Donovan Morningfire said:

Donavan,

Yes, I know Inksplot reading of the rules was wrong. Sorry if my post wasn't entirely clear about that.

I was just saying that Inksplat's interpretation, although wrong, had something i liked about, in principle.

It was more sensible concerning the way I think the force works in the setting and what certain characters can do.

I still think the move power effects for FR 1 and 2 are exagerated in the current rules, compaing to what we see in the OT movies.

In ESB Luke was having dificulties lifting a X-Wing under tutelage from Yoda (he was expected to do it). I reckon he was FR 2 by then.

Even Yoda had to concentrate to lift said X-Wing. I don't imagine throwing it in combat that easily.

Yoda should be FR 6 at least. Beyond a certain size, it should not be so easy to throw big objects at people.

Your Star Wars may vary. I like mine based in ESB and Vader's use of said power versus Luke.

I also think jedi mind trick's should not be used in combat, unless someone makes a compeling argument otherwise.

In your example, I believe that the cost is 2 Force Points and not 3, as in my interpretation of the RAW you don't seem to pay for the "first use" of range upgrades.

I like your solution better that the RAW though.

It makes the use of the power more difficult.

Still, hurling YT-1300 at people at extreme(!) range should be something for Starkiller to try to do, not really within reach of FR 2 Padawans.

I think this new version of the rules is better than the former, but still not as good as it could be.

I must playtest it first, though. I may be wrong in my first impressions.

LethalDose said:

True.

I also strongly dislike the existence of multiple activation option for the range upgrade.

What is the reason behind it? What's the intent. It was better with the old rules where you could pay 1 Power to increase 1 range band, IIRC.

I also don't understand the need to have force power move within engaged band, as this is the range where, by definition, you can manipulate and interact normaly with objects (no need for force powers there). Even then, I consider that if you are going to keep engaged as a default base power range, you should give the option to the or force user to spend 1 Power for range band to increase it. That was how the base power worked in the published version of the rules, and that alone enabled the power to be effective even when no range upgrades were purchased.

Maybe to keep the basic power and eliminate the multiple activation option for the range upgrade would result in the better option?

And I still don't quite understand why force power move must be allowed to work at extreme ranges?

But, as with anything else, I am open to understand. Anyone can justify this to me?

Actually, it's really not all that complicated.

For using just the basic power of Move (no upgrades at all), you spend 1 FP to lift a Size 0 object up to your maximum range, which would be engaged. By itself, not very useful. An example of this in play would be Luke using the Force to grab his dropped lightsaber while hanging upside down in the Wampa cave. The GM had described the scene as Luke hanging upside down with no weapons at hand, Luke's player spent a Destiny Point to have his lightsaber on hand, but GM exercised a bit of veto power and instead had the weapon just out of Luke's reach (but still engaged); maybe Mark had shown a few bad instances of "lightsaber syndrome" in past sessions. Mark decides to use the Move power (of which he's got the basic ability so far), gets the required 1 FP after a couple tries (he doesn't want to gobble up the party's Destiny Point pool this early in the adventure).

I think you are right about the activating range upgrades multiple times; it's an option for a PC to affect things very far away even if they haven't bought the necessary Range Upgrades. Kind of puts me to mind of Luke in ESB when trying to lift the X-Wing. He'd bought enough Strength Upgrades (Size 3 if the Y-Wing on page 169 is anything to go by), but only one Range Upgrade, and the X-Wing was placed at Medium Range. He simply didn't generate enough Force Points (figuring he's up to Force Rating 3 by this point) to lift it, needing 1 for basic lifting effect, 1 to activate his Strength Upgrades, and then 2 in order to activate his Range Upgrades twice.

As for degree of complication compared to other things… well, it's the Force, which is pretty nebulously defined in the source material, but needs to be defined for an RPG while still mimicking what we see in the movies, comics, books, and what-not. It's also quite powerful in-setting, as in most instances a "Master Force User" is going to trump just about any other combatant (save Mandalorians when Karen Traviss was writing them).

Personally, I probably would have left the "spend extra FP to activate multiple times" bit out of the Range Upgrade, but they probably wanted a means to keep the original version of the base power's ability to increase the range band by spending extra FPs.

OB-1 said:

Probably due to there being instances outside the movies where Jedi and/or Sith are seen using telekinesis on things that are a long, long ways away from them?

The only instance that immediately jumps into my mind is Starkiller from Force Unleashed and his guiding that Star Destroyer into a controlled crash as it fell from it's orbit around Raxus Prime. Like the game or not, it did establish that the Force could be used for some pretty **** impressive feats.

We've already got folks complaining about not being able to play straight-up Jedi in the current version of the rules. I'd hate to see what would have happened if there was no way at all to mimic the sort of high-end Force-use stuff we see in other media.

I'm also thinking that with Sense, Influence, and Move, the designers are laying the groundwork for when they really start working on Jedi, Sith, and other Force Traditions in a couple years (figuring a 1 year lead time on each core product). This way, they won't necessarily have to re-invent the wheel on those three "core" powers and can then focus on establishing other powers and Force Specializations.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Sorry but I don't buy that, as according to its own definition engaged band means within arms reach. More precisely "engaged is also used to indicate that a person is close enough to an item to use it" and "The engaged status simply indicates that two things are close enough to each other to directly interact" (Star Wars Beta, page 135).

The scene you refer to is clearly and without any doubt an example of the object being right outside engaged distance, meaning the lightsaber was in close range band of Luke.

The move power at engaged distance is almost completely useless, moreso in a narrative and abstract system.

In that regard, the basic use of said power made more sense in the previous iteration of the rules, as above mentioned, in that version, albeit for the cost of 2 Power the force user could move a size 0 object within close range, even if no range upgrades were purchased. This solution, although not ideal, was better than the current one.

Now as it stands, the use of basic power with no further upgrades is simply useless. There is not even the option to spend 2 Power to make it work for some real advantage to the user.

I think this should be reviewed by the design team.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Yes. But that was my point.

Do we really want force users in this setting, within scope of this first game, inspired mostly on Episode IV, and limited to Force Rating 2 (Padawan level) compare in power to Starkiller?

• That was not the spirit of the movies and era I though we were trying to emulate here and
• where this leaves progression margin for more powerful jedi later on?

Donovan Morningfire said:

And even the Starkiller things were preceded by some really far out stuff in the Tales of the Jedi era. Things like destroying whole worlds and the likes. Or at least massive Force Lightning Storms that engulfed large areas. Arguably battle meditation. Not to mention some crazy stuff like in the Darth Bane books (Did those precede Force Unleashed?)

I like the far out stuff for the most part, but some of the Tales Era stuff I've read made even me go "WTF, seriously? And why did the Emperor bother with a Death Star?"

OB-1 said:

Perhaps, but it's also in keeping with the writer's primary approach to "balancing" Force abilities by simply making them cost more XP in order to be useful.

Take a gander at what they did to the Strength and Duration upgrades for Sense. Removed one of each and made the remaining one that much more expensive, nerfing an effect that (IMHO) really didn't need it. I think if the Duration and Strength upgrades had been re-worded to only apply to increasing an opponent's difficulty (much like it was in the chart) so that you only got to upgrade one of your own ability dice with the other Ongoing Effect, that would have been sufficient.

Also, the Sense basic power by itself isn't that much better than a parlor trick, as can A) get a quick mental snapshot of what someone a meter away is feeling without any context, or B) sense the presence of living things within a few meters. If you're relying on Option B to avoid sneak attacks in a setting where ranged weapons the prevalent norm, you're pretty much S.O.L. as by the time you sense the bad guys, you've already been in shooting distance. It also doesn't pinpoint where the living things are, only that they're there. So if you're looking for someone, best you can tell is "there's something alive in here" but you'll need other skills to figure where.

Really, Influence has the only basic effect that is universally useful out of the gate, though again without Upgrades you're again limited to melee range. So it seems that FFG's design philosophy when it comes to Force Powers is "start the PCs of really small, and make them work to become powerful." A very similar mindset to the way D6 Star Wars handled Force-users, start small (up to 3 dice in a Force Skill, and not enough skill dice to boost them all) and build their way (slowly and expensively) up to being powerful.

Donovan Morningfire said:

This is a philosophy I can get behind. These guys, imho, become uber-powerful in the previous iteration of the game too easily and much too rapidly. I like this current approach a great deal.

Donovan Morningfire said:

I think Angelicdoctor's support was so on the nose I needed to repeat it for support.

So, yeah, this. I LOVED the feel of the force back in the d6 system (I still wish we had a C/S/A system here, but I'm not gonna complain). Starting weak and growing stronger over a campaign really gives the players a sense of growth and accomplishment with their Force Sensitive character. I hope the dev's stick with this kind of paradigm for this part of the setting.

-WJL

angelicdoctor said:

Indeed. If anything, FFG's approach to Force Powers is quite novel, as all the previous editions once you "learned' the particular power, you could access all aspects of that power, with the only limiting factor on what you could accomplish was based solely around the correspending activation skill for that; if you got a lucky roll, you could acheive degrees of power typically reserved for Jedi Masters, while a poor roll could leave a Jedi Master barely to accomplish only the most basic features of that power.

FFG's approach is more along the lines of "you can do some awesome things with the Force, you've got to earn the rigth to do them." So the basic Move power is a minor parlor trick (though it could be useful in certain situations), which is a nice change from how universally useful even minor degrees of telekinesis could be in prior editions; you want your TK abilities to be awesome, then you have to pay your dues and buy the upgrades to make it awesome.

LethalDose said:

If it helps, the way they do it, while not being directly Control, Sense, Alter, is still pretty functionally identical.

Personally, I wish they'd stuck to Control, Sense, Alter as well. I can see some reasons for the change, if only for 'clarity' - but there's been a LOT of EU canon since, Path of the Jedi itself codifies those three as the parts of the Force. Definitely hope that when the full shebang lands we don't get just a list of powers though. That was a weakness of WEG's implementation of the Force if you ask me.

Dulahan said:

Part of the problem is that Control, Sense, and Alter are incredibly broad categories just by themselves. Then you get into the mixing and matching issues that WEG had with several powers (such as Affect Mind, Force Lightning, Lightsaber Combat, and Telekinetic Kill just to name a few).

With FFG's appraoch, while breaking from the "traditional" C/S/A, also makes the powers more thematically defined. The teenage Force-Sensitive I've played in Cyril's Skype game only has the Sense power, which I've taken to thinking of as a sense of "hyper-awareness." When I initially created the character back in the D6 system for a game that never got off the ground, Valin had 2D in Control and Sense, but not quite as much of a direct theme in what he could do with the Force as he'd picked several other powers.

I plan on simply telling anyone planning to take the Force Sensitive Exile tree that the difference between being Force sensitive and knowing how to use it is the same as the difference between knowing the ocean is there and knowing how to swim. They're going to have to learn how to use the powers, which implies someone is going to have to teach them. Now I don't expect them to drop everything and try to find a Force master. I'll let them learn by observation. Maybe they can make an Intellect check when they see someone use a Force ability and with sufficient success, they glean some intuition on how it works. But I'm not going to let someone cherry-pick from the Force powers just because their character is sensitive to the Force. They're going to have to earn it.

I'm also thinking about secretly rolling their Willpower/Presence/Force die in certain situations to represent them randomly and unwittingly tapping into the Force. That seems a much more plausible -- and interesting -- thing than the example above of a starting character taking out Fett and Vader.

DailyRich said:

That's a fascinating and interesting approach.

It's also worth noting that (with the week 2 updates), a starting character can now safely be destroyed by Fett and Vader. Not the other way around.

My goal is to have any Force characters mirror Luke's journey. He was a great pilot, undoubtedly unconsciously aided by his innate instinct for the Force. But he needed to meet up with Ben to start unlocking its potential. And even then, he wasn't immediately tossing TIE Fighters around.

DailyRich said:

You know, based on the information provided in the Beta in regards to the Force, it's almost as if the writers were thinking the exact same thing

They just needed to refine things a little (hence the Week 2 updates).

DailyRich said:

+1 to all of that.

OB-1 said:

Actually, Had this exact question tonight. I was explaining how force powers worked/were activated to an uninitiated friend and I realized that I wasn't sure how to improve the force rating. It didn't list it as a characteristic, and I didn't see the talent, as it was buried in row 5 and not on a corner.

I agree with Donovan whole-heartedly about the superior specializations, especially if you look at the table 8-1 under force rating 2, a "self-taught force exile" but don't blame Inksplat for trying to interpret an unclear rule set. And be polite. It takes very little effort to be polite.

One thing that would be nice to clear up is if I can buy starting Force rating with XP as I could a characteristic.

Say a force rating 3 for 60 total XP. It's implied (very much so, but not explicitly stated) that force rating is not upgradable with xp after character creation, but what about before? Inquiring minds want to know, because it helps us as GMs inform our players without sounding Like we're house-ruling things.

Majesticmoose said:

Unless you house rule it, no, you can't buy up FR with starting XP, at creation, or otherwise. The second line I quoted is really the exact point OB-1 was trying to make: Not everything can be made explicit. Nor does it need to be.

If something is implicit in the rules, there is no explicit or implict contradictory evidence, and there is no other good reason to believe that there are "missing rules" or other facts that support a system works differently than described, there is absolutely no reason to pursue

And, No, "I want there to be a way for my character to do this" is NOT a good reason to believe the rules missed something.

As far as explaining how the force works to the "uninitiated", as you put it, I'd say "using the Force is different than using a blaster or repairing a ship; It has different rules regarding how to activate and use it."

-WJL

Majesticmoose said:

As OB-1 sited, Force Rating has never been called a Characteristic. And if you want to increase it, the only method is the Force Rating talent on the last line of the Force-Sensitive Exile talent tree and is listed in the Talents section as well. And since Force Rating isn't a Characteristic, that would outright veto buying it up with your starting XP budget under the rules as they currently stand. Page 13 pretty clearly spells out what the Characteristics in this game are, and Force Rating isn't on the list. Heck, Force Rating isn't even on the character sheet, much less listed alongside the Characteristics.

From all that I've seen, about the only people that seriously wondered if Force Rating was a Characteristic were those that were desperate to jack their character's Force Ratings up to the level of Jedi Master in a setting where such characters don't exist in any great number. I'd say Old Ben and Yoda were about as far as venerable Jedi Masters go, with maybe a handful of Jedi Knights surviving up to the Rebellion Era, and then a bunch of Padawans and Initiates.

Donovan Morningfire said:

+1, and add, "…in a game that is explicitly not designed to handle Jedi."

Donovan Morningfire said:

I agree completely, except that a good game should define it's major base mechanics. Force rating is a major base mechanic, and if it's a "sub-system" all its own, it should be well defined to avoid confusion. Hoping that people fully read the talent tree before wanting to raise the (attribute, stat, … number) or stumbling upon the talent in the talent description section is not good game design.

Good game design is including one sentence along with the section that describes force rating that says "A character's force rating is not a characteristic or skill, and is not increased in the same way as those character traits." Won't really break the word count with that. Especially since the game is star wars and people will want to use the force. Ignoring that aspect of Star Wars will likely make people feel cheated, and will not add to the good will of the consumer base.

There is a certain judgement in the statements that "only people that would interpret the rules as X must be trying to game a system." As someone who is dubious about this version of Star Wars, I'm hoping ambiguities like this can be avoided to have a smooth rule set. Excited, but very interested in the direction the devs are heading.

On a different subject, I miss force grip. Something about that is so iconic in terms of Star Wars, and it's not always been very well defined in the d20 versions (OCR it was brutally OP, in RCR it was amazingly underpowered, and in SAGA, well…. it's something).

I understand that they want to be careful about what force elements they include in this book, since the tone is fringers, explorers and general ne'er-do-wells in space, but given how powerful moving objects already can be in the Beta, it sets an interesting bar for further force powers, especially the offensive and Dark powers.

Oh, and a practical question about Move: If you are able to move more than two objects, and can use them offensively, how do you resolve that as an attack. 2 I can conceptualize as attacking with two weapons, but for more than 2 would you treat it as autofire/walking-fire of a sort? Would you just continue to increase the dificulty of the dicipline roll, +1 per object over 1? Cruious to see which way the ruling winds are a blowing.

Majesticmoose said:

Said statement/judgment came from the tone of the ones commonly espousing the opinion that Force Rating was a characteristic and thus should be allowed to be increased via the Dedication talent, as they were complaining that you were otherwise limited to a max Force Rating of 2, which per the book is on par with a Jedi Padawan. So again, it's not really a case of ambiguity as wishful thinking.

Perhaps in the final version, it could be worded that when first purchasing the Force-Sensitive Exile specialization (or any other Force-based specialization that might be published down the line), that you get one free rank in the Force Rating talent. The two Force-using NPCs in the Adversary chapter both list their Force Rating in the Talents section, so it's not like my suggestion would be a radically new concept.