Force Powers and maybe less of them

[Mamatried]

I have been reading though a lot of force powers, and most of them as I see it are duplicates of another.

We have in our force compendiums, several similar illusions, be it stealthy or otherwise.

We have many besed one movement, basesd one senses of course

so I am thinking of reducing the amount of "duplicates" and allow a wider narrative disecription of each.

Telekinesis.....I would see this in the same "realm" as levitation, and distance manulipation.

I will most likely list them all, but I see inbue armor and enchant armor....why have them seperate when they do the same things, roll vs the same attributes ( here force skills alter , control and sesne being defaultable and thus "attributes")


I see this on a lot of powers, same with the variants of lightning, anything from differenc colors to electric judge ment, the "non evil" version.
while ALL can be controlled and used to kill or not killed by the user.

Now I am ranting...

So I will end this by asking about people's thoughts about reducing the "duplicate" powers.

[pakman]

TLDR Version:
Yes.

Longer version:
As part of my house rules overhaul - one of the biggest motivators for me was the force and force powers.

For some of the reasons you mention - but also - too many dice rolls, too many prerequisites (you literally need a flow chart to map them out...yes, some fans have made them) etc.

Besides standardization, consolidation and simplification - I also wanted better power scaling, and a few more things (beyond the scope of t his post...maybe)

How this was done.
It literally took months - and I don't suggest everyone do a full scale overhaul - massive spreadsheets, notes, research, viso charts etc - and

Powers that were similar were consolidated, unless they had significantly different power levels.

All were reduced to a single roll - based upon the force skill (control, sense, alter) that was usually the highest difficulty. In many cases - where some Skills felt more critical - another skill was made to be a pre-requisite to learn the ability.

As part of my overall house rules - I am adopting advanced skills being gateways to specific abilities (as inspired by the martial arts advanced skill - where improving the Advanced Skill Martial Arts gives access to another ability) - following this - I converted my force powers into abilities under force power "advanced skills".

Force Powers as Advanced Skills
I built a number of these "Force Power Trees(A)" based on their theme - Enhancing the Body, Healing, Telekinesis, Energy Control etc.
Similar to martial arts, when a character learns a pip in the parent force power advanced skill, they learn one of the abilities (the abilities previously known as force powers

Each list of abilities were organized into tiers - based on their strength and formerly listed pre-requisites. More simple powers were put on a lower tier, and more complex or stronger powers were placed on a higher tier.

Some abilities exist on under multiple powers - but possibly in different power tiers based on the theme (Heal Injury is Rank 1 on the Force Healing Advanced Skill tree - but on the second Rank on the Enhance Body).

The Skill rank of the advanced skill power - unlocks the tiers.
so Influence(A) of 1D, only gives access to Tier 1 abilities (like Dim Another Senses) but an Influence(A) of 3D gives access to Battle Meditation.

This all sounds complicated - and it was - to make (again, this took almost six months - and has been in playtest for about a year).

Here is a screen shot of some of the powers and how to read and understand them from my house rules document; It shows how my powers are arranged, and examples of how one ability (what I call powers now) is on more than one list...



Wait...whut?

Ok, so kind of got into more details than possibly desired, AND I had other goals other than just consolidation (simplifcation, power scaling, fatigue, dark side review, etc.).

In summary ; yes, merging the force powers is a good idea.
I mean - look how many exist around pain, healing, fatigue etc.

So, if you did not want to do a complete re-write (foolishly like I did) - then I would just merge a couple of them - sometimes with a bit or renaming.

For example - most of the abilities relating to resisting damage or the effects of damage (unconscious, or penalties etc.) - I merged into one - calling it 'Control Pain', and just expanded the effect. "This ability can be used as a normal Action, even before taking an injury, or used a Reaction to a highly damaging attack to ignore the pain related effects" It can be "kept up".

Anyway.... yes, they certainly can (and should, IMHO) be merged and edited...
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SW Fan, Gamer, Comic, Corporate nerd.
Working on massive House Rules document - pretty much a new book. Will post soon....

[CRMcNeill]

Counterpoint: one of the biggest complaints about long-term campaigns is how Force user characters slope up in power, eventually overshadowing the other players. Having a proliferation of specialized Force powers is one way the RAW slows the power creep of Force users. If anything, house rules should lean the opposite direction. My personal solution (generally speaking) is to decrease the “power slope” so that Force using PCs progress more slowly, while also moving them several rungs up the ladder, so that they can be more useful in the beginning.
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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

[pakman]