I personally feel one of the weakest parts of the Star Wars system is the Force Powers. I don't care for how they are structured or flesh out. Saga force users were nice, because you basically started with force cantrip type abilites.

I do really like how Genesys has handled the magic system. With a little tweaking, I think this could be a good alternative for the force power system.

My next campaign will start with the Clone Wars. The pc's will be either Padawan or Clone trooper. I would like to possibly use the Genesys Magic tree for force powers.

My thinking is to just have them both. The FR can unlock tree's and activate talents. Have a "FORCE" skill they invest into. The knowledge's can be "Jedi/Sith Training" or something similar. Use these as the stand in for Divine/Abyssal. Keep the morality sliding scale. My main concern is meshing it with the Force Rating and Force die. I am open to suggestions, ideas and concerns from everyone.

Someone already created one, it's pretty good, though personally I'm making some tweaks. PM me and I can send you via email.

What's wrong with the force powers in EotE?

5 hours ago, MasterZelgadis said:

What's wrong with the force powers in EotE?

Sounds like it's more that it's not the Saga Edition version (namely getting a number of minor effects for free just for being Force-sensitive or having even a modicum of training).

In Saga Edition, being trained in the Use the Force skill got you a number of minor abilities that could be used at-will with no additional investment needed, those being what in this system would equate to the Move basic power, the Foresee basic power (but with a much shorter window), and the Sense basic power, amongst a few other tricks that offhand I don't think really map over to FFG Force powers.

In short, the OP's problem is that in order to use Force powers, you have to spend even more resources (XP) in order to do so. Given that I had initially had the same issue when moving from Saga Edition (which I still enjoy and is one of the few d20-based games I'll eagerly play) to this system, I can see where they're coming from. However, for me at least, getting over that hurdle involved simply acknowledging that FFG was approaching the Force from a very different angle than WotC did, and was trying to prevent what had been a common occurrence in the d20 and D6 versions of Force users (Jedi especially) being far more powerful than other character types to the point of hogging/stealing the spotlight away from other characters.

I mean cant you just be like you get x amount of base powers at creation or here's an extra 30 to spend on base powers only?

Seems like the complaint is bigger than just not starting with things because the above examples are easy solutions that I'm sure others thought of before me.

13 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Sounds like it's more that it's not the Saga Edition version (namely getting a number of minor effects for free just for being Force-sensitive or having even a modicum of training).

In Saga Edition, being trained in the Use the Force skill got you a number of minor abilities that could be used at-will with no additional investment needed, those being what in this system would equate to the Move basic power, the Foresee basic power (but with a much shorter window), and the Sense basic power, amongst a few other tricks that offhand I don't think really map over to FFG Force powers.

In short, the OP's problem is that in order to use Force powers, you have to spend even more resources (XP) in order to do so. Given that I had initially had the same issue when moving from Saga Edition (which I still enjoy and is one of the few d20-based games I'll eagerly play) to this system, I can see where they're coming from. However, for me at least, getting over that hurdle involved simply acknowledging that FFG was approaching the Force from a very different angle than WotC did, and was trying to prevent what had been a common occurrence in the d20 and D6 versions of Force users (Jedi especially) being far more powerful than other character types to the point of hogging/stealing the spotlight away from other characters.

Not at all. It's that I really like what they have done with Genesys, and personally feel the Magic system is a better representation of the force. It needs some reskinning and slight redesign to fit.

17 hours ago, Jedifish said:

Not at all. It's that I really like what they have done with Genesys, and personally feel the Magic system is a better representation of the force. It needs some reskinning and slight redesign to fit.

I dont see how treating the force like spells would be better. The force is not magic...

1 hour ago, Daeglan said:

I dont see how treating the force like spells would be better. The force is not magic...

That's irrelevant in two ways. First, the Force isn't a talent tree either, with a straight progression from one thing to the next. There is nothing "force like" about FFG's implementation. Second, the magic system isn't "spells" like D&D. It's more organic and more flexible, allowing you to apply effects as you get more skilled. Frankly, that's more in line with how the Force is portrayed in the media than a bunch of talent trees.

I really like the force power trees as it represents (well, in my opinion) progression and learning the force powers and how to use them. I would also argue that they aren't linear as in most cases there are many ways to progress through the trees and pick which aspects of the power to focus on. In the cases where you are restricted to a straight path, either it makes sense for logical progression of abilities or they are very cheap (like the left side of Enhance where it advances down to Mastery).

What objections in particular do you have to FFG's system? What makes it "not Force like?"

2 hours ago, whafrog said:

First, the Force isn't a talent tree either, with a straight progression from one thing to the next. There is nothing "force like" about FFG's implementation. Second, the magic system isn't "spells" like D&D. It's more organic and more flexible, allowing you to apply effects as you get more skilled. Frankly, that's more in line with how the Force is portrayed in the media than a bunch of talent trees.

Going by the original films and Luke's progression from a neophyte Force user to a Jedi Knight runs counter that statement, and the devs have said in the past (especially when EotE came out) that Luke's progression was their guideline for how to implement the Force. Luke didn't suddenly know how to do mind tricks, leap incredible distances, or telekinesis when he got his primer on the Force aboard the Falcon in ANH, but had to learn those abilities separately. We see a somewhat similar progression with Ezra Bridger who doesn't have sudden or instant knowledge of various Force abilities the moment that Kanan clued the boy in that he could use the Force, who again learned various Force abilities separately

And before anyone belly-aches about how Rey became an instant expert in the sequel films, she really didn't as in terms of Force usage the only things she did was a mind trick (which took a few tries so hardly "instant expertise") and the basic power from Move, both of which she 'learned' after being able to turn Kylo's attempted mind probe back on him; it's even cited in the novelization for The Last Jedi that after peeking into Kylo's mind, for Rey it was like a series of doors had been opened showing her all the possibilities of what the Force could do.

The problem with the Genesys magic system is that hypothetically a character gets full access to everything all at once, and it's quite simple to build a character under the standard magic system who can accomplish a great many things simply by having a 3 in their governing characteristic and two ranks in the spell-casting skill, which in turn can make many of the additional effects rather trivial to apply. And the only neophyte individuals we see using a broad variety of Force abilities from the get-go are those who've already had several years of proper training (Obi-Wan in TPM, Anakin in AotC, Kylo Ren in TFA, Ahsoka Tano in TCW), so they aren't really neophytes and would at the very least be Heroic/Knight Level PCs.

Again, the OP sounds more like they're hung up on how Saga Edition handled the Force, which made gaining access to a wide variety of Force powers and being able to use higher-end effects rather trivial, which in turn was due to Saga Edition needing to mimic how the prequel films and associated media treated Jedi. And in that respect, I can see how a Genesys-like magic system would be appealing, as it's far less of an investment to "get good" at using the Force than FFG's method, which as I cited earlier was intentionally designed to mimic Luke's slow path to being a Jedi Knight. That it also happened to curtail a lot of the early power abuse that Force users enjoyed in Saga Edition while also averting the "grab bag of powers" effect that WEG's take on the Force suffered from was probably an added bonus.

2 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Again, the OP sounds more like they're hung up on how Saga Edition handled the Force, which made gaining access to a wide variety of Force powers and being able to use higher-end effects rather trivial

I'm not sure that's what the OP is after, and certainly not how I would approach it. The PDF I have (from the Genesys board) still requires an XP expenditure to get the basic powers, and the restrictions for doing anything other than basic effects is pretty stringent.

11 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Again, the OP sounds more like they're hung up on how Saga Edition handled the Force, which made gaining access to a wide variety of Force powers and being able to use higher-end effects rather trivial, which in turn was due to Saga Edition needing to mimic how the prequel films and associated media treated Jedi. And in that respect, I can see how a Genesys-like magic system would be appealing, as it's far less of an investment to "get good" at using the Force than FFG's method, which as I cited earlier was intentionally designed to mimic Luke's slow path to being a Jedi Knight. That it also happened to curtail a lot of the early power abuse that Force users enjoyed in Saga Edition while also averting the "grab bag of powers" effect that WEG's take on the Force suffered from was probably an added bonus.

For Genesys, it still takes time to build the "magic" system up, you must spend xp into two skills. Furthermore, the Force would be broken up among skills so that one force skill wouldn't do everything. To me it is just another route to take to do close to the same thing. I just prefer it towards the standard Force system currently in place.

Also you guys are hung up on me mentioning Saga. It was fun for it's time, however the narrative system is my favorite. In fact I can't even stand the d20 system now, I find it boring compared to what FFG has done. I liked how force users had access to minor abilities from the start. I will implement this by give force users access to the Utility tree from Genesys as this basically covers what I want.

38 minutes ago, Jedifish said:

I liked how force users had access to minor abilities from the start. I will implement this by give force users access to the Utility tree from Genesys as this basically covers what I want.

Problem is many of those "minor" abilities constitute the basic abilities of each of the Force powers.

Lifting tiny objects but not able to attack with them? Move's basic power in a nutshell.

Brief yet vague visions of the short-term consequences of your actions? Falls within the purview of the Foresee basic power.

Pick up the basics of what my ally standing within a few meters of me is feeling? Sense basic power, or even a Control upgrade if you want to get a view of their surface thoughts as well.

14 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Problem is many of those "minor" abilities constitute the basic abilities of each of the Force powers.

Lifting tiny objects but not able to attack with them? Move's basic power in a nutshell.

Brief yet vague visions of the short-term consequences of your actions? Falls within the purview of the Foresee basic power.

Pick up the basics of what my ally standing within a few meters of me is feeling? Sense basic power, or even a Control upgrade if you want to get a view of their surface thoughts as well.

Well I have some plans for this campaign. It is Clone Wars themed, and the PC's will be a mix of Padawan and Clone Troopers. There will be a bonus 30xp at character creation, however it must be spent in force powers (Padawans) or Career Skills (Clones). It will run till Order 66, then a small time hop into Empire Era. I am find with the Utility mimicking base force trees, as I can easily give an extra blue/upgrade/narrative response.

Can I ask has anyone tried using the narrative dice system with force powers?

For example a Force Emergent starts with a Force Rating of 1 this is treated the same as a characteristic would.

A purchased Force Power for example Forsee would not only grants them the basic power of this power but also the equivalent of a career skill in it at rank 1.

So let's say because they're effectively manipulating reality to pull off this abilities the basic difficulty would be 3 purple or more if they go beyond the use of the basic power using the talent list as a guide to see how many purple or challenge dice increase is required to attempt that particular outcome the player is trying for.

So lets say the force emergent is simply using their forsee power to look ahead about 5 minutes to see what will be waiting for them when they exit the room with their contact and pass through the tavern to exit onto the street outside.

Lets say its just the 1 die due to their force rating upgraded to a yellow die because they have the Forsee skill at 1 but against which they roll 3 purple die as the "average" check for a force power use.

So he rolls getting 2 successes on the yellow die but a total of 4 threat so there is a threat out there, but whilst he's successful in detecting it he knows heading through there will put them at a serious disadvantage making him ask if there's a rear exit they could use instead.

This doesn't mean they've escaped whatever is waiting for them their quick exit out the back is duly noticed and assuming they've been spotted the backup has been contacted and they're moving in to intercept them.

As whoever is in the tavern tries to head after them with the unit waiting outside comes bursting into the tavern moments after they escape out the back, which wouldn't have happened had they gone out the front but would have placed them caught between the forces outside the tavern and those waiting inside.

Now there's a third force trying to slow them down and they have no idea or whether their flight is what provoked this response it might be had they just gone out the front it wouldn't have raised any suspicions at all!

Would using narrative dice for force powers work and how does it fare against the existing system?

In some cases, they already are.

Looking through them, the only ones I see that could maybe do with the benefit of narrative dice are some applications of Foresee and Seek, but they don't have a great general skill to apply there. Maybe just Discipline and Perception, I guess. My main thought is as regards Advantage, Triumph, Threat, and Despair being useful for manipulating the information in those two powers.

For example, guy leaving a bar rolls Foresee check and we'll presume there is in fact a threat there. Success with Threat. He senses some sort of threat, but it's very vague as to the nature and seriousness of the danger. Failure with Threat, he thinks it's perfectly safe, and may even be advantageous. Failure with Advantage, He has a bad feeling about that exit, but can't sense anything in particular. Success with Advantage, he gets a pretty good picture of the threat.

Aside from that, I think the system as-is works quite well. I especially like the Light/Dark duality on the Force dice. It is well-conceived and functions brilliantly.