16 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

In this case, that is sort of what the player is aiming for. The force isn't my preferred method of play, but the story idea linked to it is interesting, so I'm trying to accommodate.

What I was shooting for with the original idea was to have to use the pips equally, or you slide away from balance regardless which you use. If you use 2 extra LS pips, you slide 2 points down the scale. If you then use 2 extra DS pips, you slide down the scale another 2 points.

Do you have any recommendation?

What I'm thinking right now: Try to use pips evenly, the idea behind it being that the black pips (intentionally not calling them dark side) are the players emotions/passions, and the white pips (intentionally not calling them light side) are the control. In order to use more black than white or vice versa, she has to suffer Strain equal to the difference and lose an equal number of balance points. If she is between 85-100, she is "balanced" and (this is very tentative) receives a second force die. I had decided against this, but I'm starting to come back to it. It would make it suitably easier to maintain balance while in touch with the force (seeing as how she's an FR1 character), and yet significantly harder to regain balance without finding a suitable* spot to meditate.
Alternatively, scratch the additional force die, and instead make it so that she only takes Strain/loses balance points when the difference is 2 or more (basically, Strain/balance points equals difference-1).

As for the Conflict chart, I'm thinking of more-or-less discarding it, but using it as a reference for dealing with certain situations, removing balance points similarly to how you grant conflict points, though not as much because you don't roll a d10 to recover balance points.

Optional: If she drops below 50, she switches over to using the normal morality rules until she can find a suitable spot to meditate and recover.

*she has specific criteria for where is an appropriate spot to meditate. This isn't something that she can do during a long hyperspace journey.

Dont give them the additional force die. You will unbalance the game that way. As to the rest I am not sure it is a good idea. This game is all about choices. And that is what conflict is about. Do you choose to do stuff that gives you conflict. Do you choose to use the darkside pips to get what you need done or not. It becomes easier to eschew darkside pips as you get a higher force rating. Which is part of the balancing factor in this game that previous star wars games didnt have. I agree with grand faloon. Light side is balanced force use.

2 hours ago, WolfRider said:

I've read that many times on this forum. Personally I never had such player, but I never played or GMed a Star Wars RPG before the FFG one. I've a strong experience with D&D, starting with Ad&D nearly 40 years ago, and it's alignment. I never see a player choosing one the five Neutral alignments with the idea to alternate between Good / Lawful and Evil / Chaotic behaviour. Actually playing a Pure Neutral character, which is imo what should be a "Grey Jedi", is the most difficult alignment to play because of the need to keep the balance between good and evil and between law and chaos. Something that you can never achieve by alternating between acting evil / chaotic then good / lawful. Doing good deeds never compensate fully for anything evil you've done.

I use the same logic for the Force. You'll never balance it by switching between the darkside and the lightside. Quite the opposite. It's a sure way to unbalance the Force even more et to end being a darkside character.

I think these truely neutral characters are incredibly bad choices for PCs, unles the entire party follows this ethos.

As for "Grey Jedi", in the sense of Jedi that use both the light and dark sides, there simply can't be such a thing. They might be grey, but they wouldn't be any kind of Jedi.

There is actually one canon grey Force User: the Bendu from Rebels. And he was completely apathetic, not caring about anything except his precious balance, uninterested in fighting for any cause, and when pushed, happy to rain down mass destruction on the Empire and Rebellion equally.

On 12/26/2019 at 9:25 PM, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

Do you have any recommendation?

If you want to give another Force Die, well... Do it but I don't think it's a good idea. Imo, reducing the difficulty of any Force Die roll will show better the character's attunement to the Force. It could be done by upgrading 1 or 2 green dice to yellow dice or by removing 1 or 2 purple dice or by removing 1 or 2 setback dice or adding 1 or 2 boost dice if there isn't any setback dice to remove.

You can allow the "Quick Path to Power" option for the character to start with a FR2. Imo, player characters are all potentially as trong in the Force than any iconic Force User from the movies and series. It's their Force Rating that shows how much mastery of this potential they reached.

1 minute ago, WolfRider said:

If you want to give another Force Die, well... Do it but I don't think it's a good idea. Imo, reducing the difficulty of any Force Die roll will show better the character's attunement to the Force. It could be done by upgrading 1 or 2 green dice to yellow dice or by removing 1 or 2 purple dice or by removing 1 or 2 setback dice or adding 1 or 2 boost dice if there isn't any setback dice to remove.

That doesn't quite solve the issue of how to get them to roll equal pips, but I like that. I think I will use that instead of the Force Die.

One idea would be for the character to have to deal with not being able to roll equal pips, and they have to become more powerful in the force to be able to center themselves. Do you think that makes sense?

23 hours ago, micheldebruyn said:

I think these truely neutral characters are incredibly bad choices for PCs, unles the entire party follows this ethos.

As for "Grey Jedi", in the sense of Jedi that use both the light and dark sides, there simply can't be such a thing. They might be grey, but they wouldn't be any kind of Jedi.

There is actually one canon grey Force User: the Bendu from Rebels. And he was completely apathetic, not caring about anything except his precious balance, uninterested in fighting for any cause, and when pushed, happy to rain down mass destruction on the Empire and Rebellion equally.

I've been unable to quote two different message from two different pages in the same post, so I make another one.

I disagree with the 1st sentence. Having characters with different morality / alignment can make for a very interesting dynamic / interaction between them. Or it can ruin the game if players are unable to handle it.

But I agree there is no such thing as a grey Jedi. A Jedi is a lightside Force User. If he / she is a darkside Force User, he / she is a Sith. And for a neutral, someone that is neither lightside nor darkside, there's no name. Imo, that's why people keep calling those Force users grey Jedi.

I'm really lacking in my knowledge of Rebel because I didn't knew about this guy. But forme some one who's happy to rain mass destruction, whatever the target, whatever the intent, is evil and qualify as a darkside Force user. With me as a GM a player who do that will earn a lot of conflict when the target is the Empire and will earn as much conflict when the target is the Rebellion. There's no excuse for terrorism, never. What did that guy fits the definition of terrorism.

1 minute ago, WolfRider said:

I'm really lacking in my knowledge of Rebel because I didn't knew about this guy. But forme some one who's happy to rain mass destruction, whatever the target, whatever the intent, is evil and qualify as a darkside Force user. With me as a GM a player who do that will earn a lot of conflict when the target is the Empire and will earn as much conflict when the target is the Rebellion. There's no excuse for terrorism, never. What did that guy fits the definition of terrorism.

There's a little bit more nuance to it than that. It was an empty world (except for the military forces) and he was attacking the military forces of the Empire and Rebellion, trying to drive them off his world. Mass destruction is a sort of strong word for it.

12 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

That doesn't quite solve the issue of how to get them to roll equal pips

Sorry, I forgot about that. What about having the character doing it actively rather than using a scale. At the beginning of each game session, the character makes an attunement to the Force discipline check. If successful he / she is considered attuned for the rest of the game session. If failed then no attunement and no chance to achieve it for this game session. If during the game session the character gains conflict the attunement might get away.

For the attunement discipline check I was think of a base difficulty of 5 purple dice with the character's FR removing 1 purple dice for each FR. FR 1 = 4 purple, FR 2 = 3 purple, FR 3 = 2 purple, FR 4 = 1 purple and FR 5 = 0 purple. The idea is the more powerful with the Force the character is, the easier it is to be attuned to it.

Now, it's just a few ideas not tested. They mostly need some tweaking to not unbalance the game too much.

2 minutes ago, WolfRider said:

Sorry, I forgot about that. What about having the character doing it actively rather than using a scale. At the beginning of each game session, the character makes an attunement to the Force discipline check. If successful he / she is considered attuned for the rest of the game session. If failed then no attunement and no chance to achieve it for this game session. If during the game session the character gains conflict the attunement might get away.

For the attunement discipline check I was think of a base difficulty of 5 purple dice with the character's FR removing 1 purple dice for each FR. FR 1 = 4 purple, FR 2 = 3 purple, FR 3 = 2 purple, FR 4 = 1 purple and FR 5 = 0 purple. The idea is the more powerful with the Force the character is, the easier it is to be attuned to it.

Now, it's just a few ideas not tested. They mostly need some tweaking to not unbalance the game too much.

I'm not entirely convinced that that is the way to go, but it's at least a starting point.

The "Attunement" is the reduced difficulty on force checks, right?

How to then work in the equal force pips?

Part of why I wanted the sliding scale is to integrate the meditation thing, but here's an alternative: Perhaps the Meditation reduces the difficulty of the Attunement check by a certain amount, which then goes away when the character gets Conflict?

2 hours ago, WolfRider said:

I've been unable to quote two different message from two different pages in the same post, so I make another one.

I disagree with the 1st sentence. Having characters with different morality / alignment can make for a very interesting dynamic / interaction between them. Or it can ruin the game if players are unable to handle it.

But I agree there is no such thing as a grey Jedi. A Jedi is a lightside Force User. If he / she is a darkside Force User, he / she is a Sith. And for a neutral, someone that is neither lightside nor darkside, there's no name. Imo, that's why people keep calling those Force users grey Jedi.

I'm really lacking in my knowledge of Rebel because I didn't knew about this guy. But forme some one who's happy to rain mass destruction, whatever the target, whatever the intent, is evil and qualify as a darkside Force user. With me as a GM a player who do that will earn a lot of conflict when the target is the Empire and will earn as much conflict when the target is the Rebellion. There's no excuse for terrorism, never. What did that guy fits the definition of terrorism.

A True Neutral character that at best is not interested in having a goal, and at worst switches sides to whomever is starting to loose a conflict.

We're talking about an unpopulated world where the Rebels set up a hidden base. Kanan, the party Jedi, finds this ancient, Force-sensitive powerful, being, or even entity, called the Bendu (voiced by Tom Baker), and tries to get it to join the cause against the Empire.

The Bendu is completely unwilling to pick sides though, believing that conflict is always bad, no matter what side you're on or what you are fighting for.

When the Empire discovers the base and Kanan forces the issue, the Bendu reacts poorly, forcing both sides to leave the planet with a massive storm of lighting.

This is the only kind of neutral, "grey" Force-wielder shown to exist in canon.

[Pedantic note: dark side Force users aren't automatically Sith. Only members of the Sith religion are Sith. Other dark side users, like the Inquisitors, fallen Jedi, the Nightsisters... are just dark side users. Unles they changed that in TROS, which would be dumb.]

2 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

There's a little bit more nuance to it than that. It was an empty world (except for the military forces) and he was attacking the military forces of the Empire and Rebellion, trying to drive them off his world. Mass destruction is a sort of strong word for it.

It casts lightning that wipes out AT-ATs like they're nothing, as well as some spaceships IIRC. I call that mass destruction.

3 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

That doesn't quite solve the issue of how to get them to roll equal pips, but I like that. I think I will use that instead of the Force Die.

One idea would be for the character to have to deal with not being able to roll equal pips, and they have to become more powerful in the force to be able to center themselves. Do you think that makes sense?

You are never going to get them to roll equal pips. The darkside is quicker easier and the mechanic fits that.

Also i really dont think there is a middle point on the force unless you just dont act. Like Bendu did.

I think the force is more of a the dark side is abuse of power and that is seductive and corrupting.