Star Wars WEG D6 - The Force Point - "Is it a good thing?"

[Paul Farquhar]

This requires recognizing that moment, which may or may not come a few times per adventure, and

Sure, and part of running the game is signaling this. Star Wars is not subtle, if the dramatic moments aren’t obvious you haven’t got enough thermal exhaust ports.

 

[Celebrim]

But getting more Force Points requires doing so at a dramatically appropriate moment. This requires recognizing that moment, which may or may not come a few times per adventure, and also not having already spent your force point.

As a practical matter, the "dramatically appropriate moments" in the campaign have come down to two types of actions. Using a force point to save the life of someone other than yourself in a dramatic fashion (Luke swinging with Leia over the artificial canyon in A New Hope) or to defeat the BBEG at the climax of the adventure (Luke firing photon torpedoes into the exhaust port of the Death Star).

Everyone is focusing on this issue of whether there are two many force points. I think that's ignoring just how powerful a single force point is in an game that is balanced heavily around the scarcity of dice. Think in D&D terms as every dice translates to an additional action. Not only does a force point let you take many actions on your turn like you were hasted, but it makes those actions more likely to succeed. In theory this is supposed to allow players to perform really big stunts. In practice this just allows them to go nova to focus down bad guys or tunnel through problems without needing to be creative or acquire resources. Sometimes those stunts are pretty cool, like defeating two corrupt cops in SWAT gear in melee combat and then fast drawing a pistol to shoot a third corrupt cop 20 meters away before he finishes off your stunned and injured friend, all in the same flurry of action. But sometimes they are just "I go in guns blazing".

I don't think quibbling over what is heroic or not is going to be of much help running the game. Yes, it was absolutely heroic to dive across the room, cover the body of the mortally wounded witness with your own, and soak the probe droid self-destruct blast while simultaneously apply a med kit to stop the innocent victim from dying of shock. And yes, sometimes I could have ruled that spending a force point to survive the round against two crab droids that you ran into only because you split the party and needed to survive getting focus fired on wasn't heroic. But if you look at Han Solo's moments where he seems to be getting extraordinarily lucky, for the most part (with the possible exception of finding Luke on the surface of Hoth) it's getting himself out of trouble where he had been extraordinarily reckless in a good cause (such as when he charged the storm troopers to lead them away from Luke and Leia, only to run into a whole platoon). If I'm the DM of Han Solo's player and he decides to spend a force point so he can dodge while running away, in the context of him trying to rescue a princess, I'm not going to rule that a selfish act. Maybe it's marginal, but it doesn't feel like I should be punishing the player in that context as I see the game, the story, and how force points are supposed to effect play.

The real issue isn't punishing Han's player for recklessly charging Stormtroopers that out number him. In fact, it's more the opposite. Force points are as I see it supposed to encourage bold reckless exciting play, particularly at high points in the story. But in the game I'm running they are instead more often than not (there are exceptions) encouraging just more highly efficient play because even with a force point extraneous actions are still wasted dice.

Maybe the problem is that I'm not building in enough "exhaust ports", but my players generally are very skeptical of putting themselves into situations where the odds are against them and are much more about putting the BBEG in situations that the odds are against them and then making sure by spending a force point to get it done.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In practice this just allows them to go nova to focus down bad guys or tunnel through problems without needing to be creative or acquire resources.

And if they play like this they will never get more Force points. And if the GM designs the game so that they need to play like this they are missing the point. The game is about the big dramatic moments. The players shouldn't need to put much effort into defeating a bunch of stormtroopers or acquiring resources.

if you look at Han Solo's moments

Han fails a lot of his rolls.

 

[Deset Gled]

The force point was spent on a Persuasion roll (not a Con roll!) to convince the smuggler of the honorable intentions of the Hunters, and that they were not in fact working for the Empire to capture the Separatist Admiral (who had a significant bounty on his head).

If you are going to argue that the light side isn't aligned with attempts at diplomacy and persuasion, and instead force points properly only should be spent on violent acts in violent conflict, then I'm not sure there is much point in discussing this.

I want to address this on two different levels.

First, no. Jedi don't get to pull in the Force points to strong arm a sci-fi a negotiation for the same reason good-aligned Clerics don't get to sneak love potions into a meal to help at a fantasy negotiation. Because using the Force that way isn't actually using diplomacy and persuasion. It's using magic, external manipulation, and mind control to get the outcome you want. Ben Kenobi could get away with clouding the mind of a stormtrooper because he was an enemy combatant, but he couldn't use a Force point on it no matter how scared he was of getting caught. And he couldn't use the force to negotiate with Han, ever.

Second, when looking at this whole conversation from a larger level, it seems you are struggling with Force points as a meta-currency. And IMNSHO it sounds like problem is that you're treating them too much like currency. You need to make them a whole lot more meta.

Force points are only there to enforce the feel of the game you want to bring to your players. If they're not doing that, they're not working. And if they're not working, the player doesn't get a replacement Force point. It's not just a transaction where if the player uses them in a way the makes the mission successful, then they are justified. The players have to do more with it. They have to make the game feel Star-Wars-y on the meta level. Anything short of that and the use of the Force Point was a failure, even if the player succeeded in their task.

To put it another way...

I don't think quibbling over what is heroic or not is going to be of much help running the game.

Quibbling over what is heroic is exactly what you need to do as a GM. The next time you feel like...

they are being used as win buttons to overcome challenges with minimal drama, because that's the motivation of players in any TTRPG really.

... Simply don't reward it. No replacement Force point for you. And, yes, feel free to dispense those Dark Side Points as well. This is exactly what they're here for.

 

[Celebrim]

Let me try to refocus the discussion by focusing on the mechanics of what a force point does. It doubles your dice pools for the round. The nature of doubling is the more powerful you are, the more powerful a force point is.

If your dice pool only has 2D in it, then a force point only gives you 4D (+2D). That makes you like 'twice' as good at something. But if your dice pool has 6D in it, then a force point gives you 12d (+6D). That's not twice as good. That's more like being eight times as good.

Part of the problem could be viewed as the inherent issue WEG D6 (or any system that has dice pools) has when dice pools get large. When most players dice pools were 2-5 dice using a force point if anything rarely resulted in enough super power to risk big stunts. Generally it just let you reliably do one thing.

Now in their personal shtick dice pools characters often have 6-7 dice, plus bonuses from equipment of 2-3 dice. When they use a force point, they are formidable even from the perspective of powerful canonical characters. But more often than not, they are still just using that to do one thing really well. And I'm not sure what to do about that, if anything.

Imagine the difference if the force point "just" adding 4D to all your dice pools.

 

[Celebrim]

And if they play like this they will never get more Force points. And if the GM designs the game so that they need to play like this they are missing the point. The game is about the big dramatic moments. The players shouldn't need to put much effort into defeating a bunch of stormtroopers or acquiring resources.

I mean they don't. Like at this point the can take down an entire platoon of Stormtroopers and that's using an attribute array for Stormtroopers much higher than what is suggested in the base game. In my game a Stormtrooper is pretty darn elite. But we are way past the point where Stormtroopers are a major treat. Fighting Stormtroopers is not a big part of this game.

A typical climatic fight involves fighting a stolen Bulk Carrier with its anti-pirate defenses turned on the hunters, and a Mining Barge with a massive cutting beam, and six mining droids that are attached to your hull trying to drill through it while in an Asteroid field. Or in another case, fighting a bunch of cyborg mercenaries on this complex multi-level scaffolding. . I'm not saying this is the most climatic sort of fights ever, but I feel it's pretty climatic.

A typical fight along the way involves a dozen corrupt cops in SWAT gear with rocket packs and a Police Gunship, or a reprogrammed nanny-droid turned assassin atop a speeding subway train, or a dozen suicide probe droids in a houseboat about to be capsized by a tidal wave.

The scenes that they are in are dramatic. But dramatic or not, the solutions to problems are more often straight-forward than not. If we can agree that its totally canonical to spend a force point to destroy the Death Star by making sure your Starship Weapons roll was good enough to hit a 2m target with photon torpedoes, then I think we also have to agree that it is also heroic to spend a force point to disable a stolen bulk carrier be making sure your Starship Weapons roll is good enough to get a direct hit through the shields with your ion torpedoes. So long as the PCs are engaged in heroic action and not actually pirates that are trying to steal the bulk carrier, I don't think it's fair to say that it isn't heroic to just use a force point to target your ion torpedoes well.

It's just that in the movie version of this, using a force point is the last thing that Luke or anyone else in the attack tries, and he uses at the last minute. In a game, using a force point in in the obviously dramatic situation is the first thing the PC's try, and so while it's the same action, unlike the rebel pilots, they aren't wasting a lot of time and lives building up the dramatic tension.

Han fails a lot of his rolls.

Yes, he does. He's bad at both stealth and con, which is a running gag because as a smuggler, you'd think that would be two things he'd be really good at. But Han also makes a lot of rolls - "Don't tell me the odds".

 

[aramis erak]

I've several campaign-years of WEG SW under my belt (about 7-8), never had a problem with them being overpowered...

 

[Celebrim]

I want to address this on two different levels.

First, no. Jedi don't get to...

Well first of all, there are no Jedi in this game. This is set during the early years of Rise of the Empire, and any surviving Jedi right now are being hunted down and killed by Darth Vader and his minions. And the entire party is Bounty Hunters working as official and licensed Imperial Peacekeepers as members in good standing of the Guild and vassals of House Benelux. And right now they are in a situation where not everyone in the Empire is a raving psychotic. Early on, a lot of the Empire is people who built their career in the Republic - patriots trying to do the right thing. The Hunters don't really like the Empire, and they can see its corruption and its developing problems. But a lot of the bounties that they are on are legitimately protecting the public from raving psychotics. One of the major influences of the game is Batman: The Animated Series, where they are fighting some villain of the week with some sort of schtick. Those villains are often themselves the victims of something, often the Empire, but the villains themselves aren't behaving justly in response to the injustice against them, but targeting innocents or otherwise don't care who gets in their way. The Hunters don't really like the Empire, and sometimes, they double cross the Empire and work for the nascent rebels, but so far they haven't really been put into a situation whereas a matter of conscious they have to fail a job or openly rebel against Imperial rule and become "criminals". I've been deliberately holding off on that in order to show normal life as a Bounty Hunter when the profession was somewhat honorable - some of the only Justice that people in the outer rim could rely on. At some point yes, they will be asked to do things by the Empire that I think they'll reject doing, but that's still in the future.

pull in the Force points to strong arm a sci-fi a negotiation for the same reason good-aligned Clerics don't get to sneak love potions into a meal to help at a fantasy negotiation

No, that's a terrible analogy. A force point doesn't strong arm a sci-fi negotiation. It's not mind control. All that is happening is by the use of the force a person is guided towards saying or doing the right things that would accomplish the good that they are trying to achieve.

Because using the Force that way isn't actually using diplomacy and persuasion. It's using magic, external manipulation, and mind control to get the outcome you want.

Absolutely not. Using a force point is not a spell. Using a force point does nothing to anyone else at all. To the extent that it is magic at all it's just divination. Of all the many paths that you could take, you take the one that achieves the result. You are affected, but the target is not. If you must compare it to D&D style magic (which it isn't) it's more like the spell 'True Strike' than it is 'Charm Person'. Using a force point is not wielding a Force Power in any fashion. It's just becoming more one with the universe for a moment and gaining a certain level of enlightenment.

Ben Kenobi could get away with clouding the mind of a stormtrooper because he was an enemy combatant...

I actually quibble with Kenobi's glib use of Mind Control, and certainly it was vastly more questionable than anything my PCs have done. (And that's not even getting into the fact that in the Star Wars RPG, as a force sensitive he's held to a higher standard than normals.)

but he couldn't use a Force point on it no matter how scared he was of getting caught

Except Kenobi wasn't scared of getting caught. The Stormtroopers represented zero threat to him. He didn't use his force powers or his force points to save his own hide. He was trying to save Luke and the droids from harm to save the entire freaking galaxy. And absolutely you can always use a Force point to protect those weaker than yourself. Like that is one thing I will never quibble with the use of a Force Point over.

And he couldn't use the force to negotiate with Han, ever.

I would kind of agree with that, although again, he's not negotiating with Han to save his own skin, but to save the galaxy. If my player says, "Look we don't have that kind of money, but the Empire has built a new planet killing weapon, and getting these droids to Alderaan is the only thing that may stop the Empire from destroying inhabited worlds. We can't pay you, but I appeal to your sense of honor.", that's not an attempt to connive anyone out of their money or an act of greed on the player's part. I'm not going to say he can't use a force point for that. That would be really petty as a GM, and I wouldn't want my GM to be that petty.

But sure, if he's trying to trick someone to their disadvantage or he's doing something that has its only result as personal gain, then yes they probably lose that Force Point and probably gain a darkside point.

Second, when looking at this whole conversation from a larger level, it seems you are struggling with Force points as a meta-currency. And IMNSHO it sounds like problem is that you're treating them too much like currency. You need to make them a whole lot more meta.

Force points are only there to enforce the feel of the game you want to bring to your players. If they're not doing that, they're not working. And if they're not working, the player doesn't get a replacement Force point. It's not just a transaction where if the player uses them in a way the makes the mission successful, then they are justified.

I'm sorry, but ultimately Luke destroying the Death Star with a Force Point comes down to him mechanically just doubling his dice pools so he can take a dodge action, and a piloting action, and still have enough dice left in his Star Ship gunnery pool to make that Heroic "one in a million shot". That's ultimately no more than using a Force Point in a way that makes the mission successful. There isn't anything "more" to do there.

Quibbling over what is heroic is exactly what you need to do as a GM. The next time you feel like...

Being petty is not the "solution" I was looking for.

 

[Celebrim]

I've several campaign-years of WEG SW under my belt (about 7-8), never had a problem with them being overpowered...

Tell me more. For example, by the time you had played 7-8 years, how big were the top end dice pools of the players? By the RAW there are no caps on how big a dice pool can get. My suspicion is that the game then comes down to Aunt Mae can defeat Galactus if she has 3-5 fate points to spend, which in the famous Dragon letter wasn't considered a problem because if you have 3-5 fate points then well you are indeed a person with a charmed life.

But in this case, everyone is focusing on what I don't consider the problem at all - the PCs having too many Force Points (we've been playing like 3 years and no one has more than two). The real problem is I had foreseen from near the start of the campaign and which I am seeing play out is even one Force Point is absolutely game changing once the PC dice pools get large.

How did you keep up the excitement and did the use of a force point kill the tension by making tasks that were hard trivial?

 

[aramis erak]

Tell me more. For example, by the time you had played 7-8 years, how big were the top end dice pools of the players? By the RAW there are no caps on how big a dice pool can get. My suspicion is that the game then comes down to Aunt Mae can defeat Galactus if she has 3-5 fate points to spend, which in the famous Dragon letter wasn't considered a problem because if you have 3-5 fate points then well you are indeed a person with a charmed life.

But in this case, everyone is focusing on what I don't consider the problem at all - the PCs having too many Force Points (we've been playing like 3 years and no one has more than two). The real problem is I had foreseen from near the start of the campaign and which I am seeing play out is even one Force Point is absolutely game changing once the PC dice pools get large.

How did you keep up the excitement and did the use of a force point kill the tension by making tasks that were hard trivial?

None of my campaigns lasted more than 8 months. There have been a lot of them. Peak skills in the 6-8 dice range.
The force points never bugged me. They never caused a negative reaction in play. And they almost always succeeded when using them; the one time I recall them failing was a perfectly dramatic use... facing down a sith.