please give feedback for this idea

OLD IDEA

EDIT: FYI readers - The above item has been changed several times during this conversation. What you are seeing is not what most of the comments here are about. END EDIT

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Is this a proposed item? There is a good deal I don't like about it. The Bardottan Sphere is a unique ancient talisman that increases the users Force Rating by 1. These robes cost 1/5th as much and nearly double the wearer's force rating. Plus, it upgrades force power checks? Three times? I assume that means combined force power checks, where another skill is being rolled. I can't find a precedent for pricing that ability, but I don't think that 10,000 would cover it (never mind the boost in force).

It costs 2000 less, and is more common, than Jedi Temple Guard Armor, but greatly increases a force users powers. Imagine the Emperor with these robes.

It feels more like a D&D item than something out of the Star Wars universe.

Does "When making a force power check may upgrade it 3 times" mean upgrading the difficulty?

So, this reads a bit weird. I'm going to break it down in the old RAI vs RAW style.

RAW: it seems like you intend the robes to allow the user to roll three extra force dice, and then add further results based on the outcome. There are three major issues with this:

Firstly, there's no mechanic to let you upgrade force dice in the same way you would ability dice.

Secondly, adding results as a simple bonus per die also has no precedent in the game. Perhaps adding a single force point to the roll by taking strain, but certainly not a simple "roll one, get one free" scenario.

Lastly, it is incredibly, desperately broken.

RAI: it feels like it's intended to be a combined force power check boost, so I'll treat it as such here, but it still has three major issues.

Firstly, upgrading a combined check 3 times without restrictions is incredibly easy to abuse in everything from Enhance checks to spec talents. Unless you mean upgrade the difficulty of the check three times, in which case you're introducing a significant setback which would actually counterbalance in the other direction. One is too positive, the other is too negative. Which one you meant is for you to clarify, though.

Secondly, even as a combined power check, rolling with just a force rating of 2 would put you at an advantage one could considered as undeserved. Force ratings are purposely costly in XP and hard to even reach, signifying increased life experience. This is a cheap bypass to that.

Lastly, this is still incredibly, desperately broken.

Even if it was a triple difficulty upgrade, there's still plenty of ways to pass that and surge into an excess of Force power whenever you feel like it. Especially at the price point, and with no drawbacks, this just feels like a way to sidestep actually grinding up the force rating like anyone else.

So Storm, I've noticed a trend in your posts that involve increasing Force points a lot. I think there's a chance you might not fully understand just how much you can accomplish with a few Force points, with enough XP.

With just what you can get from the Force-Sensitive Exile spec, you can pull off some seriously crazy Force Unleashed stuff. If you buy all of the Move power, a light sider has a 6.25% of generating 4 pips without needing to spend a Destiny Point. That's enough to throw up to five Silhouette 4 objects (such as YT-1300s O_O) at up to Extreme range, which can be used to attack. Think about that for a second: throwing five light freighters at a target a kilometer away. At Force rating 2.

I can understand what you're after, you want the Force to be amazing. But it already is amazing, you just need a lot of XP. So, if starting characters aren't powerful enough for you, what you really need is to just up the XP level you start at. If Knight Level isn't enough, just bump it up a bit more.

14 hours ago, TheSapient said:

Is this a proposed item? There is a good deal I don't like about it. The Bardottan Sphere is a unique ancient talisman that increases the users Force Rating by 1. These robes cost 1/5th as much and nearly double the wearer's force rating. Plus, it upgrades force power checks? Three times? I assume that means combined force power checks, where another skill is being rolled. I can't find a precedent for pricing that ability, but I don't think that 10,000 would cover it (never mind the boost in force).

It costs 2000 less, and is more common, than Jedi Temple Guard Armor, but greatly increases a force users powers. Imagine the Emperor with these robes.

It feels more like a D&D item than something out of the Star Wars universe.

apologies i missed the word "difficulty" in the description

11 hours ago, NakedDex said:

So, this reads a bit weird. I'm going to break it down in the old RAI vs RAW style.

RAW: it seems like you intend the robes to allow the user to roll three extra force dice, and then add further results based on the outcome. There are three major issues with this:

Firstly, there's no mechanic to let you upgrade force dice in the same way you would ability dice.

Secondly, adding results as a simple bonus per die also has no precedent in the game. Perhaps adding a single force point to the roll by taking strain, but certainly not a simple "roll one, get one free" scenario.

Lastly, it is incredibly, desperately broken.

RAI: it feels like it's intended to be a combined force power check boost, so I'll treat it as such here, but it still has three major issues.

Firstly, upgrading a combined check 3 times without restrictions is incredibly easy to abuse in everything from Enhance checks to spec talents. Unless you mean upgrade the difficulty of the check three times, in which case you're introducing a significant setback which would actually counterbalance in the other direction. One is too positive, the other is too negative. Which one you meant is for you to clarify, though.

Secondly, even as a combined power check, rolling with just a force rating of 2 would put you at an advantage one could considered as undeserved. Force ratings are purposely costly in XP and hard to even reach, signifying increased life experience. This is a cheap bypass to that.

Lastly, this is still incredibly, desperately broken.

Even if it was a triple difficulty upgrade, there's still plenty of ways to pass that and surge into an excess of Force power whenever you feel like it. Especially at the price point, and with no drawbacks, this just feels like a way to sidestep actually grinding up the force rating like anyone else.

is item only works on force power checks so protect/unleash, and nemeses that can oppose your power and force a power check this would not work on powers like enhance, farsight or forsee.

as for broken this is my first attempt at building a piece of equipment, so apologies.

1 hour ago, Absol197 said:

So Storm, I've noticed a trend in your posts that involve increasing Force points a lot. I think there's a chance you might not fully understand just how much you can accomplish with a few Force points, with enough XP.

With just what you can get from the Force-Sensitive Exile spec, you can pull off some seriously crazy Force Unleashed stuff. If you buy all of the Move power, a light sider has a 6.25% of generating 4 pips without needing to spend a Destiny Point. That's enough to throw up to five Silhouette 4 objects (such as YT-1300s O_O) at up to Extreme range, which can be used to attack. Think about that for a second: throwing five light freighters at a target a kilometer away. At Force rating 2.

I can understand what you're after, you want the Force to be amazing. But it already is amazing, you just need a lot of XP. So, if starting characters aren't powerful enough for you, what you really need is to just up the XP level you start at. If Knight Level isn't enough, just bump it up a bit more.

yes i understand that a trend is forming that may be because i play a consular as a battlemage together with the fact that i generate ideas quickly for what i understand, aka. how to play a battlemage force user

6 hours ago, Absol197 said:

So Storm, I've noticed a trend in your posts that involve increasing Force points a lot. I think there's a chance you might not fully understand just how much you can accomplish with a few Force points, with enough XP.

I think this hits the nail on the head.

Both of his suggestions thus far revolve around "how can I quickly ramp up my character's power without paying XP?"

Which as you noted goes against the entire grain of this system, in that becoming a powerful Force user isn't meant to be fast and easy. The devs in the past have even said the intent was to follow the path of progression that Luke did in the original films, where he gradually increased in power and ability as time passed in between the films.

Unfortunately, a number of folks these days tend to focus on how powerful characters like Obi-Wan (trained pretty much since birth in a monastic culture) and Anakin (a prodigy literally conceived by the Force) were in the prequels. While I can't entirely fault them for wanting to be that level of awesome right out the gate, when you get down to it this system wasn't designed to let the PCs begin play as full-fledged Jedi Knights. As you said, beginning play as Knight Level (and taking advantage of the Mentor bonus as well) can go a long way; I've just started playing in a TFA-era campaign with a Human Sentinel/Shien Expert, and between those two (Knight Level and Mentor Bonus), I've made a PC that feels pretty close to what we see Obi-Wan accomplish near the start of TPM (I opted to invest in Influence instead of Enhance, so no crazy leaps or speed runs for my PC), and he was on the cusp of Jedi Knighthood in that film (Qui-Gon even admitting there's little more he could teach Obi-Wan about mid-way through the film). True, I'll probably need to make use of the occasional black pip, but then again the system is built around the idea that PCs will be using black pips to generate Force pips, especially when they're at Force Rating 1, which plays into the ESB dialogue about how Luke says he can feel the Force, to which Ben counters that he cannot control it.

There's also the matter that if a PC opts to focus on one of the Lightsaber Form-based specs, then they're generally not going to be as potent a Force user simply to balance out just how much more potent lightsabers are in this game; a Breach 1 weapon is nothing to sneeze at, and a PC that's focused on one of the six LS Form specs is going to be able to do some pretty impressive stunts that quite easily enable them to dominate a combat encounter.

Now, if one wants to play a character that's a powerful Force user right out the gate, then I'd suggest looking up WotC's Saga Edition line, as it's ridiculously simple for a 1st level Human Jedi PC to be insanely dominant with using the Force due to how the skill check system vs. target's defenses work. I've played a fair number of Jedi PCs in that system, including one that got dubbed "the teenage telekinetic wrecking ball" that could give Starkiller of Force Unleashed fame a run for his money in terms of over-the-top Force stunts (such as using a full-grown Rancor as a bowling ball and pushing a star destroyer back into orbit and into another star destroyer).

Was that with or without Unleashed feats?

My problem with Saga is twofold:

First, it's very specialized. With the way classes, talents, and class skills work, it's really hard to build a character that doesn't play to one specific archetype, and if you do what you need to build outside that archetype, you're kind of crippling yourself. If, for instance, you want a Jedi who's actually a capable diplomat and negotiator, you have to take at least some Noble levels or similar, and quickly lose facility with whacking bad guys with your glowbat.

Second, absolutely everything is a character option. While all the additional sourcebooks are each made of awesome, it quickly becomes apparent that if it isn't a standard combat option in the core rules, you need a feat or talent to pull it off. Want to give a swift kick to the family jewels? Need this feat. Want to throw sand in an opponent's eyes? Need that talent.

This system is much more forgiving to play to different types of characters, the "cross-class" system is actually a benefit instead of a punishment, and you have a lot of freedom to build any character to do anything you want. It's just a question of how much XP you need.

My rule of thumb for my Prequel-era-type powerful is: apprentices start at Knight level, about 500 earned XP for actual Jedi Knighthood, and about 1,000 earned XP for Jedi Master.

2 hours ago, ErikModi said:

My rule of thumb for my Prequel-era-type powerful is: apprentices start at Knight level, about 500 earned XP for actual Jedi Knighthood, and about 1,000 earned XP for Jedi Master.

This really is the answer to what Stormbourne wants to do. Rather than creating equipment that elevates a character to high power levels, just start the campaign with high XP characters.

3 hours ago, ErikModi said:

Was that with or without Unleashed feats?

With, though since my PC took the feat before we even knew exactly what it did he was a little more permissive with some of the zany stunts my PC got away with.

As for Saga Edition, I agree that it has its flaws (every RPG every written does; just a matter of how tolerable are those flaws to the gaming experience one wants to have), one of which is that going "against the grain" of what a particular class is meant to do winds up hamstringing the character. There's some of that in the FFG system (playing a Hired Gun that's focused on Charm and Deception for instance, or a Mystic/Advisor that's focused on using Ranged: Heavy), but it's not nearly as punitive in the FFG system because there's no level cap to deal with; Saga Edition capped at 20, and I've lost track of the number of pre-planned progression builds for that system that players would remain slavishly devoted to. But that's part and parcel of it being based upon the d20 system, itself derived from D&D 3.X and it's "a rule for everything and everything has rules" mindset.

As for needing talents and feats for certain types of actions, I think a fair number of GMs overlooked the simple fact of "doing this sort of thing provides a +2 (if helpful) or -2 (if detrimental) bonus to the next check." Maybe it's just be, but I saw that a talent around kicking a bloke in the nadgers was less a "you need this talent to punt a tosser in the junk" and more "you know exactly where to hit and how hard to do so to make this bozo's eyes water in pain as they clutch themselves and whimper." D&D 4e was outright lousy with the "you need special thing to do a thing!" but that was just 4e design in general due to it being more of a boardgame-focused tactical combat simulation than a proper RPG (to be fair, I had fun playing 4e, but I knew what I was getting into each time I did).

I think it needs an integrated Lightsabre gun otherwise people might think these robes were a little too Munchkin.

updated for clarification

I'm not trying to beat you up here, but I don't understand. The example uses Enhance, which you previously said would not be helped by the robes.

Also, a "Force Power Check" is when you just roll force dice. A "Combined Force Power Check" uses force dice combined with a skill check. You also don't need to specify that the skill check needs to succeed for the force power to come into play. That is already in the rules.

Regardless, this item is game-breakingly powerful, and really just does not fit with the way the game is built or the universe it is set in. If there were a bunch of these robes out there, the Emperor would have every single one of them locked away. Being seen with one would bring the Empire crashing down on you.

Mechanically speaking, a character with these robes would no longer need to work their way down specialization trees to raise their force rating. Instead, they would just invest in skills to make sure they passes their skill checks.

4 hours ago, TheSapient said:

Mechanically speaking, a character with these robes would no longer need to work their way down specialization trees to raise their force rating.

Considering both this and his prior suggested house rule item, it does seem that's his general intent, is to get around the need to increase Force Rating via purchasing the talent, and have "instant awesome Force user" for little to no effort on the character's part.

And it is fine if that is what his table wants to do. I guess I wonder then what is being asked of the community here.

Or even the purpose of creating an item. Just start all Force-users at FR 5 and be done with it.

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Considering both this and his prior suggested house rule item, it does seem that's his general intent, is to get around the need to increase Force Rating via purchasing the talent, and have "instant awesome Force user" for little to no effort on the character's part.

um no neither of my two post are about OP force users, the first, being our house rules on the force and the dice, was to designed to create a tension for force user as light side was specifically supposed to have a disadvantage against the dark side (aka. better temptation of the dark side), this one actually rewards skill and experience because

1. the ability affects your force dice so if you have more you get more

2. it's side effect would be a turn off for many, for lack of a better phrase, low level force users

3. it only works on high end force powers, the only two powers that are affected by this before a player becomes knight level are enhanced and battle meditation

oh and let me clarify this here and now: no this would not work to make all force users wearing this super fast (foresee initiative upgrade) as that is not a check with opposing dice it is reaction time

7 hours ago, TheSapient said:

I'm not trying to beat you up here, but I don't understand. The example uses Enhance, which you previously said would not be helped by the robes.

Also, a "Force Power Check" is when you just roll force dice. A "Combined Force Power Check" uses force dice combined with a skill check. You also don't need to specify that the skill check needs to succeed for the force power to come into play. That is already in the rules.

Regardless, this item is game-breakingly powerful, and really just does not fit with the way the game is built or the universe it is set in. If there were a bunch of these robes out there, the Emperor would have every single one of them locked away. Being seen with one would bring the Empire crashing down on you.

Mechanically speaking, a character with these robes would no longer need to work their way down specialization trees to raise their force rating. Instead, they would just invest in skills to make sure they passes their skill checks.

apologies at the time i was exclusively thinking of the right hand branch of the power which doesn't use a power check just out right tells you what you can do

yes the emperor would want this on lock down as a this knight class armour would allow force users (players) an edge in a world where he holds all the cards

while more valid please see above for the final point

12 minutes ago, Stormbourne said:

apologies at the time i was exclusively thinking of the right hand branch of the power which doesn't use a power check just out right tells you what you can do

yes the emperor would want this on lock down as a this knight class armour would allow force users (players) an edge in a world where he holds all the cards

while more valid please see above for the final point

The right hand side of of Enhance does use a power check.

The Emperor would want this because it increases the user's force powers by 75% (!)

I don't know what final point is above.

Can I ask what you are asking for by posting this? Are you asking if it is reasonable?

4 minutes ago, TheSapient said:

The right hand side of of Enhance does use a power check.

The Emperor would want this because it increases the user's force powers by 75% (!)

I don't know what final point is above.

Can I ask what you are asking for by posting this? Are you asking if it is reasonable?

collecting information about how to present myself within this forum, asking whether it is reasonable, and seeing if there are any people worth ignoring

also where'd the 75% figure come from?

1 minute ago, Stormbourne said:

collecting information about how to present myself within this forum, asking whether it is reasonable, and seeing if there are any people worth ignoring

also where'd the 75% figure come from?

The average die roll is 1.3333 pips. Your item raises that to 2.3333 pips. (2.3333-1.3333)/1.3*100% = 75%

And remember that force dice are progressively more expensive to acquire. Going from 4 to 7, which your item basically allows, is a LOT of XP. There is already a unique item in the game that costs 5 times as much, and gives a character 1 extra force die.

On 2/2/2018 at 10:07 AM, TheSapient said:

The average die roll is 1.3333 pips. Your item raises that to 2.3333 pips. (2.3333-1.3333)/1.3*100% = 75%

And remember that force dice are progressively more expensive to acquire. Going from 4 to 7, which your item basically allows, is a LOT of XP. There is already a unique item in the game that costs 5 times as much, and gives a character 1 extra force die.

if you think the sage's robes should have a price similar to the Bardottan Sphere that is easily changed

i also went through the the current force power find if and where they allow for a combined force power check and listed them above (happens a bit more often than i first thought)

23 minutes ago, Stormbourne said:

if you think the sage's robes should have a price similar to the Bardottan Sphere that is easily changed

The robes are many times more powerful than the Sphere. I don't think they should be in the game at all, for the many reasons stated repeatedly in this thread. I don't have anything else to add.

7 minutes ago, TheSapient said:

The robes are many times more powerful than the Sphere. I don't think they should be in the game at all, for the many reasons stated repeatedly in this thread. I don't have anything else to add.

what do you think would be acceptable?

alt idea when making a combine force power check may dedicate force dice to downgrade the difficulty once per force dice committed

What is it you're trying to do with this item that can't be done via the normal rules?

Once you hit Force Rating 2, a whole lot of possibilities open up, in Committing a Force Die for one effect while having one left to roll for others (or Committing two to different effects).

Once you hit Force Rating 4, you can do just about anything you want, if you're willing to take some Strain and Conflict to use Dark pips. And taking Conflict is actually a GOOD thing, as that's what lets you increase your morality. Unless you're generating 5+ Conflict every time you do generate Conflict, you will trend upwards on the Morality chart pretty easily. The only way to ensure dropping it to generate more than ten every time. It's not easy to fall to the Dark Side without a concerted effort in this system.

Once you hit Force Rating 6, you can pretty much do anything at all you want, and probably without taking Strain or Conflict from using Dark pips.

There's just no reason to up the power of Force-users in this system, as they're pretty well balanced against non-Force-Users, and most campaigns will probably feature at least one non-Force-Sensitive character (or, at least, a "minimally" Force-Sensitive character, who doesn't bother with Force Rating and Force Powers and sinks all their XP into whacking things with a glowbat).

changed armour ability to alternate idea