The Force
The force is a barely understood energy field that binds all living creatures in the galaxy together. Some see it as a reflection of the collective consciousness of the sentient living creatures in the galaxy. Others see it as a means to an end. To some it is a constant companion that walks every step of a person’s life. Others it’s a curse. All of these can be true, depending on your perspective.
Now the Edge of the Empire core rulebook has an entire chapter on the force and I strongly encourage you to take a nice long read of that chapter before we go any further. I am going to let the book explain to you how dangerou the force is for a person. There are a lot of extremely dangerous things that will come into the shadows looking for a force sensitive character. You have been warned, friends.
Force Rating
This is an additional attribute that you can acquire in a variety of ways through gameplay in Edge of the Empire. The easiest way, (and this is only slightly easier than selecting a naturally force sensitive race) is to select the Force Sensitive Exile Specialization. We’ll take a closer look at that in just a second, but we need to talk about what a Force Rating actually means and does.
The most important thing that Force Rating does for a character is that it determines the size of the pool they create when manifesting force powers and talents. For every point in Force Rating, the character adds a Force Die to their pool. Results one the force die are used to activate your force powers and talents, and those are described in each of the specific descriptions.
The Light and the Dark Side
This is an important caveat for rolling the Force Die. Light side results (white dots) provide the power to activate force abilities and some of the talents. The Dark side results provide no benefit for this, but the dark side offers power, at a price.By flipping a destiny point from light to dark, the force user can channel the power of the dark side to give their force abilities the power thtey need. The character can’t use this ability if they don’t have any light side destiny points to flip and they gain an amount of strain equal to the number of results they want to use.
The Force Sensitive Exile
This is a different kind of a Specialization, because it isn’t tied to a specific career. Anyone can spend experience points and pick up the Force Sensitive Exile (the cost is ten times the number of Specializations the character has). This specialization doesn’t have specific skills attached to it, but it does provide a Force Rating of 1. The Feat tree for the Exile is focused on survival and avoiding attention. Remember, the Exile isn’t just a Force Sensitive character, it’s a person who has survived the ugliest part of the Empire’s brutality and came out the other side. This character is a survivor above everything else, and the talents available accentuate that role.
Force Powers
Force powers are the many different ways a character can use the force to influence the world around them. Each power has a cost to purchase, and they give the character a very basic usage of the ability. By spending more points, the character can upgrade a variety of usages of their ability (sort of like adding enhancements to gear, but these cost experience points, not credits). We’re going to take a much closer look and breakdown how these abilities work, what they can do, and how you use them in game, next time.
Conclusions
This article is a little shorter than most, and that’s by design. We’re going to ease back into these, but the Force is such a big topic that it has its entire book devoted to it in the form of Force & Destiny. We’ll be putting up a couple of articles about that book later in the week, so keep your eyes peeled to this spot. We’ll see you all soon, and hope this gives you a start of a look at how the Force can shape the Edge of the Empire. Game on, Game Fans.
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