Well, I'm looking for a bit of advice on what seems to be a rather potent combination of abilities. The power level of our group right now is all over the place, we're playing a dark side campaign and our enemies have suddenly become juggernauts, even the mooks / minion groups arrive in swarms, and the most trivial combat is life threatening for every PC except one. However, I don't believe that is in any way the GM's fault. Right now, we have a PC in the group who is effectively a god. With 4 force dice, Magus tree, 4 intellect and Heal / Harm, and 4 ranks in medicine, no enemy that doesn't arrive with such an entourage leads to any point in combat where they're included. However, when they're not included these combats are extremely difficult for us to surmount. If the GM makes combat easier for other players, it makes our PC feel bad for having come up with such a clever combo. If it's at the level it's at, some of us feel bitter because we just want to play to have fun but our builds just don't make the cut to survive with the level of foes we face.

To clarify the combo for anyone curious (or perhaps to point out a flaw in it): Roll your 4 force die. Fully activate power of evil for 3 force pips. This guarantees the activation of heal / harm and 2 other pips. That means if you roll even 1 pip on the 4 force die, you deal 8 damage that can't be mitigated by soak and heal 8 strain and 8 wounds, meaning you actually NET positive health while using ability meant to sacrifice health for power. Additionally, even if you roll ALL BLANKS you can still deal 8 damage and net 8 health. However it gets even crazier with the average die rolls, on average with the 4 die we've been seeing 3 black pips. With the strength upgrades, they're actually on AVERAGE dealing 14 unmitigated wounds, and healing 14 wounds and 14 strain each time they do this, or just dealing 16 wounds and healing 16.

So.. our characters are simply nowhere near that level. Some of us can do comparable / more damage, mine with unleash at this point is somewhat silly in terms of damage, but our damage is wildly inconsistent and doesn't net us resources. As a result, the GM has to handle 3 normal characters with limitations and the needs to sleep / rest to recover strain and health, while also dealing with a character that simply doesn't die unless they are utterly annihilated. In light of everything, my question thus boils down to this. How do we handle this situation, or is this even a situation to be handled? Are we misunderstanding this combination of powers? Is this the expected power levels and our characters are just woefully unfit for combat?

Thank you immensely for your input.

tl;dr: Deal 14 unmitigated, heal the same amount of wounds and strain. Is this normal and if so, how does the GM deal with unsatisfied PCs feeling like their character goals are being trampled upon due to their inability to deal with the environment?

Well, for starters a character can only heal themselves as many times as they would use stimpacks as each use of heal uses the "optimal resource", so that ultimately it isn't "unlimited" healing per say; he could only ever heal himself five times before he runs out of heals and harms.

Personally though, this game is easy to break. Autofire and Jury rig is the example of a character who can deal a staggering amount of damage for relatively little XP and equipment which I've seen net about 8 hits of between 12/20 damage. This is fine in certain situations, there should always be some trepidation in approaching a machinegun nest, but I as a GM would have to ensure that the player knew this kind of heat would draw the wrong attention if simply carried around all the time, from I as a game manager and from the galaxy who frankly doesn't like wild cards that can disrupt their ilicit businesses. This is fairly similar in that it encourages very fatalistic game of rocket tag.

That and I really, really hate force wizards . I had bad memories of them being anime style weeboos and no one on my table has changed my mind on the absolute rubbish they bring to the table in the last 5 years. Personally, true wizards are masters of the force who have spent a long time building up a understanding on the environment around them, not necessarily the character that invested it's character into only doing one thing. That being said, half of the time I feel the people playing those characters are genuinely unaware of the difficulties they are imposing on the GM, so establishing a dialogue is the only discourse.

Personally, I would pause the game and have a discussion about how everyone feels the campaign is going and to set out expectations for future play. I've toned down my character on several occasions for both thematic and balance reasons to ensure that the GM could challenge me without necessarily destroying the party. Have the discussion about the interaction of powers and simply ask whether it would be possible to tone it down a bit? Have the discussion and see if they are willing to tone it down a bit, explain that it's making encounters really hard to balance if there is a character who is effectively the damage dealer and the cleric. Most players would be more then happy to tone it down, players that don't aren't usually the kind of people I would like gaming with anyway.

2 hours ago, LordBritish said:

he could only ever heal himself five times before he runs out of heals and harms.

Pretty sure only Heal is limited. Harm isn't, and when using an upgrade to Harm, you can heal for as much damage as you inflict.

2 hours ago, LordBritish said:

Personally though, this game is easy to break.

If the dev's never errata'd it, it is working as intended.

I'll back up Lord British's assessment, with one addition.

Agree that if you have a "normal" group and one "optimizer" you can end up with a broken character throwing the game pretty quick. Force Orbitdropper, Dr. Spock Punchmaster MD, Pewbot the walking pillbox, and now Emperor Dracula here.

My question is this though: To get that build you're talking some pretty serious XP investment. With Magus that's 125XP to get FR 2, then you'll need at least 20XP to take a second Spec (assuming Seer for in-career and two +1 FR Talents) and another 160 XP to get to FR 4. Then you've got the Force power which to have those abilities is going to be what? say 115XP give or take? Plus the 4 Ranks in Medicine, which is what? another 50 XP assuming I'm counting right?

So... doing nothing but Emperor Dracula that's around 470 XP + probably another 70 of starting XP to get Intel to 4 at start... and that doing nothing but getting the ability to do that.

I'm sure there's some give and take with Starting XP and other fine details, but does that sound right? Have you accrued a good pile of XP that makes that possible? Did the Player B-line to this build? Did the GM make the mistake of allowing other methods for gaining FR allowing this guy to skip ahead?

@Ghostofman We all started with one FD. It's my first time playing so I don't know if that's normal or not. The idea was we were starting at a Sith temple, already having a small amount of knowledge of the force and our relationship to it. And yes, we're all currently sitting at 590 xp after a year of play, earning between 15-25 xp based on how much we get done in a weekend. We're generally a pretty good group about openly discussing things, but the problem is no one wants to bring it up because it might sound like we're more concerned with bringing down a character's power level rather than seeking to balance out the game. Especially when we knew what this character was up to day one, but without my personal knowledge on any of the mechanics as I was fairly new, I had no idea how it would turn out. So it's hard to tell them "yeah you have to cut it back a bit" when they've reached the zenith of their abilities after a year of working for exactly what they wanted, if that makes any sense.

1 minute ago, JustAnotherLich said:

@Ghostofman We all started with one FD. It's my first time playing so I don't know if that's normal or not. The idea was we were starting at a Sith temple, already having a small amount of knowledge of the force and our relationship to it. And yes, we're all currently sitting at 590 xp after a year of play, earning between 15-25 xp based on how much we get done in a weekend.

Ok, so if the guy made a relative b-line for that build then it's plausible he just found another broken build.

This isn't an uncommon problem. In other systems you tend to have to specialize and remain in a group to be competitive relative to the NPC's the game guides suggest GM's throw at the players. Star Wars is suppose dot be looser and more narrative focused, so splitting the party, losing gear, and other stuff is comparatively common. As such more flexible characters are expected. So it's not unusual for people to come in thinking they need to hyper-focus and end flying too high too soon.

It's probably time to talk about where the campaign is going, and if it's time to try something new.

2 minutes ago, Ghostofman said:

This isn't an uncommon problem. In other systems you tend to have to specialize and remain in a group to be competitive relative to the NPC's the game guides suggest GM's throw at the players. Star Wars is suppose dot be looser and more narrative focused, so splitting the party, losing gear, and other stuff is comparatively common. As such more flexible characters are expected. So it's not unusual for people to come in thinking they need to hyper-focus and end flying too high too soon.

It's probably time to talk about where the campaign is going, and if it's time to try something new.

Thank you for the input. I think you may be right. It feels a bit odd to me, as I've been playing DnD / Pathfinder for many, many years now, and only as a beginning GM have I ever really had problems with optimized builds. But the systems are so expansive that some would call it bloated (which is a problem for people just getting into it, and a blessing for those looking for the most niche of fantasies), so optimized builds usually had answers to them without making the characters feel as if they were cheated. I really want to help the current GM with an answer like that, but it's possible that the lifetime of characters is less than I'm used to in this rpg, which is honestly much more realistic both from a design stand point and the realistic constraints people face in terms of time in their every day lives to be fair.

It's just a build thing. You can get to 1000+XP and still feel ok. But that's talking about a character that takes a little of this and a little of that, and a secondary spec or two, and so on.

But in D&D/Pathfinder, you need to be the best Barbarian you can be. If you cross class into Wizard, you'll never be as good as the actual Wizard, but you will be less good at being a Barbarian. So why bother? If you need brains let the Wizard do it.

In Star Wars all that Dungeon Crawling modified wargame hooey goes out the window in favor of a Movie Simulator. So hyper focusing on one thing is just begging to end up separated and without needed skills.

And if you're playing KotOR era... I could totally see a Jedi equally specialized in something like Suppress showing up and bending Emperor Dracula over his knee and giving him the belt. Might actually be funny, though a bit of an F-U to the player.

Jedi: You don't want to fight us. Surrender now and my soldiers will merely sedate you until we can find a place to keep you.

Dracula: Foolish Mortals! Behold my power as I suck the life from you all! *falls unconscious*

Jedi: A most impressive display! Men, please sedate and secure him for the trip.

Its not broken healing is limited to 5 times each time it lowers by 1. The healing from Harm is just as limited as the healing from heal its the same tree.

Also its difficulty is much higher since most npcs can make it a resisted check so you have to roll the npc's discipline or resistance or medicine etc to actually succeed.

Finally its entirely a touch based ability so they have to actually be able to touch them to do it.

Just another case of a GM letting a player walk over them by not bothering to read the actual rules.

9 minutes ago, Decorus said:

Its not broken healing is limited to 5 times each time it lowers by 1. The healing from Harm is just as limited as the healing from heal its the same tree.

Also its difficulty is much higher since most npcs can make it a resisted check so you have to roll the npc's discipline or resistance or medicine etc to actually succeed.

Finally its entirely a touch based ability so they have to actually be able to touch them to do it.

Just another case of a GM letting a player walk over them by not bothering to read the actual rules.

Sorry, right now I have the beggingforxp sheet pulled up but I know there are extended explanations not on the sheet. How could one find details like that without access to the books? [The gm has them all but I won't be back there until the weekend.] Also, the range is a purchasable upgrade they occasionally use but most of the time this particular character doesn't care about being too close given their sustain, and has been using it in melee. I'm also not sure about the resistance check? I have force influence, but the GM arbitrated that I can't use it on force sensitives because they can feel their emotions being swayed by me. Is it something like that, or should force users instead be rolling against my influence in a resistance check rather than it not working at all and we've been doing it wrong? Or are they unrelated? Sorry for the long question, but I appreciate the feedback!

5 hours ago, GroggyGolem said:

If the dev's never errata'd it, it is working as intended.

I don't assume the Dev's have balanced everything, as with every ruleset things stack together to create crazy situations that some groups never predict. It's fairly clear that the quality of the trees in the Edge Core rulebook are much more haphazard then later material.

Besides. The rules in most RP are by large suggestions that recommend that "the GM takes charge and adjusts these rules to suit his campaign", thus there's no particular reason why a game master shouldn't be taking charge, axing and adjusting elements of the game that just don't work. Like crafting tables, access to force powers and so fourth. Just because elements of the game exist doesn't mean that all of it is intended to be used together, the advantage of it's modular design means that elements can be either included, adjusted or excluded depending on the flavour of campaign. It's very bad taste for example to design a Force and Destiny character when the game master wants to run an Edge campaign, or using alchemy out of the blue without having any in character knowledge as to whether or not exists.

In this particular case; I strongly disagree that this is "the game as intended" to have an effectively indestructible Dracula figure in a party of people who just want to have fun building characters with traits and flaws rather then a well oiled machine that requires the GM to literally throw the book at him just to provide some thin illusion of challenge. In this particular case I feel that this is the time to have a good discussion about expectations about the kind of campaign these guys are all sharing so that everyone can have a good time. After all, of it isn't fun for most of the table then it should be adjusted by the GM.

Edit: Ahh, dungons and dragons. I came from a similar background. There's a couple of things different about this system.

The first is that the player's aren't necessarily expected to be great at combat. Some of the more narratively valuable members of the party would struggle to deal with what the Force and Destiny characters deal with on a session by session basis, to me this game is a very weak combat simulator but it is much more interesting when you dive into the skill based challenges based aspect of the game, such as a vicious debate with an NPC, successfully navigating a high security vaults defence systems and so far.

The other is that I feel this system, much more then other's encourages party splitting and dividing of challenges. There is no obligation to hang around together as a party, due to the relatively rules lite nature of the system it's possible to run multiple encounters alongside eachother and cut between each one; two are doing a skill challenge, that kid is duelling his evil father, these two are holding off the tides of storm troopers. I would greatly encourage splitting the party in this system and treating the encounters more like scenes in a movie, rather then asimulator that DnD 3.5 tried to be.

22 minutes ago, JustAnotherLich said:

Sorry, right now I have the beggingforxp sheet pulled up but I know there are extended explanations not on the sheet. How could one find details like that without access to the books? [The gm has them all but I won't be back there until the weekend.] Also, the range is a purchasable upgrade they occasionally use but most of the time this particular character doesn't care about being too close given their sustain, and has been using it in melee. I'm also not sure about the resistance check? I have force influence, but the GM arbitrated that I can't use it on force sensitives because they can feel their emotions being swayed by me. Is it something like that, or should force users instead be rolling against my influence in a resistance check rather than it not working at all and we've been doing it wrong? Or are they unrelated? Sorry for the long question, but I appreciate the feedback!

According to RAW, as a general rule Nemesis class NPCS (and the occasional Rival class that merits enough importance) should resist force powers with an opposed check. So yes, Mr. Space Dracula should be rolling a skill check, opposed by the NPC in question if he is targeting a Nemesis or important Rival. (Probably Medicine/Discipline against Discipline/Resilience, but that part is up to the GM.)

As for Influence, that GM ruling is total nonsense, from both a mechanical and narrative standpoint. Force users can't influence other force users? Have they not watched any of the movies? I mean, respect rule zero and all, but you should absolutely point out to your GM that what they've decided goes against both the rules of the game itself and pretty much all the lore in existence, legends or canon.

I can't say where, because rules of the site prevent me from mentioning it. I totally suggest you buy a copy of at least Force and Destiny. Plus its generally considered bad form to discuss such things inspite of the fact they are barred by contract from selling us pdfs.

Here is the problem I run into a lot there are people who haven't read the rules and try to run the game like its D&D. What you need to do is discuss this problem and try to work out a more helpful solution that requires the GM and the Player to relax the arms race they are engaged in that is ruining the experience for the rest of the players. Basically a gaming intervention.

On 1/28/2019 at 7:46 PM, JustAnotherLich said:

Sorry, right now I have the beggingforxp sheet pulled up but I know there are extended explanations not on the sheet. How could one find details like that without access to the books? [The gm has them all but I won't be back there until the weekend.] Also, the range is a purchasable upgrade they occasionally use but most of the time this particular character doesn't care about being too close given their sustain, and has been using it in melee. I'm also not sure about the resistance check? I have force influence, but the GM arbitrated that I can't use it on force sensitives because they can feel their emotions being swayed by me. Is it something like that, or should force users instead be rolling against my influence in a resistance check rather than it not working at all and we've been doing it wrong? Or are they unrelated? Sorry for the long question, but I appreciate the feedback!

I would allow the use of Influence Basic Power to be used against Force Sensitives. They will most likely be able to detect it happening and be aware of who is doing it and may fight back after the first attempt. If it is a particular nasty Nemesis, I may have them make an opposed Discipline vs Discipline check just as if they were using the Emotion Control Upgrade.

Back to your first point regarding Harm and Channel Agony, you should see a difference in play after enforcing the 5 uses per day rule mentioned by others. The player will probably start choosing when to use it and when not too. Not that he still won't dominate a battle using Harm unchecked like that he just won't be as unstoppable - at least until he dips into the Colossus Spec. Magus+Colossus+Harm healing = not dying any time soon (well, honestly, Colossus+anything = not dying soon).

On ‎1‎/‎29‎/‎2019 at 12:46 AM, JustAnotherLich said:

Sorry, right now I have the beggingforxp sheet pulled up but I know there are extended explanations not on the sheet. How could one find details like that without access to the books? [The gm has them all but I won't be back there until the weekend.] Also, the range is a purchasable upgrade they occasionally use but most of the time this particular character doesn't care about being too close given their sustain, and has been using it in melee. I'm also not sure about the resistance check? I have force influence, but the GM arbitrated that I can't use it on force sensitives because they can feel their emotions being swayed by me. Is it something like that, or should force users instead be rolling against my influence in a resistance check rather than it not working at all and we've been doing it wrong? Or are they unrelated? Sorry for the long question, but I appreciate the feedback!

Ahhh this is a interesting one and for most part it depends.

One of the easiest things me and my GM does is that we never roll influence checks targeting each other for precisely that reason. It isn't a hard coded thing but it just prevents things becoming "too random" in regards to dice pools while allowing the ability to be expressed (since we are both trying to do the same thing, both abilities are cancelled out.) Given the rarity of force users in this campaign, most of which are fairly major players in some aspect or other. That and it seems a bit rude to try and "sway the mind" of someone else who has their own mental defences.

That being said there are exceptions to the rule; for example if one party or another isn't aware of the other as a force user my GM will allow the initiator to make the check, this represents the character having truly got the drop on a major bad guy who mightn't even been aware their thoughts have been subtly altered which is what influence does.) until they review the scene back in their minds later, or might never find out at all. Being force sensitive doesn't mean omnipotence, otherwise a clash of wills and force wouldn't mean anything. Likewise, there is a time when the other force user just doesn't care and attacks with influence anyway, opening one's self up for retribution. For example I imagine Kylo Ren's mind buggery technique is influence on a corc check, he is literally trying to force the information out of the deep recesses of his targets mind, and Rey did the same back to him ultimately forcing him to draw back unless any more of his thoughts were to be taken from him.

There's nothing hard specifying a rule one way or another; it just depends how the table wants to play it.

On 1/27/2019 at 9:15 AM, JustAnotherLich said:

To clarify the combo for anyone curious (or perhaps to point out a flaw in it): Roll your 4 force die. Fully activate power of evil for 3 force pips. This guarantees the activation of heal / harm and 2 other pips. That means if you roll even 1 pip on the 4 force die, you deal 8 damage that can't be mitigated by soak and heal 8 strain and 8 wounds, meaning you actually NET positive health while using ability meant to sacrifice health for power. Additionally, even if you roll ALL BLANKS you can still deal 8 damage and net 8 health. However it gets even crazier with the average die rolls, on average with the 4 die we've been seeing 3 black pips. With the strength upgrades, they're actually on AVERAGE dealing 14 unmitigated wounds, and healing 14 wounds and 14 strain each time they do this, or just dealing 16 wounds and healing 16.

Page 203 - Resisting force power checks. Against anything other than minions, they'll be having to roll more than just force dice to succeed.

3 hours ago, Darzil said:

Page 203 - Resisting force power checks. Against anything other than minions, they'll be having to roll more than just force dice to succeed.

283

On 1/27/2019 at 3:15 AM, JustAnotherLich said:

tl;dr: Deal 14 unmitigated, heal the same amount of wounds and strain. Is this normal and if so, how does the GM deal with unsatisfied PCs feeling like their character goals are being trampled upon due to their inability to deal with the environment? 

So the concern is this character, that has been optimized for a specific focus in combat, can wipe up the floor with enemies when in the exact situation his/her character was built for. And to compensate, the GM has to up the encounter level, which puts pressure on the rest of the group. And there is an implied question of whether the GM should do something about it due to dissatisfaction from the other players at the table.

While the combo is indeed impressive, it has its limitations. Some specifics (much of which has already been noted):

• Using the Control upgrade to heal wounds dealt to an enemy counts as the use of a stimpack (it is word for word in the Control talent description, there is no errata or developer clarification required).
• When this power is used against a nemesis level character or "important" rival, this generally will turn the result into a contested check of some kind, perhaps against resilience or discipline if the target is a Force user.
• The Suppress power would be an excellent counter to this build
• This power combo is useless against droids.
• This power has a range of engaged. Enemies with ranged weapons should take advantage
• The Protect power reduces damage; it doesn't increase soak. So the damage reduction of Protect would be useful against this use of Harm.
• Ranks in Calming Aura reduces the Force Points generated on a power by 1 per rank. Have an NPC with a few ranks in this talent show up.

But I think there is another question embedded here, and that is "What should the GM do to deal with unsatisfied PCs..."

My answer is: is it really the GMs job to deal this dissatisfaction? What are the player(s) in questions doing about it? What would the player(s) in question like to be done about it? The GM already has a lot on their plate. My take is it as much up to the player, if not more, to deal with these dissatisfying situations as it is for the GM.

Now since I sort of stirred the pot here, I will give some ideas for in game responses both player wise and GM wise.

• The party is made up of Sith, and the whole philosophy of the are based on power and strength. It would not be unreasonable to have your own PC(s) react to this individual as such. "You are so powerful, you can clearly get yourself out of this mess you found yourself in".
• I would of course make sure to walk the very fine line of PC vs PC actions here, or the game can VERY quickly devolve into hurt feelings and lack of fun. But then again a very rational response to playing a sith in this person's company would be to give them the respect they deserve so you don't find yourself on their bad side, but also hoping they meet their end sooner rather than later. And if lack of action is all that is needed for this Sith to meet their ultimate end well...
• These overt displays of incredibly Evil Dark Side use (it is all narrative at this point, but is is 2 conflict every time this combo is used) is going to get noticed. At some point the opposition is going learn this persons tricks and look to neutralize them (see above). All in all, there is nothing subtle about this character's actions, and the heinousness of how he does (I mean, he is literally SUCKING THE LIFE FORCE OUT OF A SENTIENT BEING) is going to get him on the "Dispatch with extreme prejudice" list really, really fast. Bounty Hunters can target sith just was well as jedi.

Bit of a necro, but I thought I'd make a post on the conclusion of the epic saga of Emperor Dracula. Not that he's dead, but the problem is mostly abated now and I wanted to share a couple last clarifications as well as the ultimate resolutions should anyone find them useful in the future.

First off, the clarifications: I've spent a bit more time with the books and errata now in the hopes of easing the strain on the gm to reduce having to worry about at least one more player's learning curve for basic knowledge. One of the biggest problems with force Dracula wasn't just the scary healing and damage, it was also that they were an int based character, using the alchemy tree from unlimited power. They could make lore checks and understand signs of impending doom / gain information to make them difficult to trip up, as well as build things like fetishes of fear that could come in clutch and shore up their weaknesses in terms of getting ccd down. So while the power was indeed relevant, they actually were a fairly balanced character in spite of b-lining for this particular build, which was ultimately the real source of the problem balance wise.

That being said, we did come to a spot where everyone's happy. The solutions were mostly obvious, but sometimes hearing them out loud can reaffirm a good idea to be as good as it sounds.

-We all got together and talked about the direction of the campaign. Dracula thought the campaign was ending soon, so was doing pretty intense stuff that could bring about serious havoc. Upon learning that the other PCs were expecting the story to last quite a bit longer, they've since toned it back a bit and have actively been drawing less attention, lest they invoke (more) attention.

-The fear of Jedi is real. All of our faces but one have now been seen by some official during a less than reputable activity. In some cases these activities are very minor, but Dracula killed 3 senators, which resulted in significant bounties on their head as well as the attention of the Jedi. Another one of the PCs attempted to bomb one of our contacts for pay, and was seen fleeing the scene of the explosion. While they haven't drawn Jedi attention, understandably we are no longer on that planet.

-Several NPC events have triggered that have required our attention, and dealing with them has lead to an interesting power balance, in which if any one of us WERE to kill the other, there's a good chance there would be retaliation and we would lose out on valuable resources to accomplish personal goals. In character we're basically in a state of MAD, out of character we're all happy with it because it follows the whole system of potential betrayal while being a good excuse for temporary cooperation in-character, despite potential in-game trepidation.

Ultimately, with subtle changes such as these over time things have reached a healthy game state and everyone's having fun again. Thanks again for the input, and to anyone reading this with similar issues, good luck and feel free to ping me if you're interested in anything specific!