Guys, I’ve read several discussions about how or whether to use Duty, Obligation or Morality in mixed games. Seems most ppl, though not all, prefer to pick either Duty or Obligation based on the type of campaign they are playing, and make all force users take Morality independently.

My question is this: does anyone else feel that Morality has an intrinsic value? In other words, don’t you feel that force-using characters already start with a little advantage?

Let’s not even count as an advantage the fact that they have a whole extra pool of force powers to choose from (which we should). But simply by taking Morality at character creation rather than Duty or Obligation, essentially force users get to pick either 10XP, or 2500 credits, or 5XP+1000 credits, or a free Destiny Point every session (light side paragon). Not to mention the chance to get even more mechanical benefits at the end of each session by rolling the dice to resolve conflict.

Non-force-users don’t get that, unless they take additional Duty or Obligation. Makes me wanna pick a career from FaD just for that extra 10 XP, even if I never intend to play as a force user.

Thoughts?

Well, for one, that's assuming that your GM would let you take Morality outside of an FaD game. I have a Force user in my AoR game right now, but we only use Duty—not Morality.

For another, the way most GMs describe using it, Conflict should be coming up a lot more often in their games. That helps keep the advantage you're talking about be something that's more earned than otherwise. Tossing one or two Conflict at a PC who's standing by while the other PCs rough someone up for money reinforces the notion that they're treading a morally iffy path, delaying their ability to become paragons.

It's also worth noting that Force powers still come at an XP cost, so most Force users are going to be a little underpowered at the start, then roughly equal for a good long time before they hit godly levels. (That transformation starts around 1,000 earned XP, in my experience.) Plenty of time for non-Force users to get some high-level equipment that helps offset the disparity, or else time for the campaign to wrap up before anybody starts feeling left behind.

I only ever use Obligation.

Duty always struck me as the point to a AoR type game anyway, and that as part of game play I'd be giving PCs access to better and more resources as well as facilities anyway.

Morality was the wrong approach I thought in F&D. Seems like whether you are good or bad staying under the Emperor's radar is paramount so I just used a the hunted concept of Obligation for Force PCs.

For the Jedi Star campaign, running over in the F&D Beginner forum, each character uses the mechanic appropriate for his or her career. So, if it's an F&D character (all of the starting level characters, and most of the Master level characters), he or she uses the Morality mechanic. If it's an EotE character, he or she uses Obligation. If it's an AoR chararacter, he or she uses the Duty mechanic.

49 minutes ago, CaptainRaspberry said:

It's also worth noting that Force powers still come at an XP cost, so most Force users are going to be a little underpowered at the start (...)

How do you figure? Force-users still start with the same amount of XP (or more), and have everything that non-force-users have available to choose from (and more).

Force powers come at a cost, sure, but so do talents and skills. Force-users simply have more to choose from.

I could create two almost identical characters: one from EotE, and one from FaD with the same starting characteristics, skills and talents, 50 Morality and 10 leftover XP.

57 minutes ago, RalfieT said:

Guys, I’ve read several discussions about how or whether to use Duty, Obligation or Morality I’m mixed games. Seems most ppl, though not all, prefer to pick either Duty or Obligation based on the type of campaign they are playing, and make all force users take Morality independently.

My question is this: does anyone else feel that Morality has an intrinsic value? In other words, don’t you feel that force-using characters already start with a little advantage?

Let’s not even count as an advantage the fact that they have a whole extra pool of force powers to choose from (which we should). But simply by taking Morality at character creation rather than Duty or Obligation, essentially force users get to pick either 10XP, or 2500 credits, or 5XP+1000 credits, or a free Destiny Point every session (light side paragon). Not to mention the chance to get even more mechanical benefits at the end of each session by rolling the dice to resolve conflict.

Non-force-users don’t get that, unless they take additional Duty or Obligation. Makes me wanna pick a career from FaD just for that extra 10 XP, even if I never intend to play as a force user.

Thoughts?

You are missing, that Force & Destiny Characters only get 6 (plus up to 4) career skills and five free ranks in those career skills.

EotE and AoR Characters will get 8 (plus up to 4) career skills and six ranks in those career skills.

So the benefit of not needing to take additional Duty or Obligation is already balanced out by less career skills and less free skill ranks.

On top of that the force skills will eat up a lot of XP, that is missing for talents and skills.

While I no longer have any Force-users in my mixed campaign, when I did, they only got extra perks for starting at 0 Duty (new to the Rebel Alliance). They all had both Duty and Obligation. The Force users had to start with 50 Morality, but got no benefits for doing so. (Only from their Duty).

39 minutes ago, Rogues Rule said:

You are missing, that Force & Destiny Characters only get 6 (plus up to 4) career skills and five free ranks in those career skills.

EotE and AoR Characters will get 8 (plus up to 4) career skills and six ranks in those career skills.

So the benefit of not needing to take additional Duty or Obligation is already balanced out by less career skills and less free skill ranks.

Ah yes, very true. Thank you for pointing that out, that’s pretty important. Technically that’s really only worth 5 XP at character creation, but I’ll take it ? I can account the other 5 for having those extra 2 career skills available.

26 minutes ago, RalfieT said:

Ah yes, very true. Thank you for pointing that out, that’s pretty important. Technically that’s really only worth 5 XP at character creation, but I’ll take it ? I can account the other 5 for having those extra 2 career skills available.

Also, consider while the force user is dropping their first 50-100xp into force powers the normies are raising their skills and getting new talents. A force user doesn't really fall behind due to the extra capabilities from the force powers, but their skills and talents won't match up.

We use Morality in our EoTE group, but only for the force users. For everyone else it doesn't matter.

One thing to keep in mind with Morality is that the actions of the other PCs can effect a characters morality. You yourself might not do anything evil, but if you do nothing while the homicidal astromech in your group flushes a prisoner out the airlock for funzies you're gonna lose some morality.

17 hours ago, RalfieT said:

How do you figure? Force-users still start with the same amount of XP (or more), and have everything that non-force-users have available to choose from (and more).

Force powers come at a cost, sure, but so do talents and skills. Force-users simply have more to choose from.

I could create two almost identical characters: one from EotE, and one from FaD with the same starting characteristics, skills and talents, 50 Morality and 10 leftover XP.

That's exactly what I mean. Because Force users have more options on where to spend XP, less XP goes into any one option.

At the start of the game, a non-Force user chooses between putting their XP into their skills or their talents. A Force user, on the other hand, has to choose between skills, talents, or Force powers. If they spread their XP out, they won't have as high skills or as many talents as their non-Force using counterparts.

Adding to that is the fact that Force powers have relatively expensive buy-in (minimum 10 XP on most powers) and multiple upgrades, don't start getting really useful until you reach Force Rating 2, and don't start producing reliable results until Force Rating 3.

The alternative is to not put XP into Force powers early on, but like @Rogues Rule pointed out, you've then got the deficit in Career skills. And then what's the point of even playing a Force user to begin with?

Something else to bear in mind with Force user PCs in the early going is that with a Force Rating of only 1, they're generally not going to be pulling off amazing things with what few Force powers they do have.

Yes, Move is probably one of the most potent powers in the game after investing a bit of XP (enough for a Strength upgrade, a Range upgrade, and the 'hurl objects' Control upgrade), but at Force Rating 1 the most you're going to be able to accomplish is activating the base power and one of your Strength/Range/Magnitude upgrades, and more likely than not you won't be able to pull that off as you'll only have one Force point to spend, and even that's assuming you used that dark side pip you're most often going to be rolling to generate a Force point.

Sense's defensive upgrade is nice, but it's only twice per round (max), and you've pretty much got to sacrifice your first action in the combat to commit your Force die, which then prevents you from doing any other Force-related stuff.

And by the time the Force user PC has gotten enough XP to be reliably good at whatever Force tricks they've focused on, the muggles in the party are going to have more talents, better skill ranks, and possibly even a Dedication talent to boost up a characteristic.

The resource bump for going 50 isn't that big a deal. The Skill shortage that Force Users have kinda balances that out a bit.

As for choosing what to use:

I always look at Morality at startup and see if the player has plans to engage it or not. If they do, cool. If not, I dump it for something else.

A simple comparison is imagine the Prequels as a Campaign. You get to the Tusken camp in AotC and now Anakin has a Morality event.

Option A: He goes bananas and kills the sand people for a good Conflict hit, but it's 100% in line with the character and moves character's personal story forward.

Option B: He sneaks off and that's it. It's totally out of character, but he doesn't earn any conflict.

Option C : He comes up with a different solution that's still in line with the character, but doesn't earn conflict.

If the player is likely to pick Option B every time no matter what, Morality may not be a good fit.

If he's more likely to go with A or C, then Morality is a good fit.