53 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Really? That's heavy-handed? Pretty much anything goes in my games (though thankfully I have a pretty mature group of players, so I don't have to deal with murder hobos and the like), is it too much to ask for a cinematic moment on occasion?

If by "cinematic moment" you mean "I know that there's no reason for your characters to let things happen the way I want them to happen, but they'll happen anyway" ... yeah, that might be too much. As a GM, I can control the entire world except for three to six people. If I want something to happen, I can make it happen without intruding on the control of those few.

Like everything at the table, this can be negotiated, of course. If your players are happy with it, more power to you!

It's probably already been said here but you need a minimum of 5 Force Points to use the Heal mastery upgrade. 1 to activate the power and 4 more to activate the mastery upgrade. You will only consistently do this when your character has a Force Rating of 5. Any Force Rating less than 5 means it is a chance the character will not roll enough. Even at 5 Force Rating, the character may have to dip into the Dark Side to activate all of it and that might be a problem if the party used up all of their Light Side Destiny before a character dies.

There's also a very short window of time to pull this off, where you basically have 1 chance to revive the ally, possibly 2 if they took "the end is nigh" crit as opposed to the "complete, obliterated death" crit.

Beyond that, there is definitely limitation built into the description of the power. You are bringing someone back from the brink of death. If they fell an impossibly long ways, landed in some sort of vat of acid or lava or were instantly vaporized, blown to bits inside of a ship and scattered into space, turned into stardust from the death star, then there's really no chance of Heal mastery working.

Personally I wouldn't pull out too many of those cinematic "you can't revive them" moments because it makes the power that the player spent xp on quite useless.

Re the XP spend, I'd also note that there's an opportunity cost to doing what they did: it took at least 90 XP and maybe more to suddenly buy the heal power up through mastery (depending on what else they took beyond the minimum to beeline to it), and that's 90+ XP that they didn't have working for them in the meantime; unless it's coming in unusually quickly or slowly, that means 4-5 sessions where the character was less capable due to all that unspent XP.

As for the narrative implication of suddenly spending like that, it's not particularly unusual for characters to have a sudden epiphany about their power. Whether it's the Force or something fated or some prophecy that no one knows about yet or just that they were in the right frame of mind in the moment to realize that 'It works... like that!' In this case it was obviously The Will of the Force that this guy be saved. There's probably an implication to that somewhere down the line, even if the PCs never witness it themselves.

17 hours ago, Cifer said:

If by "cinematic moment" you mean "I know that there's no reason for your characters to let things happen the way I want them to happen, but they'll happen anyway" ... yeah, that might be too much.

I think you're reading way too much into what I'm saying.

Quote

I think you're reading way too much into what I'm saying.

On 7/2/2018 at 7:05 PM, whafrog said:

...and you don't have to allow these things. One of my biggest issues with players comes when I'm trying do a cinematic moment , and they interrupt with a mechanical approach. Every movie and show has a bit of dialogue as the villain monologues, or shows some action that the protagonists are helpless do act upon. In "real life" this would never happen, but it's a staple of any fiction. And yet players seem to think they can interrupt this with "I pull my blaster and shoot him while he's talking."

Don't fall into this trap by allowing it . Just say no, call it a "cinematic moment" or whatever you need, and make it clear this is all part of the NPC's turn. In this case, maybe it was still the NPC's turn, and his "Action" was deliver the mission and die.

Not sure what there is to read into.

Well, it was stated forcefully to make a point. I have been in situations like the video @panpolyqueergeek linked to, and I don't think I should have to tolerate it.

At the same time, I have a *lot* of posts on these boards about the importance, nay, the pre-eminence, of player agency, so your assumptions seem misplaced.

Just ignore it for now, be happy the player was motivated about the NPC (or maybe just wanted to use that power for the first time).
Adapt, make the choose next time whom he want to save, and sometimes allow them to save all.

On 7/2/2018 at 7:05 PM, whafrog said:

Don't fall into this trap by allowing it.

The trap is imho in trying to convert a trope from a non-interactive medium into an interactive one. What works in one medium does not need to have a place in another one.

And now to something totally different: Apparently Torso cut in half is not the end for someone who has the force as his ally. ?

On 7/2/2018 at 1:05 PM, whafrog said:

One last consideration, but this is based on my own opinions about Jedi and the Force, so YMMV. The purpose of the Jedi is to do the will of the Force. I've introduced the occasional "search your feelings" moment into my games, which is usually a Discipline check (of varying difficulties) to give the PC a chance to be guided by the Force, which, in my Star Wars universe, is the "right path".

A nice way to implement this in RAW is with the "ask the GM a yes/no question" control upgrade to Ebb/Flow.

Meanwhile, the NPC was just brought back from death. I'm sure he's pretty far out-of-it to continue his mission, and he thrusts the explosives into the PCs' hands and asks them to complete the job. The PCs could urge him to try anyway, and he would, but, out-of-character, the PCs must understand that his difficulty will be higher and/or upgraded.

The GM calling for a "cinematic moment" is a great idea. I will use that in the future. I think I would flip a Destiny Point to use it, so the players could see it as a bonus to pause and listen for a moment too. There's always this "fear" in the back of my mind when thinking about the players mechanically shoving their way past the villain monologue or the dying NPC, so I think this is a super way to pause the action to tell the story.

In my own game, I don't allow my players to increase a Skill by more than one rank, or Talent or Force Power by more than one tier at a time. That way, they can't simply save up points and rocket through what would be a more reasonable and natural progression.

You can't pre-script cinematic moments as anything other than box text. They usually occur as an organic part of the game play.

Another issue is that you allowed a Force & Destiny career character in an adventure module that was scripted for Age of Rebellion characters.

And what's wrong with that ? The game is designed to make it possible to play together character created from any of the three rulebooks. Then why is it an issue to bring a F&D career character in a AoR adventure module ?