Hello all, I have got the Beta book recently at a convention (Australia) and I am going to be running a Old Republic style game. In this case the players would like to start off as force sensitive and I am little confused as to how to handle the dark side / light side.

I understand the whole "dark side is not more powerful just quicker, easier, more seductive" idea in that a person can use the dark side points at the cost of strain and falling to the dark side if they do it often enough. However once a person has fallen to teh dark side (in this game the plan is not to take away a persons character but let them play it which is not a problem for this group) the dark side character no uses the dark side dots to power their abilites and can call on the light side in the same way….um this doesnt feel right to me is this how it actually works? a Raging Dark Sider calls upon the power of harmony for extra might in a Force Duel with a Jedi? the mechniac seems the same as well he takes strain to do this…what happens if a dark sider does this a lot? he falls to the light side because he callls upon the light to power himself? (a reversion of the rules for the dark side) I dont think that happens but the system seems confusing.

Anyone have any suggestions on how to handle the above? I am very happy with the way it works for the light side (calling on the dark) but I am not so happy with how to handle dark side characters. Any suggestions also on how to make the Dark Side: Quicker to power but not more powerful than the light side? (maybe dark siders get XP faster but up limit of power is the same and they have to embrace the dark side?)

On an unrelated note, concerning combat. I was thinking of instead of the standrad rules for defence of adding in the opposing skill roll rules for defence. so that people actually have a active defence rather then a negative dice added to a attack roll. This is in part about trying to make light sabre dules more interesting so that people could defend/parry. THe only issue is how to handle defence rolls (easy to pick a appropriate skill) but do you get a full defence roll against every attack your aware off (Not a bad idea) or do you only get a "active" defence roll against one attacker and the normal static defencev rolls against others unless you take "extra defence manuvers with correpsonding diffciulty dice". My group would appreciate a system that allows more depth and crunch for the Duels of lightsabers.

Anyway these are just very initial thoughts I am kicking around and would apprecaite anyone elses opinions on what they are going to do.

Cheers

Additional question after same further game play: A Padawan/Jedi of the Old Republic character calls upon the force to soothe the tensions of a group/individual in a tense situation. He rolls his force dice and is forced to randomly determine if he calls upon the light side? (ie if he rolls dark side DOTS or light side DOTS?) and/or is tempted by the dark side? Seems a bit strange to have a random mechanic do something that is better determined by role playing, of course the "strenght" of your force power is also built into this mechanic. Not sure about this rule, anyone else tried it out?

Honestly, if you're going to run a campaign that's heavy on Force-users, you might be better off using either D6 or Saga Edition, as both games have fully-fleshed out rules for Jedi, falling to the dark side, and Force Powers, with Saga Edition perhaps being a bit more robust simply because it's the most recent version and is able to account for many of the changes since WEG lost the Star Wars license. EotE is built primarily for campaigns set during Dark Times and Rebellion Era, where Force-uses are a vast minority.

EotE puts a lot of the traditional aspects of Force-usage and the dark side off to the side, as that sort of thing isn't EotE's focus, and even says as much in the Beta that "falling to the dark side" is more of narrative thing than something tracked mechanically. Sorry if I come across as discouraging, but it sounds like you're trying to force a particular mindset onto a ruleset that simply doesn't accomdate it, at least not without a whole lot of work.

I can understand where you are coming from but the system I assume will eventually have the rule set to do this. Thus the brain storming . AS my players really do not like the Saga edition (they are not at all interested in DnD style rule sets) and we vastly prefer this system, I mean the bones are their for a I think a great force based game (I mean I hope they release a book on the Force) I am aware that EotE does focus on the "Star Wars Noir" setting atm.

However we noticed in some of the beta updates the original combat rules used opposed checks for combat rather than static difficutly with defence. Does anyone think that works better? if you use opposed checks do you not use the Defence Trait? I assume you would as the targets stat+skill determines your difficulty (ie purple dice or red dice) and defence adds black dice.

Abhoth said:

There were some who did back over on the Beta forum.

It might complicate combat a little, particularly where melee is concerned, but I think the fact that opposed checks tend to put melee fighters at a much bigger disadvantage compared to shooters was likely one of FFG's main reasons for going with a static difficulty.

After all, there's no Dodge skill, so I'm guessing the pre-Beta rules used Agility to set the difficulty, particularly for ranged combat. But there is a Brawl and Melee for close-quarters, and given that Brawl and Melee attacks generally have a lower damage output to startt with, going the route of opposed checks would make characters that wanted to focus on melee combat inherently sub-par to someone with a blaster pistol and less focus on shooting someone. A tad more realistic perhaps, but Star Wars and realism have never had the most stable of relationship

Also, with melee combat, do you use Brawn or Agility as the base Characteristic? Do you leave it open for the player to choose? If so, why not leave it open to the player to choose whether they use Brawn or Agility when making a Brawl or Melee attack? For their part, FFG simply chose to go with the easiest solution, and use a flat difficulty for the sake of keeping the game moving.

Maybe they'll include an optional rule to have combat use opposed checks down the line, but it'd be an optional rule.

As for the Force stuff… they probably will work on it, but likely not until Age of Rebellion has been finalized. Then again, maybe they already have and the production version of EotE will have slightly more in-depth rules on falling to the dark side.