GM Chris said:

Yeah I'm remembering a few more now too. Good points. Yoda against Darth Sidious's guards was a good one.

Which makes me wonder. I don't have the book in front of me but can you hold someone in the air indefinetly with the FFG Move power or just "throw" them?

Maybe they need more granularity between Force grabbing and Force slamming.

Quicksilver said:

Mmm… "sometimes".

Just watched Episode III again, and when Darth Tyranous fights Obi-Wan and Anakin (near the end of the fight), Tryanous uses "Move" on Obi-Wan directly, slamming him into a nearby raised walkway - which actually knocks him UNCONSCIOUS. (You might be able to argue that the walkway did the damage… but it's pretty thin… especially in a narrative system.) Then he uses Move again to pull the walkway on top of Obi-Wan's unconscious body. Maul also used it on Obi-Wan directly, right after he shish-kabob'd Qui-Gon and the two apprentices went at each other with sabers - the force of the blast was so powerful it knocked Obi-Wan backwards into the 'big well' and knocked his lightsaber out of his hand.

And we see Move doing "direct" damage to mooks frequently, even when they're not pushed into objects. The first one that pops into my head is padawan Obi-Wan using it against three B1 battle droids on the Trade Federation ship right near the start of Episode I (right after they escape the gas-filled room).

Quicksilver said:

Actually, with that example, I'd say Vader was hurling Silhouette 0 sized objects (base damage 5), and using the excess Force Points he was generating to move them more than one range band and deal an extra point or two of damage to make sure he would beat Luke's Soak value. Like you said, Vader was pretty much toying with Luke at that point in the fight.

Also, I re-read the Control Upgrade for Move, and I'd apparently missed that the way it's worded, you don't even need to hurl an object at the target

So for those same 40 XP I outlined in my earlier example for Move, you could drop that second Strength upgrade and take the other 5 XP Magnitude, enabling you to just deal 10 damage to any regular sized opponent you might face. Yeah, it's not enough to one-shot most Henchman or Nemesis-grade NPCs, but you've got instant mook smashage for a single Force Point that could be repeated ad nauseum. Generate an extra Force Point or two, and you can even push them away and right into one of the many pits that appear in Star Wars building design. Get that Force Rating up to 2 and you can push them even further; the max result of 4 points will let you push 3 targets at that point up to three range bands (Engaged to Close, Close to Medium, Medium to Long). Add another Magnitude upgrade or two, and you could potentially take out almost an entire group of bad guys with a wave of your hand and not have to exceed their wound threshold. That's… that's pretty **** impressive, and something you couldn't do in Saga Edition without a very high level Force Secret.

Makes you wonder why Tyranus didn't just do this to Obi-wan at the begining of the fight. Of course mechanicaly (iirc), as you go unconscious when you run out of strain this still fits. Obi-wan, who had suffered a large quantity of strain due to force power use, is finaly low enough a powerful strike from Tyrannus can cause enought strain to render the Jedi unconscious. The second application of the power is essentialy a non-combat movement to pin a fallen, unmoving person. Again, I'm not arguing that the force doesn't do any damage, I'm arguing that it's usualy equivilent to a good sturdy kick, not a blaster bolt, and therefore should cause damage similar to an unarmed, brawl attack.

Yoda, who is very strong in the force is able to incapasitate a minion. Tyrannus (ex-jedi master) is able to knock out an exausted Jedi. Sith Apprentace Maul is able to push a Jedi off a ledge that's right behind him (which arguably wouldn't have been to dangerous in the open hanger). Obi-wan is able to destroy a B-1 battle droid, which the gunguns kindly show us fall apart when shoved hard enough anyway.

Quicksilver said:

Makes you wonder why Tyranus didn't just do this to Obi-wan at the begining of the fight.

[begin HK-47 Impression] Mockery : Because the movie was aiming to create a cinematic battle and wasn't being run using any set of RPG rules? Lucas was going for "this looks cool" rather than "the most effective combat tactic would be…" [end HK-47 impression]

Quicksilver said:

Great question…

For Tyranous - I'm going to go entirely RPG on this one: Tyrannus was an ARROGANT lightsaber wielder who prided himself on his saber skillz. Those would be his FIRST resort. (The same could be said of his fight with Yoda in Episode II.)

"I see this contest will not be decided by our knowledge of the Force, but by our skills with a Light Saber."
- Tyrannus

Quicksilver said:

That's RIGHT!!! [facepalm] Well, my theory goes out the window.

GM Chris said:

Not necessarily.

If you've read the novelization for Revenge of the Sith*, then that duel between Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Dooku was pretty much a staged fight with the intention of drawing Anakin closer to the dark side. On Dooku's part, he thought the objective was simply kill Obi-Wan, be "bested" by Anakin and taken prisoner, where he'd recant his "crimes," pin the blame for the really major atrocities on Grevious (who makes a great patsy for that sort of thing), and pretty much work alongside Palps/Sidious and a converted Anakin to remold the Jedi Order and galaxy into a grand Sith Empire.

So for that fight, Dooku held back on the Force usage until Anakin had gotten emotionally worked up ("You have great anger, but you don't know how to use it!"), at which point he took out Obi-Wan and was getting set to throw the fight and let Anakin win.

Only problem was that by making it look like Anakin's replacement father figure was now dead, the boy pulled out all the stops and Dooku found himself fighting for his life. The movie does a better job (surprisingly enough) with Dooku simply looking shocked at the betrayal when Palps urges Anakin to finish the job and kill Dooku. Not to mention it was a staged fight, but that the intent was to dispose of both Obi-Wan (poor guy just can't catch a break, can he?) and Dooku. Unfortunately for Palps, Obi-Wan did catch a break and survived, but seeing as how Palps is really good at Xanatos Speed Chess, he adapted the plan and settled for bringing Anakin one step closer to being his apprentice, a role he'd been quietly and very subtly grooming the boy for over the past decade.

As for the AotC match between Dooku and Yoda, I see it as a case of gunslinger syndrome. Dooku, having become a Sith Lord, is flush with his new power, and he's just taken out the so-called "Chosen One" as well as Kenobi, who's probably got a fair rep for being a talented duelist himself (hey, he did take out a combat-focused Sith Lord by himself when just a Padawan). So in strolls the old master, and Dooku wants to prove that he's far more powerful. Unfortunately, he's not, and Yoda proceeds to put the uppity Count in his place regarding their respective Force prowess**. So, having seen first hand that he can't beat Yoda with the Force, he defaults to his lightsaber and hopes that Yoda's gotten much slower in his advanced age. Sadly, it was Strike Two for Dooku, leaving him to finally resort to putting Anakin and Obi-Wan in danger in order to make his escape.

*If you haven't read this book, seriously, go and get the paperback or e-book version and do so. It does a wonderful job of really showing you what the various characters are thinking in their scenes, as well as making Anakin's "sudden" change of allegiance a great deal more believable.

**In the novel Dark Rendezvous (pretty good story that has Yoda playing more to the trickster mentor archetype than most Clone Wars portrayals), there's a scene where Dooku and Yoda are simply conversing, and after Yoda challenges the Sith Lord to "create for him a rose" using the vast might of the dark side, Dooku does what could be called a "Force aura" reading… and quickly concludes that if Yoda turned to the Dark Side, both Dooku and Sidious would be obliterated .

I think the way the Force is done is PERFECT and don't see anything wrong with it at all.

It's for this reason that force users (Jedi/Sith) were so feared. And I get the Beta thing but not everything needs a rule to govern it. Some people will always complain that the Force is too powerful, but then you'll always have those who understand that the Force is supposed to be and wish to keep it so. The Only restrictions that should be placed on the Force are those that the GM wants for their particular campaign.

As I stated before, and as a GM myself, I LOVE how they've worked it and wouldn't change anything.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Donovan Morningfire said:

This actually comes back to my point. Once Anakin goes into "desperate revenge mode" and starts wailing on Dooku, the Sith Lord is required to fight by the best methods possible in an attempt to survive, and this means using your light saber, not Force Pushing people or throwing objects at them. It seems to me that every combat use of Move powers is a quick strike of opportunity (Maul, Dooku), toying with someone (Vader) or due to lack of ranged weapon (Obi-wan).

No trained force user ever approaches the Move power as the superior combat option if a weapon like a blaster (Obi wan vs. Grevus) or a light saber (everyone else) is available. So I'm not saying that the power shouldn't be available for combat use, just that it's damage output is low even when utilized by powerful force users, and that should be reflected in the rules. Personally, I think a few strain is enough, given the choice, a minor force sensitive on the Rim should shoot the guy, not Force Slap him.

Quicksilver said:

Actually, in the Prequels we see telekinesis being used as an attack quite a bit when two Force-users are going at it. As was noted earlier, Darth Maul used it to pretty much end the fight with Obi-Wan during the big lightsaber fight in TPM, and nearly took Obi-Wan out (if he'd not made a lucky grab, he'd likely have been just as dead as Qui-Gon).

In RotS, after Sidious' lightning attack, Yoda opened a can of his own Force-empowered whup-ass by blasting the Sith Lord across an entire room and into his fancy chair, so I'd call that a fairly effective attack seeing as how it was 10 points of damage and made a statement that the little green dude was not to be taken lightly.

Also, remember that unlike animated series, novels, and cartoons, filming those kinds of things are special effects, which can be both time-consuming to get right and costly to produce, since you've got to arrange it like any other stunt. That's probably the real-life reason why we never saw it in the Original Trilogy, as Lucas simply didn't have the kind of money and effects technology that's available to him these days.

I think that while Move isn't a very useful target against another Force-user (something I sought to address in my addendum to GM Chris' suggestions about balancing Influence and Move) as a main tactic, but can be a useful tool in one's combat arsenal if the situation is right, but can be hell on mooks as we see during the films when battle droids get hurled around like so much junk.

Sorry if someone already covered this idea, but I didn't notice it during a quick read through.

I really enjoy how the Force is handled too, although thinking about the movies I would probably add a few houserules based more on the Force Rating of the user. For Move, I would add a rule that a character can only move objects of a size equal to his Force Rating -1, so a character with a Force Rating of 1 could only move objects of size 0 and could not purchase the Strength upgrade until the Force Rating was raised. Extra Force points could also be used to lift larger objects instead of adding range or damage. I would also add that lifting objects beyond your own silhouette costs Strain as well, based on the scene in Empire where Luke tries to lift the X-wing and Yoda succeeds, but both look tired after the effort.

The other change would be adding something to the Influence upgrade where thoughts and emotions are manipulated that the Force using character can't influence targets with a Willpower higher than the character's Force Rating. This plays into Obi Wan's comments about it affecting the weak minded. Plus I have a personal pet peeve with the idea that all Hutts are just immune to Force influence, and that Jabba was just a strong willed slug.

I also like the idea of heroes and important NPCs being able to spend a Destiny Point to avoid a Force power for one round, since it gives them a chance to avoid it, but there is a cost and the resouce is finite.

I am not a big fan of how force powers are resolved right now, mostly because theres no variability, either you get a few light side marks and everything is perfect every time or you dont and nothing happens, in a system where its almost impossible under any other situation for nothing to happen it happens frequently with force powers. I understand some people like that the force mechanics are compleatly diffrent it makes them special snowflakes, but It also divorces them from the system and the characters using them. It also removes almost all the mechanical anchor points that other actions have to be adjusted.

I Think it would work out much better if force powers worked like any other action characteristic+skill+difficulty+random modifiers looking for success/failure advantage/threats. Rather than rolling the one weird die with light and dark pips you would roll a normal action useing force rating as your characteristic and diciplin or perception/vigilence, or mabye even sometimes coerce to determin success.

Force power upgrades could add boost dice or upgrade other dice in the pool when useing specific powers, sustaining powers would still lower your effective force rating essentially lowering your proficency dice in most cases. It also relives alot of the problems with move and mind trick, Influence would allways be an opposed roll vs willpower+diciplin, probeblly with extra setback dice for very suspicious individuals the GM could even use destiny to help keep important NPC's protected. Move would have higher difficulties with big objects and resisting individuals might upgrade some dice. Force users able to defend themselves might treat move as an opposed roll making it a highly questionable action mid combat unless you had a major advantage like having them on the ropes or having gotten some boost dice from your last successful action.

Sutter said:

I have hard time agreeing with you. Influence and Sense seem okay but a Newly Created PC should not be able to wield a 3 meter chunk of wall and kill Darth Vader and Boba Fett in one round that is just crazy.

ashimar2 said:

Any of them can get insanely effective with "the starting XP." But it is quite important to realize that no PC actually has access to this without express GM approval.

Okay, guys. Let's talk Sense.

So I ran a game on Saturday night (which should be up in podcast form this week, btw…), and my wife decided to make a Force-User. She rolled up a Rodian Bounty Hunter/Survivalist/Force-Sensitive Exile. She then proceeded to dump 2/3 of her starting XP into the Sense Power. She pretty much took the entire left side of the Talent Tree. All the Strength upgrades. Honestly, I was anxious to see how this played out.

So, the rodian now had two "maxed out" ongoing Sense effects. The ability to upgrade the difficulty of attacks against her THREE times, or the ability to upgrade the attack she makes THREE times.

She took a handful of skills here and there, but nothing major. Pretty average, actually.

In play - she actually rolled dismally. But still managed to be wickedly effective. With a 3 Agility and only a single rank in Ranged (Heavy) and Gunnery, she's rolling THREE yellows and a purple when she attacks. And she was practically un-hittable. The worst example of how this was overpowered was in Starship Combat. (There's nothing that says you can't use these Sense abilities in Starship combat…).

Anyone else have any experience with Sense?

GM Chris said:

The movies make it seem like it's a fair use.

Thanks for the stress testing.

On the topic of the move power & strength imbalance, I agree, it seems unbalanced and problematic.

A solution that seems appropriate for the situation would be to require additional light side "pips" or "points" (or whatever we call those circles) to lift objects of increasing size, e.g. to lift an object of size 2 would require 3 pips to lift. Increased size -> increased effort

Maybe this flies in the face of canon and with the force "size matters not", but sorry, Yoda, size matters.

In addition to the increased difficulty to lift large objects, the increased size should make it more difficult to hit with lifted object as well. So the control talent would allow moved items to be used as weapons, but requires an additional pip to hit them with it.

So, if a player was using a locker, of size one, to attack an engaged target, he would need 3 pips to successfully do so:

• 1 pip for one size increase (0 to 1)
• 1 pip to use a size 1 object as a projectile/weapon
• 1 pip for baseline success

With these rules, even a powerful force user would have the option to use smaller objects that are easier to hurl, and use surplus pips to cause extra damage (one for one, as described in the control upgrade) OR hurl larger objects that have greater damage potential, but may be more difficult to use as weapons (i.e. increased fail chance).

I'm sure there are problems with this system, I just came up with this off the top of my head, and I'll admit this power hasn't seen combat use in my games. But I have to be honest, I was surprised to discover attempting to move larger objects did not involve increasing the pips needed for success. I'll try road testing these rules out in the next session.

I still think its an issue that hits on successful uses are "automatic" (although hits on other attacks are also "automatic" if you succeed after accounting difficulty), but at least under these rules, its harder to make the checks.

-WJL

Alright, this is a play on whats already been put out there.

Make the magnitude upgrades an Ongoing Effect that modifies the strength of the Movement power.

In other words, using the nature of Ongoing Effect rules, the player can modify how much their force Movement power can effect. It stops being a matter of pips (which dark side still could allow for benefit of), and makes it scale plainly from base Force Power. It also represents needed concentration; a force user moving around a size 4 object can't also be easily maintaining his force sense Ongoing Effect to upgrade the difficulty of attacks made against them.

Has anyone offered an idea for a maneuver to allow force users to take strain in exchange for an additional force die? It seems like it could be appropriate to allow weaker force users a way to accomplish more daunting tasks by taking time and effort to concentrate on the how the force is flowing through them. Examples include Luke deflecting the remotes bolts when we cleared his mind, Luke concentrating to pull his saber from the ice before the wampa got him, etc.

It would look something like this:

Clear Your Mind (Force Rank 1+ only)

This maneuver allows the force user to clear their mind of distractions to better feel their connection to the force. The character takes 3 strain* and may attempt a Hard* Discipline (PPP) check. On a successful check, you may consider your force rank to be one grade higher until the end of your next turn, or until you activate a force power. Three advantages or a triumph may be spent to temporarily increase your force rank.

Characters with the "Dark side force user" ability may activate a similar maneuver, but must make a Daunting Coerce check instead of the Discipline check described above.

*indicate values adjustable for game balance.

This could also make a great talent for the force exile tree, instead of the foraging, convincing demeanor, and streetwise that we find there (I get their purposes and flavor, its just… bleech). If this were a talent, ranks could decrease the difficulty needed to activate it. It kind of breaks the "Skill checks take actions" rule, but seems to fit a maneuver used to improve a skill activation (similar to aim, though aim doesn't require a check).

There should also be limits on it to avoid abuse. (e.g. the maneuver can't increase a force rank more than 2 or 3 times, this maneuver may only be taken once a round or once an encounter, a single force check may not be affected by this maneuver more than once, etc.)

Let me know what you think, and where it could cause problems.

-WJL

GM Chris said:

I've got some, both from a Force-Sensitive Smuggler I played under Cyril, and a "Jedi Trainee" that I ran as part of a combat royale (with cheese) with some friends when half the gaming group couldn't make it for our planned play-test of the game.

Regarding a maxed out Sense, I'm figuring you game your party more XP than usual, or she simply dumped all her points into Sense, which would be 70 XP (not counting the cost of buying into Force Exile in the first place). If the latter, then it sounds about on par with someone building a Human or Miraluka Jedi in Saga by dumping the majority of their ability score points into Wisdom, the rest into Charisma, then taking Skill Focus (Use the Force) and Force Training at 1st level. Compared to a more well-rounded character, that sort of twinked-out Force-user is going to tilt the balance of the game.

While the rules don't explicitly forbid it, I think they strongly imply that isn't valid, as in starship combat it's the starship that's being targeted, not the Force-user. Now that's not to say there won't be Jedi career/specialization talents down the road that let you explicitly do so. At the very least, restrict the Ongoing Sense effects to personal, one-man fighter craft, much like those that Anakin (Jedi starfighters) and Luke used (X-Wings). But that does bring up a point that the designers may want to consider.

As for the three uses, it does highlight that going toe-to-toe with a Jedi in a one-on-one fight is a colossally stupid idea. A Force-user that becomes too reliant upon Sense to save their butts will find themselves in a bad way if they start getting ganged up on by the bad guys. And if they want to upgrade their attack, that's one less defensive use they have available. At least the way I'm reading it is that the Force-user gets to upgrade an opponent's difficulty or boost their own attack a maximum of three times per turn (admittedly, I could be wrong on that reading).

And unless she also had a Force Rating of 2 (which is why I ask how much starting XP the PCs started with), she only gets one of those Ongoing Effects at a time. So she'd have to choose between offense or defense, and it'd take her action to switch since you're activating the power, even if you're not rolling the Force Die to generate Force Points. So in the case of Force-users with access to other powers, they're giving up their ability to use those other powers in order to boost their offensive/defensive ability, at least until they've spent enough XP to buy the Force Rating talent, which takes 95 XP to reach even if you "fast track" along the Force Exile tree.

As another player in Cyril's EotE one-shot demonstrated, you can have "broken" builds without even touching Force Powers. The Trando Marauder had a base Soak Value of 7, making him virtually immune to small-arms fire with a high Wound Threshold on top of it, and was pretty much decimating mooks with just a vibro-knife.

While I do understand part of the point of the Beta is to "stress test" things and see where they break, I'm not convinced that Sense is that huge a problem, at least in comparison to Influence and Move.

So I've been playing around with some modifications to GM Chris' suggestions a dozen or so posts back about restricting who you can affect with Influence or Move based upon your Force Rating.

For the Influence power, the Force Point cost is revised to work as follows:
- Against a Minion-level NPC, you only need to spend one Force Point as per the default rules.
- Against a Henchmen-level NPC, you instead need to spend a number of Force Points equal to their Willpower rank, less your own active Force Rating, to a minimum cost of one Force Point. (Willpower = required number of Force Points less active Force Rating).
- Against a Nemesis-level NPC, you instead need to spend a number of Force Points equal to their double their Willpower rank, less your own Force Rating. ([Willpowerx2] = required number of Force Points less active Force Rating).
- A target with a Force Rating of 1 or higher adds that value to their base Willpower.
- Player Characters resist as though they were a Henchman, however the targeted player can choose to spend a destiny point to become immune to the effects of the Influence power for the rest of the encounter.

In order to effect or attack a target with the Move power, the Force Point cost is revised to work as follows:
- To attack or lift a Minion-level NPC, you only need to spend one Force Point as per the default rules.
- To attack or lift any other sentient target, you instead need to spend a number of Force Points equal to their Agility rank (if attacking) or Willpower rank (if lifting), less your Force Rating, with a minimum of requirement of one Force Point. (Agility or Willpower = required number of Force Points less active Force Rating).
- A target with a Force Rating of 1 or higher adds that value to their Agility score.

In regards to the above, a Force-users “Active Force Rating” is the number of Force Dice they have available to activate Force Powers. So the Forsaken Jedi adversary (Force Rating 3), that has activated the Ongoing Effect of his Sense power would only have an active Force Rating of 2 (number of dice he has available to roll when activating the effects of his other Force Powers.

I'm generally happy with the above, since it makes things more of a choice to have Sense's ongoing defensive effect up if you want to be able to target others with your powers and have a reasonable chance of pulling it off. Also makes a Force Rating of 2 worth a bit more.

The only thing I'm not 100% happy with is how Player Characters are treated. Unless Willpower gets boosted a fair amount (which doesn't seem likely for a lot of builds), PC's are going to be easy prey for Influence. The destiny point option is there, and it is potent, but it's a finite resource and there could well be situations where it's not available due to the PCs having flipped their destiny points earlier in the session.

LethalDose said:

Well, the main thing is that in a lot of cases, you're really not going to need an abundance of Force Points. With the exception of Sense's ability to read thoughts (which costs 2 Force Points), you really only ever need a single Force Point.

Now, if you've adopted a house rule that changes the activation costs, such as your Move cost being depending on the object's size or mine to have the cost vary based on the "level" (Minion, Henchman, or Nemesis) of the target, then something like that would be more handy.

But I think rather than making it any kind of skill check (and slowing down what's a fairly quick resolution system), simply change it to make it once use per session, provides a number of Strain up to your Willpower or Discipline (whichever is lower ), and have it either replace one of the Street Smarts at the 20 XP level, or Intense Focus. Being able to generate an instant number of Force Points for a handful of strain shouldn't be something that's easy to acquire, especially as Strain is easy to recover at the end of a fight.

In the RAW, there are several ways other than the 'detect thoughts' use that would require a force roll to need more than one pip, like influence's magnitude upgrades (multiple targets), move's increase speed (between range bands) and move's additional damage ability (not needed, but may be worth the effort). An increase in force rating would allow a character with sense defense's up to have more dice to activate force powers, at a cost, while maintaining the defense.

There may also be situations in which the character wants to simply improve the probability of scoring at least one success on the roll. A character with force rating 2 has a little more than a 34% chance of rolling all dark side results on 2 dice. This gives them a proactive way to improve the roll and avoid being tempted by the dark side.

The house rules described above may increase the value of having this option, but there still many situations in which it is useful without them.

-WJL