I have a player who is going to play an Arbiter and preparing for one of his Talents - Calming Aura - I wanted to get clarification on it. I tried searching for it, but didn't find the answer.

Here is the Talent Description:

CALMING AURA
Activation: Passive Ranked: No Trees: Healer
Force talent. When an opponent targets the character with a Force power, after the opponent generates (Light or dark Pip Symbol), reduce the total (Light or dark Pip Symbol) generated by one, to a minimum of 0.

Who determines which of their Pips goes away, since they may have some light and some dark side. I would figure it would be the player with the talent to pick which pip is lose, but it is not specified. Is there an official answer to this or have you handled it with the Talent owner picking?

Remember, the symbol that's half white and half black doesn't refer to pips rolled on the dice, it is difficult called "Force Points." It's a separate resource from pips, and is what you actually spend when activating Force powers. How a Force power works is like this:

Light-Sider:

1) Roll Force dice.

2) Spend white pips (white circle symbol) to get Force Points (split white-and-black symbol).

3) Spend Force Points to activate the power and any upgrades.

Dark-Sider:

1) Roll Force dice.

2) Spend black pips (black circle symbol) to get Force Points (split white-and-black symbol).

3) Spend Force Points to activate the power and any upgrades.

So as you can see, it doesn't matter; Calming Aura reduces the number of Force Points they have available no matter which side of the Force they're drawing upon.

Or, put another way: first, the character using the power decides how many Force points they are using from their roll, of whatever colors they want/ have access to. Once they decided (i.e. "I have 5 points to spend,") Calming Aura reduces that by 1. It doesn't care what color the pip is. The person using the power decides which pips to use, pays any necessary costs (strain, Conflict, Destiny Points, etc.), then the character with Calming Aura reduces the number of pips they choose to use by 1.

Let me know if that makes sense.

The way I've been handling this talent is that once the attacking Force user as determined their Force points, then the Calming Aura talent kicks in, reducing the number of available Force points by one. That's probably not RAW, but it works out and justifies the talent being pretty expensive. There's also the Suppress power, which has a Control upgrade that does something similar, though it requires committed Force dice vs Calming Aura's "always on" aspect.

Going more strictly by RAW, it's tough to say. Unless the player knows in advance if the adversary uses light or dark pips. For most bad guys, it'd probably be obvious they'd use dark pips, but that brings up the question of when does the player make the choice, as if a bad guy rolled 3 Force dice, got 2 dark pips and 2 white pips, the player could just say "get rid of one of those black pip" and the GM opting to flip a Destiny Point to let their bad guy use the white pips, putting them in an even worse situation potentially, which to me feels like too much of a "gotcha" side effect of what's meant to be a beneficial talent.

3 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

The way I've been handling this talent is that once the attacking Force user as determined their Force points, then the Calming Aura talent kicks in, reducing the number of available Force points by one. That's probably not RAW, but it works out and justifies the talent being pretty expensive. There's also the Suppress power, which has a Control upgrade that does something similar, though it requires committed Force dice vs Calming Aura's "always on" aspect.

Going more strictly by RAW, it's tough to say. Unless the player knows in advance if the adversary uses light or dark pips. For most bad guys, it'd probably be obvious they'd use dark pips, but that brings up the question of when does the player make the choice, as if a bad guy rolled 3 Force dice, got 2 dark pips and 2 white pips, the player could just say "get rid of one of those black pip" and the GM opting to flip a Destiny Point to let their bad guy use the white pips, putting them in an even worse situation potentially, which to me feels like too much of a "gotcha" side effect of what's meant to be a beneficial talent.

Donovan, it doesn't matter . Calming Aura reduces Force Points, not pips; the attacker has already spent every pip they have access to (or want to) before Calming Aura takes effect .