Majesticmoose said:

On the subject of Force Grip, there's nothing stopping you from using Move to directly deal damage to an enemy and describing it as choking the crap out of them. In the D6 version of Star Wars, the effect was called Telekinetic Kill, and it just did straight damage. So using Move with the first Strength Upgrade lets you deal 10 damage to the target, which again can be described as using the Force to crush/choke the target just as easily as it being used to send the target sailing ass over tea kettle with a Force "Push."

OCR also just did damage,but was broken due to the chance of doing damage straight to the target's Wounds, which was a big deal. Saga Edition is also problematic, as a PC using this power can shut down a major bad guy with ease if they've taken Skill Focus in Use the Force (which most Force-using characters had by 3rd level at the absolute latest), and by a strict reading of the RAW weren't penalized as Force Grip was no longer a dark side power.

The other concern with such effects is that currently, there's not really any long-lasting penalty for using "dark side" type powers (such as causing direct harm via the Force) other than a bit of Strain and an expended Destiny Point if you happen to roll Dark Side pips on your Force Dice instead of Light Side Pips. Personally, I'd rather wait for the "nasty powers" such as a true Force Grip or Force Lightning until there's a system in place to encourage Force-using characters to stick to the straight and narrow.

Donovan Morningfire said:

I'd like to wait. Just makes me a touch sad, as that's one of those really classic powers. But I suppose it is chiefly in the domain of Vader in the films, so that may be outside the scope of the current rules. Sigh.

I'd still like to see a basic version for now.

Majesticmoose said:

Force tickle?

Majesticmoose said:

Well, an interesting bit of trivia is that the "telekinetic kill" effect wasn't a "core power" in the WEG D6 corebooks, only in the variousd20 corebooks, same with Force Lightning and Battle Meditation. So the precedent is there for not including such things as a "core power."

Now that said, one of the new talents I'm working on for my revamp of how Force-Sensitive interacts with the careers and specializations system could easily be construed as a low-level Force Grip type of effect, inflicting relatively low amounts of Strain and setback dice on the target. Though if anything, it owes more to D6's Inflict Pain power than it does to Telekinetic Kill.

Donovan Morningfire said:

I'd buy that. I have been progressively thinking grip would be incorporated into a more general "wound" power, as in the fiction there are multiple wounding methods, each a little different.

Majesticmoose said:

That actually gives me an idea. I know a poster tried to put together a very general "dark side power" some time ago, but frankly it was all over the place.

But taking a page out of the WEG corebooks, a "Wound" power might work, starting with a touch-range damage effect, then tacking on upgrades for increased range, magnitude upgrades to hit multiple targets, a couple control upgrades to branch out to something other than "deal damage," and maybe a strength upgrade or two for increased damage, both of which would take up two columns and thus have a double XP cost for their row. Perhaps even with Force Lightning as the apex of the power. Pretty much ever effect on in this power tree would be fueled by Dark Side Force Points, so a PC would have to incur Strain and spend a Destiny Point to use them.

I'd need to really think it over, but it might be something fun to work on.

I'm glad you like the idea. I'm sure somewhere down the road there will be a "sith" power of "dark" power, for those things that are specifically sith and or blatently un-natural.

I was wondering if general concussive powers (what would have been force blast, repulse in SAGA) and other telekinatics (force shield) would be branches off of move, or would they have a different shared root power? I know it's a long way off, but I know eventually I have 2 players that will want to move in that direction, plus the powers as currently set up make me wonder… are these "one-off" powers, or will these be the core root powers of far more abilities and skills?

Majesticmoose said:

Well, for general concussive powers, I'm thinking Move could be used to reflect force blasts/slam/repulsion via the 1st Control Upgrade, in that you're dealing damage directly to the target rather than through a thrown object, as the the Week 2 updated cites that said upgrade "deals damage to both targets and object being moved." As a GM, I'd have no problem with letting a player use Move to deal direct damage, It's not very efficient, and you're capped based on the target's size (10 damage in most instances), but the only thing we saw in the movies being taken out by Force Slams were battle droids.

Got some notions on expanding this a bit, but I'll need to sit down and think them over first.

Possible suggestion for a change to the Move Basic Power, to make it wee bit more viable than the "fancy parlor trick" that it is right now, based in part on an earlier conversation OB-1 and I had in this thread.

Instead of just being limited to Engaged, change the first sentence of Basic Power to read something like this:

The user may spend 1 Light Side to move one object of silhouette 0 that is within close range up to one range band away or towards him.

This way, you can have a barely-trained Luke pull his lightsaber to him like he did in ESB with just the Basic ability, but it's not overpowering and about on par with the Basic abilities of the other two Powers.

Only thing is that with all the Range Upgrades, it'd take a Force-user beyond Extreme Range if they were all purchased. So not sure what to replace that last Range Upgrade with if going with the change to the Basic ability as outlined above. Perhaps a Strength Upgrade to be able to affect Silhouette 5 objects? There's already enough Magnitude upgrades to affect up to 5 targets in total, so I don't think yet another one of those is needed.

I was also pondering the addition of the Knockdown quality to the 1st Control Upgrade for Move, but you could just as easily spend the 2 Advantage for a setback die and narrate it as the target stumbling around after being hit with a Force push/thrust/slam.

Currently, the move power has no duration upgrades. It seems fitting to add the following somewhere to the tree:

Duration Upgrade:

Force users that have previously lifted objects may hold them aloft.

Ongoing Effect [Force Die] : Force user may keep objects aloft and move them as allowed by range upgrade allows. Effect ends when the Force user uses the lifted object(s) to attack, or voluntarily lowers the objects.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

The only Force-users we see in the movies that are able to hold something aloft for extended periods of time (more than several seconds) are Yoda (X-Wing in ESB and the pillar in AotC). Given he's doing nothing else, it can easily be said that he's spending his turns to kept activating Move, having a high enough Force rating to score the three LS Force Points he'd need (1 for basic effect, 1 for Strength Upgrades, 1 for Range Upgrades).

So for a lot of the instances of Move being "maintained," it's the Force-user spending their action to continually activate the power. Luke really just needed two LS Force Points during his telekinesis practice scene in ESB since the rocks and R2 were all Silhouette 0 objects, needing one LS for the basic power and the second for Magnitude Upgrades. Sidious having multiple Senate seats floating in the background before hurling them at Yoda in RotS can be chalked up to cinematic effect, with Yoda's player choosing to activate a Despair on Palp's Disicpline roll to catch one of the pods and then hurl it back at the Sith Lord.

Besides, Ongoing Effects are more the domain of Control Upgrades going by the examples presented so far.

Donovan Morningfire said:

First off, Luke levitated the **** out C-3PO on Endor, and held him up for a while, so there are other examples. But I'm not saying that even needs to be an example of the explicit use of this power. There are lots of talents, skills, gear, even other force power upgrades that aren't explicitly shown in any of the movies, but are included because they fill, expand, and support the characters and the narrative.

Second, there are no restrictions on where on-going effects can be applied, read their description. In fact, the control upgrades are intended to "add new effects to force powers or modify existing effect" and duration upgrades "increase the length of time of a power's effects". In a completely separate power, it made sense to apply on-going effect to a control upgrade. Here, it makes sense to apply it to a duration upgrade.
Besides, "going by the examples presented so far" is a horseshit argument, especially from you, given the novel ways you came up with to add flavor to the aliens supplement.

The upgrade is useful and appropriate as it stands, or at least you haven't demonstrated any real problems with it in your rebuttal. It provides a replacement for range upgrade you were looking for.

Duration Upgrade:
Force users that have previously lifted objects may hold them aloft.
Ongoing Effect [Force Die]: Force user may keep objects aloft and move them as allowed by range upgrade allows. Effect ends when the Force user uses the lifted object(s) to attack, or voluntarily lowers the objects.

-WJL

Donovan Morningfire said:

Donovan Morningfire said:

Wow, we're on the same page there. I just posted the same ESB example in a post about basic move (and other things) in another category.

It seems very weak to only work at engaged for costing a lot of XP to get there and also requiring a LS point.

Maybe not have the basic power be able to move one range band away . Maybe within the range band or towards him.

Anyway I'd like to see short range for the Basic Move Power and I'd go one farther in saying that if they can concentrate they don't need to spend Force points.

Is that the basic understanding? Say outside of combat if you have time to concentrate you are assumed to succeed at maximum effect rather than rolling over and over until you get the LS points you need? I'd like to see the ability to concentrate and time not being an object and just say they worked and move on.

LethalDose said:

Yeah I'm looking for more clarification in that regard too. Is Move a push effect where you push an object with force one time and then gravity takes over or is it a grab, hold, and move effect.

If I Move a blaster is it like I'm throwing it or is it like I grab and move it?

If it's the latter then arbitrary constraints like the length of a round in this game should not really effect how long I can move it.

If you grab and hold, it should affect what the grabbed object can do.

Saga had the same problems. If you used Move Object you could maintain it but nothing stopped the target from doing anything (including move) like the Force Grip power did.

LethalDose said:

Except a I did provide a rebuttal, namely that the current system already enables Force-users to "maintain" a Move effect simply by being capable enough Force-users to consistently roll the required number of Force Points to activate the power from round to round.

A Force Rating 3 character would have little problem generating enough Force Points to float C-3P0 around in the example you citeds on a round-by-round basis. Luke also only does so for roughly a minute, which some posters here have argued is roughly equivalant to one round of time when not in combat, if not longer dependent upon the scene. Even heavily tactical-based games such as d20 Star Wars and D&D are pretty fluid about how long a "round" is when not in combat.

And that's the thing too, is that most of the instances we see of "sustained" telekinesis is out of combat. Yoda in AotC holding up the pillar that Dooku tried to drop on Obi-Wan and Anakin is the closest in-film example we see of someone in combat using "sustained' telekinesis, and even he was seen struggling to keep the thing afloat, indicating he was spending his action each round until he could push the thing aside to ensure that those two weren't crushed by it.

TL,DR - Your Duration upgrade doesn't serve any effective purpose, as mechanics already exist in the rules for the same general effect.

usgrandprix said:

Actually, I do like the limit of being able to target objects that are out to Close Range but can only move them from Engaged to Close or vice-versa.

As I noted in my reply to LethalDose, there already is a "maintain effect" mechanic by way of spending your action each round to continuously activate the power, reflecing that it takes a Force-uses full-concentration to use telekinesis.

I'm also very hesitant about making a "maintain for free effect" simply because you either need to word it to exclude the "attack with hurled object" to say nothing of enabling low-level Force-users (FR 1 or 2) to make use of multiple upgrades for free once they manage to score enough Force Points to activate the effect in the first place. Luke in ESB is a prime example of a low-powered Force-user (probably FR 2 at that point in the film), and he has quite a few struggles with telekinesis, even under Yoda's tutelage, only managing to a single upgrade (Multitude for the rocks and R2, Range for the X-Wing), and even then it's tough for him. Even Saga Edition required a new Use the Force check each round to maintain Force Grip, Move Object, or the various other powers with a "maintain this effect" clause.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Actually, I'm pretty sure that Sidious probably did the same thing that Yoda did (in your example), spending at least a turn or two dedicated to "holding" the seats up. It's not like he actually engaged in combat while he was "showing off" or anything.

But, I agree. I think if one wants to keep **** a float, all he needs to do is simply devote his turns to do so and keep paying Force Points. No Force-user (Jedi or Sith, included) ever did anything at the same time that they were making stuff fly, or float, around.

Repeatedly activating the ability on subsequent rounds is akin to lifting objects, dropping them, lifting them, dropping them. Narratively, you can work around this by doing what you're describing, but there are problems:

You state characters with FR3 should have no problem holding aloft what they lifted, even though this FR is impossible in the given rules. A character with FR 3 has a 20% chance to roll NO light side results. What luke did would take 3 pips (one pip for each: activation, range, strength), FR 3 has less than a 7% chance of making that roll. Once. The chance of no light side points is 34% for FR 2.

The upgrade I described allows players to keep concentrating and keep the lifted object up without repeating checks and risking dropping something important, like a person. Its better than using the check over and over and over. Because that's what upgrades do, they make the power better.

The expense of activating the power is not "free", it reduces your effective FR while you hold it up. The cost be increased to force die/object held.

As I've stated, there doesn't need to be an example of this occurring in the movies for it to be included. If in film examples were required to justify inclusion in this game, you couldn't have:

• Ghtroc Freighters

• Missile Tubes

• Booster Blue

• Stimpacks

• CloakShape fighters

• Spread Barrels

• Flame Throwers

This list goes on… You seem to flagrantly ignore this and keep saying "No one did it in the movies, so it has no place here"

-WJL

Okay, my bad, botched my math above. FR3 has about a 32% chance for 3 or more lightside pips to appear in a single roll.

Other %'s are spot on.

-WJL

Donovan Morningfire said:

In Saga outside of combat/stress you can Take 10 on Use the Force>Move Object to move and hold indefinitely. Only took +5 UtF for medium objects. I think this represented the source material well.

And with Force Power Mastery you can take 10 even when distracted.

It should be different in combat but outside of combat you should be able to move and hold with concentration what your unlocked/unlearned mind can move and hold. Requiring points/rolls for non-conflict movement of objects scaled to your strength in the Force seems to me contrary to this more abstract system, let alone the source material.

LethalDose said:

Maybe you should read my posts about the Force a little better and without as much bitterness.

The references I cite regarding the Force, and only the Force, pertain to the movies because are the best known examples to the broader audience. Not everyone obsessively reads every bit of Star Wars EU lore, and they're no less a Star Wars fan than you or I.

There's a decent chunk of the Star Wars Fandom that don't give a flying frip about the EU, and would be quite happy junking all those things you listed, things I have never once remarked upon , a fact that you have flagrantly ignored.

Given what FFG has put in the Beta book in regards to Force-users, it's pretty **** obvious that they're aiming to keep things in line with what we saw in the movies for Edge of the Empire, which in terms on levels of canon, overrule everything else in the EU. Do they cover every aspect of the Force that we see in the movies? No, but I've stated and will continue to state that we saw most of those acts being performed by very powerful individuals, and like it or not, that at this point in time, the developers have deliberately chosen to restrict the players from reaching those levels of power. That might change in the final release, or those with a hard-on to play Jedi Knights may have to wait until Force & Destiny. Force-using PCs in Edge of the Empire are meant to be struggling with their mastery of the Force, as they don't have anyone to teach them. There's a world of difference between a person that's taught themselves advanced physics with nothing more than a textbook and time, and someone that' learned the same subject in a college classroom from a teacher with a Masters degree or better in that same subject. The person in the classroom is likely to learn the subject quicker and better than the person with the text book. But then I guess you're in the same camp as Dulahan and AluminumWolf in wanting Jedi Masters to be available in the first book, going by how you're complaining that a PC can't reach the same levels of power that someone that was already bordering on being a true Jedi Knight with the added perk of being exceptionally strong in the Force could manage after getting actual Jedi training from one of the most experienced instructors the Old Jedi Order had to offer.

I could cite obscure examples from various novels or Dark Horse comics or video games, but to a lot of people, those are references are utterly meaningless . However, a lot of people have seen the films, and those constitute the primary Star Wars experience for the majority of the Star Wars fan base. Thus, why my references regarding the Force pertain to what we see in the movies. It has the benefit of being a common reference point, and a fairly stable one, where the viability of what the Force can do in the EU varies wildly from one author to the next. Tim Zahn and Micheal Stackpole keep the Force on a fairly even and sensible level, while other authors have used the Force as a hand-wave for doing some pretty insane feats such as rip holes in the fabric of the universe or muck around with the surface flames of a sun as an idle diversion.

Regarding your alleged math for Luke and floating C-3PO around, did you include the possibility of Luke spending a Light Side Destiny Point and being willing to take a point or three of Strain to make use of any Dark Side Force Points he might have rolled? Given he spent a good chunk of RotJ flirting with the Dark Side, it's certainly possible he'd tap the dark side, even for a semi-noble end as saving him and his friends from being the blue plate special at an Ewok barbeque. Given your ranting about how it's nigh-impossible for a FR3 character to accomplish that feat, I'm guessing the answer is No.

Also guessing you chose to gloss over the point I made about how rounds in this game are not a defined period of time ? Hell, the book itself states this on page 128, 2nd paragraph under Structured Gameplay. To quote:

"Rounds can last for roughly a minute or so in time, although the elapsed time is deliberately not specified "(emphasis mine).

And that's under the Structured Gameplay mode, while the Narrative Gameplay mode pretty much tosses out the notion of "timed rounds." So for the "Luke using TK" scenes, since he's not in any active danger, the GM could easily have run those in Narrative time, where the concept of rounds goes right out the window. So Luke would only need to roll once, be willing to suffer some Strain to turn any Dark Side Force Points into Light Side ones, and the GM simply allowed Luke's player to float Threepio around for a couple minutes as a single action. A possibility that you have chosen to flagrantly ignore.

As Sutter said, we don't see Jedi or Sith doing stuff other than focusing on levitating/hurling objects with telekinesis, something that your proposed duration upgrade blatantly ignores.

usgrandprix said:

Well, as I noted above to LethalDose, rounds in Edge of the Empire also don't have a super-strict definition of time, with the closest being "roughly a minute or so" under Structured Gameplay, a stark contrast to Saga/OCR/RCR's much stricter definition of "1 round = 6 seconds."

So it could very well be that in a non-combat situation, those extended manifestations we see of telekinesis are simply the Force-user making a single check and the GM choosing to allow the effects of that check to carry over for a minute or two. In combat, even outside the movies, telekinesis is generally used to grab something and then quickly hurl it., and the only folks we generally see 'maintaining' big feats of TK are Force-users that are far more powerful than Edge of the Empire is currently allowing, so I'm okay something like that being out of a PC's hands at this point in time.

AluminiumWolf said:

If it means not having one PC be a veritable demi-god compared to the rest, a common syndrome in high-level D&D campaigns where the wizard can do anything with their magic and the fighter and rogue are pretty much glorified minions (aka the Linear Warrior, Quadratic Wizard scenario)? If it means you don't have 3.X's CoDzilla Syndrome* where a single character class can fight better than the classes whose primary role is to fight?

**** straight I hold to that first interpretation. It also makes much more sense when compared to what we see in the movies. And given how the original concepts of the Force that Lucas used draw almost entirely from a blend of Eastern mysticism (particularly chi ) and psionics from the early days of science fiction, their work is more in keeping with that tone and feel. If I want to play beings with super-heroic powers, I'll go play a super-hero game, as there's plenty of good ones out there already (Mutants & Masterminds, Marvel Heroic RPG,and HERO being my top three choices in that regard).

And having played a god-level Jedi in a friend's Saga Edition game, that kind of power got pretty boring pretty quick. Yeah, it's cool the first time you tell the Laws of Physics to piss off and hurl a falling capital ship back into orbit to slam into a Star Destroyer, but being able to do that at nearly at-will becomes fairly boring pretty quickly. By the campaign's end, this kid (not even 20 years old) made Starkiller at the very end of The Force Unleashed look like a cruiserweight in terms of destructive power, and would have handily crushed most write-ups of Palpatine or Vader. I got extremely lucky in that the rest of the group didn't overly resent this character's presence; the fact I tried to keep it sparing with the Force usage and let others have their time in the limelight probably helped, but not every gaming group is going to be so understanding, especially if the Force-user/Jedi falls into CoDzilla Syndrome.

*For those blissfully unaware, CoDzilla Syndrome refers to Clerics and Druids in 3rd Edition D&D being able, through proper application of their spells, become far better warriors than a Fighter or Barbarian of comparable level.

AluminiumWolf said:

Given the high demand for Jedi, I highly doubt FFG is going to pass up the chance to earn a good chunk of money by putting rules for actual Jedi of any stripe out there for free. Maybe a few tidbits in later supplements, but not as a web freebie. It's a nice dream, but given FFG is a business with an aim to turn a profit as well as producing high-quality work (after all, hard to produce quality new products if you can't make money off the previous quality products), I just don't see it happening.

They're already being quite generous by providing the weekly updates not only for free, but on a weekly basis. Any company will tell you that putting out free material still costs that company money, but it's done in the hope of drawing greater interest and more customers to their products.

But this is probably a discussion for a different thread. We certainly don't need to brass off any of the self-appointed vigilante moderators that float around these forums with a prolonged off-topic discussion.