Hi everyone!

I have been running a campaign for a few months (first time as gm),mostly eote characters. We have had great fun so far but have recently reached a conundrum regarding a player who has a FaD character and I was wondering if I could get some help

Recently the team decided to extract a lieutenant of the big bad boss of the campaign who wanted to defect in return for giving up Intel on their bosses base of operations. This guy was in Coronet City, and was wanted by Corsec for murdering two of their agents. The boss of the defector had also sent an assassin team after him; leading to a three way struggle. A gap opened up in which a couple of Corsec officers attempted to arrest the defector, whereupon one of the non FaD PCs gunned them down in the back.

Its important to note that Corsec hadn't yet used lethal force or even tried to do more than arrest the perp.

What would be helpful is to know how to handle this vis a vis conflict? The force sensitive wasn't in a position to stop this happening, being busy against the assassins; his only offensive action towards Corsec had been to throw one officer into another when they were first confronted. The book suggests that conflict should be earned if they casually tolerate this kind of thing from other PCs; for this reason we decided that the morality roll will be delayed until the beginning of the next session when they will have a chance to interact a bit. Still, I am not sure how much the FaD PC needs to be to avoid conflict.

Any thoughts or advice would be welcome!

In my opinion he should not earn any conflict for this case. The book suggest that conflict should be given if he chooses to not intervene. The FaD PC didnt seem to have a chance to affect the outcome. So no conflict should be given for that.

However could be made that the FaD PC should be given conflict for tossing a Corsec officer. If it the PC used violence as a first solution before the PC was attacked by Corsec.

On the first one (other PC ruthlessly gunning down the officers with the F&D PC not able to do anything to affect the outcome), I'd say little to no conflict; at absolute most I'd assign 1 point of Conflict if the shooting PC was being especially ruthless (such as gunning down the officers when they weren't attacking the group at all), but so long as the Corsec officers were attacking (even if using stun setting), then there's not really any grounds for assigning Conflict.

On the tossing one Corsec officer into another, that's a bit different. If the F&D PC did so to both inflict damage and did so before the Corsec officers attacked, then that's Conflict-worthy, but at most it'd be 2 points of Conflict, and more likely to just be 1 for immediately resorting to violence rather than trying to find a more peaceful resolution. Now, if the PC at least tried for a non-violent solution and didn't resort to telekinesis until after the Corsec officers started shooting, then there wouldn't be any Conflict assigned.

thanks for the replies! I wasn't planning to give any conflict for simply being in the same group as the cop killer; I think you're right there. I was wondering about going forwards in the group though; for example, if the force user just shrugged it off, or had a tolerant attitude to the incident, or if he does nothing about repeat occurrences. The corsec officers were moving to arrest the NPC defector; they had demanded that he be handed into custody, but at the time there was a fight between assassins, the PCs and other corsec officers (who were using non lethal force). The fight started with the throwing of one officer into another; the PC specified he was using as little force as possible, and they knew the assassins were hot on their heels so I can see where talking it out may not have seemed a viable course, plus they were caught in the attempt of trying to avoid violence so I didn't give any conflict for it.

In future I will, but not sure if its fair till retroactively award it after I said I wouldn't.

I’m more interested in the fact he revealed himself as a force user, inquisition time!

He avoided using force powers or even bringing his lightsaber along; by throw I mean the PC is a big burly lad who tried to disarm one of the corsec officers and instead sent him sprawling into the other with advantage and no success. As to the inquisitor, it is probably a bit late for that...

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

If the FaD PC was in no position to stop such a cold-blooded murder from occurring, I agree, no Conflict. He could even just shrug it off as "there was nothing I could have done." If it keeps happening, I'd give increasing amounts of Conflict. . . say, +1 for every two incidents in which the PC is unable to act (because it's not hard to arrange to be too busy to stop your comrades from performing the morally questionable actions for you). So upon a third incident like this, it would be 1 Conflict, a fifth would be 2, and so on. Rationalize it as the PC just become desensitized to all the murder going on around him, and making no effort to stop them from occurring.

But yeah, every so often, circumstances align something bad happens through no fault of the PC, no reason to hand out Conflict for it (unless your group likes playing that way).

That was very much the angle I was thinking about; to be fair it shouldn't be too much of an issue as the killer player hasn't been particularly murderous before this, the players are quite decent at ooc communication and don't want to compromise each others character concepts either.

as to the arranging to be elsewhere, I've made it clear in the past that 'going for a walk' whilst your mates do the dirty work wouldn't fly (funnily enough involving having the same NPC they are now trying to extract at their mercy!)

Then sounds like you're on top of it!