I'm still wrapping my head around the force powers but I think I'm starting to get it. I read through the FAQ and it helped, but I'd just like to ask a few clarifying questions for move.

My character wants to attack with move by blasting a silhouette one individual (or minion group since they're one entity) with a force attack. I have the move power, one strength upgrade, one range upgrade, and the control upgrade. I roll a discipline check with my force dice and need one FP to use move, and one FP for strength to effect a sil one object and I inflict 10 points of damage + successes.

• Is this correct?
• If I didn't activate the strength upgrade would it be only 5 points of damage or I simply couldn't effect the target?
• If I had the FP and was able to activate strength twice it would still be limited to 10 damage since the target was sil one or would it go up to 20?
• If the target was at medium range I would need one additional FP to activate range correct?
• Can this attack crit?
• What is the difficulty of the check? The rules say the difficulty is the silhouette of the object being thrown but if it's just a force blast what would it be?

Using an auto-fire effect requires the magnitude upgrade. If I activate magnitude once I could using the autofire rules (increased difficulty, two advantage to activate, highest target difficulty) to hit the same target twice or multiple targets. If I only had one magnitude upgrade purchased I would need to activate magnitude once per additional hit. If I had two purchased, I could hit twice for each force point. Is this correct?

Do I have to actually throw something at the target to do damage? We see both in the movies, Maul and Vader both hurl random objects at their targets. Qui Gon and Obi Wan blast droids with a push effect sending them flying back in pieces. Reading the FAQ, move is designed to mimic the force push effect, but the text for attacking doesn't really address it. Without throwing objects, and just using a force push/blast style attack, does the move power overshadow the unleash power? It would appear that unlike move, unleash can crit and the damage can scale outside of silhouette, so I would say no.

The silhouette of the object (or person) thrown is what determines damage. So, if you hurl a Silhouette One object, it does 10 wounds to the target hit as well as the object hurled. IF you hurl a Silhouette two object, its twenty wounds, etc.

Also, Move is one of two powers used to emulate the Force Push effect. The other is Bind 's movement upgrade, which, on top of immobilizing the target (as per the base power) pushes a target away from the user by one range band, or pulls the target towards the user by one range band.

Building on what Tramp Graphics has said, I would say there are even three powers that can emulate a telekinetic attack.

Move can be used to hurl objects at the target, with a fairly standard Ranged Attack. You can also slam the target into walls and such, but I would always require an opposed roll to move a sentient. I also include some sort of insurance against being tossed off a cliff. Not a big fan of Save-or-Die effects.

Bind is usually in the "crushing and squeezing your enemy's lungs" department, but there's no reason you can't say that you just slammed your target into the wall and held him there.

Unleash is also good at representing an extremely aggressive slam attack. It doesn't have to be lightning and such. About 5:15 in this video , the Jedi uses such a power. Really, you could narrate it as any one of them, but to me it feels like a pretty solid Unleash.

Short answer: multiple powers in this game could look exactly the same to describe them. And that's okay.

28 minutes ago, The Grand Falloon said:

Building on what Tramp Graphics has said, I would say there are even three powers that can emulate a telekinetic attack.

<Snip>

Bind is usually in the "crushing and squeezing your enemy's lungs" department, but there's no reason you can't say that you just slammed your target into the wall and held him there.

<snip>

Short answer: multiple powers in this game could look exactly the same to describe them. And that's okay.

That is, of course if you're using the Dark Side when using Bind . Otherwise, the base power just immobilizes them.

57 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

That is, of course if you're using the Dark Side when using Bind . Otherwise, the base power just immobilizes them.

True enough. There's also the upgrade that causes the target to suffer Strain in order to take any actions. Awesome upgrade, but I'm not entirely sure how to narrate it.

1 minute ago, The Grand Falloon said:

True enough. There's also the upgrade that causes the target to suffer Strain in order to take any actions. Awesome upgrade, but I'm not entirely sure how to narrate it.

Simple: the effort of trying to move against the restraints of being bound, exhausts the target.

I'm basing my question off of this

Quote

Question asked by Josep Maria

There is any official response about "Force Push" power or it isn't created? It's a variant from Move?

Answered by Sam Stewart :

Force Push, Pull, and Move are all the same thing in our game. Anything you could do with Push, you should be able to do with Move.

and this scene (at 1:35 in) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUbXyd-fK8Q

So according to Sam Stewart, I should be able to blast a group of minions with move without throwing something at them. But how is the question.

5 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

I'm basing my question off of this

and this scene (at 1:35 in) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUbXyd-fK8Q

So according to Sam Stewart, I should be able to blast a group of minions with move without throwing something at them. But how is the question.

That shot where Qui Gon pushes the droids back and down can be done with either power. I’d be more inclined to say that particular use was Bind’s movement upgrade because all the droids did was fly back several meters and land on their backs. We don’t see them being hurled into each of other or other objects, and break or fall apart, like later in Theed when we see droids slammed into each other or into walls, smashing them to pieces. All those three droids do is fly back and land sprawling on their backs.

13 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

That shot where Qui Gon pushes the droids back and down can be done with either power. I’d be more inclined to say that particular use was Bind’s movement upgrade because all the droids did was fly back several meters and land on their backs. We don’t see them being hurled into each of other or other objects, and break or fall apart, like later in Theed when we see droids slammed into each other or into walls, smashing them to pieces. All those three droids do is fly back and land sprawling on their backs.

But you also don't see them get back up and start shooting at the group. It's a movie, cinematics, etc. But to me, that means that the droids have been eliminated. In the game, tossing a group of minions back and knocking them down with move would simply be an inconvenience.

I guess you could say they used bind, and used the dark side to inflict wounds, then for S&G's activate the control upgrade to move the dead body away...

5 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

But you also don't see them get back up and start shooting at the group. It's a movie, cinematics, etc. But to me, that means that the droids have been eliminated. In the game, tossing a group of minions back and knocking them down with move would simply be an inconvenience.

I guess you could say they used bind, and used the dark side to inflict wounds, then for S&G's activate the control upgrade to move the dead body away...

We don’t see them get back up because the scene cuts away from them immediately after they hit the floor. As such, their fate is unknown. For all we know, they could have gotten back up shortly thereafter, and probably promptly cut down. My point is all we see is them pushed back, fall on the floor, and the camera immediately cuts away.

The thing about Move’s hurl upgrade is that it is designed for throwing something or someone as a projectile at a target for damage . That is not what we see Qui Gon do.

Yeah, replicating a Force push/slam style of effect is a bit of a trick in this system, as there's no "one true way" to do it, leaving it open to GM interpretation. About the only clear point is that you'd be using Move, based upon Sam's answer that was posted earlier in the thread.

So with regards to your questions...

• If I didn't activate the strength upgrade would it be only 5 points of damage or I simply couldn't effect the target? You'd fail to affect the target, since it's silhouette 1. You could however choose to affect a silhouette 0 object and thus deal the five damage, but that's it.
• If I had the FP and was able to activate strength twice it would still be limited to 10 damage since the target was sil one or would it go up to 20? It'd still be limited to 10 damage, since the target is silhouette 1.
• If the target was at medium range I would need one additional FP to activate range correct? Correct
• Can this attack crit? Technically no as it doesn't have a crit rating, but a common house rule is to allow a Triumph to inflict a crit.
• What is the difficulty of the check? The rules say the difficulty is the silhouette of the object being thrown but if it's just a force blast what would it be? It'd be based upon the silhouette of the object being affected. So if you're trying to Force slam a stormtrooper (silhouette 1), then you'd be rolling against an Easy difficulty. However, it's also a ranged attack, so if the stormtrooper had cover, you'd add a setback die for the target's point of ranged defense.

For a Force "push" against a single target, mechanically you're slamming the target into the ground even if narratively you're describing it as blasting the target back with a burst of kinetic energy. Again, it's a single target, and damage is based off their silhouette. Knocking them prone is more a matter of spending advantage or a Triumph, but more often than not it's really more that the target's wound threshold has been exceeded and they've been knocked unconscious or been killed.

On the matter of a Force "slaim" (i.e. attacking a minion group)...

Since this is a ranged attack and minion groups are considered a single target for purposes of being targeted in combat, by strict reading of the rules you would just need a single Strength upgrade to affect a minion group of silhouette 1 foes no matter how many minions are in that group, but you'd only be doing 10+successes damage, which is generally not enough to take out more than one (maybe two) minions in a group on average. Although, you could also potentially make use of Magnitude upgrades to affect multiple targets at once, thus doing your damage to the group multiple times; whether that counts as an autofire attack or not is up to the GM, but I'd lean towards using the autofire rules in this instance.

Of course, another possible interpretation for a Force slam type of attack is that you grab one minion out of the group and then slam him back into the group, effectively dealing the 10+successes damage twice, as per the part in the rules for Move where both the object hurled and the target take the damage. Of course, the minion group's soak would be applied twice, since it's two separate 'hits' and thus you're only likely to be taking out two (maybe three if you roll really good) minions at a time. Again, Magnitude upgrades could be employed to get more hits in as you're hurling more than one minion, but that would certainly be needing the autofire rules.

Some GMs prefer to increase the effective silhouette of a minion group by one, which also means that you'd either need to have bought two Strength upgrades or be able to generate enough Force points to trigger the upgrade twice, thus making it less common for low XP characters to accomplish. On the upside, you'd be dealing more damage, so a minion group of stormtroopers (normally silhouette 1) under this house rule would be taking 20+successes damage, which is enough to probably take out three or four minions in one go, much like we see Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon doing to battle droids throughout Episode 1. Personally, I'm leaning more towards this approach, as getting that second Strength upgrade isn't all that expensive, and it allows PCs with lower Force Ratings to still have a decent chance of Force blasting minion groups, and it's overall much cleaner and simpler to run at the table.

There's probably other permutations out there on how to handle a Force slam, but those are the main three that I'm aware of.

3 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

• If I didn't activate the strength upgrade would it be only 5 points of damage or I simply couldn't effect the target? You'd fail to affect the target, since it's silhouette 1. You could however choose to affect a silhouette 0 object and thus deal the five damage, but that's it.
• If I had the FP and was able to activate strength twice it would still be limited to 10 damage since the target was sil one or would it go up to 20? It'd still be limited to 10 damage, since the target is silhouette 1.

For the first bullet point, as you roll a skill check along with the Force Power check, I would have to say that you can't change the target of the effect after rolling, as that feels very much against the rules in this system and is nowhere stated as an option. So if you are targeting a stormtrooper to be moved and you don't have the ability to activate the Strength upgrade, you can't just change your target to a crate instead because it's smaller. The dice roll would be different to move a silhouette 1 compared to a silhouette 0, so logically that would require another dice check for Move which would only come by taking another action.

For the second bullet it should be clarified that the target you mention (stormtrooper) is the target that is being moved, not the target that you are moving the stormtrooper to. Restated differently, the damage of the Hurl upgrade for Move is based on the silhouette of the moved target x 10 + uncancelled success results, or if the moved target is silhouette 0, the damage is 5 + uncancelled successes.

2 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

For the first bullet point, as you roll a skill check along with the Force Power check, I would have to say that you can't change the target of the effect after rolling, as that feels very much against the rules in this system and is nowhere stated as an option. So if you are targeting a stormtrooper to be moved and you don't have the ability to activate the Strength upgrade, you can't just change your target to a crate instead because it's smaller. The dice roll would be different to move a silhouette 1 compared to a silhouette 0, so logically that would require another dice check for Move which would only come by taking another action.

Now maybe I'm just a more lenient GM than most, but in that specific instance, I'd remove the lone difficulty die and just keep the rest of the roll rather than have the player roll again as it's quicker and keeps things moving.

Only place it begins to get mildly thorny is when the Force user is attacking someone that's able to upgrade the difficulty so that the user is only rolling challenge dice, such as a foe with Adversary 2 (difficulty pool of 1 red and 1 purple). Though in that instance, if the PC didn't get the Strength upgrade to work, I'd just take out the difficulty die since a Simple difficulty upgraded twice is a challenge die.

Or, if it's a case where failing to get the Strength upgrade to affect a silhouette 1 target would be a downgrade of a challenge die to a difficulty die, such as attacking a foe with Adversary 1, then as a GM I'll go ahead and flip a destiny point to say the difficulty was upgraded.

Of course, this is all dependent upon one's style as a GM. I'm more of benevolent GM and concerned with the players having fun than sticking to the minutiae of the rules. Given that the two main guys who created/developed the game (Jay Little and Sam Stewart) will modify rules on the fly during a session if not toss them out entirely, I'd say there's a good precedent to focus more on the players having fun that getting the game rules exactly right.

50 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Of course, this is all dependent upon one's style as a GM. I'm more of benevolent GM and concerned with the players having fun than sticking to the minutiae of the rules. Given that the two main guys who created/developed the game (Jay Little and Sam Stewart) will modify rules on the fly during a session if not toss them out entirely, I'd say there's a good precedent to focus more on the players having fun that getting the game rules exactly right.

I can agree with this sentiment but only on a case-by-case basis. The phrase I've borrowed from Matthew Mercer in Critical Role is "I'll allow it", meaning this isn't going to be a new rule but this will be a momentary exception to a rule. Often what I respond with here is strictly by the rules, especially when someone is asking how the rules themselves work. If someone were to ask "how would you houserule Move or make exceptions in the moment" that would generate different answers from me.

I tend not to allow too much rule bending or rule ignoring when it comes to Force Powers, which already bend or ignore typical rules of the game (examples of things ignored by powers: Athletics checks to lift above your own encumbrance threshold, can only communicate to Long distance, can only see to Extreme distance, can't know what's going to happen before it does, need to be physically wringing someone's neck to choke them out, etc).

I definitely condone the “minion groups are a Silhouette 2 object” it makes them much more like the movies and TCW cartoons in that they can be tossed around easily.

As for succeeding with not enough Force Pips I keep the dice pool results as they are but allow them to change the effect, so long as the targets of the attack remain the same and the difficulty would not have been any harder.

Thank you for all of the ideas and points of view everyone. I'll pass the +1 sil for minion groups idea to my GM.

I'm going for a kind of Nick Gant (Chris Evans) character from the movie Push. So a big focus on telekinetic abilities.