SAGA Jedi, spells/maneuvers only once per encounter: in or out?

[RangerWickett]

I know there are ways to 'recharge your force powers,' but they feel artificial. In Saga I might pick, say, force slam, force choke, and force lightning. In combat, round 1 I force slam some droids. Then in round 2 I want to force slam them again. I can't. I have enough control of the force and enough . . . I dunno, willpower, or midichlorians or something, that I can shoot lightning at them, or crush them with force choke, but I cannot slam them again without spending a force point. Why? What's the justification?

Likewise, in Bo9S, I have 5 maneuvers. First round I use a Diamond Mind maneuver. Then next round, I could do a tiger claw maneuver, or one of my desert wind maneuvers, but I can't do the same diamond mind maneuver? Why not?

 

[Victim]

You can't use the same special move repeatedly because spamming the same attack repeatedly tends to be boring and not in the source material Bo9S or SW. It's required variety that prevents players from selecting the 'best' option and using it over and over again.

And in Star Wars, at least, you can do the same manuever repeatedly if you learn it multiple times. If you a broad range of powers, you're saying that the character is generalist in terms of how he uses the force. If you want the character to be a telekinetic master, then pick Force Slam and Move Object several times so that the character's default move set is to smash things with TK.

 

[RangerWickett]

Okay, so there apparently is no in-world justification for the restriction. Not everyone seems to mind that, but my players and I do. If I'm playing a Street Fighter RPG and I have enough ki to fire a fireball, I want to be able to. I don't want to have to use a different move just because I fireballed last round.

Of course, if my enemy does something that makes fireball not a valid maneuver, well, then I'll gladly use one of my other powers. 'Spamming' is only a problem if one power is overpowered, or if it is always the most useful. No one complains about warlocks spamming eldritch blast, because it's not that strong.

Really, I think I'd like wizards in 4e to be like warlocks in 3e -- possessing a set of abilities usable at will -- with an added element of being able to cast a handful of 'powerful' spells a limited number of times a day. Similarly, I'd like fighters to be able to use all of their powers whenever that power is appropriate. Now, some might be fairly niche -- "if you're armed with a spear, your enemy is on higher ground than you, and he attacked and missed next round, you can skewer him from below, using gravity against him and automatically critting" or something like that -- but if my opponent keeps putting himself in harm's way, I want to be able to use the same trick again and again.

 

[Klaus]

Tangent on the Force:

Wickett, see your Force power suite as "bridges" you build between yourself and The Force. Once you "burn" a bridge to bring a Force power to bear, it takes time for that particular bridge to be restored. Remember, the Force isn't an inner reservoir of power, it's an invisible energy field that surrounds us and penetrates us, binding the Galaxy together.

So, you could give a bit of yourself to the Force to restore that bridge you used (spending 1 round and a Force point), or you could wait for it to regenerate on its own (1 minute).

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

You can't use the same special move repeatedly because spamming the same attack repeatedly tends to be boring and not in the source material Bo9S or SW. It's required variety that prevents players from selecting the 'best' option and using it over and over again.

This is only a problem if:

a. the ability is powerful enough to warrant limiting it to one per combat
b. there are no other characters who "spam" the same attack each round

In Star Wars, as someone pointed out, many characters will be spamming blaster fire every round. So why the artificial restriction on force powers? Do all of them satisfy condition a? If not, why not make the more powerful ones 1/combat and the less powerful ones at will?

Or is this the line of questioning that gets us from Star Wars Saga to 4th edition D&D?

 

[RangerWickett]

That would be one way to look at it.

Me, my next campaign is going to work on the premise that the world is the creation of a child with a very short attention span. When you do things that are cool, he gives you more power so you can survive to do more cool things (i.e., XP so you level). However he hates things to get repetitive and boring, so he doesn't let people use the same powers over and over again. When you use a power, it always has the same appearance (i.e., animation), and though doing it over and over again saves on the animation budget, it gets kind of boring.

Really, it's going to be sort of like Naruto but without all the flashbacks. I mean, the villains who use the same trick over and over again never win.

Now I just need to find a proper mechanic to encourage the other PCs to have internal monologues pondering what is going on while the other people fight, and explaining to an ambiguous outside audience why Kenshin-sama is not able to block the attacks from the guy with the horizontal stripes on his shirt sleeves.

 

[Victim]

Okay, so there apparently is no in-world justification for the restriction. Not everyone seems to mind that, but my players and I do. If I'm playing a Street Fighter RPG and I have enough ki to fire a fireball, I want to be able to. I don't want to have to use a different move just because I fireballed last round.

Of course, if my enemy does something that makes fireball not a valid maneuver, well, then I'll gladly use one of my other powers. 'Spamming' is only a problem if one power is overpowered, or if it is always the most useful. No one complains about warlocks spamming eldritch blast, because it's not that strong.

Note that people do complain about the warlock being boring since the character is generally doing the same things every round (unless he goes UMD, but you can attach that ability to any class).

Funny that you bring up Street Fighter, because I was thinking of combos. If your fighting game throws 2 fireballs, they usually won't come off fast enough to combo with each other. But if you do 2 different sorts of fireballs (maybe low then high blasts), or if you do an uppercut then a fireball, then the moves will land in rapid sequence. And so it might be the same thing for manuevers - launching manuever A might leave the character out of position to do so again (without taking some time to reset his stance and posture - ie, take the action to recover it), but from ending position of A he might be in a good spot to chain immediately into B and then C+D. Or if you enter into the attack movement for a manuever too quickly, the opponent will be ready for it. Mixing up your attack pattern is the only thing that makes it difficult to counter the special moves.

 

[Delta]

They've also said that "a wizard should never have to rely on a crossbow because he's out of spells".

This isn't totally on-topic, but this quote has really made me think for a few days now. I personally disagree with the designers' motivation.

(1) Yes, a wizard using a crossbow specifically is pretty silly; that's a bit of a straw-man. You don't see that in classic literature. It was a mistake in 3E to give them that proficiency; they didn't have it in 1E or 2E. My fix for that is just roll back to 1E and say they can't use crossbows.

(2) More generally, wizards being forced to use some physical weapon does come up a lot in literature. If it's good enough for Gandalf to fight with a sword or staff, it's good enough for my D&D wizards.

 

[Delta]

Okay, so there apparently is no in-world justification for the restriction. Not everyone seems to mind that, but my players and I do.

Only grognards expect in-world justifications for game powers.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Okay, so there apparently is no in-world justification for the restriction.

Yes, there is. It's just never spelled out.

Watch any of the SW movies, or read any of the novels, and you'll see that no Jedi, ever, uses the same power more than two or three times in a row (without a break, anyway).

The rules model that.

Now, as to why Yoda never repeatedly spams Move Object, your guess is as good as mine.

No one complains about warlocks spamming eldritch blast, because it's not that strong.

The Force Powers, however, are substantially more powerful than a Warlock's blast.

Note that there's nothing stopping you from using the UtF "powers" repeatedly (especially Move Light Object).

Really, I think I'd like wizards in 4e to be like warlocks in 3e -- possessing a set of abilities usable at will -- with an added element of being able to cast a handful of 'powerful' spells a limited number of times a day.

I do agree with that, however, and it seems to be the way things are leaning currently.