My perspective is this:

In some cases, it does make sense to allow the target of a Force power to defend himself against the use of that power. Influence/Mind Trick type stuff is a good place to add that.

The Move power, however, is not a good place to use it, unless the defender is also using the Force (see Anakin and Obi-Wan trying to Force Push each other during their duel in Ep. III). If a Force-user uses the Move power against Boba Fett to hurl crates at him, as was mentioned previously, then no, I don't think Boba Fett gets a defense against that other than dodging out of the way of the crates being hurled at him. If a Force user wants to push Boba Fett off a cliff, then Boba Fett has no defense against the push, though he might react to the fall afterward.

But I would argue that the discussion of adding defenses against Force powers is akin to treating the symptom rather than the disease. The powers themselves are the issue; they are simply too strong. The ability to Force-move a Bantha should not be in this game at all, period. This game is not about high-end Force-users; powers of that magnitude should, in my opinion, be reserved for the Force and DEstiny book and nowhere else. At the time of the Galactic Civil War there are probably two individuals in the galaxy who are THAT strong in the Force, and they are Yoda and the Emperor. I don't even think Darth Vader can do that kind of thing.

If it were up to me, I would tear the entire Move table out and start over, making is substantially weaker as befits the Edge of the Empire setting and power level. The MOST I would allow it to do would be to let a character move, say, a backpack-sized object at long range, and only moderate speed, and even that is a rare feat for a Force user.

It's a conservative stance, but I think treating the Force conservatively in EotE is the right approach. And if the Force powers were tamped down to a more appropriate low power level, the there would not be this great need for defenses against them (though it would still be appropriate in some cases).

It depends how much the Prequels and Clone Wars influence the whole line. If not? Then yeah, you're probably right about Yoda and the Emperor. With Vader a possibility, just depending on how much his injuries and cybernetics have changed it.

If so on Clone Wars? Then a lot of people can, it's just basic Jedi Knight stuff. Maybe a bit tough for most padawans, but Knights? Yep, they're chucking boulders and such left and right. Even Ahsoka (Though it can be argued she's more Knight level, even if 'just' a Padawan yet)

Dulahan said:

I've never watched Clone Wars but the feeling I get is that the Jedi from that era are all gone by the GCW.

Oh, I know, I was just talking about if the show influences how Jedi will be when they finally land.

Venthrac said:

+1

Sorry, Dono. But I kinda got to agree with this. I do believe that it's every GMs responsibility to police his game to an extent; and NO rules system will ever prevent broken situations or characters. There never won't be a need for the GM to step in at some point.

But when I can pull this build out of my ass after ONE read-thru of three chapters….

And even still… Character creation veto aside, there needs to be some type of resistance or opposed check, here.

Sorry for the double post, but something just occurred to me…

You know what an easy fix would be to keep starting characters from abusing Force Powers? Simply add extra light-side pips to activate the "more advanced" upgrades of them. Don't limit their purchase or anything… Just make them cost more pips!

The big Control upgrade for Move is a prime example. If it cost an extra pip to activate, then it would be HIGHLY unlikely that a starting PC with a Force Rating of one could activate it. Just a thought.

Hi all,

First post here.

I apologise for all the errors in this post as english is not my first language, furthermore i am typing from an iPad, which can be straining at times.

I had a player make a Force Exile last night and he managed to start off the bat with a Force Ranking of 2 and the basic power of influence.

His character was human and he used the option of adding a +10 XP Obligation.

1.

First thing I noticed was that the description on page 182 about the basic power (influence) is apparently not compatible with the first boxed entry on page 183.

On the first page its clearly stated that " The most basic form of Influence does not allow the force user to guide or shape the thoughts of others. He can "merely" strain their mind (…) ",

whereas on the following one it is stated that

" the character may attempt to guide, shape, and even twist the thoughts and feelings of others " and then the text in the box proceeds to explain a special rule to force use that seems somewhat out of place in that page.

In your opinion what version of the text should prevail? The one in page 182 or 183? I am inclined to go by the former.

2.

Regarding the unbalance of the force thing ( re: influence and move), I am willing to playtest sakieh's suggestion regarding a defense mechanism (as quoted below):

Willpower/Vigilance to resist Influence, Brawn/Athletics to resist being moved (…)

In the absence of further guidelines from the games designers, I will just make the difficulty in the mentioned checks equal to the force rating of the power user (just 1 or 2 at the power level of force sensitive or padawan).

I dont know if the influence basic power to inflict stress should be resisted, but don't think so, as it doesn´t strike me as problematic right now.

On the other hand I think Game Masters can also take into consideration situational issues, notably the (narrative) difference between minions, henchmen and nemesis regarding the possibility to resist force powers.

I believe that in principle minions should not be able to resist the use of those force powers. Nemesis should always be able to resist them.

Also, please note that the Hutts have a special ability that enables them to ignore jedi mind tricks, just like RotJ.

sakieh said:

Venthrac said:

Early level Jedi yes, but once a Jedi in the D6 system got their Force dice up to the 5D level, they could do a whole host of things, and it just got worse from there. The last time I played a D6 Jedi, I had no problem with telekinetically popping most of the windows out of the bridge of a Star Destroyer, not even needing to spend a Force Point to double the number of dice I was rolling.

Ah okay, I never got very high in level. Maybe that was it.

GM Chris said:

+1. Making it cost more than 2-3 pips essentially puts it out of range of a PC unwilling to go to the Dark Side; making it cost more than 4 puts it out of their range entirely, I think.

A bit of this may just be unavoidable given the narrative focus of the game, and particularly its approach to the Dark Side. IIRC correctly in WEG you got a dark side point every time you used a power to cause direct damage. So throwing a crate and hitting a Storm Trooper instantly netted a Dark Side point. "The Force is used for defense, never for attack," and all that.

GM Chris said:

+1 I like it!

You leave the Powers in place as they are and change cost: 1 pip per Force Throw, +1 pip per Size/ Silhouette, +1 pip per extra object/target.

Sure you can toss a 10 damage heavy crate (2 pips)… sometimes, also maybe you can toss 2 smaller (5 damage) at 2 targets (2 pips), or on a great roll and with Force Rating 2 you can finally spend 4 pips and go crazy: throw 1 Size 3 object, or 2 x Size 2 objects, or 3 x Size 1 objects.

I can see it working.

Also for Jedi with higher Force Rating I see a lot of Force dice being tied in several ongoing effects: Danger Sense, Rebuke-like thingie, Bolt Deflection Readiness, Aura of Calm/Valor/Awesomeness.

Reqiring additional pips does seem like a reasonable way to control the usage without controling the access to the powers, as it were. I feel that it's also worth noting that except for the most trivial of situations (minor fling of a small object) even highly skilled force users had to pause and concentrate to enact any power with more control then just a wide area blast, which somewhat limits their utility in combat. I'm not sure how/if this is reflected in the rules, but I thought it was worth noting.

TheRedBaron said:

I think its time for Dice Math! The majority of light side faces on the force die give two pips where as most dark faces only have one. Requiring more pips actually gives light side users a small edge over their normal outclassed position.

A force rating 1 FSE who is drawing on the light side exclusively will have 2 dots available 60% of the time that he has access to the force (which is admittedly only 41.67% of the time. That means that not drawing on the dark side, a rating 1 force user can generate 2 dots 25% of the time. Rating 2 Force users can draw on 2 dots 67% the time, 3 dots 10% of the time, and 4 dots 6% of the time.

If the force user is willing to draw on the dark side at rating 2 they generate two dots with rating one 33% of the time. While a rating 2 force user drawing on the darkside always generates 2 dots, generates 3 dots 66% of the time, and 4 dots 11% of the time.

More than four is of course impossible, but I think the ideal would be to put lifting a size 3 object and not throwing it at 4 points. That's Luke lifiting the x-wing on Dagobah. So, 1 to activate +1 per size, and an extra +1 to throw it? Perhaps +1 per range tossed, since we rarely see people using Move at long ranges. This would let people toss around size 0 objects with relative impunity and rarely getting to toss a landspeeder at someone.

cetiken said:

That definitely feels like a solid solution.

cetiken said:

+1

These percentages feel more like the right levels. When moving objects, we see that size really does matter, as does distance. I would consider also adding a 'prolonged concentration mechanic (like being able to keep one or more dice while you re-roll the rest) to reporduce what we see on Degobah or even Hoth.

After all, there's a reason why Jedi hit people with lightsabers instead of Force-flung rocks.

Quicksilver said:

No need for a special mechanic, would be simple enough to just add a Maneuver via a talent in the Force Sensitive tree.

Inksplat said:

If it was a maneuver with the special condition that you can't use it more than once in a single turn, then yeah, I'd agree with this.

Venthrac said:

Most Talent-based maneuvers are set up to be Once per Round anyway, so it would fit right in.

Good stuff. Wonder if one of the design team members will sound off on this idea. It sounds like most of us agree it's worth consideration, at least.

It's safe to assume they are reading this and aware of concerns and proposed solutions. It's uncommon to get a direct response from FFG on the boards. I expect to get their opinion / response when / if they do a PDF update of the beta rules as happened weekly with Only War Beta. I wonder of LucasCorp will allow that though. Reguardless they are definatly busy this weekend at PAX.

Yeah, I'm predicting we'll get less frequent updates, especially at first. But the beta period will be a lot longer than Only Wars'

Well, given updates probably have to be vetted by LucasFilm first, and the process can sometimes drag (case in point, getting errata out for the Saga Edition books), we're likely bound to only get two or three major updates.

As for the powers themselves, I was reading through them last night, in particular the Move power. Being a veteran of the many different Star Wars RPGs, this has always been an issue, though Saga Edition I think had it the worst in terms of damage, and RCR the worst in terms of sheer complexity involved with the power.

Right now, the main beef seems to be the potential for obscene amounts of damage (even 20 points is enough to drop most bad guys in the Adversary section) without any means of the target being able to resist/dodge/avoid the attack, again an issue in common with Saga Edition but also D6 when your Force-users got to the higher end of play (namely, their Force skills started hitting the 6D level).

So I'm thinking that patching Move into something a little less broketastic can be handled one of three ways:

Option 1: Chance to Avoid
Cetiken's notion of an Agility/Coordination check is certainly a good one, however the issue is how to determine the difficulty level. Do you base it on the size of the object being thrown? Do you base it on the attacker's Force Rating? On how many Force Points were spent to activate the power, or how many FP's were spent to activate it? Each of these has their perks and drawbacks.

Based on the hurled object's size? Small objects become pitifully easy to avoid, almost forcing the character to hurl really big things if they want to hit the target.

Based on just the attacker's Force Rating? Until you can raise your Force Rating to at least a 2, it's still going to be really easy to avoid, since that's only a single difficulty die, and even with 2 difficulty dice it's not going to be too hard for a BBEG to avoid getting pelted. Granted, as more books are released and more options become available to boost your Force Rating, this will eventually heavily favor the Force-user, but we're talking a whole 'nother year at least for prospective material. Granted, this was my initial suggestion to address the balance issue of Move, but in retrospect it's not quite as hot as I thought it was.

Based on the Force Point cost? Same issue as above, it's only going to add 1 or 2 difficulty dice to the roll, which won't be that big of a setback, and we're stuck waiting on new material for added ways to boost that Force Rating.

Based on combination of Force Rating and Force Point cost? Okay, so the hurled object attack isn't as easy to avoid even at low levels, but this is starting to get way too complicated for it's own good.

Also, you're possibly talking about multiple rolls when multiple bad guys can be targeted at once, which again is pulling this game away from the general K.I.S.S. principle that it's generally embracing.

Option 2: Increased Force Point Cost
Again, fairly simple. Just have the Force-user pay one extra Force Point for every increment above Size 0 the hurled object is. If you just want to lift the object but not attack, then you just pay the standard 1 LS Force Point; if you attack, then you pay extra.

Overall, pretty simple, and it keeps the really heavy stuff (Size 3 and up) from being tossed at bad guys out of a starting hero's hands. 20 damage is still possible, but at least you don't have the concerns of a Force-user choosing to just flip a destiny point and use a DS Force Point to score that much damage in one go. And at Force Rating 2, the really heavy stuff becomes a possible attack option and the 10 to 20 damage a near-constant one, but these are high-level heroes at this point, and the bad guys would be scaled to match, either in volume or ability.

Option 3: Reduce the damage of hurled objects
One that I've not seen here, but how about instead of dealing 10 damage per size rating starting with Size 1, have the damage scale by 5 instead of 10? So a Size 0 object still does 5 damage, a Size 1 does 10, but after that the scale changes to dealing 15 damage with a Size 2, 20 with a Size 3, and so forth. It's still auto-damage since the Force-user just needs to come up with a single Force Point to activate it, but it's not as much of it. Sure, you're bound to be wiping out minions and henchman like there's no tomorrow, but a nemesis won't be quite so easy to take out, especially if they've got a decent Soak score and/or Wound Threshold to help them out.

If you're really concerned about the potential abuse of Move, try combining Options 2 and 3 (increased cost, reduced damage). If that doesn't scale things down to a less worrisome level, I'm not really sure what will.

Now, onto the other hot-button power, Influence . The main issue is that it's mind-whammy with no means of resistance, pretty much meaning a Force-user can "auto-win" just be being able to act before their intended target, especially once the first Control Upgrade. There's the Option 1, a resisted roll as documented above, only using Willpower/Discipline for the target's roll, and it has all the same perks and drawbacks as listed above. There's also really not much call for an increased Force Point cost. And yet, we do have instances in both the movies and EU of "the strong-willed' being able to resist a mind trick. Okay, so Jabba got ret-con'd into having a species' trait that made them immune to mind tricks, but we do have instances in the EU where the mind trick simply failed because the target's will was too strong for the Jedi.

So, I suggest adopting the proposed suggestion (not sure who it was) that a target (must be a PC or Nemesis) can elect to voluntarily suffer strain to directly cancel out the Force Points generated by the Force-user to activate the Influence power, specifically the basic effect and the alter thoughts/emotions effect, with the addition that they can only spend as much strain to do this as they have ranks in Willpower. So a henchmen will get mind-whammied pretty easily (like we see in the movies), but a Nemesis character with a Willpower of 2 or better will probably be able to fight off a mind trick from a neophyte Force-user until he either passes out from the strain or the Force-user gives it up as a bad job, but a seasoned Force Exile will have a better chance of overcoming the Nemesis character's resistance. There's no rolling, just an expenditure of strain and determination of effect (if any).

As for Sense , that one I really don't think is that big a concern. The sidebar on page 180 already discusses how to deal with emotion/thought-reading, namely that it's not perfect telepathy like we see in so many other sci-fi settings (Babylon 5 being a big one), just a quick snapshot of what the target is feeling or thinking at that given moment, or to go by the movies (especially the Original Trilogy), you just get a word or three and some basic emotional content, not full sentences or elaborate images.

As for the Ongoing effect, yes it's potent, particularly with all the Strength upgrades, but the Force-user is also sacrificing their ability to do any other Force stuff, including sensing emotions/thoughts until they get their Force Rating up to 2, which is probably going to take a while (at least 100 XP going the fastest route possible on the Force Exile talent tree). Not to mention there's a good chance those extra difficulty dice aren't going to do more than just add a bunch of threat without offsetting any of the attacker's successes, and from how it reads, you'd have to decide to use that ability before the attacker makes their roll (or at least that's how I'd run it).

In the skills chapter, under Vigilance and Discipline , it is mentioned those skills are very important to the use of the Force and to see that chapter for further reference… however, there is no mention of their use in that chapter.

Has anyone else noted this?

Perhaps there was a thought to use those skills with the various Force Powers .

JediHamlet said:

Nice catch. I think we're missing something here that might be the factor we're all trying to create.