Also, I wasn't properly reading the sidebar on the Influence power.

You can only use Dark Side points to generate negative emotions (and to do even this, you must spend destiny points and suffer strain). In other words, you can't choose to tap into the dark side and get them to be friendly with you.

Now, this is written more for the base form of the power, but I'm fairly sure it is/should be interpreted for the rest of the control upgrades. This causes it to only work about 1/3 of the time when using only 1 force die, and only a little more than half the time when using 2 dice (the max this system lets players arrive at).

I think the fact that most of the time, players don't want to take actions that either incur a fight or encourage anger in their foes will cause this to not get too broken.

Chris's character is legal and awesome, only thing Just found out (easy to miss) is you pay multiple costs if an upgrade takes more than one column, so the "attack variety" of move is 10 XP. Just thought I'd mention it since I missed it on first read.

KommissarK said:

Unfortunately, KommisarK you are incorrect. While I agree Force powers should not be specializations, an issue I raised earlier in this thread, page 179 makes it clear that Force powers are specializations.

There you will see sentences like:

• "This is the first row of the Force power specialization, when consulting the specialization's visual breakdown."
• "As with any specializations, upgrades are purchased with experience points, and each upgrade may only be purchased if it connects to the basic form or previously purchased upgrade."

This is of course a side issue to the issue of the Move power, but it is something that should be addressed.

cparadis said:

Now, I don't have my book yet, but I'm pretty sure that just the Force Sensitive Exile is the specialization. The powers are a completely separate beast. I'm pretty certain that its covered in the Order 66 podcast. It just wouldn't make much sense to have Force Sensitive and the individual powers to be Specs, as that would be a severely gimped character. Smuggler + Exile + Move being a maxed character would give you almost nothing in terms of talents to take.

I will say I missed that detail, but its meaningful to note that nowhere near the actual stated "how to buy" a force power does it call it a specialization.

One interesting thing,

"(In actuality, characters may only have access to three talent trees at any one time, but since each specialization includes a talent tree. this provides a limit on specializations as well)." p 65, Acquiring New Specializations, 4th paragraph.

Note that it speaks of talent trees.

Now go to p. 178-179. Note that it makes no reference to talents. Force Powers are classified as containing a tree of the basic force power, and its upgrades . Throughout the section, it is referred to as upgrades, and talent is not mentioned anywhere.

So I'll grant you that sure, its a specialization. But characters are not limited to 3 specializations, they're limited to 3 talent trees (which EotE might as well mean 3 specializations). And force powers are not talent trees.

Lets face it, we can be sure that Powers don't count against the limit, otherwise if you take all 3 you can't keep Force Exile tree. And upgrades aren't even marked as passive/activated/permanent so we see they're a different beast. Still, it should be made clear in the final product.

I can understand where there's confusion; personally, I won't be counting Powers as specialisations, if only for the reason that it severely limits customisation options by having each Power use up one of your 3 available slots.

I understood it this way.

Force Exile is the Specialization. This is the only way (unless I missed something) to gain a Force Rating. Once you have a Force Rating, you can use XP to purchase Force Powers.

p.179 uses vocab that confuses the issue calling "Force Power" "Force Power specialization." This is the only place it does this. On p.178, where it lists the XP to purchase "Force Powers" it does not refer to Force Powers as "specializations". I think 179 is just making the analogy that Force Power upgrades work in a similar fashion to "Talents" in a Career specialization.

If you compare the language on p.176, where it talks specifically about the Force Exile Specialization and how it goes out of the way to explain how it compares/contrasts with other specializations, its clear that Force Powers are not "normal specializations and they have "upgrades", not "Talents" as pointed out previously. Otherwise I would expect similar "disclaimer' language on p.178-179 as well.

It's obvious that it's something else that needs some clearer language in a final product from all the confusion in this thread. Again, the Beta working!

Dulahan said:

I agree. Personally, I do not think Force powers should be specializations, but perhaps this is a balance issue … who knows? I just wanted to clarify that in the rules as written Force powers are referred to as specializations.

KommissarK's point about the distinctions between specializations and talent trees is also a very good point. Generally, I think Dulahan is spot on and The Force chapter will need some cleaning up and like Dulahan said this is the point of the Beta.

cparadis said:

Just need to keep repeating that. There's a lot of threads where the tone of this is already like it would be in any other number of full release games. Beta is the time for debate, to find the kinks, point out the flaws. Because there is still a good chance things can be changed. The Only War Beta is a great example of that, there were some down right drastic ones due to debate. Debate, debate, debate. This is a rather large scale thing, and we the players DO have some power here.

I, for one, think the Force Power upgrades should cost a lot more than they currently do.

Dulahan, I like your style.

As I told someone else, the more active the fans are on these forums and the more civil we remain in discussing how we think the game can be improved, the better chance we have at getting the best Star Wars RPG we can!

Venthrac said:

Why? Between having to buy into the Force-Sensitive tree, having to buy access to each power, and having the upgrades cost twice or thrice their listed price, I think becoming a Jedi Padawan is extremely expensive as it is.

TheRedBaron said:

The fact that…

For 60 xp, I can upgrade the difficulty of 3 incoming attacks (per turn) 3 times (e.g. 1 difficulty die becomes 2 challenge dice). This is assuming buying both Force Sensitive (and theoretically dropping it as a specialization), and then buying into the Force Sense tree.

For 110 xp (remember, this is the amount a starting human has), I can throw a size 4 object (40 damage) up to the Extreme range band, and affect up to 3 distinct targets. Assuming a group of minions = 1 target, that could in theory mean I kill 21 stormtroopers a round. And at worst I'm giving the GM one destiny point and suffering 1 strain. Yawn. Next…

Now, certainly, both of those things are very expensive, but can quite quickly overshadow any other character at the table.

Right, and that's all done with just starting XP . I'm sure characters will accrue plenty more XP fairly quickly during their adventures.

Consider how many Force-users we see in the movies who are able to move objects of that mass and size. They tend to be experts like Yoda, Dooku and the Emperor. It feels to me like it should take, I don't know, at least a few decades of training to be able to move around objects the size of banthas. Such power should be, in my opinion, a lot harder to gain access to than it currently is.

This is an area where levels can help. I'd expect a d20 game to place a level restriction on such an ability, but we don't have levels in EotE and so some other gating mechanic should perhaps take its place. If the character build that GM_Chris described doesn't convince you of that, there's not much else I can say that will.

A level system is a flat out terrible 'gating' mechanic for its sheer artificiality and how it limits creativity. A good GM should be able to balance things.

That being said I do believe the Force is currently too strong. Yes strong ones learned to do cool things, but for younger, early in their training types. It took a lot more effort. So yes, some sort of tie in to your force rating would be a good idea, I believe. And training. Right now it is definitely more powerful than was probably intended.

Personally, I would say:

1) Force Powers CANNOT be purchased at Chargen….or, no Upgrades may be purchased, and only 1 power, just because of how potentially broken they can be, and how, frankly, un-thematic it is for someone to be able to start out as a master telekinetic or mind manipulator or "Senser."

2) There MUST be a defense mechanism. This is important because a) It means the GM does not have to build opposition completely around the one telekinetic in the party and b) Take the telekinetic above that could rip level 3 section of wall. Throw that against the PC's…If something can be used against the PCs, then it must have a way for the PCs to save themselves beyond "Act first!" I would go with: Willpower/Vigilance to resist Influence, Brawn/Athletics to resist being moved, Agility/Athletics to get out of the way of things being moved at you, and Cunning/Deceit to resist Sense. Of course, I would assume that there is a Characteric/Skill roll with Force related stuff(still muddling through alot of the book).

3) Given the debate on a bunch of the wording, I think the wording SHOULD be clearer. no-body wants to have their character die because the GM interpreted something different, no-one wants to spend the starting build points to buy something, only to find out that the GM did not interpret something poorly worded in a different way then they did.

Maybe it's just my experience both playing and GM'ing other point-buy systems (HERO/Champions and Mutants & Masterminds being the most prominent), but it seems a lot of the fretting over PCs being able to make broketastic Force-users by dumping all of their points into Force powers has a much simpler solution.

Namely, the GM has final approval over a character, and if he feels a certain character build is problematic or is going to ruin the fun for everyone, said GM has the right to veto that character build. Personally, I wouldn't have allowed GM Chris' Starkiller Junior to have hit the table, rightly citing that he'd be far too dominant in combat encounters. I've had HERO characters veto'd for similar reasons and with a perfectly reasonable explanation. As the GM, one of your main responsibilities is to ensure that everyone at the table has fun, yourself included. And if that player insists that either they get to play their broketastic Force monster or they won't play… then I guess they won't be playing, simple as that.

That said, I do think some in-game restrictions should be in place to keep would-be power gamers from dumping all their points into Force Powers and creating idiot savants like Starkiller Junior up there. For me at least, restricting them to just the 5 XP upgrades and allowing no more than half their starting XP to be spent on powers (including purchasing the Force Exile specialization) would go a long way towards curbing the potential for "rampant Force power abuse," at least in regards to starting level PCs.

Problem is still going to come up with more-experiened PC Force-users though, so there does need to be some kind of resistance system. Either that or some kind of penalty applied directly to the PC other than flipping a destiny point if you want to use dark side pips to fuel your powers.

sakieh said:

sakieh said:

Supplement with something like this(?):

(1) Under a Force Power Tree, you can't move down a level until you purchase all on a given level. For example, no 10 xp boosts until you purchase all the 5xp upgrades.

and/or

(2) You can't purchase more than one Force talent box per chance to spend xp points. At character creation you can buy a power, and even buy one 5 xp upgrade. After your first adventure, you can buy another xp upgrade for that power, but not 2 or 3. DMs are encouraged to require players to acquire a trainer or otherwise explain this increase.

Either one (and especially both) would make Force Power development a longer, more arduous process, and especially for something like Move, would seem more organic that all aspects of the power seem to grow together.

Alternatively, you could have the range of Move have multiple levels according to size. For instance, rather than have Medium range with the entire scope of Move sizes, you have to buy range for each size. Just because you can move Size 2 at Medium range, when you buy Size 3, you don't automatically get that at Medium range too, but now have to buy up to Medium range with Size 3 as well.

Donovan Morningfire said:

I call this "the nuclear option" and I hate using it. Why? Being told "because I said so" sucks. It's like being a kid again and having your parents yell at you. It also communicates a fundamental lack of trust in the game rules. If the player creates a character that's in total compliance with the rules, and I veto it, I'm basically telling them that I only intend to play by the rules when it's convenient for me to do so. Once that precedent is established, trust breaks down and the players feel like no matter what the rules say, they're just puppets to your whims.

I guess I'm providing an extreme example and maybe being a little fatalistic, but man, if you can't even get through character creation without throwing the rulebook out, that's not a good sign at all of things to come.

Certainly, the argument "at character creation" is pretty much invalid (as the GM can and should squash any problem characters at that stage).

Whats concerning is how effective it could still be in the hands of a solid roleplayer.

So you're running along with your character, things are good, and then an event happens. Then, the player tells the GM he would like to pursue the idea of his PC becoming force sensitive. An excellent reason is developed, events happen in game; drama happens. So far, its quite interesting, quite enjoyable. As a plain old Force sensitive person, there is no obvious imbalance in the game.

In theory, sure, this could go on, without any real issue. But for the sake of argument, step two happens: the player requests to learn the Force movement power (hey, Luke was doing it by the start of Ep 5). Alright, default power isn't too broken, sure. 10xp down. (note that yes, all that has been spent so far is 20xp + any amount invested in the off time, not too involved with what it takes to "break" things).

From this point, obviously the player probably needs to petition the GM about what he can train, but eventually, its going to be a question of "can I train the control upgrade for the attack" (it only takes 15xp more from the initial learning of the power to get to that point. In the off time, they could already be able to fling around bantha sized objects; just not attack with them).

Then the attack breaks the game. Size 0 isn't too bad, but even as low as the size 1 version (remember, only 5xp to take that strength upgrade) is quite dangerous. Suddenly, the PC can use an action, roll a force die, on a result of a white pip, the attack deals a straight up 10 damage (equal to a blaster rifle). Size 2 is a total of 5xp more an 20 damage. For reference, it only took 35 xp (depending on xp rate, 3.5 sessions). Of course, it still can only be used on engaged targets, but this is still significant.

The issue is that the xp cost is pretty much minimal. Obviously, the GM can gate when they train all of this, but that still feels needlessly arbitrary. Also, it still means that jedi in later books are going to be -scary-. And I don't ascribe to the starkiller/gods among men theory of jedi. At least not in 35xp. I could buy Resilience, Dedication, and Defensive stance from the marauder specialization (75xp) and still get shown up (big time) by a force user flinging a large desk at me at medium range (10 for the power, 5 for first magnitude, 10 for attack, 5 for size 1, 5 for size 2, 5 for short, 5 for medium, +10 if you're counting force sensitive). 55xp straight up owns the 75 from the top tier of marauder (and thats not including the rest of that tree).

Sure, maybe the marauder would win on other checks, but if dealing in a pure combat situation, the difference in cost/benefit of being a force user is just too high.

Venthrac said:

If the player is actively trying to game the system, isn't it them that's causing the trust breakdown? The GM is there to keep things fun. I mean, as a GM you could follow the rules and just drop a Star Destroyer on the head of the offending PC, but that seems worse than a veto to me.

Everyone, do remember this is a Beta, so while in a full release game "The GM should solve it" is probably a decent, if not always the best solution. In a Beta we should be trying to come up with genuine solutions so that doesn't have to be the answer. Will FFG take our ideas? It remains to be seen. But it is the point that we should be actively trying to find problems and how to solve them now. And the Starting, untrained low Force Rating Force User having better Telekinesis than Vader shows in Empire Strikes Back? That's a definite issue. Mind Trick? Big issue.

So we need to look at the real problem, it's not so much a case of starting character issue as it is a case of System issue that needs to be fixed.

KommissarK said:

KommissarK said:

As opposed to shooting a blaster rifle for the same 10 damage at 0xp expenditure…? And as for tossing banthas around, note that the 110xp expenditure renders that literally the only thing the character can do with any kind of proficiency. It's a really nice trick, but it's a single trick.

I see the point, but I think the problem lies in the accessibility rather than the power of the Force. Honestly, if these powers are going to stay consistent across the three books (as in, a Jedi Master in the third game could take Move relatively unaltered), then the real solution is just to increase the XP costs of Force Powers. If Jedi are going to see greater experience at chargen anyways, everybody's happy.

And now that I've re-read it, the way the powers are constructed (as talent trees), the wording in the specialization chapter ("an individual only has access to three talent trees at any one time") indicates that you can't take all three Force Powers on one character since they're required to have the Force-Sensitive specialization.