Had anyone considered running the Force Powers in FaD using a different system? The problem our group has (as players) is that the Force Power system in FaD is so bulky and complicated that you have to search pages and pages of FP Trees to see what magnitude, range, strength, duration, control, or mastery you may or may not have with one power or another. With at least 14 trees, it can get complicated quickly. It is a deterrent for us to even play FaD at all. As a bit of an absurd example, if my character wants to tell if a desired object exists across the room in the dark, know something about it, bring it over to me, up my coordination to use it, convince my friends to like it, prevent my enemies from seeing it, ... then it seems like that is about 8 trees to survey and check all that stuff on. Not to mention, it's an XP-siphon to split your XP in yet more ways. Wnat to get a few (basic) handy force powers? Then forget about having decent skills and talents. There has to be a better way.

It would seem that maybe a spell point system would work better. You get a pool of power points equal to your xp (perhaps?) and then spend them (on the trees) to get what you want done. Do a lot of stuff, run out of powers (fatigued from using the force so much). Do something great, and it is tiring. Or, do a whole lot of simple stuff.

Another option may be a SAGA Edition-like skill for using the force. Successes, Advantages, Triumphs, etc... all tell you how well you can use it. Some simple powers have a base +1 Success to them (like Move). The skill get's adjustments based on purchasing increases. Want to do something? Go ahead and try! Roll well enough and you can do it.

The FFG narrative system seems to permeate through everything....until you reach the Force Powers. You can do what you want and let the dice results narrate how it looks. The base system is very free-flowing but the FP's are tree upon tree of searching for ways to make what you have work, rather than "I can move stuff with the force" and make a roll to see if you can lift your X-Wing out of the swamp.

Any ideas out there? It's been years and my players (and I) never took to the force system. We were left utterly disappointed. It'd be a shame to let the book keep collecting dust.

The reason that the cost for Force powers comes from the same pool of XP is for game balance so that Force users don’t outshine non Force users, which was a common problem with previous systems.

As for searching through tree after tree, each power has its own tree, with all of its upgrades so that shouldn’t really be an issue. If you want to telekineticly lift an X-Wing, use Move and check to see if you have enough Strength upgrades or FPs to power the effect. There’s no searching through multiple trees.

@DurosSpacer These threads may interest you:

But, as @Tramp Graphics mentioned above, the general consensus is that XP cost is a feature, not a bug (I've never played Saga, but apparently there was a huge problem with Force Users overshadowing "mundanes".)

As for consulting multiple trees, since the trees are smaller and filled with repeats, it's much easier than flipping through their specialization counterparts. And with the XP cost, no player is going to have all 14 trees to flip through, let alone all the upgrades. Which holds at least to Legends, where some Force users excelled at certain aspects, and were rubbish at others. Again, from that point of view, feature, not bug.

I think you'll find that any Force system will have some level of overhead either in implementation or development, I hope you're able to find (or make) one to fit your needs. Good luck! And let us know!

Download oggdude's character generator print out the character sheet. Then look at what the player actually has... No need for all the rest. Its like 3-4 sheets max

On 12/21/2018 at 7:22 PM, Tramp Graphics said:

The reason that the cost for Force powers comes from the same pool of XP is for game balance so that Force users don’t outshine non Force users, which was a common problem with previous systems.

As for searching through tree after tree, each power has its own tree, with all of its upgrades so that shouldn’t really be an issue. If you want to telekineticly lift an X-Wing, use Move and check to see if you have enough Strength upgrades or FPs to power the effect. There’s no searching through multiple trees.

Understood. But I think you misunderstood me about the sheets. One sheet per power, yes. But after you have 1-2 career trees and then 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.... Force Powers, you've got so much bookkeeping to keep up with (Tree upon Tree...). As you said, "use Move ", and then (I say) flip-flip-flip-flip.....Where's that Move power sheet? So many trees....so many sheets...Did I buy that 5pt upgrade on Move? Or, was that Influence? Or, Sense? Etc... And, was that one upgrade or two? Range? Magnitude? Strength? Duration? Control? Ugh......

It'd be one thing if the powers were standardized, then Range upgrades would always mean engaged to short. Two Range upgrades mean medium, etc... You wouldn't have to look them up. But powers start off at different ranges. I think that's the letdown. You want to use Move , and in the spirit of the game there's most always 'a chance', but with the FP's there's no roll you can make to make it happen if you didn't purchase the 5pt upgrade. Seems counter to the flow of gameplay the system establishes. If you want to do something with skills or attacks, then just roll against a fistful of Purple Dice and see what happens. It could happen. Not absolutely anything, but most things could happen.

Thanks for the thread links! Very on-topic!

18 minutes ago, DurosSpacer said:

One sheet   per power, yes. But after you have 1-2 career trees and then 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.... Force Powers, you've got so much bookkeeping to keep  up with (Tree upon Tree...). As you said, "use Move ", and then (I say) flip-flip-flip-flip.....Where's that Move power  sheet? So many trees....so many sheets...Did I buy that 5pt upgrade on Move? Or, was that Influence? Or, Sense? Etc... And, was that one upgrade or two? Range? Magnitude? Strength? Duration? Control? Ugh......

I made custom character sheet for my table with more space on the back to track XP expenditure for Specs/Talents.

And then I also made a special sheet for tracking Force Powers, so that you can track everything on one page.

But... you could achieve the exact same thing with,like, y'know, notebook paper if you don't have mad Microsoft Office program skills tho.

So with regards to Force powers being "too much" in terms of page counts...

One idea I've been toying with off and on with regards to a revamp of how Force powers work in this system is to take notes from both Genesys and Saga Edition.

One of those alterations is to condense the Force powers so that rather than having to keep pouring more and more XP into the powers to "unlock" various upgrades is that the player instead buys the whole power at once (at an increased XP cost) and will rolling a skill check to activate the power, they have the option of spending advantage to activate what would have been a Range/Magnitude/Strength Upgrade. For things like Control Upgrades would likely be "advanced" effects that may still require XP to "unlock" after acquiring the basic power, and would generally add another option to what the user could do with that power.

It still keeps Force powers from being too simple/potent, an issue that Saga Edition had with their "one and done" approach to acquiring powers, but it's subject to the randomness of FFG's dice system, which can be good or bad depending on your POV. I'm not sure whether to go with a single "Force Usage" skill or go the WEG route and break them out into separate skills along the classic Control/Sense/Alter theme, though I am leaning towards a single skill (governed by either Willpower or Presence) with the caveat that you don't buy skill ranks, but instead use your Force Rating to determine skill ranks, and is increased strictly by purchasing the Force Rating talent to keep with FFG's approach of "slowly mastery of Force usage."

Donoven Morningfire I would love to see your take on this?

On 12/24/2018 at 10:16 AM, Donovan Morningfire said:

So with regards to Force powers being "too much" in terms of page counts...

One idea I've been toying with off and on with regards to a revamp of how Force powers work in this system is to take notes from both Genesys and Saga Edition.

One of those alterations is to condense the Force powers so that rather than having to keep pouring more and more XP into the powers to "unlock" various upgrades is that the player instead buys the whole power at once (at an increased XP cost) and will rolling a skill check to activate the power, they have the option of spending advantage to activate what would have been a Range/Magnitude/Strength Upgrade. For things like Control Upgrades would likely be "advanced" effects that may still require XP to "unlock" after acquiring the basic power, and would generally add another option to what the user could do with that power.

It still keeps Force powers from being too simple/potent, an issue that Saga Edition had with their "one and done" approach to acquiring powers, but it's subject to the randomness of FFG's dice system, which can be good or bad depending on your POV. I'm not sure whether to go with a single "Force Usage" skill or go the WEG route and break them out into separate skills along the classic Control/Sense/Alter theme, though I am leaning towards a single skill (governed by either Willpower or Presence) with the caveat that you don't buy skill ranks, but instead use your Force Rating to determine skill ranks, and is increased strictly by purchasing the Force Rating talent to keep with FFG's approach of "slowly mastery of Force usage."

So basically like Genesys Magic?

54 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

So basically like Genesys Magic?

Yes and no.

It's not going to be nearly as free-form as Genesys (which allows you to totally make up effects on the go with everything unlocked the moment you acquire a single rank in the relevant magic skill), as you'd still have to buy specific effects (Move, Influence, Enhance, Bind, etc).

Not even sure if I'd go with a single Force usage skill the way Genesys does, or go ahead and break it up into the classic Control/Sense/Alter paradigm from WEG.

To be honest, it's still very much in the early conceptual/brainstorm stage, so hard to give any sort of precise details.

You could just print out the force power trees and use them from Begging for XP, link .

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Yes and no.

It's not going to be nearly as free-form as Genesys (which allows you to totally make up effects on the go with everything unlocked the moment you acquire a single rank in the relevant magic skill), as you'd still have to buy specific effects (Move, Influence, Enhance, Bind, etc).

Not even sure if I'd go with a single Force usage skill the way Genesys does, or go ahead and break it up into the classic Control/Sense/Alter paradigm from WEG.

To be honest, it's still very much in the early conceptual/brainstorm stage, so hard to give any sort of precise details.

I would go with the old control alter sense. With each skill attaching to appropriate effects. It would also allow for different force traditions to give bonuses to certains skills and such. And i agree it wouldnt be nearly as freeform but i was trying ro get a feel for methodology

There's a couple of major flaws with trying to port the WEG Force rules into FFGs system.

Of course beginning with WEG Force was broken AF in the WEG system. Didn't scale at all comparable with anyone else.

Bring it into FFG, and 1 of 2 things will happen.

1. Force Users have to spend much much much (much much much) less XP to become complete Masters in everything Force, and the Force is thereby horribly broken in your game. Some people like that so YMMV.

Or(/and?)...

2. The Force isn't capable of anything near what it potentially is now in-game or (should be) compared to the canon media. If you try to temper the inherent brokenness of the 3 Skill Force system by making any given "upgrade" effect more and more expensive, then no one is able to do anything really fantastic with it like the Force should be.

No to mention how it completely nullifies the Morality mechanic, and would cascade into a necessary re-jiggering of unknown numbers of Talents, and what do you do with the Force Rating Talent, and, and, and... yea, no.

Whats the big deal about using a piece of notebook paper and writing down some shorthand? It's a good system. The best there ever has been in a Star Wars RPG, IMO, RE: balance and capturing the canon.

If you want something different, play a different game. There are tons of options out there.

8 hours ago, emsquared said:

Of course beginning with WEG Force was broken AF in the WEG system. Didn't scale at all comparable with anyone else.

Truthfully, one of the bigger problems was that the WEG Force skills were just so bloody versatile, given that you got a new power with ever pip past the first one, so it was very easy to have Force users who could do all sorts of things with the 4D in each Force skill. Having played a plethora of Jedi in that system, far more often than not the main balancing factor (when the GM wasn't being a punitive jerk) was myself as the player opting to not spam Force powers until the banthas came home and to give other PCs chances to shine.

That's one pitfall I fully intend to avoid with my homebrew system; I might be using skill checks instead of Force dice, but the PC still needs to purchase each power separately instead of just getting new effects as their skill rating increases.

My original thought was that I'd just simply double (or perhaps triple in the case of Move) the cost of the base power, and that once the PC buys into that power, they unlock the entire tree at once. Steeper cost up-front to buy-in, but cheaper overall to utilize. I've since moved away from that, and will likely be using a condensed tree with the "activate multiple time" style upgrades only need to be purchased once, with multiple activations being covered by spending advantage (or threat if the player wants to accept both strain and conflict).

The Force system in FFG Star Wars is probably my least favorite aspect of it. It just feels so cumbersome and difficult to get breadth in it. It sounds like my ideal Force system is something closer to what you are building @Donovan Morningfire .

I would also use the Alter, Control and Sense skills. I would assign some very basic effects to the skills themselves. Moving a light object as an action (with no ability to damage) for Alter. Some basic ability to sense nearby life for Sense (also probably GM controlled premonitions which really shouldn't be something you pay for), And basic athletic bonus or a trance option for Control. Everything else would be additional effects bought like talents. Heck, every Force tree seems to only consume 70 to 100 exp anyways to fully buy, you could probably condense each of them to 75 exp (with a couple exceptions) and just build them as a straight 5 talent path down like any other specialization tree. The tree names themselves could be called Alter, Control and Sense for elegance, though it would not be required. It would make it a lot easier to collect a breadth of Force powers, while still requiring a lot of exp for the truly powerful effects. The shared skills also allow you to have some technical skill transfer over. If you wanted to get really cute you could make each each Force power its own characteristic for that power, so while the skill is shared for a minimum level of competency for every power you buy in to technical mastery requires buying deep in to the tree as well, and not just buying new abilities.

On 12/24/2018 at 8:15 AM, DurosSpacer said:

Understood. But I think you misunderstood me about the sheets. One sheet per power, yes. But after you have 1-2 career trees and then 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.... Force Powers, you've got so much bookkeeping to keep up with (Tree upon Tree...). As you said, "use Move ", and then (I say) flip-flip-flip-flip.....Where's that Move power sheet? So many trees....so many sheets...Did I buy that 5pt upgrade on Move? Or, was that Influence? Or, Sense? Etc... And, was that one upgrade or two? Range? Magnitude? Strength? Duration? Control? Ugh......

It'd be one thing if the powers were standardized, then Range upgrades would always mean engaged to short. Two Range upgrades mean medium, etc... You wouldn't have to look them up. But powers start off at different ranges. I think that's the letdown. You want to use Move , and in the spirit of the game there's most always 'a chance', but with the FP's there's no roll you can make to make it happen if you didn't purchase the 5pt upgrade. Seems counter to the flow of gameplay the system establishes. If you want to do something with skills or attacks, then just roll against a fistful of Purple Dice and see what happens. It could happen. Not absolutely anything, but most things could happen.

Thanks for the thread links! Very on-topic!

I have a 1500 xp "signature character for an online play by post game." He has, without looking at my sheet 4 specialization trees

Move , 2 strength, 2 magnitude, 2 range, and all the controls except fine manipulation

Enhance , all of it except the attribute enhancements, since everything I have except force leap is adding force dice to skills which ogg dude's generator handles that for me what I need to remember is that for 2 fp I can force leap out to medium range horizontally or vertically as a maneuver or action.

Farsight basic power, I'll look at it if my character is ever blinded

Foresee , basic power (impressions), initiative upgrade (I have to remember to add force dice to initiative checks, which is 2 yellow, 3 green, 3 blue, and 4 or 3 white if I have a force die committed to sense) and details upgrade a fp for the basic power and each FP after that gives me a detail.

Influence , basic, magnitude, skills

Seek basic power, 2 force points and I know wherever anyone or anything I'm looking for is or which direction I should head to to get there

Sense full defense upgrade (first 2 incoming attacks per round get upgraded twice) and the sense thoughts upgrade.

Eventually I plan to get ebb/flow and the upgrade for recovering an extra point of strain.

So there are the 7 or 8 powers you mentioned it's not hard to remember what they do if you're using ogg dude's generator to keep track of which skills get force dice added to them, and yeah I got a whole lot of add force dice to skills powers & upgrades but if you do that then you don't need to put xp into skills, and it's fairly representative of a powerful movie jedi knight in my opinion.

Also note that I'm at 1500 xp and I have 4 specs, if you use an average of 300 so devoted per spec (including purchasing the specs) and granted I'm likely a little under that average because I only purchased about half of the talents in the sentry and padawan survivor trees (including all of the bottom rows on both) and there are 3 more talents I want to get from niman disciple, that leaves maybe 400 or 500 to spend on a combination of skills and powers. The character isn't far behind a muggle who didn't spend xp on force powers, and spent a lot on skills, and I'm getting a huge benefit from those force powers. So I would argue that this admittedly optimized build (warrior:steel-hand-adept/niman-disciple/padawan-survivor/sentry) is a good deal ahead of most muggles in raw power and/or versatility.

In other words the OP's criticisms sound very much like the opinion of someone who has looked at but has no experience with FaD characters. But this is late game, if you want a mid game jedi as mature as muggles you should be looking at the combination of niman-disciple/sentry in either order and get move, enhance, sense, influence and a small number of upgrades of each.

On 12/28/2018 at 3:19 AM, Donovan Morningfire said:

My original thought was that I'd just simply double (or perhaps triple in the case of Move) the cost of the base power, and that once the PC buys into that power, they unlock the entire tree at once. Steeper cost up-front to buy-in, but cheaper overall to utilize. I've since moved away from that, and will likely be using a condensed tree with the "activate multiple time" style upgrades only need to be purchased once, with multiple activations being covered by spending advantage (or threat if the player wants to accept both strain and conflict).

I really like the basic structure of the Force subsystem and am loath to port it to the magic system. Given that Genesys's pyramid is substantially more XP efficient due to lack of "speedbump" talents or surcharges for additional specializations, I would need to condense the trees and probably reduce the overall cost by a factor of 2 or 3.

Again the system is designed for force powers to be an xp sink.

Could something more free form work better? Sure, but I haven't seen it yet. Everything so far unbalances things and returns weg and saga's issue of the force trumps all.

That's not at all what we see in canon. It's a bit clumsy I agree. However I think it would take a lot of work to get something that works as well.

On 3/6/2019 at 8:03 PM, TheShard said:

Again the system is designed for force powers to be an xp sink.

Could something more free form work better? Sure, but I haven't seen it yet. Everything so far unbalances things and returns weg and saga's i  ssue of the force trumps all.

That's not at all what we see in canon. It's a bit clumsy I agree. However I think it would take a lot of work to get something that works as well.

"From a certain point of view." The XP sink aspect of it acts as a gatekeeper IMO. Keeping characters from getting too powerful, too fast in comparison to other characters. And that is partially because Force abilities are themselves very broad, versatile, and powerful. If you place the gatekeeping mechanism at another location you can keep the balance and radically re-do how force powers are gained.

I'm a fan of doing force powers like genesys magic skills. I don't see anything wrong with still requiring purchase into the individual powers though. Throwing an idea at the wall, perhaps you can know one power per skill rank, so the first power costs 5, the second 10, etc. You could also make certain options on the chart require certain skill levels. Or perhaps you can buy into separate tiers of powers at certain XP points similar to the heroic abilities in Realms of Terrinoth. What if the individual powers were simply done as seperate skills? Then to max out move you would still have to dump 75 XP into that particular ability.

I was tossing around an idea in my head of certain power upgrades requiring certain skill levels as well as costing more strain, but strain could be reduced by skill rank. For example a basic move use would cost 3 - skill rank strain. Adding an attack option (rank 1 option) would increase the difficulty by 1 and increase the strain by 1. So, your force user with 2 skill ranks could move sil 0 rocks around at the cost of 1 strain. But if they wanted to attack someone it would be 2 strain and an increased difficulty on the check. Another tier 1 would be range medium for 1 strain. A tier 2 upgrade (requiring 2 skill ranks to use) would be something like move a sil 1 object with +5 damage on the attack, but would cost an additional strain. So now if our force user is wanting to attack someone at medium range with a sil 1 object it's a total of 4 strain (3 base, +1 range, +1 attack, +1 size, -2 skill ranks) and 3 increases to the difficulty. It would take a lot more work to flesh out, but was just an idea I was musing on.

1 hour ago, Ahrimon said:

What  if the individual powers were simply done as seperate skills? Then to max  out move you would still have to dump 75 XP into that particular ability.  

When Genesys first came out ppl were trying to figure out how to convert the Force to the Genesys magic system all over the place, and they were doing "everything" (by which I mean, it seemed ppl were mostly fixated on trying to convert WEG Star Wars Force mechanics into FFGs Force, then trying to convert that into Genesys magic).

But, I did then and still do think this: a new Skill per what was previously a Power, is the best way.

It both adheres closest to the original FFG XP-sink/power-scale "model", and yet adheres closest to Genesys' existing magic skills while maintaining that XP-sink/power scale.

From there it's "just" a matter of balancing how Successes and Advantage and Triumph can be spent.

It certainly isn't perfect, presenting primarily some particular problems around "instantaneous prodigies" in single Powers/Skills, in a way that's just not possible under the current mechanic (and doesn't line up well with Star Wars lore), because Genesys has no precedent for tieing functionality (basically, Control Upgrades) to Ranks in a Skill, so often you might just need a good linked-Characteristic to mostly master the Power.

But I think then creating some Talents around the Skills, as "gatekeepers"/Control Upgrades, would make it a very good conversion.

How about making force rating become the 7'th characteristic , then let it handle upgrades and have it act as a tree for all force powers.
It will also have Force use / Use force skill linked to force rating characteristic, which becomes a career skill when FR1 is achieved.
All force powers will have their upgrades removed from the their respective trees and will now be found as a more universal equivalent under their respective foundational upgrade in this system - however all of the powers upgrades are still very much part of the force respective force power and should still remain their respective descriptions, as they can still be activated if one has the corresponding sub-upgrade for it's linked foundational upgrade. More info on this below.


Force Rating will get the following foundational upgrades:
Alter , Control , Influence , Manifest , Sense .
- each with the Control, Duration, Magnitude, Range, Strength and mastery upgrades, to be taken just like they're being presented with the powers, but as sub-upgrades for these upgrades. Furthermore, to balance the force user, any upgrade can be taken a maximum of 1x force rating - this can be adjusted as needed, but for now I'll leave it at 1x. Each control or mastery sub-upgrade for it's respective linked foundational upgrade, each allows one to use one of the power's normal control or mastery upgrade respectively.

Example: 1 Alter control upgrade can allow the force user to use 1 control upgrade for any of it's linked force powers, used from it's normal listed control upgrades when activating the force power. So for instance this could be the control upgrade in the move power that allows one to make ranged attacks.

Note, that a force user cannot learn to use any force power linked to any of the foundational upgrades which it has not yet acquired.
The foundational upgrades include the following:

Alter : It is the power to manipulate reality with the Force, it includes: Bind, Heal/Harm, Manipulate, Move.
Control : It is the power to use the force to enhance oneself, it includes: Enhance, Heal (self), Farsight.
Influence : It is the power to manipulate minds with the Force, it includes: Battle Meditation, Influence, Misdirect
Manifest : It is the power to turn the Force into energy, enhancing or hindering others, it includes: Protect/Unleash, Imbue, Suppress.
Sense : It is the power to feel changes in the Force, it includes: Foresee, Seek, Sense, Ebb/Flow.

To activate a force power:
One must first generate force points, which is done by making an use force skill check , with a minimum of 1 difficulty to dice to activate it, +1 difficulty dice for each upgrade one wants to activate.
A force user under this system can freely choose what side of the force to use, however that doesn't mean that one will get the intended side of the force generated, as success 1 counts as 1 intended sided force point generated, but a failure will automatically convert 1 intended sided force point to the opposite force side, IF ANY failures still remain and there are no more intended sided force points to be generated - 1 additional failure cancels one of the opposite sided force points. 2 points of advantage can be used to recover 1 strain or be converted into 1 success. 2 Points of threat can be used to cause 1 strain or be used to convert into 1 failure. A destiny point can be used to convert all opposite sided force points to the intended, the amount converted will cause 1 strain and 1 conflict. Committing force points to force power will make the force power of the force side committed. An IMPORTANT Note: A force user can commit UP TO the force users force rating x2. So a force user with force rating of 1 will only be able to commit 2 force points, no matter how many force points have been generated - this is consistent with what is possible with the force dice.

Failing a check:
For every failure that remains when the skill check has resolved will result in the force user suffering 1 strain for each failure that remained.

Committing force points:
Just as normal, committing force points will temporarily lower the force users force rating, until the force points are released.

Something worth noting that can be considered as well, as force rating under this system is a characteristic, it could in some circumstances be allowed to be added to a skill check, adding to the ability dices available, reflecting that the force is passively present and aiding the force user. I think it's also important enough to point out that one should not be able to use the dedication talent to increase the force rating.

I hope this makes good sense and can be of good use to you.

I personally like the Vanilla Force mechanics. They're very simple, elegant, and flexible, AND capture the lore well.

So none of this has any value to me (nor to I think most people) UNLESS it is a system that unifies it with Genesys. Because there's no reason to make an entirely new system that isn't unified with Genesys, UNLESS; it's simpler, more elegant, and more "fun" (subjective, I know).

And what you describe doesn't come close to doing any of that.

It's no simpler, introducing all kinds of new stuff. Certainly not as elegantly incorporating everything that the present system does, Light/Dark, committing, wide range of Powers, balance, etc.

And as for Genesys, there's no precedent for Characteristics governing the capabilities of Skills/serving as a "gatekeeper".

Creating new Characteristics is also a no-go for me, to consider something "unified" with Genesys (new Skills, fine, new Characteristic, no - opens to big of a can of worms).

And you seem to be making up new terminology and concepts, adding crunch every where.

Yuck.

Just my 2 cred, of course. But, good luck.

2 hours ago, emsquared said:

I personally like the Vanilla Force mechanics. They're very simple, elegant, and flexible, AND capture the lore well.

So none of this has any value to me (nor to I think most people) UNLESS it is a system that unifies it with Genesys. Because there's no reason to make an entirely new system that isn't unified with Genesys, UNLESS; it's simpler, more elegant, and more "fun" (subjective, I know).

And what you describe doesn't come close to doing any of that.

It's no simpler, introducing all kinds of new stuff. Certainly not as elegantly incorporating everything that the present system does, Light/Dark, committing, wide range of Powers, balance, etc.

And as for Genesys, there's no precedent for Characteristics governing the capabilities of Skills/serving as a "gatekeeper".

Creating new Characteristics is also a no-go for me, to consider something "unified" with Genesys (new Skills, fine, new Characteristic, no - opens to big of a can of worms).

And you seem to be making up new terminology and concepts, adding crunch every where.

Yuck.

Just my 2 cred, of course. But, good luck.

Yeah I am in the same boat. This all adds a whole lot of complication for no real gain. And a lot of loss in simplicity. The Genesys system makes sense for a fantasy world where where there is a lot more variables in what you can do. In many ways the Force is WAY WAY WAY simpler than magic.

2 hours ago, Daeglan said:

In many ways the Force is WAY WAY WAY simpler than magic.

I think that statement depends on what era of Star Wars publishing you're looking at. During the 90's, the books being produced were lousy with the Force being treated as a do-anything crisis solver by a multitude of authors, who turned Luke into a space wizard to get their plot out of whatever corner the author had painted themselves into. Timothy Zahn was one of the few (IMO at least) who got that the Force wasn't "magic" but closer to the realm of psionics, and while it could do some impressive things, it wasn't a "do whatever I need it to do" thing that the EU turned it into.

Going purely by the films, then yes the Force is quite a great deal simpler than magic, as we don't see it do a great deal outside the (admittedly vague/broad) realms of telepathy (mind tricks, thought reading, illusions, possibly a degree of self-hypnotism depending on how you interpret enhancing one's combat prowess via the Force) and telekinesis (moving rocks, hurling objects/people, strangulation), with farseeing (past, present, or especially future events) and lightning being the major exceptions.

9 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Timothy  Zahn was one of the few (IMO at least) who got that the Force wasn't "magic" but closer to the realm of psionics, and while it could do some impressive things, it wasn't a "do  whatever I need it to do" thing that the EU turned it into.

Waiiiit a second, you're telling me, you don't think things like acid-tentacle summoning, from-orbit skydiving, physical alteration of electrical/computer systems, consciousness-transfer, literal complete regeneration of the flesh, and animation of inanimate/dead things were not originally envisioned in the conceptualization of the Force?!

Heresy, sir!