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 Powers
Like we said last week, the Force is a powerful resource for a character and the character’s Force Rating determines how capable they are of manipulating or using the force in any given situation. Most characters playing in Edge of the Empire cap out at around a Force Rating of 2, but the Force and Destiny book adds a bunch more options and can help you raise your Force Rating much higher.
Force Powers give you a use for all of that raw ability. Being able to channel the force because your character has a Force Rating isn’t that helpful without having the powers to go with it. Force Powers represent specific abilities that a character can utilize with enough practice (mechanically buying the power with experience points). They can even expand this ability with more practice, (spending more experience points) to unlock additional aspects of the Force Power. Let’s break down what a Force Power looks like, and the terminology that rolls with it.
Key Terms
Force Talent
When you look at a Specialization and see a starburst in the upper left corner of the talent, this means it’s a Force Talent and can only be used by a character with a Force Rating of 1 or Higher. Other characters are incapable of using these, and characters who somehow lose their Force Rating (or have it reduced to 0) are incapable of activating these talents.
Force Power
A specific ability or usage of the force that a character can utilize in Edge of the Empire. These abilities all require a character to have a Force Rating of 1, and must be purchased for 10 experience points each. A character will need to Activate the power by rolling a number of dice equal to their force Rating. White spots can be spent to activate the power, while dark spots do not help. (There is a caveat, and you can check that out on page 278 ish, or look back at our article earlier in the week). Each white spot rolled generates a Force Point, which can be used to activate the power.
Ongoing Effects
Some Force Powers can last beyond an immediate action. Rather than spending force points generated by activating powers, the character will have to commit Force Dice to the process. For every die committed, the character’s available pool of Force Dice for generating Force Points is reduced by the amount of Force Dice committed to maintaining ongoing effects. This does effectively mean that maintaining ongoing effects temporarily reduces your Force Rating by the amount of dice committed, (but this does not drop the character below the minimum Force Rating needed to activate Force Powers or utilize Force Talents). Ongoing effects can be ended as incidental actions on a subsequent player turn.
Force Power Breakdown
Let’s take a look at the actual nuts and bolts of a force power. Each Force Power has its own sheet (sort of like the Specialization trees) that details how a power works and it lets you track your progress with that power. I strongly encourage you to make copies of the ones you are working with, they make it much easier to track than individual notes.
Basic Power
This is the most basic version of the ability granted by selecting a force power and often gives the character a very simple view of the power and how it works. Each basic ability gives you a specific mechanical description of what’s needed to activate it and the benefit it provides.
Upgrades
As mentioned above, each Force Power can be customized by the character by purchasing upgrades to the power. These all cost experience points, but expand the Force Power in some fundamental way. There are five key types of upgrades.
Strength
A strength upgrade powers up the basic ability by making it more potent than the basic version.Magnitude
A magnitude upgrade powers up the basic ability by allowing the user to affect more targets than the basic version.Duration
A duration upgrade improves the basic ability by allowing the power to last longer than the basic version.Range
A range upgrade allows the power to be used at a greater distance than the basic version.Control
A control upgrade allows the user to add new or different effects, or modify the existing effect (this can change how a character activates the power or give new way to spend force points).Now each of these upgrade works differently based on the power they are modifying, but they all represent a fundamental improvement in the way the power works. Let’s take a look at a Specific example this week, and then we’ll finish up the other two next week
Force Power: Sense
Sense is one of the most basic abilities that a Force User can access. It allows a supernatural awareness of the environment around them and gives them the ability to peer into the thoughts and feelings of other living creatures. Sense is an important ability for a Force User because it can allow them to defend themselves from harm or gather information very quickly, very quietly.
Basic Power:
A Force User with this Force can do the following:
Spend 1 Force Point to sense all living things within short range (sentient and non-sentient)
Spend 1 Force Point to sense the current emotional state of one living target they are engaged with.
Now From this basic power, there are two paths you can follow for upgrading this power. Path 1 focuses on defense and situational awareness, Path 2 focuses on reading minds. Both are iconic uses of this ability, but focus on different aspects.
Path 1
The first upgrade (a control upgrade) gives the character an ability. This is an ongoing effect that requires the character to commit one Force die. This lets them upgrade the difficulty of the dice pool used to attack them, once per round.
This leads to a duration upgrade that allows the character to use the Sense ability’s ongoing effects an additional time each round. (This immediately let’s them use the upgrade a difficulty pool twice per round instead of once per round).
Next on the path is a Strength upgrade that allows the character to upgrade the ongoing effects of the Sense ability twice, instead of once.
The end of this path is another control upgrade that allows the character to commit a Force die to gain the ability to upgrade the ability used for a combat check once per round. However, with the other upgrades, this lets the character do this twice per round, and upgrade the ability twice.
Path 2
Path 2 starts with a Control upgrade that allows the character to spend 1 Force Point to sense the thoughts of 1 living creature they are engaged with. The path splits from here in two, with a series of three range, and three magnitude upgrades. The range upgrades allow the Force User to Sense thoughts at a longer range, while the magnitude allows them to sense thoughts on additional creatures. Fully Upgraded, this lets them use the Sense basic powers (and the Thought Sensing) ability at three range bands and can affect up to 4 different targets for the Emotion and Thought Sensing abilities.Conclusions
Now that’s a fairly concise write up for the nuts and bolts of Force Powers and how they work in Edge of the Empire. Next week we’ll breakdown the Influence and Move Powers and talk a little bit about Force and Destiny. We’ll see all of you then, Game On, Game Fans.
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