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.

The saga version was terrible. It basically made the force vancian magic which is not force like.

I think the force system we have workss much more like we see in the movies.

I don't know the system you're talking about, but I concur with Daeglan on this one, I really like the way the force is handled in this system, and while it might be a tad underpowered at times, I think that overall it is balanced and makes sense for what we see in the movies.

As far as your proposal goes, I don't think it makes sense to have a "force skill" because (aside from having to overhaul the entire system) having a single measure (i.e. Force Rating) keeps it balanced, because if you add another measure, you end up with people who have a low FR, but a high Skill and, presumably (you haven't given much in the way of concrete rules), that would unbalance things dramatically, allowing people with lower FRs to perform abilities to exceptional levels that they shouldn't be able to. The force power tree solve this as they allow you to train the abilities and provide prerequisites for FR. The whole force system in this game is based around the force die, and with a few exceptions, that is the only thing involved in the force power check, so changing that to a Skill is completely unnecessary (if you keep the force die in that situation) and simply adds an extra step and more difficulty than a simple force check that (unless there are certain things you want to do) cannot fail (because you can take conflict to use Dark Side Pips).

Long and short of it, The RAW are phenomenal for this.

If you want the PCs to have some free starting force powers, you could give them Move, Foresee/Sense, and Enhance for free and let them develop them over time, while still having starting access to the powers.

Another solution is to simply give the PCs more xp and let them buy through the trees normally.

Something else to consider is giving force users an extra 5 xp per session sense (get it ;P) they have more things to spend it on.

As a Saga Edition veteran, I can see the appeal of having "cantrip" like abilities as the OP said, things that you get automatically simply for being Force-sensitive. The problem however is that in many instances, what were those "cantrip" abilities in Saga Edition are the basic abilities of each of the Force powers.

It's also worth noting that Saga Edition and FFG systems each have very different approaches to handling Force users. For a good chunk of the early production life cycle of FFG's system, Force users were a minority, and the ability to use the Force was a very uncommon thing, much less for a person to be well-trained in using the Force. It wasn't until Force & Destiny was released that Force users could be viewed as a more mainstream character type, and even then they weren't necessarily "well-trained." As well as hoping to address the constant concern that Force users so often ruled the roost when it came to the game table given the sheer versatility of what they could accomplish (WEG was especially lousy in this regard).

Saga Edition instead worked from complaints lobbied about regarding OCR/RCR and how Force usage was punitive since you had to burn health in order to activate your powers. Saga Edition's use of "fire and forget" wasn't perfect, but powers refreshed after an encounter, and was really only limiting at lower levels, since combinations of more Force Training feats and various talents helped beef up a character's stock of available Force powers; heck, the Force Unleashed Campaign Guide made it so that a PC who focused on telekinetic powers could very easily have more TK-based Force powers to hurl around than they'd need for all but the most daunting encounters.

A part of this also goes to how both systems (Saga and FFG) tended to view starting characters. Saga Edition aimed more for the PCs being heroic right out the gate (not unlike the tact taken by D&D 4th edition), with even the frailest PC generally able to shrug off a blaster shot or two, and stormtroopers and battle droids very quickly ceased to be a threat to PCs. Conversely, FFG is geared more towards the PCs earning their stripes as it were, and will generally get nervous when a bunch of stormtroopers or battle droids show up no matter how much XP they've invested into their character.

As for solutions, there's a couple. The first is start the PCs off as Heroic/Knight Level characters. This gives them plenty of XP with which to purchase at least the basic ability of each Force power that would be considered part and parcel of what could be called the Jedi Temple basic curriculum (Enhance, Move, and Sense) while still having XP free to spend on increasing characteristics and buying up skill ranks and talents.

Another solution is to allow any Jedi PC to gain the benefit of the Master party resource option (even if the group winds up choosing something else), bu that benefit only applies at character creation, and any new Force powers purchased after the game starts don't get the XP discount by default.

Or, as P-47 suggested, just hand out the basic powers in those three Force powers at no charge, though I'd suggest either not doing this if more than half the group are not Force users, or instead giving the non-Force users 30 bonus XP (the cost of those powers) to keep things relatively even.

3 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

As for solutions, there's a couple. The first is start the PCs off as Heroic/Knight Level characters. This gives them plenty of XP with which to purchase at least the basic ability of each Force power that would be considered part and parcel of what could be called the Jedi Temple basic curriculum (Enhance, Move, and Sense) while still having XP free to spend on increasing characteristics and buying up skill ranks and talents.

If these Force Powers are part of the Jedi Temple basic curriculum, characters get the mentor discount for buying them. It's 5 XP less cost, so a total of 15XP for the three powers.

The other solution is take a look at the Jedi career in rise of the seperatist and collapse of the republic. The padawan spec has the force rating talent very readily available

2 hours ago, WolfRider said:

If these Force Powers are part of the Jedi Temple basic curriculum, characters get the mentor discount for buying them. It's 5 XP less cost, so a total of 15XP for the three powers.

Technically no, because the Mentor benefit by RAW only applies if the group takes that as their starting group resource (in lieu of a starship or a holocron), and the XP savings only applies to XP spent after a character has spent their starting allotment of XP from their species.

I have seen and played in groups where this was house-ruled so that the Mentor benefit would apply either to starting species XP or be applied in addition to the group having a ship, but both of those instances are house rules.

13 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Technically no, because the Mentor benefit by RAW only applies if the group takes that as their starting group resource (in lieu of a starship or a holocron), and the XP savings only applies to XP spent after a character has spent their starting allotment of XP from their species.

I have seen and played in groups where this was house-ruled so that the Mentor benefit would apply either to starting species XP or be applied in addition to the group having a ship, but both of those instances are house rules.

That rule for the Mentor benefit is right for a F&D game with character being Force Users not having attended the Jedi Academy. But for a game set before Order 66 the Mentor benefit should apply to any Force User with a proper Jedi training at the Jedi academy. The same for any Force User from the Sith Academy during the KotOR / SWtOR times.

Do you consider the 10 XP bonus at character creation part of the starting allotment of XPs from his / her specie ? Imo, it's no and the player can spend them on two Force Powers that cost 5 Xp each with Mentor savings. If it's yes, then the Force Powers are bought with the first earned XPs after the first playing session. It doesn't make a big difference.

I'm not that much RAW bound for character creation. If a player needs 5 or 10 XPs more than he / she has for raising a characteristic, I let her / him has them and give that much as bonus to the other player. And the players'll receive 5 or 10 less XPs after their first play session. I prefer to have players who play the character they want; And 5 or 10 XPs isn't really abusing the rules.

15 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Technically no, because the Mentor benefit by RAW only applies if the group takes that as their starting group resource (in lieu of a starship or a holocron), and the XP savings only applies to XP spent after a character has spent their starting allotment of XP from their species.

I have seen and played in groups where this was house-ruled so that the Mentor benefit would apply either to starting species XP or be applied in addition to the group having a ship, but both of those instances are house rules.

I am unconvinced that it explicitly says this is the only way to obtain this benefit.

The Party is offered the choice of a ship, a Holocron, or mentor, and with some work, two out of those can still be obtained after character creation, so it'd be weird if a mentor wasn't the same.

I'd say that if later on, the PCs can get their hands on an NPC willing and able to teach them the ways of the Force, they get the Mentor benefit.

1 hour ago, WolfRider said:

That rule for the Mentor benefit is right for a F&D game with character being Force Users not having attended the Jedi Academy. But for a game set before Order 66 the Mentor benefit should apply to any Force User with a proper Jedi training at the Jedi academy. The same for any Force User from the Sith Academy during the KotOR / SWtOR times.

Which again is a house rule . There's zip in the two Clone Wars supplements that says characters in the Jedi class receive any sort of discount to purchasing Force powers, so the RAW of Force and Destiny takes precedence.

As for the bonus XP from Morality (or Duty or Obligation), per the designers yes it is considered part of a character's starting species XP budget, as you gain that XP very early in the character creation process (prior to selecting your species actually). But as most GMs and players wind up doing the character creation process out of order, it's a very common house rule to select Morality/Duty/Obligation and what perk they get along with it after choosing species and career/specialization.

You can run your games however the heck you want, but you should at least have the basic decency to acknowledge that you're using house rules when discussing how the rules operate.

18 minutes ago, micheldebruyn said:

I am unconvinced that it explicitly says this is the only way to obtain this benefit.

The Party is offered the choice of a ship, a Holocron, or mentor, and with some work, two out of those can still be obtained after character creation, so it'd be weird if a mentor wasn't the same.

I'd say that if later on, the PCs can get their hands on an NPC willing and able to teach them the ways of the Force, they get the Mentor benefit.

To clarify, I'm talking specifically about the group starting out with one of those three options, similar to how an Age of Rebellion campaign starts out either with a base of operations, a small squad of Y-Wings, or a stolen Imperial shuttle.

Once the campaign begins, the door is indeed wide open for a party to acquire a ship, discover a holocron (which may well be better than what's offered as a starting option), or find and convince a wizened figure to become a Mentor to them, all of which is at the discretion of the GM. Same with Age of Rebellion, where the PCs can certainly gain a small group of starfighters or procure an Imperial shuttle of their own once the campaign kicks off.

I don't acknowledge rules I don't use. I don't use the Mentor Benefit rule in any current SW FFG game. But I maintain that characters taught in the Jedi Academy (or the Sith Academy) how to use the Force should have the Mentor discount when buying Force Powers. If it isn't in the rules it's stupid. And I would probably house rule it like that if I run a game set during the SWtOR era or the Clone War.