So, I may have accidentally let a character in the Shadow spec get a hold of a stealth field generator. He has the talent that makes it impossible to detect him or his Force use with the Force, and the stealth field makes it very hard to target him visually, and he has the Misdirect power to make it flat-out impossible for characters to detect a target of his choosing (like himself) if the stealth field is insufficient.

So how do you overcome this? Not that I want to build every enemy to be able to bypass his trick. . . the player has a solid, worthwhile build, and I want to reward him for playing it. But it's already become a bit problematic in one battle with a recurring nemesis, and I want to make sure that some fights are appropriately difficult, with the standard tricks not working as well and forcing the characters to improvise and really dig deep to pull out a victory (or to have a fight end up with everyone but the Shadow incapacitated, and the bad guy unaware of the Shadow's very existence).

I'm hesitant to add specific counter-abilities to certain NPCs, though I might be considering it for the ancient Sith Lord the players just popped from his carbonite can.

An adversary with Bad Motivator will do it. The talent doesn't even require the opponent to actually do anything to the stealth field generator.

Despairs rolled while cloaked can also cause disruptions in the field generator or even damage it.

Well, the Seek power has a version at even the basic level that allows the user to see through Force-based illusions, and with the Strength upgrades, you can dispel them if you see through them. That can get a Force-using Nemesis through Misdirect. Also consider that most Nemeses, Force-using or not, should be getting a roll to avoid being affected by Misdirect, so having ranks in Vigilance can help with that as well.

As for the Stealth generator...how much power does that thing need? I'd think a lot. Maybe it works like a personal deflector shield: if the character rolls a Despair, you can spend it to make the stealth field stop working until recharged. And if someone does attack him, they can spend a Triumph to damage the item. If it's as rare as it sounds, the parts are also likely expensive, so it'll cost a lot to keep it in repair. And if he lets it get too damaged, it stops working. If it's destroyed, he probably won't be able to get another one.

I obviously wouldn't use these tricks every time a Triumph or Despair is rolled. As you said, let him use his trick, he's earned it! But let it happen occasionally, so that he's aware that it can fail, and so maybe he won't rely on it as much. OR at least won't complain when it happens at a really bad time when you roll a double Triumph !

For Shroud, there's not much you can do. It does cost a Destiny Point each time, however, so that's something. Also, make sure that there's a way that information about his tactic can get out. If he uses the ability, flip a Destiny Point and tell him, "Oh, you've noticed a bit too late the security camera/fleeing guard on a comlink/etc." Sure, they can destroy the camera or kill the guard, but the information is out there, and so groups or individuals who expect to encounter your party can potentially be informed and ready to counter his tactics. Ion weapons might also auto-disable his stealth generator like a Despair does, so if someone's not Force-sensitive and has reason to be prepared, they may just get a high-powered ion blaster to use.

Those are the primary options I'd recommend.

There are other things to detect him with, chief among them being surroundings. Sprinkle patches of plasticrete around the area for him to do coordination against. Maybe a turbolift that can only hold 650 kilograms is a little close to the safety limit for just the Big bad and his cronies. If he has any artifacts on him, other Force sensitives could feel them close by.

OR

When in doubt, just flood the area with goons. He's got to bump into one at some point, and it deals with the others getting incapped.

OR

Make a copy. Turnabout is fair play, and if he can get cloaking tech, surely the Baddies can with their resources and lack of scruples. Make it a fight to tell where anyone is. Think the Shinobi vs Samurai fight in Samurai Jack.

Well, he "looted" the SFG from a bad guy.

Long story a little less long, I made a homebrew race based on the Predator from the films. Since high tech is prevalent in Star Wars, I thought it would be cool to make them super-low-tech, to the point where working with high technology is actually difficult for them. They can use it just fine, but building/repairing it is hard for them (in this system, represented by Setback dice, which can pretty easily be overcome). So I ran the group through something of an homage to the original Predator, with a Yautalor (my name for the race) Hunter stalking them and some allied Stormtroopers through the jungles of a very hostile planet. They defeated the Yautalor and the player claimed the cloaking device for himself. It does have the "shorts out in water" drawback, like in the films, rationalized not because this device somehow wasn't waterproofed, but because if it really is "bending light" around the wearer, then the differing refraction ratios between the organism itself, the air around it, and the hundreds/thousands of tiny water droplets clinging to it just makes the cloaking device say "Screw this, I'm going home."

I'll look into the Seek power. The Sith nemesis turned on them after they helped him find his daughters, and one of them would certainly have that as a power. That'd be a pleasant wake-me-up for Mr. Invisible Shadow Dude

1 hour ago, ErikModi said:

It does have the "shorts out in water" drawback, like in the films, rationalized not because this device somehow wasn't waterproofed, but because if it really is "bending light" around the wearer, then the differing refraction ratios between the organism itself, the air around it, and the hundreds/thousands of tiny water droplets clinging to it just makes the cloaking device say "Screw this, I'm going home."

That . . . actually makes way more sense than faulty wiring. I can't believe I never thought of this before.

Blast, Anything with Blast will still hit him or her.

Traps will still work especially trip wires, and pressure plates.

Also people can literally resist Misdirect with perception.

Seek negates it.

Any kind of liquid or barrage of dust, foot prints on the ground.

Closing your eyes and listening along with all penalties for fighting blind will work.

Sprinklers. A stray round in a fight hits something and starts a small fire, which triggers the fire suppression system; sprinklers come on and everything gets wet, including your player's stealth generator. Not super difficult to narrate into any indoor fight scene.

Similarly, it could be used purposely by a nemesis who knows something is amiss. Perhaps a footprint left in dust is enough of a clue to tip them off to the use of a cloak, at which point they purposely trigger the sprinklers for the same reason.

Ion grenades, or sources of ionized energy in the environment could also knock it off. Maybe a large power generator that the nemesis can overload, or that the player simply wanders too close to, can deactivate it.

Cloaks like this are light bending devices, but they don't do anything about heat signatures. If your nemesis character has realised there's a sneaky invisible threat from a previous encounter, they may have brought along a thermal imaging device like Scanner Goggles to counter him. If the player is using predator tech, why not give some to the nemesis too?

There's also an overlooked but obvious choice; have the encounter happen somewhere that stealth isn't really possible. Somewhere that the environment is forcibly interactive like a dense forest with dried leaves underfoot and lots of low hanging branches to move out of the way. Between disturbed and noisy leaves, and branches moving, even invisible enemies can be targeted with setback for firing roughly toward them.

Some kind of bestial opponent that relies on smell and hearing would probably not care about light being redirected.

Smoke/Mist/Fog, so you can see (with great difficulty) them moving at medium range or below, from the movement of the visible atmosphere.

So. . . would Seek seeing through Force-based illusions negate the Shroud ability of him being undetectable through the Force? Since he's using the Force to make it seem like he's not using the Force, and using the Force to make him undetectable in the Force?

Or would that be like putting a Bag of Holding inside a Portable Hole?

There is no need to do anything fancy just use the RAW. You can spend a single advantage to "Notice a single important point in the ongoing conflict..." (pg 212 F&D), that can be related to someone using a Stealth Field Generator(SFG). You shouldn't give their exact position away but you can give them something to attack with a few Setbacks for being invisible (see pg 219 F&D - Concealment). Since +3 Setback is suggested for Heavy Fog, Thick Smoke, darkness etc. being invisible would be even better (I'd suggest +4). A Stealth Field is essentially Concealment so this is RAW/RAI and with such a high number of Setbacks your Player shouldn't whinge too much

Also in the description of the Stealth Field Generator (pg 186 EotE) it states that these "are prone to collapsing " so that means you can justify, without being a buzzkill, that it will always collapse if that Player rolls a Despair when it's activated. You could, and probably should, also declare that if an NPC is attacking that PC and you roll a Triumph on that attack you will always spend it on collapsing the field, you should make these known before the Player uses it any further so they know ahead of time what to expect. Unlike specifically countering the SFG's effects neither of these rulings gimp the device or are arbitrary because they are based on the RAW and just make sense.

PS. you should also consider the SFG's Condition and adjust the ease of collapse accordingly: Minor Damage - Collapse on 3 Threat, Moderate - 2 Threat, Major - 1 Threat. And make it really hard to repair due to it's extreme rarity.

PPS. Always flip a DP and upgrade, if possible, the PC's roll if no Challenge die is already part of their rolls and justify this by saying it's to make sure there is a possibility of collapse.

You could also use Suppress Mastery:

Quote

The user may make a Suppress power check along with an opposed Discipline vs. Discipline check targeting another Force user within short range. If the user spends and succeeds on the check, the target Force user immediately uncommits all (FD) and ends all ongoing effects of Force powers and Force talents that required committed (FD)

Although this specifies committed Force Dice it's perfectly reasonable to allow this Power to overcome and negate the Shroud Talent on a successful opposed Discipline check. I'd suggest only using this when it's apparent another Force User is nearby before they try it, ie. after they use a Force Power such as Misdirect. You can justify this by ruling that although they may be Shrouded their use of the Force is not . Additionally the Suppress Power is wicked cool...

There was a tv show in the early 2000's on SciFi called The Invisible Man. And the main character was, to no surprise, able to turn invisible, but there were several limitations to it, including things like duration, and a toxicity to the effects that he had to deal with long term.

Also, most episodes they would show somebody being clever and thinking of a way to counter his invisibility talent, with a bit of preplanning and cunning. Might check out the show.

Off the top of my head though:

Various forms of powder/liquids that would adhere to his body.

Pressure plates don't care if someone is invisible, they just care that they have weight, so traps set up with those in mind, perhaps including the above mentioned powder/liquids would make for a good combination.

I don't know anything about the device in question, but if it doesn't completely mask the entire spectrum, things like IR scanners, UV scanners, X-Ray, etc, would likely spot him.

Electrical scramblers, and EMP devices should likely short out the device itself, given it's a bit of high tech gadgetry.

Really good acoustic equipment picking up footfalls, breathing, heartbeats.

As someone above mentioned, anything with blast won't really care if he's invisible or not. Again, this is assuming that a type of trap has been set up, to completely turn an enclosed space into pain, hard to avoid pain when it's coming from everywhere.

1 hour ago, KungFuFerret said:

There was a tv show in the early 2000's on SciFi called The Invisible Man. And the main character was, to no surprise, able to turn invisible, but there were several limitations to it, including things like duration, and a toxicity to the effects that he had to deal with long term.

Wow, someone else remembers that show!

Good advice, all. The SFG I have is a bit different that ones in the books, because I didn't think those rules really captured what I wanted to accomplish. This one Upgrades the ability of all Stealth checks made while it's active once, and Upgrades the difficulty of all attacks made while it's active once, and that's really it. So no additional Setbacks for targeting the invisible, because that's baked into its rules already (and seemed like the right penalty, for me, for attacking someone you can't actually see). And it does, indeed, only work in the visible spectrum, so even Chiss could probably see through it at least partially.

I'm more concerned with the combo of SFG and/or Misdirect making him undetectable by non-Force means, and Shroud making him undetectable via the Force, so he might well be able to spend an entire encounter with the enemy completely unaware he's even there. Now, him making an attack should make his presence known (he was defeated with a thrown lightsaber after firing at the Sith Lord last session), and getting around that for appropriately difficult fights without fiating ways around it because I want this bad guy to be immune to his trick.

Though, the group's primary opponents are Ubese, who wear armored environment suits all the time anyway, so adding some built-in IR goggles to their kit would make perfect sense. . .

Yeah that show was pretty fun. I loved his sidekick in that show, he just made the show for me.

I think the key thing is for there to be some group/person, who is aware he has the device, and has taken steps to counter it. If it's some random mook who doesn't have any clue this guy has this stuff, then it would make sense for them to be tricked.

Remember, you can always use a Despair to make the device malfunction and not work properly from time to time. I mean, the thing about storytelling where someone has a really powerful device/skill that gives them a huge edge over their opponents is that it often fails, or else there is no tension. There should always be some flaw/weakness baked into any really powerful ability, or else it truly is OP. If you think the combination as is, makes the PC too powerful, talk to the player about it. Tell him that you have concerns about the broken nature of the combination of abilities, giving him an obscene edge in any encounter. And see if he's cool with you adding some kind of additional quirk to the device, that makes using it either more risky, or has some other drawback that would become problematic for him overtime (the quicksilver poisoning for example).

Have you considered throwing them up against a Miraluka?