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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9768467" data-attributes="member: 4937">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.</blockquote>

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