Sense Control Upgrade (Sense Thoughts)

By LukeZZ, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

The Sense Control Upgrade (Sense Thoughts) is activaed using 1 Force Point (as shown in the relative desctiption) or 2 Force Points (as shown in the relative table)?

LukeZZ said:

The Sense Control Upgrade (Sense Thoughts) is activaed using 1 Force Point (as shown in the relative desctiption) or 2 Force Points (as shown in the relative table)?

Officially, it's not been addressed. It's been pointed out on the Beta sub-forum as a piece of conflicting info though.

My thought would be to have it cost the 1 Force Point as noted in the description, as past history with a lot of RPGs as shown that the information in the table tends not to be quite as up-to-date as the descriptive text.

But if you feel that actual mind-reading is too good an ability, then feel free to require the Force-user to spend 2 Force Points.

My group has read this as costing 2 force points:

  • One FP to activate the basic power "spend FP to sense the current emotional state of one living target"
  • One FP to further activate the control upgrade to read thoughts

We assumed that in the table, these 2 FP had simply been combined, thought maybe we were just implying the consistency.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

My group has read this as costing 2 force points:

  • One FP to activate the basic power "spend FP to sense the current emotional state of one living target"
  • One FP to further activate the control upgrade to read thoughts

We assumed that in the table, these 2 FP had simply been combined, thought maybe we were just implying the consistency.

-WJL

The problem I see with this assumption is that you should also be making the same assumption for the Mind Trick upgrade for the Influence Power, where Mind Trick simply lists a single Force Point as the cost. Also, the Control Upgrades, even after the Week 2 Updates, don't require additional Force Point costs, particularly those of the Move Power, whose Control Upgrades expands the base Move effect similar to how the Sense Thoughts upgrade expands what the Sense basic power can do. Also, given there's a full sidebar on just how not useful being able to read thoughts can actually be, I don't think the intent was to have Sense Thoughts to necessarily be more costly to activate.

But as I said earlier, there's no official word, so simply use whatever works for your group until the final version of the corebook comes out, which will hopefully address the issue by correcting whichever one turns out to be in error.

I guess if you can read a sidebar that starts with the sentence "Sense can be an extremely potent ability in a game, especially the ability to read another's thoughts" and then say

Donovan Morningfire said:

… there's a full sidebar on just how not useful being able to read thoughts can actually be…

then yeah, I guess you could support that argument.

-WJL

LethalDose said:

I guess if you can read a sidebar that starts with the sentence "Sense can be an extremely potent ability in a game, especially the ability to read another's thoughts" …

-WJL

Seeing as how they pretty spell out all sorts of exceptions as to why mind-reading in EotE isn't as potent as such ability is typicaly presented in sci-fi material that deals with psychic/telepathic power, with all sorts of ways that GMs can nip its perceived power in the bud, then yes, that assessment can be supported, especially if one has played enough other games where mind-reading didn't have as many suggested restrictions and could easily be used to totally de-rail a many a campaign.

Then again, maybe you've not heard of "Flashy Headline to Grab Reader's Attention" method that every major news media outlet uses ;)

In all honesty, there's valid reasons for deciding one way or the other, and there's an equal chance that one interpretation is right as there is that it's wrong.

Maybe it'll get cleared up in the final version (probably the best bet for such clarification happening), maybe a dev will step in and say "this is how it is" (pretty unlikely given how light dev presence seems to be on big game company forums), but until then, the GM should run it how they see fit based on the material available and their own judgment as to what feels appropriate for their campaign.