Played my first session last night and we stumbled across a rather surprising… well… I'll call it omission because it seems odd to me that it is missing.

There was a Force user in the group that had the Influence power. She tried to use it on unimportant thug and he was swayed. No biggy. Never crossed my mind to think otherwise. Then she tried to use the power on a person that was more significant and I felt her skill should be tested against him. That's when I realized: there are no rules for resisting mind altering Force powers!

Well, to be fair, I couldn't find rules for resisting mind altering Force powers. The way it seems to be laid out now, if the Force user rolls the die (and is willing to spend a Dark Side result on the roll) it will not fail . So the lowliest, first level, Force user could influence… well… anyone. Boba Fett, Han Solo, Darth Vader, the Emperor. Any person, 100% of the time.

Am I missing a written rule?

We fixed it real quick. We had the target roll Willpower and he had to gain more successes than the amount of Force dots that were invested in the power. Easy enough. I just want to make sure I didn't miss something vital. If this isn't in the book, I think it needs to be addressed before the game goes to final print.

Nope, you're not missing anything.

As it currently stands, there is no way to resist the effects of Force Powers. So a character with Influence can freely bend minds, and the Move power can be used to automatically dish out some heavy damage with way for the target to avoid getting crushed.

There's been a lot of talk in the Force Discussion thread about the lack of balance in regards to Force Powers, with a lot of ideas bounced around as to how to reel them in. Hopefully the folks at FFG that are working on EotE are keeping tabs on that thread.

Donovan Morningfire said:

It doesn't so much bother me with Move. As "unbalanced" as it might be, how do you "resist" being moved about? But it would seem somewhat important with mind affecting effects. Otherwise the "weak minded" comment by Obi-wan would seem somewhat erroneous. It works on everyone!

But I digress. I don't to start another back and forth on the subject if one is already going on. I missed that in the Force thread. I'll check it out and see what's been discuss so far. I'm glad I'm not the only one that spotted that.

I have 2 players in my group that have hard on's for playing jedis… (every game we played in SAGA edition all they wanted to do was play as a jedi…) so i announced that force powers were outlawed unless they could come up with a great reason on why or how they know it….

Another thing to point out is that the book seems to be missing a couple rules--namely, it says that Discipline and Vigilance play big parts in using The Force, and directs you to The Force Chapter.. unfortunately, that chapter doesn't mention how to use them.

I would honestly guess that one of them helps defend against Influence.

Until then though, I plan to just flat out make Nemesis-tier NPCs immune, as they obviously aren't weak minded.

But I could definitely see Discipline playing a roll. I could honestly see it being that if an NPC has even a single level of Discipline, that you can't mind trick them.

Inksplat said:

Yeah, I noticed that omission as well. I thought the same thing about that.

I'd prefer not to shut it out entirely. I have not problem with them succeeding if they really do well (or the bad guy does poorly). But it shouldn't be automatic. If you used something like Discipline it would work quite well as a patch, I think. If you used one success on that roll to counter each point invested, it would work pretty well. Honestly, with a Force Rating of 1 they would only be able to invest (at most) one point into a power (if I read the rules correctly) so any character with a point or two Discipline person would resist it pretty easily (one success).

GoblynByte said:

2 points. Force Rating 1 allows you to roll 1 Force die, which has a max of 2 pips per side.

Yeah, honestly, simply having the rolls for Henchmen tiers would be best. They should work automatically on Minions and fail automatically on Nemesis tiers.

I'd make it an opposed roll - with Willpower + Discipline/Vigilance as the dice pool both for and against the roll. Both skills fit, as with Vigilance you'd notice that you were being influenced and so the spell would break, and with Discipline, it just wouldn't work.

I think Willpower + Discipline/Vigilance should be used as the dice pool when any power that might be opposed, really, but yea, it needs to be looked at by FFG.

MILLANDSON said:

I thought about doing that, the opposed roll thing, and even suggested as much in the Force Feedback thread. The only problem is that it adds yet another roll to a system that's geared towards quick resolution.

If an opposed roll is the way to go, then I'm thinking a Discipline check is best suited to rest the Influence power set.

Move's a bit tricker, though you could just settle for a Coordination check to reflect getting out of the way, and just accept that a sentient target chosen as the object to be hurled is SOL.

Inksplat said:

Player could always choose to flip a destiny point and suffer a point of Strain to use a Dark Side Force Point to activate their power.

In regards to the skill descriptions of Discipline and Vigilance "being important to Jedi," I'm wondering if that's just left over text from a previous iteration of the skill rules, much like how Brawl and Melee in the Skills chapter says that it's an opposed check, but the Combat puts those at a flat difficulty. It could have just been that in an earlier draft of the Force rules, those two skills did play a roll, perhaps as the key skills to activating Force powers before the Force Rating/Die mechanic was worked out.