My apologies if this has already been asked and answered elsewhere. The Search function for the forums was not very useful for finding the answer if it was.

My question: can a player commit dice up to his max Force Rating if it is temporarily boosted by a talent or item (e.g., Knowledge is Power, Survival of the Fittest, Unstable Kyber Crystal)? All of these talents boost your Force Rating for one check, but can you commit that many Force dice at the end of the check to maintain an ongoing effect, even if the character's Force Rating would revert back to normal at the end of the check?

TIA!

The power would end as soon as you no longer had the dice available to commit and keep it sustained, so single-check boosts to FR wouldn't be useful for sustaining anything.

If the talent boosted FR for an entire scene then you could commit them and keep the power active until the scene ended, though.

Very important detail on these talents (Knowledge is Power, Survival of the Fittest, etc.). These powers do NOT increase your Force rating. Instead, they change the number of dice you roll when making a Force check.

I.e. They say, "Hey, when you use this, don't look at your Force rating to know how many dice you get, look at your Lore/Survival ranks." Your Force rating doesn't change, the only thing that changes is the number of dice you get to roll.

So, as an example:

You have Force rating 2 and Lore 4, and you use the Battle Meditation power.
Scenario 1 (You do not use Knowledge is Power):
--To assemble your dice pool, you reference your Force rating, meaning you get 2 dice.
--You roll 2 Force dice and spend any Force points you generate on the effects you want.
--You cannot activate the Duration upgrade to sustain the power, because your Force rating is only 2, and it requires you to commit 3 Force dice, so the effects will only last until the end of your next turn.

Scenario 2 (You activate Knowledge is Power):
--To assemble your dice pool, you reference your ranks in Knowledge (Lore), meaning you get 4 dice.
--You roll 4 Force dice, and spend any Force points you generate on the effects you want.
--You cannot activate the Duration upgrade to sustain the power, because your Force rating is only 2, and it requires you to commit 3 Force dice, so the effects will only last until the end of your next turn.

I'm not as familiar with the Unstable Kyber Crystal, but again, most effects don't increase your Force rating, they add or modify the number of dice you roll.

EDIT: The wording is confusing so I understand why this question keeps coming up. But the reason it works like this is as follows: in the long description of the talents, it says "...when making a check..." i.e. when rolling dice. All commit powers either are not checks (like the Sense powers that upgrade your defensive or offensive ability) and therefore the talent does not apply, or the commit specifically happens after making a check, meaning you are no longer in the process of making a check. Also, the talents say that you "treat your Force rating as being [something else]," not that it actually becomes something else.

I love Mystics, so I am very familiar with the inner workings of this particular talent, and have thought about it a lot . If you're wondering how that's useful once you get a very high Force rating, remember: when you commit dice, your Force rating actually goes down by the number of committed dice. So even if you have Force rating 6 and only 4 ranks, if you commit 4 dice to various powers (and hence only get 2 dice normally), you can then use Knowledge is Power to roll 4 dice on a check.

Thanks @Garran and @Absol197 for your responses! They are very helpful.

@Absol197 you mentioned Survival of the Fittest, and I had a related question today that I think your detailed write up answered. Specifically a Hermit with Survival of the Fittest, Force Rating 3, and 4 ranks of Survival would still NOT be able to bond a Silhouette 2 animal companion, correct? My reasoning is that since Survival of the Fittest doesn't actually increase your Force Rating, you wouldn't have Force Rating 4 at the time of bonding the animal.

7 hours ago, AeroEng42 said:

Thanks @Garran and @Absol197 for your responses! They are very helpful.

@Absol197 you mentioned Survival of the Fittest, and I had a related question today that I think your detailed write up answered. Specifically a Hermit with Survival of the Fittest, Force Rating 3, and 4 ranks of Survival would still NOT be able to bond a Silhouette 2 animal companion, correct? My reasoning is that since Survival of the Fittest doesn't actually increase your Force Rating, you wouldn't have Force Rating 4 at the time of bonding the animal.

Correct.

That is correct. I don't like the wording they use for these talents, because it leads to this exact problem of people thinking their Force rating actually increases and then we get a bunch of weird, "well, technically I have high enough Force rating for a moment, so how..." No. It only changes how many dice you roll on one check. You value for any ongoing abilities does not change.

I don’t think the +FR wording is bad. I think it’s quite clear. Power From Pain gives force Rating in addition to what you have equal to critical injuries suffered. It shares similar wording to the others Survival of the Fittest and Knowledge is Power. So would PFP be the same as SOTF and KIS?

I argue that it would not act the same.

The only difference (and it is a big one) here being is the length of the duration SOTF and KIS are one check PFP is the entire encounter you activate it in. So I don’t think it’s the wording that’s the issue here but the duration.

All these abilities and items add to your FR meaning you roll more dice, but only (to my knowledge) PFP lasts an encounter and has the same +FR wording, thus everyone is correct in saying you can’t commit temporary FR, If and only If those Temporary FD last one check, lasting an Encounter is wholly different.