Oh, I came up with another minor tweak! This one is really simple (some might call it "pointless"), but I really like it regardless .

So, for all basic attributes a character can have, the talent that makes them better has a different name than the attribute does. Characteristics are increased by Dedication; wound threshold is increased by Toughened; strain threshold by Grit; and soak by Enduring. But Force rating is increased by Force Rating? That's not right! Not only does it make it very easy to confuse the attribute with the talent, it's just not a very evocative name for a talent. So I changed it! Tada!

Strong in the Force

Ranked: Yes.

Specializations: Lots.

Force Talent. Gain +1 Force rating per rank of Strong in the Force.

Makes sense to me! The name of the talent always bugged me too

So something I've been working on for a bit is some tweaks to a couple of the existing Force powers, specifically Enhance and Move.

Now to preface, the changes to Move are not to "nerf" or "balance" the power. If anything, it overall probably makes Move-based attacks a bit more powerful, but I'm largely okay with that.

Enhance Revisions
- Combine the Control upgrades for horizontal and vertical Force Leap into a single Control upgrade, allowing the user to move to any location within short range, with this upgrade placed in Row 2.
- Move the Range upgrade down from Row 4 to Row 3.
- Move the Control upgrade for Force Leap as a maneuver down from Row 5 to Row 4.
- Add a new 10XP Control upgrade in Row 5 with the following text: When performing a Force Leap, the user may move to engage a target that is within range.

So that last one is a very watered-down version of Hawk-Bat Swoop, loosing much of the special perks of the talent (spending FP to add Advantage to a combat check) but is more generally available. Plus, it was a fun ability from the old KOTOR games, one that my Jedi Guardian PC builds used quite often, and it's something we see other Jedi doing in the various media, such as Anakin making a leaping attack at Obi-Wan to kick off their duel in RotS.

Move Revisions
- Remove the Row 2 Control upgrade to hurl objects with a ranged combat check using Discipline, which is now rolled into the basic Move power, with the caveat that attacking with a Silhouette 0 object is done against an Easy difficulty, and has the Knockdown weapon quality.
- Move the Control upgrade to pull objects from Row 4 down to Row 3, and increase the cost to 10XP.
- Move the Control upgrade to manipulate objects from Row 5 down to Row 4.
- Add a new Control upgrade that adds the Concussive quality to an attack made with a hurled object, as well as allowing Knockdown to be triggered with a FP instead of 2 advantage, and costs 20XP.
- Strength upgrade wording is changed to account for hurled object damage (10 x Silhouette above 0) and that the difficulty of the Discipline ranged combat check is increased by one per Silhouette (ex: hurling a Silhouette 2 object has a Hard difficulty)
- Magnitude upgrade wording is changed to include wording that attacking with multiple hurled objects uses the rules for Autofire.

I got the initial idea for this change while working on some pre-gens for a convention module, as well as thinking back to Saga Edition (which I very much enjoyed) which allowed for attacking using tiny hurled objects just for being trained in the Use the Force skill. Increasing the difficulty to Easy instead of Simple for attacking with Silhouette 0 objects does seem to address the increased utility of the basic Move power since it gives any character who buys it a Force-based attack right out the gate. Adding Knockdown is a concession to us seeing all the instances of people being blasted by Force push/slams and knocked on their hindquarters, and frankly was something I was by and large doing anyway, so this is just codifying it.Strength upgrades with regards to hurled objects are still very damaging, but are now a little harder to pull off, and by the rules you're capped at Silhouette 4 for attacking since that's a Formidable difficulty and hurling anything bigger falls into the realm of Impossible difficulty checks.

I had considered leaving the fine manipulation Control upgrade where it was originally, but it just felt odd to have the final Control upgrade cost 15XP while the one directly below it (the Control upgrade to add Concussive quality) was 20XP. I probably could have priced the Concussive upgrade at 15XP, but given how potent Concussive is and how infrequently it shows up, it felt more like a Mastery-type ability and so became the Row 5 upgrade, pushing the fine manipulation upgrade to earlier in the tree.

I've put them into a single PDF that is probably easier to make sense of than what I posted above.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bukiqqpxz5g6o25/Revised Force Powers.pdf?dl=0

Edit: Tweaked the new Row 5 Control Upgrade based on some useful feedback so that the FP activation only applies to Knockdown; you've got to spend advantage to trigger Concussive as always. Also fixed the attachment so that all the Strength Upgrades are connected appropriately.

I'm still waiting for your Autofire fix... 40 damage no waiting and available for starting characters unlike Move that requires 1000 xp.

10 hours ago, Decorus said:

I'm still waiting for your Autofire fix... 40 damage no waiting and available for starting characters unlike Move that requires 1000 xp.

Scrap my earlier response.

Sorry, not playing your little games. Welcome to my block list.

On 3/8/2018 at 7:12 PM, Decorus said:

I'm still waiting for your Autofire fix... 40 damage no waiting and available for starting characters unlike Move that requires 1000 xp.

I said it before. Auto-fire should require spending 2 success, not 2 advantage, and it largely fixes the damage issue. Each time you trigger Auto-fire this way, it reduces the damage that each individual shot can do.

Say you rolled really, really well. 5 success, 4 advantage, with a blaster with base damage 9. By current rules, you could trigger auto-fire twice, and each hit would do 9+those 5 success, for three hits at 14. 42 damage.

With my ruling, on that same roll of 5 success and 4 advantage, you could spend 4 success for 3 hits at 10 damage, and have 4 advantage to either trigger a crit or do something else narratively interesting.

Against a minion group of 4 Stormtroopers, the end result will be pretty much the same. However, against something a bit tougher, like a rival or a nemesis, this can make a huge difference. Say these attacks are against a Darktrooper, soak 8. By current rules, those three hits at 14 damage would inflict a total of 18 wounds to the Dark Trooper, nearly instantly dropping what is meant to be a major threat. By my ruling, you would instead inflict 6 wound, along with a crit. Less damaging, more narratively interesting.

That fixes nothing, because if I'm not mistaken you are more likely to roll successes then advantages which means you decrease the damage and increase the number of times they can hit things which in fact increases the damage they are doing since they can hit a single target multiple times.

3 hours ago, Decorus said:

That fixes nothing, because if I'm not mistaken you are more likely to roll successes then advantages which means you decrease the damage and increase the number of times they can hit things which in fact increases the damage they are doing since they can hit a single target multiple times.

I don't feel the statistically small increase from switching from advantage to success outweighs the massive reduction in damage per hit. Try itat the table before claiming it's still broken. I've been running a campaign for a year with this homerule, and have had none of the issues that normally crop up from auto-fire and linked.

Another big issue with auto-fire right now is the number of ways to get free advantage. There aren't many ways to get free success. My version is way less easy to abuse.

Hey look I just rolled 6 successes hmm I could say deal 14 damage or I could with Jury rig turn that into 5 9 damage hits.

Still not seeing how thats an improvement.

I'm fairly certain undoing your house rule would have zero effect on your game, because its not that you fixed the problem. Its that you made a fix for a problem that never existed.

Seriously try trusting your players more.

39 minutes ago, Decorus said:

Hey look I just rolled 6 successes hmm I could say deal 14 damage or I could with Jury rig turn that into 5 9 damage hits.

Still not seeing how thats an improvement.

I'm fairly certain undoing your house rule would have zero effect on your game, because its not that you fixed the problem. Its that you made a fix for a problem that never existed.

Seriously try trusting your players more.

Against a soak 8 enemy? Five 9 damage hits is gonna deal a whole whopping 5 wound. Versus the 6 that the 14 damage shot would have done. You're not taking soak into consideration, when it's actually a pretty vital part of the calculations here.

And again, comparing it to what auto-fire does with the current system, my version deala vastly less damage.

For what it's worth, I do trust my players. One of my players is the one who pointed out how ridiculous auto-fire can get when he jury-rigs a superior blaster, and suggested I try to find a fix.

Also, it's funny you're saying that I made a fix for a problem that never existed, when you're the one calling for a fix for auto-fire, so you clearly feel it's a problem.

Autofire is mostly broken by players who expect to be Rambo in every single scene. If your players go everywhere with a Light Repeater then that’s why it’s so broken, even a real soldier doesn’t take a fully automatic rifle out to dinner.

From a purely simultaneous perspective Autofire is exactly as deadly as it should be, yes even the jury rigged version. Just ask the Turks at D-Day and Gallipoli how great a machine gun is at killing minions.

12 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

Autofire is mostly broken by players who expect to be Rambo in every single scene. If your players go everywhere with a Light Repeater then that’s why it’s so broken, even a real soldier doesn’t take a fully automatic rifle out to dinner.

From a purely simultaneous perspective Autofire is exactly as deadly as it should be, yes even the jury rigged version. Just ask the Turks at D-Day and Gallipoli how great a machine gun is at killing minions.

Exactly. As someone who has actually fired automatic weapons (including the venerable M-60 machine gun), The mechanics for autofire in this system are perfectly fine for dealing with how deadly autofire is "supposed" to be (in other words, very deadly ). Any "fixes" to make it "less deadly" are missing the point.