How do Aggressor and Warden play differently?

By SavageBob, in Star Wars: Force and Destiny RPG

5 hours ago, Black_Rabbit_Inle said:

, who will likely make a TN 3 fear check (and the check can't be modified as far as I know, please tell me if there's a way).

Ranks of confidence can not only modify it it, but trivialise it and turn the fearsome check into an advantage for them since with 3 ranks it's now a disicpline simple check that you can still choose to roll, if you did you may still fail but with only positive dice in the pool could give the target freedom to gain triumph and/or advantage.

Often not a good idea to fearsome a target that may have pick up a few ranks of it , mind you I had 3 and a good discipline pool personally fear checks were often reduced to zero or at best two dice

1 hour ago, syrath said:

Ranks of confidence can not only modify it it, but trivialise it and turn the fearsome check into an advantage for them since with 3 ranks it's now a disicpline simple check that you can still choose to roll, if you did you may still fail but with only positive dice in the pool could give the target freedom to gain triumph and/or advantage.

Often not a good idea to fearsome a target that may have pick up a few ranks of it , mind you I had 3 and a good discipline pool personally fear checks were often reduced to zero or at best two dice

I meant it couldn't be modified to the Aggressor's advantage. Like I said, fearsome is only good against weak opponents. Against any real opponents the Aggressor spec is trash that can really only be relied upon to provide a small, but sometimes necessary, defensive boost to better trees. I really wish coerce and/or presence could help fearsome in some way. It would make the Aggressor tree much better.

5 hours ago, syrath said:

Ranks of confidence can not only modify it it, but trivialise it and turn the fearsome check into an advantage for them since with 3 ranks it's now a disicpline simple check that you can still choose to roll, if you did you may still fail but with only positive dice in the pool could give the target freedom to gain triumph and/or advantage.

Often not a good idea to fearsome a target that may have pick up a few ranks of it , mind you I had 3 and a good discipline pool personally fear checks were often reduced to zero or at best two dice

Minor correction regarding Confidence: The talent cites that if the difficulty is reduced to Simple, then the character doesn't have to roll the fear check at all.

As a GM, I'd interpret that as a case of "there's no chance of failure, so why roll?" and not let the character (PC or NPC) roll the dice, anymore than a sane DM would require a Paladin who's immune to fear to make saving throws against fear-based effects.

Edit: And to expand, if a player wanted to roll the dice simply so they could generate "easy advantages" as you describe, then that's all the more reason to not let them roll. To quote both Jay Little and Sam Stewart, the only dice should be rolled is when the roll means something. And rolling a fear check when there's no chance of being affected by the fear is fits pretty well into the realm of a meaningless check.

Edited by Donovan Morningfire
4 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Minor correction regarding Confidence: The talent cites that if the difficulty is reduced to Simple, then the character doesn't have to roll the fear check at all.

As a GM, I'd interpret that as a case of "there's no chance of failure, so why roll?" and not let the character (PC or NPC) roll the dice, anymore than a sane DM would require a Paladin who's immune to fear to make saving throws against fear-based effects.

Paladin... is that a new specialisation?

1 minute ago, MrTInce said:

Paladin... is that a new specialisation?

D&D reference, as it's a character class of which a major trait is a blanket immunity to fear effects once they reach a certain level.

44 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Minor correction regarding Confidence: The talent cites that if the difficulty is reduced to Simple, then the character doesn't have to roll the fear check at all.

As a GM, I'd interpret that as a case of "there's no chance of failure, so why roll?" and not let the character (PC or NPC) roll the dice, anymore than a sane DM would require a Paladin who's immune to fear to make saving throws against fear-based effects.

Edit: And to expand, if a player wanted to roll the dice simply so they could generate "easy advantages" as you describe, then that's all the more reason to not let them roll. To quote both Jay Little and Sam Stewart, the only dice should be rolled is when the roll means something. And rolling a fear check when there's no chance of being affected by the fear is fits pretty well into the realm of a meaningless check.

The wording is that the fear check can be ignored if the player chooses to. They can still opt to make the roll, to take advantage of a triumph or advantage result, albeit they now have traded it for a small chance of failure if they roll no success

4 hours ago, Black_Rabbit_Inle said:

I meant it couldn't be modified to the Aggressor's advantage. Like I said, fearsome is only good against weak opponents. Against any real opponents the Aggressor spec is trash that can really only be relied upon to provide a small, but sometimes necessary, defensive boost to better trees. I really wish coerce and/or presence could help fearsome in some way. It would make the Aggressor tree much better.

The warden can cause the target to lose their free maneuver on two threat on the roll as well considering this is always on its not insignificant, albeit the GM can rule you can't use it again on the same opponent.

Combining the specs you can technically get 8 ranks of it , although id personally not allow an 8 purple check, but if the opponent had 3 ranks of confidence I'd still say the opponent rolls 5 purple if a player wanted to spend all the XP to get them all

Edited by syrath
1 hour ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

D&D reference, as it's a character class of which a major trait is a blanket immunity to fear effects once they reach a certain level.

Sorry I should have put in a smiley face...

16 hours ago, Daeglan said:

Old school batman shot them. Depends on which era you are refering to. There are many batman eras

Good point. You mean oldest school. I mean 1940s Batman, when DC introduced their own internal policies forbidding their characters to kill.

On 6/4/2019 at 8:49 PM, HappyDaze said:

I don't connect Batman and "without resorting to violence" unless you're going neck to Adam West and the Superfriends days, and back then he did really scare anyone.

The classic, sane, pre-TheDark Knight Returns, Batman we got from creators like Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, and Jim Aparo in the 70s to early 80s was like that. I really miss that guy.

59 minutes ago, micheldebruyn said:

The classic, sane, pre-TheDark Knight Returns, Batman we got from creators like Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, and Jim Aparo in the 70s to early 80s was like that. I really miss that guy.

Well, even that version of Batman resorted to violence. It just wasn't his go-to option and he was generally far more merciful in dealing with your average criminals, settling for unconscious and bruised as opposed to crippled or left in agonizing pain. But there were times he was pushed to the utter limit of his tolerance by various members of his rogue's gallery, with Joker's savage murder of Jason Todd being a memorable instance of Bats being pushed to the point of nearly breaking his "no kill" rule, and even went so far to slug Superman (with whom he was not antagonistic towards in that era) when Big Blue tried to dissuade Bruce from going after the Joker in his current state of mind.