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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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 Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2023 11:15 pm Post subject: Getting rid of Alter-only Force Powers |
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I'm wondering if there should even be any Alter-only Force Powers. If you're going to manipulate something via the Force (which is what Alter is all about), then it would seem to follow that you should first be able to sense it through the Force in order to do so, which should require a Sense roll.
There are only four official Alter Force Powers (Telekinesis, Injure/Kill, Bolt of Hatred and Dark Side Web), so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to integrate a Sense component into them.
Thoughts?
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Mamatried
Commodore
Joined: 16 Dec 2017
Posts: 1829
Location: Norway
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| Posted: Sun Dec 10, 2023 11:27 pm Post subject: |
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this is a good point.
I would go to the Force Dice rules with the 7th FORCE attribute here....and when you are or become force sensitive you gain SENSE, only that not alter or control..... these you have to learn.
I can see someone senitive to the has the ability to sense it, making to me Sense as a default and "ONLY" force ability to get when being awakend or force sentive minimum.
Then once you sense it you should have imo first to contol it and then to alter it.
to me the control is I can both sense/see the force and I can hold/Grab it, with altel I can shape it and all that..... |
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10297
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2023 1:10 am Post subject: Re: Alter-only Force Powers? |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | I'm wondering if there should even be any Alter-only Force Powers. If you're going to manipulate something via the Force (which is what Alter is all about), then it would seem to follow that you should first be able to sense it through the Force in order to do so, which should require a Sense roll.
There are only four official Alter Force Powers (Telekinesis, Injure/Kill, Bolt of Hatred and Dark Side Web), so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to integrate a Sense component into them.
Thoughts? |
At first I thought you wanted to get rid of these powers, but I realize that aren't actually proposing to get rid of anything but the classification because the powers would be reclassified. You are just proposing the adding of the Sense element to the powers that are Alter-only under RAW, which would make them Sense+Alter powers.
I think that makes a lot of sense (pun intended). I like it.
| Mamatried wrote: | and when you are or become force sensitive you gain SENSE, only that not alter or control..... these you have to learn.
I can see someone senitive to the has the ability to sense it, making to me Sense as a default and "ONLY" force ability to get when being awakend or force sentive minimum. |
Before I adopted The Force attribute, I always felt Sense would come first too. Then Control and then Alter.
| Quote: | Then once you sense it you should have imo first to contol it and then to alter it.
to me the control is I can both sense/see the force and I can hold/Grab it, with altel I can shape it and all that..... |
But after The Force attribute, I wanted to embrace the 'normal skills default to attribute' aspect of the other attributes, but I also felt it should be possible to have have the Force without access to any powers with an Alter component (to explain characters like Chirrut Îmwe in my system), so I decided to split the difference and make Alter an advanced skill (so it does not default). This means that characters who have The Force attribute in my game start with both Sense and Control, but not necessarily (A) Alter.
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pakman
Commander
Joined: 20 Jul 2021
Posts: 385
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| Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2023 10:20 am Post subject: |
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I would say no;
1 - In my OPINION Force powers are already complicated enough with too many rolls. Heck, that is why I reduced all my powers in both dice rolls and power levels...
2 - I have a force attribute in my game - with the three skills (control, sense, alter) under them. Having he Force Attribute is enough, if they can already detect the object (the rock I want to move is right there...).
But - those are my reasonings - if more dice rolls works for another group - then that works for them!!!
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2023 11:31 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | I would say no;
1 - In my OPINION Force powers are already complicated enough with too many rolls. Heck, that is why I reduced all my powers in both dice rolls and power levels...
2 - I have a force attribute in my game - with the three skills (control, sense, alter) under them. Having he Force Attribute is enough, if they can already detect the object (the rock I want to move is right there...).
But - those are my reasonings - if more dice rolls works for another group - then that works for them!!! |
I can respect not wanting to add dice rolls in general, but let's be very specific here. We are talking about Telekinesis and three dark side powers. The dark side powers are not going to appear in the game that often (and hopefully not used by players).
So this mostly only affects Telekinesis. If you run an all-Jedi, high-level campaign, then maybe Telekinesis would come up a lot. If not, this rule change would have almost no impact on the amount of dice rolls in a campaign. I don't find the additional dice rolls to be a strong argument against this.
On the other hand, these powers are outliers in that they can be used remotely but for some reason they don't require a Sense component in RAW. I'm guessing part of the appeal of CRM making this change would be for categorical consistency. The trade-off is a minuscule increase in dice rolling in most campaigns. If that minuscule increase is important to you, then of course, do whatever works for you.
There are other ways to address a lot of dice rolls. Since the 80s, I have often used the hack of pre-rolling strings of various dice values and just going down the line, marking them off as I use them. It's still completely random as dice rolling always is, but I delay the game less often that way.
I doubt anyone can really convincingly argue that Telekinesis (and those other powers) should not have a Sense component. It could be that originally these powers did but then the designers realized that they had no Alter-only powers, and the Force system in all editions allows you to have any of the Force skills individually. Without any Alter-only powers, hypothetical characters with Alter only would have no powers they can do. It's not a preposterous idea – I do have admission from Bill Smith directly that 'quota filling' was a concept sometimes used in game design for this game. (In my game system, it is impossible to have Alter without first having Control and Sense, so this is concern a non-issue in my rules.)
I suspect that most of the resistance to the idea amounts to 'But this is the way we've always done it.' That could go back to 1987 for some GMs, so I get it. If that is powerful consideration for a GM, then there really isn't any meaningful argument against that except things don't have to be a certain way just because they always have been, especially if it never made sense in the first place. But if you would rather hand wave these few powers as not requiring Sense but enforcing a line-of-sight restriction (mundane sense), I guess that works.
All of the arguments mentioned admittedly here do have various levels of influence on me about the different aspects of the game, but like anything, a GM weighs them all and proceeds as they judge best. I don't feel extremely strongly that Telekinesis must have a Sense component, but I really don't see the harm in it and it does make some sense. It also provides an advantage of very slightly nerfing Telekinesis, which I find I do not mind much.
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pakman
Commander
Joined: 20 Jul 2021
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| Posted: Mon Dec 11, 2023 11:54 pm Post subject: |
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| Quote: | I can respect not wanting to add dice rolls in general, but let's be very specific here. We are talking about Telekinesis and three dark side powers. The dark side powers are not going to appear in the game that often (and hopefully not used by players).
So this mostly only affects Telekinesis. If you run an all-Jedi, high-level campaign, then maybe Telekinesis would come up a lot. If not, this rule change would have almost no impact on the amount of dice rolls in a campaign. I don't find the additional dice rolls to be a strong argument against this. |
I can respect this - but in my game.... two things...
First -
As part of my force rules overhaul - I have reduced ALL force powers to a single skill check (Control, Sense, Alter are skills under the Force Attribute in my game).
So, with my group - NOT having it a single roll - THAT would be an outlier.
and...
Second -
I have a campaign of ALL FORCE USERS!
(they asked for this) - so when working on the house rules for our game - I invested a lot of time in a force overhaul - made over the course of about six months, and tweaked a bit here and there over the last year and a half of play testing (folks here on the pit and many other places helped a lot in my year long effort on house rules - I am almost done .....).
The powers are internally balanced, duplicates removed/merged, more accassable to beginning users, reduced power curve etc.
So, obviously - I have a bias for reducing complexity unless it has a signifigant value add.
if I did feel that sense were important to Telekinesis, I would make the requirements to LEARN it Alter 2D, and Sense 1D (or something like that). As that is how I handled most of my force powers that required more than on skill to use (I made them more than one skill to learn).
I love the details other folks go into sometimes, and this thread, like many - the idea of "should sense be part of telekinesis" has merit and is fascinating - I would just implement it differently - but I still find it interesting to ponder.
Anyway - to each their own - if others want to add more rolls, and it works for them - all good!
That is the beauty of our beloved old game - we can all have fun our own way.
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2023 2:41 am Post subject: |
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| pakman wrote: | As part of my force rules overhaul - I have reduced ALL force powers to a single skill check (Control, Sense, Alter are skills under the Force Attribute in my game).
So, with my group - NOT having it a single roll - THAT would be an outlier.
...
Anyway - to each their own - if others want to add more rolls, and it works for them - all good! |
No one was suggesting that the four RAW Alter-only skills be the only powers with two rolls. That would be silly. If your house system has already eliminated all multiple rolls for all Force powers that have them in RAW, that is a modification above and beyond what the OP was suggesting. When House Rules are proposed, by default they proceed from RAW for the basis of discussion. Your objection about adding a dice rolls makes a lot of sense for your Force rules, but less for a system closer to RAW that already has many Force powers that require multiple rolls. It is a minuscule change overall, so I feel you are overemphasizing the very few additional rolls for the general discussion. Maybe it is just from the fact that even adding a few over a campaign is the opposite direction you went with the Force. You seem to have greatly reduced the number of Force skill rolls in your system...
| pakman wrote: | | Whill wrote: | | So this mostly only affects Telekinesis. If you run an all-Jedi, high-level campaign, then maybe Telekinesis would come up a lot. |
I have a campaign of ALL FORCE USERS!
(they asked for this) - so when working on the house rules for our game - I invested a lot of time in a force overhaul - made over the course of about six months, and tweaked a bit here and there over the last year and a half of play testing (folks here on the pit and many other places helped a lot in my year long effort on house rules - I am almost done .....). |
I did remember that you were running an all Force-user campaign group, which is why I qualified my answer in that way. But this is pretty rare in general. I've run entire campaigns with no Force-users, and I have never ran a campaign that had more than two Force-sensitive PCs. Most of my campaigns have had one Force-user at most, and this seems fairly typical with the community at large.
| pakman wrote: | The powers are internally balanced, duplicates removed/merged, more accassable to beginning users, reduced power curve etc.
So, obviously - I have a bias for reducing complexity unless it has a signifigant value add.
if I did feel that sense were important to Telekinesis, I would make the requirements to LEARN it Alter 2D, and Sense 1D (or something like that). As that is how I handled most of my force powers that required more than on skill to use (I made them more than one skill to learn). |
Have you shared your Force system anywhere? Even a basic overall structure without the rules for each power? It seems powers have skill prerequisites. I'd love to see the lists of skills with the prerequisite values. I'd also love to see what powers you have consolidated as I wish to do that as well. Please consider sharing that in a new thread. Thanks!
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Mamatried
Commodore
Joined: 16 Dec 2017
Posts: 1829
Location: Norway
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| Posted: Tue Dec 12, 2023 11:00 am Post subject: |
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could there be a need for this to apply to other spowers as well, like control only powers.
If someone have to be able to sense the force in order to use it, then any and all force powers that is not Sense + A or C also someting to maybe look at.
I wuld say that it is no more far fetced to be able to jump high, or to contort and looking over many of the powers many of the Control only powers are imo very mental, I feel thing indise so I use it to detoxify this poisin I ingested, or otherwise.
I am wondering if maybe another souluition is there, a sort of "parmentnent sense" that may not be alone enough to have a power or a stat, but is required for all force to be used, even if only by alter or control.
IF on the otherhand sense is enough to always have a flow to see and tap into then someof the force powers are not needed..
And I get this issue with some of the control powers. |
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pakman
Commander
Joined: 20 Jul 2021
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| Posted: Wed Dec 13, 2023 12:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Whill wrote: |
I did remember that you were running an all Force-user campaign group, which is why I qualified my answer in that way. But this is pretty rare in general. I've run entire campaigns with no Force-users, and I have never ran a campaign that had more than two Force-sensitive PCs. Most of my campaigns have had one Force-user at most, and this seems fairly typical with the community at large.
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Understood, and totally agree. In almost 30 years (dang I am getting old...) of star wars gaming - this is the ONLY time I have ever had this many - I mean...ran a clone wars game pre-covid, but even that only had I think two...
I was planning on updating some force powers as part of my house rules overhaul - then having a full party of force users, AND all the great topics and other house rules here on the Pit - caused me to really look holistically look at the entire set of force rules (Adding a Force Attribute, power scaling, consolidating, thinking about dark side points, and other balancing mechanics...etc.).
| Whill wrote: |
Have you shared your Force system anywhere? Even a basic overall structure without the rules for each power? It seems powers have skill prerequisites. I'd love to see the lists of skills with the prerequisite values. I'd also love to see what powers you have consolidated as I wish to do that as well. Please consider sharing that in a new thread. Thanks! |
I need to - it is just...big (Force section is about 54 pages).
And interconnected - so hard to isolate just the force powers, mechanics wise. However, they are pretty solid (some minor tweaks in a year of play testing).
It is a bit ...intimidating sharing your 'baby' out there - I am sure you can relate - many folks here have shared a lot of content.
I am almost done - finishing up other AdvancedSkills and Starship Combat now ...and a few more changes to character creation - but overall solid.
I have a draft of a thread for sharing and getting feedback - I will post it up over the holiday break.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16178
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2023 12:00 am Post subject: |
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| Mamatried wrote: | | to me the control is I can both sense/see the force |
This is wrong. Control, per the RAW, is a combination of Sense and Alter focused on the user's own body. Sense and Alter are both externally focused.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2023 12:14 am Post subject: Re: Alter-only Force Powers? |
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| Whill wrote: | | I think that makes a lot of sense (pun intended). I like it. |
| Quote: | | Before I adopted The Force attribute, I always felt Sense would come first too. Then Control and then Alter. |
I recall discussing this with you before, and I concur.
| Quote: | | But after The Force attribute, I wanted to embrace the 'normal skills default to attribute' aspect of the other attributes, but I also felt it should be possible to have have the Force without access to any powers with an Alter component (to explain characters like Chirrut Îmwe in my system), so I decided to split the difference and make Alter an advanced skill (so it does not default). This means that characters who have The Force attribute in my game start with both Sense and Control, but not necessarily (A) Alter. |
My main objection here is making Alter an (A) Skill, but that's why I made the Intermediate (I) Skills topic. Also, to clarify, didn't you once suggest allowing (A) Skills to stack with the Attribute when being used on their own and not stacked with a Prerequisite?
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.
The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
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Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Thu Dec 14, 2023 1:45 am Post subject: Re: Alter-only Force Powers? |
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| CRMcNeill wrote: | | Also, to clarify, didn't you once suggest allowing (A) Skills to stack with the Attribute when being used on their own and not stacked with a Prerequisite? |
Suggested and officially adopted into my rules.
In my game, the primary use for advanced skills requires rolling an attribute plus the advanced skill. Prerequisite skills uses are sometimes benefited by the GM determining that they can to be boosted by the advanced skill.
I have tweaked advanced skill rules for my game, but maintain the premise of non-advanced skills defaulting to their attributes (meaning characters have access to all normal skills of an attribute, without or without having the skill), while advanced skills do not default. (Defaulting normal skills may be subject to a situational temporary unfamiliarity penalty though).
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