>>>I've GM'd a few different systems in my time and the constant complaint I've heard about Jedi in SW games is that they outshined non-force using characters.<<<

Doing thematic games like this tries to resolve that problem by splitting Jedi off in to their own game.

That means that when you are playing Edge of the Empire, you don't need to worry about Jedi hogging the spotlight because their are no Jedi. And that means you can do all the things you wanted to do but couldn't because the Jedi got in the way.

In EotE, your skill with a blaster matters. You can do Old West style quick draw duels like in The Quick and the Dead and it is important. Your ability to fly a ship and run cargo makes you the coolest dude in the game.

But.

This also means that in their own game, the Jedi don't need to worry about hogging the spotlight of the non-Jedi characters, because there are no non-Jedi characters (or at least, if there are the player is probably just being difficult). That means you can do all the Jedi stuff you always wanted to do but couldn't because of all the whining from the people who are not playing Jedi about how the Jedi are hogging their spotlight.

I imagine I'll catch some flak but I actually think The Old Republic MMO has done a good job in balancing Jedi/Sith with other classes. I'll explain in a moment but I first want to say I'm not a big fan of TOR itself, I don't like MMOs, there no real skill system except combat stuff and I don't want a tabletop RPG to play like a video game (aka. D&D 4th ed), so lets not waste time on covering TOR game play.

What I mean is by how TOR has chosen to make the player the hero regardless of what class they are and build their powers accordingly. So it doesn't matter if you are a Bounty Hunter or a Jedi you're still going to kick a$$ in combat. They've balanced the classes by making each class shine in it's own way by giving each a range of abilities that mirror Jedi/Sith powers in strength and effectiveness but "skinned" them differently. I think this is a good way for FFG to approach the Jedi/Sith balance with other character classes for combat. A blaster bolt to the head is just a deadly as a lightsaber hit or Force Lightning, so have our non Jedi heroes as deadly accurate as any Force user. I'm not suggesting that NPCs be this way I don't think it's a good idea to nerf Jedi, just keep other Players from being overshadowed.

For other skills and Force powers a similar approach would work as well. Jedi should be skilled in many different things as their roll is to deal with a variety of situations, they should be as capable as any other character class is outside of combat, especially when they use the Force as an enhancement. They are essentially Jack-of-all-trades + the Force. Rather than nerfing Jedi or splitting them off in their own setting I think the better approach is to bump up the rest of the Player classes to match their effectiveness. As gritty as EotE wants to be it's still based on a cinematic universe so it's okay to have the heroes be HEROES and still keep that gritty feel.

Basically don't "balance" Jedi by lowering the bar, rather raise the bar for the other Player classes.

FuriousGreg said:

I think that's the best way to do it, since it's pretty much what happens in Star Wars anyway. The "normal" characters are still quite a bit above normal in regards to their skills and abilities. Ususally that's enough to put them just about on-par with most of the Jedi who are characters, except a few of the Jedi masters.

FuriousGreg said:

Well for one, I'm still a subscriber to SWTOR so you'll catch no flak from me. The gameplay is alright but the story and the worlds are the real reason I still play .

That aside, I completely agree with everything you said! Jedi are amazing. The force is awesome. But has anyone seen Boba Fett? That guy is a certified badass. He would obviously not have any problems tangling with a jedi or sith either (considering he almost killed Darth Vader once). Bringing everyone to the same level is what needs to, and is going, to be done.

They have already had to nerf a few force powers for that exact reason. They don't want to penalize players for not using the force by making the force so overwhelmingly awesome that it would be foolish to not be force sensitive. The metagaming crowd would be in a rampage.

But I totally agree with what some of you guys are saying. In a realistic Star Wars setting, a well-placed blaster shot to the head of a Sith Lord is still going to kill or seriously injur him. That is one thing I really liked about the Revan novel. Lord Scourge fought a few mercenaries and actually got hit a few times. I mean, he was fine, but one shot got through his armor and he was complaining about it all day long. It was great.

FuriousGreg said:

From a certain perspective, FFG already has.

Every PC starts out with the same basic traits based upon their species selection. From there, the player gets to start choosing what they want their character to be awesome at, first by choosing their starting career and specialization, and then by spending their starting XP to purchase the Characteristics, Skills, and Talents that best fit what they've got in mind.

So a freshly made Bounty Hunter/Assassin, Smuggler/Pilot, and Technician/Outlaw Tech are all going to be as awesome as that Explorer/Fringer/Force-Sensitive Exile… but each of them are simply going to be awesome in different ways. The Assassin's great in a fight, the Outlaw Tech can fix and modify gear like nobody's business, the Pilot's gonna fly circles around most folks, and the Fringer F/S Exile is going to have access to some funky ablities dependent on which powers they start with.

WotC tried the "let's make everyone awesome!" approach with Saga Edition, something Rodney Thompson discussed during his inital guest appearance on the Order 66 podcast. The problem with Saga Edition came down to how skills interacted with defense scores, particularly at low level where Skill Focus was a game breaker, being readily apparent with the Use the Force skill, though any skill that targeted an NPC with mostly non-heroic levels fell into the realm of "game-breaker."

The thing with SW:TOR is that as a video game, the players don't have a lot of options or input on how their various class abilities work. That's always been the blessing and curse of table-top RPGs, is that players can get wildly creative with how their character's various feats/talents/skills/powers/whatnot work. Force-users in a video game are pretty limited to how they can implement their powers, since the video game is coded to only permit specific results when using a given power or class ability. Having played and GM'd Force-users of some stripe for close to two decades in a number of Star Wars RPGs, I can tell you that a little player creativity with the Force can lead to a number of odd-ball situations that no game designer could have ever hoped to conceive of.

Compared to Force-users, other characters in a table-top RPG are a little more locked down in what their various talents can do. Feral Strength simply lets you dish out more damage, though a benevolent GM might permit a Boost die to Brawn checks under specific circumstances, perhaps asking that a point of Strain be suffered per Boost die, but that's outside the parameters set for Feral Strength.

A Force-user with the "alter thoughts" Control Upgrade for the Influence power can pull off all kinds of stuff as they freely mind-whammy NPCs, making things that would be extraordinarly difficulty Charm, Deceit, or Coerce checks seem quite easy (especially if the target has a lousy Discipline/Willpower rating). The Sense basic power can largely negate Stealth, since it instantly lets the Force-user know "hey, there's a bunch of living things in this supposedly abandoned part of town," limited only by the number of Range Upgrades they've purchased in terms of range; even without those it ID's anyone with Short Range (doesn't mean you've got a clear shot at them or know exactly who they are, but you know they're there).

And that's not even opening the can of worms that is telekinesis; as a GM and player I've been amazed at what I've seen Jedi pull off using telekinesis over the years, from using a Hutt to go Bowling for Mooks (i.e. used a Hutt crime lord as a bowling ball to crash into a clustered group of hench-beings) to popping the glass on the cockpit window of a tramp freighter while in space. Heck, I once had a Jedi PC in a Saga Edition game use a Rancor as an oversized basketball.

This also isn't something that's limited to just Star Wars either. I love Evil Hat's Dresden Files game, but the amount of stuff I could pull off as a Wizard in comparison to the rest of the group, especially if I had even a modicum of prep time left the group in speechless awe on several occasions. And that was without really flexing my character's metaphysical muscles… when my character opted to cut loose, bad guys got nuked, quite literally in a couple instances. But FATE is also a narrative-focused system and is open to players using their skills and aspects in neat and unusual ways.

Before you get the wrong impression, I'm not saying your suggestion is a bad idea. Only that it's a lot tricker to pull off in a table-top RPG than it is in a video game. Video game is going to enforce a certain level of equality (most of the time) between classes. Table-top RPGs are by their nature much more open to creative interpretation, particularly in the realm of meta-physical powers such as the Force or magic or even psychic powers. The trick with Force-users is that FFG is going to have to find that happy balance point between letting Force-users get creative within a rule structure but not leave things so free-form that it's ripe for abuse.

WEG D6's approach to Force powers was notorious for how broken it could get once the Force-user got their Force skills up to a certain point (usually 5D, sometimes 4D and defitenly at 6D), particularly 1st edition which didn't limit Force-users to specific powers, but simply let the player use any power the wanted. 2nd edition fixed that a bit, but by 4D in your various Force skills, the Force-user pretty much had most of the powers anyway, especially those pertaining to Alter.

WotC tried for a more codified approach, particularly with Saga Edition and spliting various telekinetic tricks into separate powers and talents. But again, a creative player with Move Object and Mind Trick could pull off all sorts of crazy stuff. Heck, they don't even need those powers, as there's a Force Adept in the SWSE Skype game I play who is a freaking amazing meat shield, able to draw attacks to him (Caamasi with Draw Fire and trained in Persuasion) and negate most if not all of the damage (DR 10 talent and Force Shield). A regular SWSE Soldier trying to do the same thing wouldn't be nearly as effective since they wouldn't have the means to absorb all that damage, plus having to figure out how to get trained in Persuasion in the first place (either multi-class, select a specific talent, or hope the GM is using the Background system from the Rebellion Era Campaign Guide).

Right now, we're seeing just the bare basics in terms of the Force, and the only real limit is a combination of what a Force-user has spent XP to acquire, be it Upgrades for their powers or working their way towards the much-desired Force Rating talent. As more Force-based specializations are published (either in Force & Destiny in 2015 or in supplements for EotE or Age of Rebellion) and the opportunity to go beyond Force Rating 2 presents itself, Force-users will definitely grow in power, as they'll be able to more reliably activate not only the base power but also additional Range/Strength/Duration/Magnitude Upgrades. During the playtesting of my Ways of the Force material, I noticed that a Force Rating of 4 all but ensured that a Force-user would be able to activate the base power and two upgrades. Yes, it would take a lot of XP to get there, but once they did, the Force-user would be quite potent as their powers are all but guarenteed to work.

By the same token, a non-Force-user PC would have spent similar XP on buying talents (such as Dedication) and boosting up their skills. So maybe in the end, the way FFG has designed the game, things will all balance out. Since we've only had the Beta for just under a year, it's still too early to tell how it will all shake out after peolpe have been playing the same character for several months. I know the D6 system was great… but it was only designed (by admission of one of the lead designers) for characters to be played a dozen or so adventures and then retired for new characters, not for folks to play the same character for once a week for three years straight. Saga Edition is also pretty solid (Skill Focus issue aside), but things start breaking down around 12th level, especialy for the GM who has to concoct the NPCs for the players to fight.