Hey everyone!

Just getting into Force and destiny again...I know that mastering the Force trees can take a long time, but I was wondering what the best path would be for character building. I want to focus on force abilities and gaining force points. So I'm not sure which paths would be the best to take but I would appreciate any suggestions or or paths you might have taken if you've tried this!

Thanks and may the Force be with you!

3 hours ago, cybercat07 said:

Hey everyone!

Just getting into Force and destiny again...I know that mastering the Force trees can take a long time, but I was wondering what the best path would be for character building. I want to focus on force abilities and gaining force points. So I'm not sure which paths would be the best to take but I would appreciate any suggestions or or paths you might have taken if you've tried this!

Thanks and may the Force be with you!

Before we directly address how to power through trees, what do you want to do with the Force? Are there other players making Force-using characters, and if so, what are they doing? You can try to make the omni-capable Force-user, but it will either be extremely costly, spread very thin, stepping on the toes of other characters' roles, or lacking in direction (more than one can apply) compared to a character that has a focused concept.

So there's essentially two paths to what I suppose could be called "mastery of the Force," that being getting a high Force Rating as quickly as possible, and being highly effective with a Force power with as few Force dice as possible.

On getting a high Force Rating (and thus more Force dice), the most efficient route to at least Force Rating 3 is to start in Seer, Sage, or Hermit (found in Savage Spirits) as all three of them offer two Force Rating talents. After you've gotten the two Force Rating talents in one of those specs, buy into a different one of those three and buy them up to the two Force Rating talents, putting you at Force Rating 5, which is pretty much a "master of the Force" as you'll pretty reliably have multiple Force points of your preferred flavor (light or dark). There's also Magus, which can get you extra dark side Force points, so if you don't mind being a dark sider, that's always an option.

The other path is investing in upgrades for your powers, which allows you to get more oomph out of each Force point you spend, since for the various upgrades, each Force point spent allows to active all upgrades of that type; for instance, if you've bought three magnitude upgrades in the Move power, one Force point allows you to affect up to three additional objects when using the power.

Now you can certainly combine the two approaches, such as starting out in Sage and getting your character up to Force Rating 3, while also spending XP in select Force powers to purchase upgrades. However, it bears mentioning that there's not really a "quick" path to power, as the developers designed the game so that Force users would have a long road to travel in terms of spending XP; many EotE and AoR players would consider their characters "done and finalized" somewhere past the 500 earned XP mark, while for many F&D characters getting to that same threshold still leaves a lot of room for growth.

16 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Before we directly address how to power through trees, what do you want to do with the Force? Are there other players making Force-using characters, and if so, what are they doing? You can try to make the omni-capable Force-user, but it will either be extremely costly, spread very thin, stepping on the toes of other characters' roles, or lacking in direction (more than one can apply) compared to a character that has a focused concept.

Yikes I would most likely be the sole force user. And yes based on Donovan's post, I'm seeing how costly it would be.

12 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

However, it bears mentioning that there's not really a "quick" path to power, as the developers designed the game so that Force users would have a long road to travel in terms of spending XP; many EotE and AoR players would consider their characters "done and finalized" somewhere past the 500 earned XP mark, while for many F&D characters getting to that same threshold still leaves a lot of room for growth.

That summaries it up pretty nicely. I'd prefer to get the high force rating then get into Force powers.. I'll have to discuss this all with my GM and group to see if they'd be willing to let this character mull around forever or not lol or I'll see if they'd be interested in running a force and destiny only game.

1 hour ago, cybercat07 said:

Yikes I would most likely be the sole force user. And yes based on Donovan's post, I'm seeing how costly it would be.

That summaries it up pretty nicely. I'd prefer to get the high force rating then get into Force powers.. I'll have to discuss this all with my GM and group to see if they'd be willing to let this character mull around forever or not lol or I'll see if they'd be interested in running a force and destiny only game.

You probably want to do a hybrid of the 2 paths. As it is cheaper to get the force bought up to some extent than to try and get all the force rating you want. IE as quickly as you can get to force rating 2 but then invest a reasonable amount in the force powers you want to focus on. Then work on both getting your force rating up and adding more to your force power trees.

If your starting spec is Sage, Seer or Hermit, it's possible to get both +1FR talent in the tree with around 150 XPs. But you won't have many left to spend on Force Powers. So, with using the Knight Level option you can start with a FR3 character without any FPs or an FR2 character with one or two Force Powers and one or two upgrade in each.

One trick for Force versatility might be to start in a tree with two Force Rating upgrades, then hop into Jedi Master. The Powerful Ally talent lets you spend a Destiny Point to use the basic version of any Force Power you don't already have, or use an unpurchased upgrade on a Force Power you do have.

Capping out that tree would also get you to Force Rating 4, which is pretty darn solid.

Awesome! All great suggestions. I'll talk with my GM to see what they think will work best!