Personally, I'd go with character becomes a dark side Force-user as outlined on page 278 as the major consequence of falling.

With an effect like that, why not just make it a choice on the part of the player? The effect is fairly neutral overall, so it's not powergamer bait, and I'm not certain a mechanical system is really needed.

Personally, I'd go with character becomes a dark side Force-user as outlined on page 278 as the major consequence of falling.

With an effect like that, why not just make it a choice on the part of the player? The effect is fairly neutral overall, so it's not powergamer bait, and I'm not certain a mechanical system is really needed.

As I said, that's my personal choice. And as I posted above, my personal choice isn't a mandate for how the FFG design team should handle it. I've met and talked with a few of them, and they're all smart, informed, and capable individuals, so I'm willing to trust their judgment on the matter. After all, every single one of us in this thread are just a bunch of random bozos posting on a message board that they don't even look at, so it's not like any of us are going to have any real influence on the game. That won't happen until the Beta, and I'm willing to bet they'll put more stock in direct e-mails providing feedback and suggestions than forum posts. And even then, they may just ignore it, just as FFG ignored the whining and gnashing of teeth that the fundamental dice mechanics for this system didn't work and should be scrapped entirely.

FFG might well decide that such a thing needs far sharper teeth to keep players of Logan's "I can do what I want!" mindset in line, to the point of going the WEG route and that after a certain threshold, the character gets removed from the game. "You wanna play your Jedi like a cowboy cop? Well, there's going to be consequences for doing so, up to and including your character being taken away if you get too out of line." Could be that FFG goes with two thresholds, the first being "okay, you now use these rules when activating Force powers" and the second being to take the character out of play.

But with just making it a choice, you also run into the problem of when the player and GM don't agree on when that threshold was crossed. I've seen and heard about players who ran Jedi PCs as psychotic mass-murderers that would give Palpatine pause claim that they were still true to the Jedi Code and thus hadn't fallen to the dark side, and that's with systems that did have a dark side tracking mechanism, with said player arguing against or trying to justify why their actions shouldn't be worth a DSP, or why their actions should be deemed heroic in some truly brazen incidents.

A tracking mechanism isn't the end-all and be-all of it, but merely the final, objective representation of where a character is on the karma meter. Ideally, it'd be accompanied by a chapter, or at least several pages, going into more detail as to how to best determine if a course of action merits a Dark Side Point for that character.

I am not some random bozo, but a very specific bozo, thank you very much!

My question is how will they do the ep cost will it be in line with the other careers or like it is now. It costs a ton to get anything near a viable force user (for obvious reasons)

It's no sweat Donovan, I was just trying to engage in some good debate on features with a few jabs thrown in when it looked like you got, how was it put, a little prickly.

I don't think it should be a binary light and dark but more of a spectrum. But I'm totally open to having options available.

I didn't think that you were calling for a one strike and your out situation. I'm even totally ok with a tracking system. I'm just advocating for no mechanical side effects. Although that page 278 option doesn't sound bad. I've seen way to many GM's punish someone in game for doing something that the GM determined was wrong. Or put players in a darned if you do darned if you don't scenario. That's why I brought up both sides of the paladin argument, I wasn't sure which you were refering too. I looks like we're on the same page with that dead horse.

As far as what is cannon goes, I'm sure FFG will go through the approval process for everything. I'd heard years ago that all stories, books etc had to get approval. I had just never heard anything about an actual cannon classification system where you can go through and determine levels of cannon until you posted it. And I'm sure most people who play the game will never have heard of it either. I wasn't trying to disagree, just point out that the majority of players will have very little exposure outside of the movies, a few books, and some games.

FFG has done an awesome job of making a mechanically vague system with focused flavor. And I hope that they continue this trend in F&D.

Ahrimon,

In so far as the canon thing goes, whether the players are aware of it or not is irrelevant. The writers have to be the ones that are aware of it, and of where the lines they can and cannot cross are.

A 'broad spectrum' as you put it might be nice, but that's only shown up in a couple EU cases and not been debunked as a fallacy (the Aang-Tii Monks are about the only ones, but not many folks know who they are in the first place). In Star Wars, the Force is either Light or Dark, with no shades of grey in which to hide. Count Dooku believed himself to something of a "grey Jedi", using Light and Dark in equal measure, but it's pretty clear how that turned out. Jacen Solo believed that there was no dark side, only dark intent, and he ended becoming just as reviled a Sith Lord as Vader or the Emperor, to the point his own father Han disowned his only son when he'd otherwise been quite proud of his kids.

As I cited in another thread, there may be folks that don't give a flying monkey lizard's hindquarters about degrees of canon, but Lucasfilm obviously does, and have been doing so for years; heck that's Leland Chee's sole job, to maintain the degrees of canon, or more recently what is and is not canon. Which means that FFG in turn has be concerned about it as well when writing the rules for Force & Destiny. And if they write something that blatantly defies the existing canon, such as the Force being a spectrum and having several different shades of grey, it will not get approved, sending FFG back to the writing board until they write stuff that does mesh with the existing canon, or at least doesn't directly contradict it.

I've just had an idea for a dark side mechanic... and it's also already in the game in some way

Like when Obligations goes over 100, your players can't spend XP...
Why not make it the same for characters turned to the dark side ?? I mean the Dark Side consumes you and feeds upon your evil deeds... It could then make it a very good incencitive to return to the light side.

Here's another idea...
I know this is a game focused on narative roleplaying and that it doesn't like rolls for mundane stuff... but maybe we could have a Dark Side Point traker. Each time you gain a Dark Side Point, you make a discipline roll with a difficulty equal to your character's DSP total. If you fail the roll, your character falls to the dark side. Players could redeem themselves and lower their DSP total by spending Destiny points equal to their DSP total (to lower it by just one each time).

Can't wait to get F&D
FFG better hurry up

I've just had an idea for a dark side mechanic... and it's also already in the game in some way

Like when Obligations goes over 100, your players can't spend XP...

Why not make it the same for characters turned to the dark side ?? I mean the Dark Side consumes you and feeds upon your evil deeds... It could then make it a very good incencitive to return to the light side.

Here's another idea...

I know this is a game focused on narative roleplaying and that it doesn't like rolls for mundane stuff... but maybe we could have a Dark Side Point traker. Each time you gain a Dark Side Point, you make a discipline roll with a difficulty equal to your character's DSP total. If you fail the roll, your character falls to the dark side. Players could redeem themselves and lower their DSP total by spending Destiny points equal to their DSP total (to lower it by just one each time).

Can't wait to get F&D

FFG better hurry up

I hope its not based on the Obligation system, especially not with the XP spending block. I think that this is a weakness in Edge and I strongly prefer the Age mechanic for Duty where it represents building a positive vs. avoiding/reducing a negative.

Force-Sensitive Warrior? I could rock that! I love martial heroes.

Now here's an interesting idea... though I'd be left wondering where-and-how to decide "career or specialization" for a particular archetype, just how much a career would actually merit unique specializations (as opposed sharing specializations with other careers), and what exactly -- in the event of a career with unique specializations -- should be had as far as 'unique' talents, as opposed to more ranks of existing ranked talents* or its own instances of unranked talents (aka "buy this once and it's considered purchased in all specializations that have it").

I will say though that I hope that -- and hopefully we have a consensus on this one -- FFG continues to follow the seeming pre-existing trend of "all specializations open to all characters irrespective of their career, with the exception of droids and Force specializations", by which I mean "no specializations that require a F&D career in order to purchase", so that players aren't mechanically penalized for a "came to the Jedi later in life" character concept, not least there's so many of those in the EU besides Luke that I couldn't count them all...

* In fairness, "more ranks of ranked talents" is a way for F&D specializations to have "a leg up" as far as wielding the Force.

Chortles,

As far the "penalized for coming into Jedi later in life," the penalty isn't that big. Even assuming a non-career cost to purchase a Jedi specialization, it's not putting the PC too far behind, and does reflect the fact that they haven't spent their formative years learning how to be a Jedi or any other type of Force-user. It'd be akin to a Bounty Hunter picking up the tricks needed to become a Pilot after they've been active as a hunter for several years in comparison to a fighter jock that's been flying airspeeders since they were teenagers. Yeah, the Bounty Hunter is penalized for branching out into Pilot, but that's a character choice to go outside their default niche.

With the current set-up of Exile and Emergent, anyone that wants to be a Force-user has to do so as a secondary gig, as they're stuck with a career and specialization that doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with being a Force-user.

Ultimately, it's a design choice on the part of the player. Do they want to focus on primarily one thing (their initial career and related specializations) or do they want to branch out into other areas?

Unless FFG is going to totally re-write the career/specialization system, I think that anyone that opts to branch out into a Force-user specialization instead of starting with an F&D career/spec combo is going to be "penalized," just as an EotE character would be penalized for picking up an AoR spec and vice versa.

I think the book will either be blue, or an earthy tone like green or brown.

@ Donovan Morningfire: I understand however that the Force specializations actually don't carry a "non-career" penalty* due to being considered universal specializations, so what I'd be concerned with would be if there were additional penalties besides differing starting career skills (from the career) and/or having to pay the additional 10 XP for a non-career specialization (which in fairness is a given for any non-universal/Force specialization out of a career's three career specializations) if a Force-using career has non-universal specializations in the same manner as non-Force careers/specializations have; those two sorts of penalties I consider "a given".

* Beyond the opportunity cost of "could have put that XP into something else".

Chortles,

As far the "penalized for coming into Jedi later in life," the penalty isn't that big. Even assuming a non-career cost to purchase a Jedi specialization, it's not putting the PC too far behind, and does reflect the fact that they haven't spent their formative years learning how to be a Jedi or any other type of Force-user. It'd be akin to a Bounty Hunter picking up the tricks needed to become a Pilot after they've been active as a hunter for several years in comparison to a fighter jock that's been flying airspeeders since they were teenagers. Yeah, the Bounty Hunter is penalized for branching out into Pilot, but that's a character choice to go outside their default niche.

With the current set-up of Exile and Emergent, anyone that wants to be a Force-user has to do so as a secondary gig, as they're stuck with a career and specialization that doesn't necessarily have a lot to do with being a Force-user.

Ultimately, it's a design choice on the part of the player. Do they want to focus on primarily one thing (their initial career and related specializations) or do they want to branch out into other areas?

Unless FFG is going to totally re-write the career/specialization system, I think that anyone that opts to branch out into a Force-user specialization instead of starting with an F&D career/spec combo is going to be "penalized," just as an EotE character would be penalized for picking up an AoR spec and vice versa.

The "big penalty" will come when the non-Jedi Career character that later trains into Jedi Specializations is forever unable to pick up the Signature Abilities of a Jedi Career.

Guess they should have started in a Jedi career then.

*IF* we get a Jedi career/specializations.

The kotor 2 fan in me almost doesn't want Jedi to have careers or career skills.

"Yes, and what are they without the Force? Take the greatest Jedi Knight, strip away the Force, and what remains? They rely on it, depend on it, more than they know. Watch as one tries to hold a blaster, as they try to hold a lightsaber, and you will see nothing more than a woman – or a man. A child."

Guess they should have started in a Jedi career then.

Pretty much.

If a PC wants being a Jedi to be a major character aspect, there's a number of fan-made Jedi careers out there, the two more notable ones being by Awayputyrwpn and DarthGM, with my preference being for DarthGM's version.

Any character, Force-user or not, that picks up a non-career specialization is saying that they want that to be a secondary aspect of their character, be it a Colonist/Doctor that buys the Mercenary Soldier spec or a Commander/Tactician that picks up Commando or an Explorer/Fringer that picks up a Jedi specialization.

Those "Signature Abilities" are a reward to a PC for sticking with a particular career/specialization rather than hoping around in multiple specializations. In that respect, it's not all that different from Pathfinder awarding PCs that stick within their favored class with an extra hit point or skill point when they level up, while the multi-classing rules aren't as punitive as D&D 3.0/3.5 were so those players that want to do so can multi-class to their heart's content.

The kotor 2 fan in me almost doesn't want Jedi to have careers or career skills.

"Yes, and what are they without the Force? Take the greatest Jedi Knight, strip away the Force, and what remains? They rely on it, depend on it, more than they know. Watch as one tries to hold a blaster, as they try to hold a lightsaber, and you will see nothing more than a woman – or a man. A child."

Kriea's too much of a self-indulgent nihilist hypocrite to be taking her words at face value. There were points in the game that you could challenge her on her hypocrisy, and she'd begrudgingly admit you had a point in some instances.

In a way though, such a thing can already occur. If a Force-user devotes all their XP to increasing their Force Powers rather than purchasing skill ranks or talents not required to make their way to the Force Rating talent, then they would be pretty helpless if access to said powers were revoked, where a mundane with a similar amount of earned XP would be far more competent due to having spent that XP on increasing skills and purchasing a larger variety of talents.

The "big penalty" will come when the non-Jedi Career character that later trains into Jedi Specializations is forever unable to pick up the Signature Abilities of a Jedi Career.

And therein lies my disagreement... but then again, I'm not even a fan of the Signature Abilities either.

The kotor 2 fan in me almost doesn't want Jedi to have careers or career skills.

"Yes, and what are they without the Force? Take the greatest Jedi Knight, strip away the Force, and what remains? They rely on it, depend on it, more than they know. Watch as one tries to hold a blaster, as they try to hold a lightsaber, and you will see nothing more than a woman – or a man. A child."

Kriea's too much of a self-indulgent nihilist hypocrite to be taking her words at face value. There were points in the game that you could challenge her on her hypocrisy, and she'd begrudgingly admit you had a point in some instances.

In a way though, such a thing can already occur. If a Force-user devotes all their XP to increasing their Force Powers rather than purchasing skill ranks or talents not required to make their way to the Force Rating talent, then they would be pretty helpless if access to said powers were revoked, where a mundane with a similar amount of earned XP would be far more competent due to having spent that XP on increasing skills and purchasing a larger variety of talents.

I think this quote fits the "thug with lightsaber" syndrome that draws in some people.

"There is much weight, much craving attached to such a tiny thing of light. For the male, it seems to have inordinate importance. But we shall leave such male preoccupations for philosophers and cultural historians."

You know, I'm still torn up over this whole dark side tracking thing. On the one hand, it's so ingrained in the source material that I can't imagine a Star Wars game without it, but on the other I never liked the idea that the light and dark sides were corrupting absolutes.

I liked the WotC mechanic because it meant a real consequence for falling and could be used by the GM to great effect, especially if the player was aware of their character's descent and made some deliberate choices. Then again, my favorite part of being a GM is not controlling the players and their characters.

Like my distaste for the light/dark absolutes, though, there could be a middle ground. Maybe there's no mechanical threshold of falling to the dark side, but a narrative agreement between the player and the GM. Said agreement would include some defined act that would signal the character's change from hero to villain, with either the player taking the role of a short-lived antagonist -- since they wouldn't be able to play in opposition to the rest of the party for long and have it still be fun -- or handing his or her character sheet over to the GM as a new NPC villain that could recur.

Hm. With this system, it'd be imperative that only experienced and tested roleplayers be allowed to play Jedi. And that wouldn't necessarily be fun for everyone involved. It's a tough issue; I think I see why FFG saved this book for last.

I'm of mixed opinion on specialization for Jedi....smacks too much of DnD and working with EotE specializations seem to be more flexible in allowing you to shore up a character than lock you into a specific mould. So I hope they sidestep the whole 'consular, guardian, sentinal' thing and just give us trees that are more general in nature....or that function as ranks, say 1st specialization is Padawan, 2nd knight, 3rd master etc...which would bring a character up to 4 force points...maybe have the trees be smaller to account for force power xp expenditures....and then fill the rest with alternate traditions such as the exile, emergent, Sith, Dothamir Witches etc...

It would be cool to have the padawan as a base career and having the jedi knight and jedi master as very specific

specialization talent trees.After all,it would keep well to the star wars feel.As an example,say have the force rating

of a padawan fall between 1 and 2.A jedi knight having a force rating fall between 3 and 4.And finally have a jedi

master having a force rating fall between 5 and 6.Also have other careers herein,such as the negotiator or force adept.

I am just stating some ideas.

One interesting game mechanic is allowing deflection/redirecting of incoming blaster fire.(we all seen the movies)

I agree they should reprint the force abilities from EOTE and AOR when doing F&D,but adding the more exotic abilities

as well.In the end,all characters should be balanced between one another,making no one character better or worse,but

it should take a little longer to aquire force abilities and rise from padawan to master.Lets face it,it would feel kind of cheap

to begin as a padawan and 5 sessions in reach knight,ect.

Anyways,my opinion is my own,but FFG will develop F&D just as good as any of their other books.

Anyways,my opinion is my own,but FFG will develop F&D just as good as any of their other books.

This.

I think that, however they choose to do it, FFG will produce a book to the same standard that they have previously - that is to say, an 'amazing' standard.

Anyways,my opinion is my own,but FFG will develop F&D just as good as any of their other books.

This.

I think that, however they choose to do it, FFG will produce a book to the same standard that they have previously - that is to say, an 'amazing' standard.

And if someone doesn't care for it, well there are already a few fan-supplements that deal with the Force. Or they can make their own house rules.

Isn't having an imagination grand?