Force Rating talents in that tree; getting to them will cost you 145XP as you'll have to buy two extra 25 XP talents to unlock them.

After that, you want Navigator, Pathfinder, Sage, Seer and Force-Sensitive Emergent. That's three career specs, as Emergent is Universal, and two non-career, which costs 20+30+40+50+60=200XP, plus another 20 for the non-career premium for a total of 220.

Navigator has one Force Rating talent, which only costs 50 XP to get to as it's only on the furth row and there's a straight run down the tree to it.

Pathfinder will cost 70 to get to Force Rating, it's on the fourth row again but you have to sidestep along that row.

Sage will cost 135 to get to both Force Rating talents.

Seer will cost 140 to get to both FR talents.

Emergent is a straight run down to row 5, so it costs 75.

145+220+50+70+135+140+75=835.

So, you can get to Force Rating 10 in 835 XP. As long as you don't buy any skills. Or Force powers to use your 10 Force dice on.

19 minutes ago, Dafydd said:

The way I look at it is that the Light Side requires more patience, more effort, more training, i.e. a higher Force Rating. It's not that the Light Side failed you - you failed the Light Side. The Dark Side feels more powerful because it's easier to make it work when you're inexperienced; "Look, I do this thing that the other Padawans can't, only the fully-trained Knights and Masters!" It's the quick and easy path, why spend years honing your concentration and inner harmony when anger and hate can get you there right now?

Two padawans are talking. The first says "look, I can lift a rock with the force, just like master did." The second responds "the rock master lifted was bigger than we are, that rock is rather small. I can lift a rock as big as master."

Both padawans have Force Rating `1, and the same upgrades to the move power. However the first one used one pip, and the second one used 2 pips. Which one probably rolled Light Side pips, and which one probably rolled Dark Side pips. And which one seems more likely to be using the Dark Side from a narrative standpoint?

I think we have the same idea as to how it should work narratively, but disagree how that best translates to the mechanics.

12 minutes ago, Murth said:

Two padawans are talking. The first says "look, I can lift a rock with the force, just like master did." The second responds "the rock master lifted was bigger than we are, that rock is rather small. I can lift a rock as big as master."

Both padawans have Force Rating `1, and the same upgrades to the move power. However the first one used one pip, and the second one used 2 pips. Which one probably rolled Light Side pips, and which one probably rolled Dark Side pips. And which one seems more likely to be using the Dark Side from a narrative standpoint?

I think we have the same idea as to how it should work narratively, but disagree how that best translates to the mechanics.

I agree that the system isn't perfect (I've never found an RPG system that is). Using a similar example to yours, the Padawan with FR1 who only uses Light Side pips can only lift the small rock 41.7% of the time. The Padawan who is willing to use the Dark Side can always lift it.

1 minute ago, Dafydd said:

I agree that the system isn't perfect (I've never found an RPG system that is). Using a similar example to yours, the Padawan with FR1 who only uses Light Side pips can only lift the small rock 41.7% of the time. The Padawan who is willing to use the Dark Side can always lift it.

Thank you for helping me understand.