I know it is just a coincidence so far, but it is a little ironic to me. In my force and Destiny game we have a a dark side player and 3 light siders. One person has the heal power and so far every time she has used the heal power on the dark side player she has had to suffer conflict to heal him(using dark side points). All of the light side players she has not suffered any conflict to heal them.

The dice are showing us that she is conflict to heal him, cause she know that he will cause more trouble and pain once he is better.

Have you guys had any strange scenarios like that in your game?

Perhaps I've read the Heal power to literally but I don't allow to be used on another people than the Force user using it if he / she need to use one or more darkside pips to active the Power and / or any upgrade. Using the power on him / herself could be done with either light or dark pips of course. That independently of the Force user's side on Morality.

For me with how I see the Force, it's impossible to do something on the benefit of another being, aka being altruistic (altruist ?), while drawing on the darkside of the Force. Using darkside pips is exactly drawing on the Darkside. For me drawing on the darkside could be done only for a selfish or violent, aka harming other beings, purpose.

I know the Influence power has restriction similar to what you are imposing and it makes sense to me. Going the other way only using dark side points for harm also make sense.

In the world the view of black and white often turn in to grey :

Dark side healing for bad reasons - If Palpatine used Heal on Vader to keep him alive, before his surgery. Knowing he has fallen to the dark side he is keeping him alive to do horrible things. or similar issue healing people who are going to do bad things.

Light side Harm use - You were disarmed of your lightsaber while fighting a sith and need to deal damage to him with your force powers. Doing this action for a greater purpose reason.

They made a control upgrade to benefit the power when people are using it how you are playing. So in RAW they are ok with your using lightside or Darkside points for either of the powers. With the EXP cost of this power which is much higher than the rest, I'm ok with the player using the total points for either application of the powers. It also has the cost of a destiny point and strain to use the darkside points (for most).

I've always just ruled that if you do dark side healing, it still heals, but it's not pleasant. The person feels like they are being cauterized, or having a gallon of hydrogen peroxide poured into the wound. They feel unpleasant tendrils of badness pervade their body, as if they have a parasite or something wiggling around inside them. When it's done, they feel a little dirty, as if they hadn't bathed in several days, and just out of sorts in general. This passes relatively quickly, but it's still a side effect (narrative anyway), of using dark side for heals.

If you wanted to have some actual, mechanical downside to it, you could have it cost a point of strain or something per point healed, reflecting the pain/discomfort of this type of healing. So that you have the chance to have the patient pass out from the agony of it, if they are also low strain as well as wound.
Personally I think this is unnecessary, and a good player should just roll with the narrative description above, and behave like they are not feeling great after the healing. But this is Star Wars, and SW gamers are insane for mechanical stuff. So, add a strain cost so it's not a free ride if you wish *shrugs*

On 10/19/2019 at 9:42 AM, WolfRider said:

Perhaps I've read the Heal power to literally but I don't allow to be used on another people than the Force user using it if he / she need to use one or more darkside pips to active the Power and / or any upgrade. Using the power on him / herself could be done with either light or dark pips of course. That independently of the Force user's side on Morality.

For me with how I see the Force, it's impossible to do something on the benefit of another being, aka being altruistic (altruist ?), while drawing on the darkside of the Force. Using darkside pips is exactly drawing on the Darkside. For me drawing on the darkside could be done only for a selfish or violent, aka harming other beings, purpose.

The "Dark Side" rule on Heal is that a Darksider (someone with a Moraility of 29 or below) can only heal him or herself, not someone who simply uses Dark Side pips to activate the power that one time.

On 10/19/2019 at 3:42 PM, WolfRider said:

Perhaps I've read the Heal power to literally but I don't allow to be used on another people than the Force user using it if he / she need to use one or more darkside pips to active the Power and / or any upgrade. Using the power on him / herself could be done with either light or dark pips of course. That independently of the Force user's side on Morality.

For me with how I see the Force, it's impossible to do something on the benefit of another being, aka being altruistic (altruist ?), while drawing on the darkside of the Force. Using darkside pips is exactly drawing on the Darkside. For me drawing on the darkside could be done only for a selfish or violent, aka harming other beings, purpose.

Hey, you're forgetting about Cade Skywalker's darkside healing!

...

Lucky you! I wish I could too...

On 10/25/2019 at 1:25 AM, penpenpen said:

Hey, you're forgetting about Cade Skywalker's darkside healing!

I don't know who is this guy. The only Skywalkers I known about are Anakin's mother, Anakin, Luke and Leïa, Ben is a Solo only half Skywalker. If there's others I never heard or read about them. Finally it was a good thing I've avoided reading most of UE books. I'm not masochistic to the point of reading crap just because I love Star Wars. 😁

1 hour ago, WolfRider said:

I don't know who is this guy. The only Skywalkers I known about are Anakin's mother, Anakin, Luke and Leïa, Ben is a Solo only half Skywalker. If there's others I never heard or read about them. Finally it was a good thing I've avoided reading most of UE books. I'm not masochistic to the point of reading crap just because I love Star Wars. 😁

He's from the Star Wars Legacy comics, set about a century after Retun Of The Jedi.

They were written by John Ostrander, the guy who came up with Suicide Squad (or at least the version of Suicide Squad that is well known). Like his other Star Wars comics, they were really good.

2 hours ago, micheldebruyn said:

Like his other Star Wars comics, they were really good.

Well, let's not call that an universal truth.

On 10/27/2019 at 11:43 AM, penpenpen said:

Well, let's not call that an universal truth.

I'd agree they were divisive, but I'd say I was a fan. It definitely tried to be more style than substance but I liked a lot of ideas there(One Sith, Fel Empire, etc), but I didn't mind Cade's reviving others with the force since it felt like it had limits and with the stuff in canon now(dathomir witches) who have ZOMBIES who also can revive others, I think that I'm fine with Cade's dark healing.

3 hours ago, Atomisk said:

I'd agree they were divisive, but I'd say I was a fan. It definitely tried to be more style than substance but I liked a lot of ideas there(One Sith, Fel Empire, etc), but I didn't mind Cade's reviving others with the force since it felt like it had limits and with the stuff in canon now(dathomir witches) who have ZOMBIES who also can revive others, I think that I'm fine with Cade's dark healing.

I'm not fine with Cade and the Fel Empire. While I think the knights are kind of cool the Fel Empire's schtick of being the good and honorable nazis kind of rubs me the wrong way.

I really don't like the Legacy era. I'm more-or-less okay with Legends until you get to the Yuuzhan Vong, but after that... Yeesh.

1 hour ago, penpenpen said:

I'm not fine with Cade and the Fel Empire. While I think the knights are kind of cool the Fel Empire's schtick of being the good and honorable nazis kind of rubs me the wrong way.

I don't recall them being portrayed as either honourable or nazis as a faction (actually, come to think of it, they were rather dishonourable, but had very good PR to cover it up). They were mostly good, although their emperor was heavily foreshadowed as taking a swan dive into the dark side.

1 hour ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I really don't like the Legacy era. I'm more-or-less okay with Legends until you get to the Yuuzhan Vong, but after that... Yeesh.

I am largely unfamiliar with the Vong era. Legacy was ages later.

Anyway, I didn't read the EU novels, called it quits after the Sun Crusher and the terribly boring new Jedi Order. I was more a comic book afficionadao. Which means I skipped pretty much all the stuff that involved major movie characters.

10 hours ago, micheldebruyn said:

I don't recall them being portrayed as either honourable or nazis as a faction (actually, come to think of it, they were rather dishonourable, but had very good PR to cover it up). They were mostly good, although their emperor was heavily foreshadowed as taking a swan dive into the dark side.

They were the Empire with all their trappings. I mean, making a comic were the SS were still around but portrayed as the occasional good guys just because they weren't overtly spouting nazi talking points would've be rather.... problematic. I'm not saying that the Fel Empire is equal to nazi apologism or even a big deal in the grand scheme of things (I'm sure the authors' just thought storm troopers looked cool), but it rubs me the wrong way. Legacy just got too... relativist for what I want from Star Wars. Shades of gray can, and has been done well i Star Wars, but Legacy was not one of those times.

I might've become overly sensitive in my old age, but the despicable subset of our fandom that that run suspiciously parallell or outright overlaps with nazi/fascist apologists sure doesn't help.

Eh, it could be worse I guess. *wistfully glances sidelong at the Warhammer 40K fandom*

The Fel Empire might have rose from the ashes of the empire, but they are not the empire. visually they are similar and they are an empire with aspirations of expansion, but that's where the similarities end.

They aren't speciest, they aren't oppressors, and the imperial knights reject the dark side and serve the Force as embodied by the empire.

1 hour ago, penpenpen said:

They were the Empire with all their trappings. I mean, making a comic were the SS were still around but portrayed as the occasional good guys just because they weren't overtly spouting nazi talking points would've be rather.... problematic. I'm not saying that the Fel Empire is equal to nazi apologism or even a big deal in the grand scheme of things (I'm sure the authors' just thought storm troopers looked cool), but it rubs me the wrong way. Legacy just got too... relativist for what I want from Star Wars. Shades of gray can, and has been done well i Star Wars, but Legacy was not one of those times.

I might've become overly sensitive in my old age, but the despicable subset of our fandom that that run suspiciously parallell or outright overlaps with nazi/fascist apologists sure doesn't help.

Eh, it could be worse I guess. *wistfully glances sidelong at the Warhammer 40K fandom*

I personally felt like the Fel Empire was more the Empire in trappings than ideology. Though certainly still presented as a fascist organization, fascism isn't inherently a synonym for nazism(though it's certainly close since nazi were fascists). The key difference is that the Fel empire allowed a lot more aliens than the empire into their ranks (see the picture). I think that evil that oppresses others but does so in an egalitarian way (being cruel/evil to everyone who isn't on your side) can be way more sympathetic (and potentially interesting) than the other. Not saying I personally like them, just I found them way less offensive than the regular empire and more usable as material for a game(grey-ish force order with lightsabers, not complete nazi's). But hey, you're entitled to not like them of course, I think I started my earlier statement by saying that the Legacy comics were admittedly divisive!

But I will say I have way more problems with the original Empire and the First Order. I think it's a lot stranger for regular people to love the Empire given it's iconography, especially with the First Order pretty much directly lifting from Nazi rallies in the Force Awakens. And yet there are people in legion wearing their storm trooper outfits and uniforms IRL. But as problematic as that is, I definitely can agree it could be worse though for sure! At least there is Thrawn and I don't think it hits the xenophobic peaks of 40k's Imperium.

5 hours ago, penpenpen said:

They were the Empire with all their trappings. I mean, making a comic were the SS were still around but portrayed as the occasional good guys just because they weren't overtly spouting nazi talking points would've be rather.... problematic. I'm not saying that the Fel Empire is equal to nazi apologism or even a big deal in the grand scheme of things (I'm sure the authors' just thought storm troopers looked cool), but it rubs me the wrong way. Legacy just got too... relativist for what I want from Star Wars. Shades of gray can, and has been done well i Star Wars, but Legacy was not one of those times.

I might've become overly sensitive in my old age, but the despicable subset of our fandom that that run suspiciously parallell or outright overlaps with nazi/fascist apologists sure doesn't help.

Eh, it could be worse I guess. *wistfully glances sidelong at the Warhammer 40K fandom*

You do know that they were not in any way at all portrayed as the good guys, right?

They were antagonists who were in bed with the Sith when nobody was looking, and were waging war against the Republic. Did you only read the #0 issue that set up the setting or something? They had some idealists among their lower ranks, but none in power.

6 hours ago, micheldebruyn said:

You do know that they were not in any way at all portrayed as the good guys, right?

They were antagonists who were in bed with the Sith when nobody was looking, and were waging war against the Republic. Did you only read the #0 issue that set up the setting or something? They had some idealists among their lower ranks, but none in power.

It was a looong time since I read it, but I definitely got the impression they were at the very least, the lesser evil by a wide margin. Didn't finish the run though.

On 10/19/2019 at 6:42 AM, WolfRider said:

Perhaps I've read the Heal power to literally but I don't allow to be used on another people than the Force user using it if he / she need to use one or more darkside pips to active the Power and / or any upgrade. Using the power on him / herself could be done with either light or dark pips of course. That independently of the Force user's side on Morality.

For me with how I see the Force, it's impossible to do something on the benefit of another being, aka being altruistic (altruist ?), while drawing on the darkside of the Force. Using darkside pips is exactly drawing on the Darkside. For me drawing on the darkside could be done only for a selfish or violent, aka harming other beings, purpose.

I believe people's motives are complex enough to render that difficult to apply as a consistent rule. What if the act that benefits others stems from ego-driven altruism? Ergo, the altruism is, in some way, stemming from personal desire. It may not really about the people you are ostensibly helping, but about you and how you see yourself or what you want from the world. Its all about you. I'm healing this person because they are my friend or lover, not because healing the injured is the morally right thing to do on principle, etc. It could also go hand in hand with the fallacy of "something must be done." To wit, "something must be done. This is something. Therefore this must be done." That path is fraught with unintended consequences and opens the door to self-righteousness. The Dark Side is tricky. It let's you tell yourself you are doing good, and may even let you achieve a good outcome, even as you abuse your power and serve yourself and your own self-image, or public image, to do so. Beware the do-gooders, for they often do-good for their own ends. Another way of putting it would be: a genuine altuist wouldn't draw on the Dark Side to begin with.

On 10/31/2019 at 6:17 PM, Vondy said:

I believe people's motives are complex enough to render that difficult to apply as a consistent rule. What if the act that benefits others stems from ego-driven altruism? Ergo, the altruism is, in some way, stemming from personal desire. It may not really about the people you are ostensibly helping, but about you and how you see yourself or what you want from the world. Its all about you. I'm healing this person because they are my friend or lover, not because healing the injured is the morally right thing to do on principle, etc. It could also go hand in hand with the fallacy of "something must be done." To wit, "something must be done. This is something. Therefore this must be done." That path is fraught with unintended consequences and opens the door to self-righteousness. The Dark Side is tricky. It let's you tell yourself you are doing good, and may even let you achieve a good outcome, even as you abuse your power and serve yourself and your own self-image, or public image, to do so. Beware the do-gooders, for they often do-good for their own ends. Another way of putting it would be: a genuine altuist wouldn't draw on the Dark Side to begin with.

So, you mean twisting good intentions for evil? It almost seems like it would be suitable if there was some kind of mechanic to alter fate? Turning destiny around? Of course, you'd have strain a bit to do so.

Eh, be a darksider and use your lightside points for evil. No need to be overly rigid about what they represent. Strain and destiny point cost are there to make sure it doesn't happen too often.

2 hours ago, penpenpen said:

So, you mean twisting good intentions for evil?

That's certainly one scenario. The point I was making, however, is that people often lie to themselves and tell themselves their intentions are selfless when the driving motivator, subconscious or otherwise, may be rooted in selfishness and ego. The outcome may be good, and the person may want to think of themselves as being motivated by solely high-minded ideals, but they are really serving themselves and their own interests. That's not evil in the traditionally understood sense of the word ("Evil with a capital E") and it may be that their actions have a positive result, but its not rooted in altruism or serving something greater than themselves, either. That can lead to some subtle personal corruption and immoral choices if you aren't self-aware enough to see yourself - and your motives - clearly in the mirror.

2 hours ago, Vondy said:

That's certainly one scenario. The point I was making, however, is that people often lie to themselves and tell themselves their intentions are selfless when the driving motivator, subconscious or otherwise, may be rooted in selfishness and ego. The outcome may be good, and the person may want to think of themselves as being motivated by solely high-minded ideals, but they are really serving themselves and their own interests. That's not evil in the traditionally understood sense of the word ("Evil with a capital E") and it may be that their actions have a positive result, but its not rooted in altruism or serving something greater than themselves, either. That can lead to some subtle personal corruption and immoral choices if you aren't self-aware enough to see yourself - and your motives - clearly in the mirror.

Eh, see it as tricking the force via self-delusion or something like that. Destiny point and strain for (ab)using the lightside should cover it.

On 11/4/2019 at 5:59 PM, Vondy said:

That's certainly one scenario. The point I was making, however, is that people often lie to themselves and tell themselves their intentions are selfless when the driving motivator, subconscious or otherwise, may be rooted in selfishness and ego. The outcome may be good, and the person may want to think of themselves as being motivated by solely high-minded ideals, but they are really serving themselves and their own interests. That's not evil in the traditionally understood sense of the word ("Evil with a capital E") and it may be that their actions have a positive result, but its not rooted in altruism or serving something greater than themselves, either. That can lead to some subtle personal corruption and immoral choices if you aren't self-aware enough to see yourself - and your motives - clearly in the mirror.

It may not be "pure" altruism, in the most literal sense of the word (since true altruism often requires that such an act be at the expense of the individual acting, not simply without any hope of reward, and, in some cases can promote inefficiency ). However, it very well would be "enlightened self interest".

Why is the party working with a darksider?