Hello Testers,

Edge of the Empire's Week 2 Beta Update is up. Please post your responses and reviews of these updates in this thread. Thanks!

While I do miss the simplicity of the original set of rules, I understand that had to be sacrificed and a degree of complexity added for the sake of game balance.

At least with the additional Force Point cost of activating powers, I'm not entirely sure I like the change, but at the very least I do appreciate the premise in scaling back Force-users at this stage of the game. And, as Inksplat noted in the Force Mechanics thread, the change does give the Force Rating chart in the book a bit more weight to it in terms of who can do what.

The opposed Discipline roll as part of activating that first Influence Control Upgrade solves the issues with that.

On Move, the Discipline roll to affect bigger objects is generally good, and makes sense in terms of why Luke failed to lift the X-Wing in ESB aside from "he just hadn't bought the necessary Strength Upgrades yet!" I'd still like there to be some means for the target of an attack to avoid getting pelted, even if it's something as simple as just using the target's ranged defense to apply setback dice to the Force-user's Discipline check (after all, it's a lot harder to hit a moving target that's moving in order to avoid being a target).

For Sense, I'm definitely not enthused about the Strength and Duration upgrade. Personally, I think the Duration upgrade wasn't that large of a problem, and maybe instead it should be two separate Duration Upgrades in Row 3 in Columns 1 & 2, and the single Strength upgrade in Row 4. Or the single Strength upgrade in Row 3 and then two separate Duration Upgrades in Row 4.

First, can we get a comment on whether or not you can increase Force Rating with Dedication? Or is the new wording of the Force Exile Spec just to future-proof it?

Second, you guys left in the "updated on September 4th" bit in the opening section.

Third, @Donovan, the Discipline vs Silouehtte is a defense roll. Where a blaster shot is 2D, now a Force Throw will be between 0~whateverD.

Yes, a Force User can deal 5 damage without a chance to miss, but that's not too terrible. To do 10 damage, they roll against 1D (plus needing to roll at least 2 Lightside, or have to go darkside). Now, a blaster rifle can deal 10 damage on a roll of 2D, and has a chance to crit.

I'd say it balances pretty well, really.

Inksplat said:

As discussed in a different thread, I'd say it's pretty darn clear that you can't raise Force Rating with the Dedication talent, since Force Rating isn't at any point even remotely described as being a characteristic. And in the two Force-using NPC stat blocks we have (Emperor's Hand and Forsaken Jedi), their Force Rating is documented in the Talents section, which makes a pretty strong case of Force Rating not being a characteristic. So it's probably future-proofing for down the road when more Force-Sensitive specializations are produced.

Perhaps for right now, where Force Rating is capped at 2, but how about later on down the road. By the time a PC reaches Force Rating 3, being able to generate the three Force Points needed to use their Range and Strength Upgrades as well as lift the object itself is pretty trivial, and a Silhouette 2 object (only an Average Difficulty which should be a peace of cake for them to beat at this point) at Long Range easily beats out a blaster rifle, which would face a Hard Difficulty. The Force-user has the advantage in this case, being able to dish out 20 damage, enough to drop just about all but the hardiest of foes, a feat which a blaster rifle can't hope to match, to say nothing of the rifleman still having to deal with any ranged defense the target might have.

Having ranged defense at least be a factor would play to the duel in ESB, as Luke was able to deflect some of Vader's force-hurled projectiles with his lightsaber, at least at first. Granted, only a couple of setback dice (assuming Luke spent his maneuver to activate the Defensive quality of his weapon) aren't much of a setback to Dark Lord of the Sith, so eventually Vader stopped "playing around" quite as much (likely dropping the Ongoing Sense effects to roll his full Force Rating) and Luke wound up battered as a result.

Inksplat, Donovan, I think you missed the part where it says the user "has to succeed on the check". No successes on a zero-difficulty roll, is still a miss.

And, although, its not specifically stated, all other commentary (damage and multiple targets) indicates that this is a normal "to hit" roll. Setback dice would be added for detrimental circumstances (cover, concealment, etc…), and boost dice should be had by "aiming" your force projectile.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Just to play devil's advocate, we also need to look at investment with the Force. It's 90 XP to get a Force Rating of 2 (to say nothing of how much they're going to have to invest in the Move power to be able to throw about damage similar to a blaster rifle without really breaking a sweat. But any other character can do the same right out of the gate without that XP investment (aside from what they sink into Agility and Ranged (Heavy). The Jedi probably doesn't have the same option because he's used the XP to get into the Specialization and then unlocked the power. How much more are they going to have to invest to get those higher Force Ratings to be able to toss about more? And how many other tricks is the blaster rifle wielder going to have up his or her sleeves at that point?

*shrug*

I guess it balances pretty well to me when I stop and think about it, even without the chance to defend oneself from the thrown object beyond the Jedi failing his Discipline check to lift an object.

Besides, if I'm standing there letting a full-blown Jedi or Sith throw boulders the size of small starships at me, I deserve everything I get.

“Humans, Species Abilities (page 36): Remove the special ability that gives humans access to an additional specialization during character creation and replace it with the following: “Special Ability: Humans and near-humans start the game with access to one additional rank in each of two different non-career skills of their choice. They may not train this skill above Rank 2 during character creation.”

Does “with access” imply that two non-career skills are treated as if they were career skills for character generation and/or advancement purposes?

1) Special Ability: Humans and near-humans begin with a two bonus skills at rank 1 in two non-career skills of their choice. They may not train these bonus skills above Rank 2 during character creation. Career / specialty skill-points may be allocated to these bonus skills. These Human bonus skills are considered career skills for advancement purposes.

2) Special Ability: Humans and near-humans begin with a two Human bonus skills at rank 1 in two non-career skills of their choice. They may not train these bonus skills above Rank 2 during character creation. Career / specialty skill-points may not be allocated to these bonus skills. These Human bonus skills are considered career skills for advancement purposes.

3) Special Ability: Humans and near-humans begin with a two Human bonus skills at rank 1 in two non-career skills of their choice. They may not train these Human bonus skills above Rank 2 during character creation. These Human bonus skills are not considered career / specialty skills for character generation or advancement purposes.

darkrose50 said:

I think the ability is pretty clearly worded. A human gets all of their bonus skill points from their career and specialization and then they get two bonus ranks in any two non-career skills. It says nothing about these non-career skills now being treated as career skills for that character. They just get that first rank for free at creation. They still have to spend the increased XP cost to advance them.

That is the ruling I would make, however two out of six of the players in my group disagreed.

Inksplat said:

You never could. It's not a characteristic, and there's a Talent specifically for it.

TheRedBaron said:

There's a few narrow Talents with wider counterparts already, I believe, so that doesn't necessarily mean you can't

And just to be clear, I'm not arguing -for- it, I just think it needs to be answered, because its been wondered about by quite a few people. If FR can only be raised via Specs, then that's totally fine with me, I don't plan to ever see any uber-Jedi in my campaigns anyway. This is really just a "a few people have asked here, which means it will be asked even more during general release, so why not make it clear?" sort of thing.

Also, good point @JediHamlet, that totally didn't even register for me.

@Donovan a blaster may not deal 20 damage by itself, but there are a ton of Talents that can jack them up that high.

Donovan Morningfire said:

"The damage is resolved following all rules for ranged attacks."

This obviously means that soak/armor comes into play. But does it also imply that defense (setback) dice go into the discipline roll?

The wording for the Influence Control Upgrade seems to imply that the sidebar for the Influence power does not apply to it.

Should a PC who is hoping to calm down a hostile situation with an NPC (mind trick them to think they're allies, etc.) be able to spend force points and suffer strain to use dark side points as light side? It goes against the sidebar, which specifically forces the use of either type of LS/DS point for a set of emotions.

EDIT: As for the other powers… I get why the sense control upgrade's strength/duration advances were changed, but couldn't maybe they be modified to just "eat" more force die? I mean, upgrading the difficulty 3 times very much feels like how powerful the defense upgrade can be.

GM Chris said:

Missed that part. Guess that's what I get for trying to digest errata after a couple bottles of Sam Adams' Oktoberfest

Well, if it does indeed follow the "all the rules" for ranged attacks, that would imply that defense (and thus setback dice) go into the Discipline roll as well. So I guess that's one less minor issue I have with the Week 2 updates

Donovan Morningfire said:

I wasn't "pointing something out" - I was asking , LOL. DOES it mean that? Because if so - they need to tighten the language up, some. The steps for building your dice pool preceed that sentance, so it's easy to miss. I'd spend a few words calling out that Ranged Defense is added to the dice pool for Move, if that's their intent.

Well, for anyone seeing this, the question is answered in the Force thread under Game Mechanics.

Sam Stewart went in and said defensive talents/maneuvers and such do add into avoiding being hit.

I think this goes a long way to balancing out the Force Using characters. I really like the activation costs on the upgrades, I think that was a great idea, and bringing in the Discipline makes it more interesting as rolling a single (or a pair) of force dice was kind of anti climactic to be honest when it happened in our first session.

I have to say that I'm very pleased with the force update. FFG continues to show good sense (while not neglecting move and influence).

cetiken said:

I see what you did there… bah-dum-chhhhh,

I really just wanted to say awesome job FFG… I'll have more quality input after Sunday, i'll be picky then… haha

Inksplat said:

Right, except Force Rating absolutely isn't one of them. It says +1 to a characteristic, which Force Rating is not. The folks who don't grasp it aren't reading the rules. This isn't rocket surgery!

I know this was originally in last weeks errata, but i didn't catch it until preparing for my game today…

the change to Melee attacks always having a average difficultly… so if i'm understanding this, swinging my vibroblade at an aware and drunk cantina parton is average- and swinging my vibroblade at luke skywalker is also average? on Melee, and opposed check makes more sense in my mind (athletics maybe?)

I'm heading out for my first session now… so i'll get a better idea after that… hopefully char. creation doesn't take all our time today ;-) hahah

MilesD37 said:

Luke will have talents and Force powers that increase his defense, and the drunk will be, well, drunk. That should add a few to your roll.

So the base difficulty is [P][P], but talents, powers, situation, etc can all modify your dice pool.

-EF

EldritchFire said:

Bingo!

And that's what is going to set a random goober on the street apart from a master combatant, the application of talents, defensive maneuvers (for which a highly skilled fighter won't suffer the inherent penalties quite as badly), and the Sense power for those with Force abilities.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Yep. The fact that I'm attacking Luke Skywalker or some random drunk doesn't change the basic skill required to wield a weapon in melee combat or to throw an effective punch.

I'm still surprised at the amount of lashback this has gotten from people. This is not a new concept. WEG was built exactly the same. Each type of weapon had a difficulty associated with it. Punching someone was always a Very Easy task. Hitting someone with a Lightsaber or a Vibroblade was always a difficult task. It was then further modified by the opponents abilities. Hell, even blaster fire difficulty was determined by how far away you are standing from someone else. Yes, they did have a chance to dodge and parry the blows, but unless they were devoting themselves entirely to that single action, they did so at reduced effectiveness. They didn't get to roll their full pool against every attack made against them.

And all that opposed checks are going to do is drag on a fight for several more rounds - something that goes against the highly cinematic nature of this kind of combat. Seriously - the stormtrooper mook has an Agility of 3. If you're using that for your basic difficulty, that suddenly makes it an incredibly difficult task for a character with little ranged combat training to shoot them from close range (normally a difficulty 1 task). That just doesn't fit the spirit or milieu of Star Wars, where legions of stormtroopers or battle droids fall to the heroes. And on the other swing of things, shooting a Hutt Crime Lord from any distance is now a Difficulty 1 check. It just doesn't jive to use opposed checks. It promotes an arms race type of scenario between the heroes and the GM, seeing who can shore up on their Defenses the most quickly, making themselves untouchable out of the gate. Suddenly you'll have a party of Rodian Bounty Hunter Assassins who have pumped their Agility to 5 and picked up Dodge with their XP, making it durn near impossible to land a blow against them.

Let the training be represented in talents like Dodge and Quick Strike, upgrading basic difficulty or adding bonus dice to the basic difficulty in certain situations.

*shrug*

Just my thoughts on the matter.

A couple thoughts regarding the changes to the Move power.

First, for the 1st Control Upgrade (dealing damage), since the Discipline roll is stated to be a ranged attack roll, that would mean that any extra successes rolled would deal additional damage, correct? That's how it reads, but I've misread stuff in the Force chapter before, so just want to be sure.

Second, regarding th Move Basic power, as it stands it really is a glorified parlor trick, where the basic powers for Sense and Influence have at least some utility. How about altering the wording to something along the lines of "object must be within close range and can only be moved a single range band." This way, you've got Luke's attempts to call his lightsaber to his hand in ESB covered (I figure he had a Force Rating of 2 at best by that point, little to no Light Side Destiny to spend, and rolled all Dark Side FPs on his first attempt).

This change would require swapping out one of the Range Upgrades for something else with a Strength Upgrade (allowing the movement of Silhouette 5 objects) or a Magnitude Upgrade (allow the affecting of up to 6 targets) being the most promising choices to replace the Row 5 Range Upgrade if the basic power is updated as I suggested.