Did Mon Mothma know?

[MrNexx]

So, listening to Moving Target, we know that Mon Mothma knew Bail, and knew Leia more or less from when Bail brought her home. Did she know who she was?
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[Whill]

[MrNexx]

This gets to another question I had, though it more ties to the marriage of game rules to the movies.

Using sense powers on close relatives is a lot easier... but Leia's "resistance to the mind probe is considerable." Shouldn't the relative ease have twigged Vader?
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[Whill]

[Bren]

[Whill]

[Bren]

[garhkal]

[Bren]

[Whill]

[Bren]

The question of what attribute Willpower should fall under has come up many times before and I rather doubt there will be many minds changed by either Whill or I explaining our rationales. That said...

Other than the fact that in the rules Perception and Willpower can be used to resist some Force powers, I don't see that Perception and Willpower have any inherent relationship. In the real world Perceptive people can have weak wills and strong willed people can be unperceptive. Sometimes it seems like a certain lack of perception (or narrow perception) is sometimes even an asset in being strong willed. I don't see any compelling reason to think that the universe of Star Wars is very different than our universe in those respects. Now from the perspective of balancing attributes, Perception is already a very powerful and useful stat in the RAW. It governs initiative in combat and provides the base for a plethora of the most useful noncombat skills and characters with a good Perception already have a resistance to many Force powers. While I see no compelling reason to put Willpower under Knowledge, there isn't a more compelling reason to put it under any of the other five attributes. In addition I think it is more balanced to put it under the Knowledge attribute and for PCs it means that there are more PC templates that will provide some resistance to Force powers. And putting Willpower under Knowledge fits with the notion that the Jedi were not solely (and probably not even primarily) warriors but were supposed to be knowledgeable, persuasive, observant, and possessed of a calm mind and an even (or at least under control) temperament. Absent any good reason to change the RAW, I just leave Perception where the designers put it.

The case for Intimidation falling under Perception is better than the case for Willpower, but I don't really like the clever con man and debater also being the best at intimidating and scaring people. If I were going to change to another attribute, I'd most likely put intimidation under Strength since the non-villainous character who we most often see use intimidation is Chewie.

[MrNexx]

Though, consider that Intimidation also includes Torture, which gets us back into "things for which knowledge is useful."

In a lot of ways, Mechanical winds up being Knowledge applied through Dexterity... a combination of reflexes and knowing the device you're working with. Technical might be viewed as Knowledge applied through Perception. You can be a wrench twiddler of great skill, but unless you can tell what is wrong and know how to fix it, you're going to be horrible at Technical skills.

If you approach it that way, you do wind up reclassifying a lot of skills... pure Perception skills are rarer, and its position as the default social attribute makes it natural to move many of them there... Intimidation can be pure Perception, but you might want to make Torture into a Technical skill.
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"I've Seen Your Daily Routine. You Are Not Busy!"
“We're going to win this war, not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love.”
http://rpgcrank.blogspot.com/

[Whill]

Bren and Nexx, great points. Yes, the attributes themselves overlap. There is some Dexterity in Mechanical, Technical, and Strength. There is a "Knowledge" aspect to most all skills, so that argument for any skills being there is not too convincing to me.

Perception has physical awareness related skills, and character interaction/influence/social awareness skills. Most D6 games actually split those up into two separate attributes. From Star Wars' inception, Perception was a combo-attribute. Willpower is admittedly neither, so it is the odd man out. There really isn't any attribute for Willpower, so you've got to put it somewhere. If a GM's sense of attribute balance is helped by putting the odd man in Knowledge, I get that. I personally feel Perception wins out because I can see Willpower being somewhat related to 'force of personality', a phrase sometimes used to apply to influential people.

Other D6 games also split up Dexterity (and even Strength!), but I really think that Star Wars could stand with Perception being split up into two separate attributes. But that would make seven normal attributes and would require extra attribute dice for allocation. We've talked about that on D6 Online and most Star Wars fans I know just feel uneasy with altering the "magic numbers" of 6 attributes, an 12D attribute total for average characters and an 18D attribute total for most PCs. I don't think 7/14/21 would be a big deal, but ultimately I just decided to keep the combo-Perception and make The Force an attribute that most characters have 0D in. (And even if you did split up Perception into two attributes, yes Willpower would still be the odd man out.)

The point about characters being good to one area of skills not necessarily applying to another area of skills would have to apply to RAW's existing combo-Perception attribute. In real life, people with really good physical awareness are not necessarily good at interaction/influence/social awareness, and vice versa. But in the cinematic reality of the game, they all default the same. If you want a more realistic division, you'll have to split the attribute. If not, the good news is there is still a way to represent that with the game system as is. If you want a character that is really good at physical awareness and not social awareness, that can be represented with low Perception and skill dice in only physical awareness skill. Or vice versa. A character with a low Willpower can have skill dice in Perception skills and a character with high Willpower can have low skill dice in Perception skills, even in my game with Willpower in Perception. So this level of realism is still possible in my game. (If a GM really wants more realism in his game then he probably shouldn't put Willpower under any attribute and instead just make the skill its own attribute. But I wouldn't.)

Regarding attribute balance, I've also moved First Aid to Knowledge since it requires more than just technological abilities. First Aid is extremely important. And GMs are the ultimate source of attribute balance by making Knowledge important regardless of which skills are moved to Perception. And finally, I'm fine with the emphasis on Perception in my game. That's where all the skills most associated with roleplaying are, and this is a roleplaying game.
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[Bren]

[Whill]

I'm not trying to change your opinion. I concede that Willpower is different than both the physical awareness and social awareness skills of Perception, and I always encourage all GMs to do whatever works for them.

I'm just explaining that (1) I feel Perception is slightly more relevant to Willpower than Knowledge, (2) I'm not as worried about the importance of Perception being unbalanced with Knowledge in my system because I as a GM make Knowledge important (GMs are the ultimate balancing factor), and (3) low attribute values and specific skill allocations allow for the "realism" of characters to be good at certain areas of skills and not others in the same attribute. It is not unrealistic for there to also be characters who are good at physical awareness, social awareness, and Willpower. Because all options are still possible in my game, I don't feel the need to disassociate physical awareness from social awareness (or Willpower from both).

I realize that this discussion is mostly just food for thought for other GMs reading this, most of whom are lurkers.
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