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jivjov
Sep 13, 2007

But how does it taste? Yummy!
Dinosaur Gum

homullus posted:

What do you see as the problem with Morality? I thought it provided a little mechanical oomph to a redemption story arc and an acceptable use of Force points. It matters about as much as Obligation and Duty do.

My big issue with it is that it only really has a mechanical effect on Force Users. Which I guess is the theme of the book...but something called "morality" should totally be affecting everyone. Especially Edge characters who are grey area fringers to begin with.

If they had named the mechanic "Balance", or given it some other effects that aren't Force-centric, I'd be a lot happier with it.

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homullus
Mar 27, 2009

jivjov posted:

My big issue with it is that it only really has a mechanical effect on Force Users. Which I guess is the theme of the book...

It pretty much assumes everyone is a Force user. Why would you buy Force and Destiny, if you weren't interested in the Force? There could certainly be a different name -- "Peace" or "Stillness" might make more sense than "Balance", since somebody with a really high number isn't balanced -- they've avoided Conflict, rather than finding a pivot point between Conflict and its absence.

Mustache Ride
Sep 11, 2001



I'm not very happy that it uses a sliding scale.

It starts you at 50 Morality, and then at 70+ you're more light side and less than 30 you're Dark Side. That just seems like arbitrary numbers they threw in to upset the narrative.

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

Mustache Ride posted:

I'm not very happy that it uses a sliding scale.

It starts you at 50 Morality, and then at 70+ you're more light side and less than 30 you're Dark Side. That just seems like arbitrary numbers they threw in to upset the narrative.

It looks in line with Obligation and Duty to me -- they're all sliding scales. Obligation you want to be low, but can't avoid it going up sometimes. Duty you want to be high, but can't always increase it when you want. Morality, you start in the middle and get to decide which direction you want to go with your newly-minted Jedi (including staying in the middle), but can't always predict or control the direction, and can help nudge it with attention to your actions (as Jedi do!).

alg
Mar 14, 2007

A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

So is F&D going to be the "epic" level of play that the official forums posters have been claiming for awhile? i.e. dark heresy -> deathwatch

I can see how it wouldn't be, based on the previous force users from the two core books

jivjov
Sep 13, 2007

But how does it taste? Yummy!
Dinosaur Gum
Fair enough...but you can give a Jedi an Obligation or a Duty, but you really can't give your Smuggler or Pilot a Morality.

Pau
Jun 7, 2004

jivjov posted:

Fair enough...but you can give a Jedi an Obligation or a Duty, but you really can't give your Smuggler or Pilot a Morality.

But you can, once he turns Jedi...

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

jivjov posted:

Fair enough...but you can give a Jedi an Obligation or a Duty, but you really can't give your Smuggler or Pilot a Morality.

But you ONLY give a Smuggler a Duty if he joins the Rebellion. Similarly, you ONLY give your Smuggler a Morality if he becomes a Jedi.

jivjov
Sep 13, 2007

But how does it taste? Yummy!
Dinosaur Gum
It just still feels asymmetrical to me...you can use obligations with any fringe character, Jedi or no. You give a Duty to anyone in the rebellion, Jedi or no. But you only give Morality to force users. And do you go back and assign a Morality to any force user who used the Emergent tree back in the previous game? Or do you only get one if you're a "Full" force wielder?

Poops Mcgoots
Jul 12, 2010

jivjov posted:

It just still feels asymmetrical to me...you can use obligations with any fringe character, Jedi or no. You give a Duty to anyone in the rebellion, Jedi or no. But you only give Morality to force users. And do you go back and assign a Morality to any force user who used the Emergent tree back in the previous game? Or do you only get one if you're a "Full" force wielder?

Having not seen FaD yet, I can see how morality would play a significantly larger part of a jedi than another character. Like, if a smuggler is a morally good character, it might influence their actions and how they think in situations, but it probably won't be constantly weighing on them as it will a jedi. After all, whether someone is light side or dark side seems to actively change how they appear and what they're capable of, though I'm mostly pulling that from the Knights of the Old Republic games.

Carteret
Nov 10, 2012


jivjov posted:

It just still feels asymmetrical to me...you can use obligations with any fringe character, Jedi or no. You give a Duty to anyone in the rebellion, Jedi or no. But you only give Morality to force users. And do you go back and assign a Morality to any force user who used the Emergent tree back in the previous game? Or do you only get one if you're a "Full" force wielder?

Morality may just be a bad name for the mechanic. I wouldn't go back and give an Emergent a Morality, because they are force-users second, and smugglers or rebels first. Morality, and FaD play, seems like the "lets all be fuckoff JEDIS" way of playing, and since everyone is throwing around force powers it makes it fun. If only one person was playing a Luke in your campaign, and everyone else was smugglers, playing it like FaD would blow rear end for everyone else involved. It's an amazing sourcebook for force sensitive players, and they even have the more powerful powers locked behind higher force rating. The FaD trees are concretely Jedi in nature, and would preclude some kind of formal training ala Luke or Yoda, or maybe a former Jedi in hiding that survived Order 66.

The race selection is pretty great, as well. :allears:

Bedurndurn
Dec 4, 2008

Carteret posted:

The race selection is pretty great, as well. :allears:

Can you be a Yoda?

jivjov
Sep 13, 2007

But how does it taste? Yummy!
Dinosaur Gum
Yeah, again if they went back and renamed it Balance (remember, per Lucas himself, Balance is not equal light and dark, its all light all the time), most of my complaints would evaporate.

And seconding the species selections; they pretty much covered the species of every notable Jedi from the films and Clone Wars. Togruta, Nautolan, Zabrak, wheeeeee

Nothingtoseehere
Nov 11, 2010


One problem with FaD is that Jedi need alot more XP to reach the power levels you would expect from Jedi characters than the book gives you. The "advanced" start, in which you start with a lightsaber, does not give you enough XP to make even a semi-competent Jedi, due to force rating being so hard to advance, and powers being expensive.

jivjov
Sep 13, 2007

But how does it taste? Yummy!
Dinosaur Gum
I see that as more of a positive...it keeps Jedi characters from outpacing non-Jedi too quickly, and will help balance a mixed-party game.

If you're running an all-Jedi game and want them to have more powers, just bump up starting XP.

Fuzz
Jun 2, 2003

Avatar brought to you by the TG Sanity fund
They should have just made it Character Flaws, full stop. No Morality.

They work like Obligations, but each Flaw is specific... like you're Proud, or you have a short temper, or you want to be powerful, etc. Some of the flaws are more esoteric, like you would do anything to help your friends, literally anything. You have to overcome them if you want to stay Light, but you can just give into them and go Dark to get bonus Dark dice... soemtimes you might have to make a Flaw check and you use Light dice to resist, or you can just turf the check and accept it and instead gain back a certain number of Dark dice to use however you like.

Could work... needs to be tested, but it's simple and demonstrates the difficulty in staying Light and how easy it is to just become weak and fall to the Dark Side.

ProfessorCirno
Feb 17, 2011

The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!
Main issues I've found:

1) Morality being point on a sliding scale makes it very Bioware-esque, and I'm not using that in a positive manner. "Oh man, I'm at 80 Light Points, ten more for my next bonus!" It makes light side / dark side become very "game-y," rather then actually set up a narrative for temptation and redemption. The initial use of having one moral strength that connects you to the light side and one moral weakness that tempts you to the dark side is good, I just dislike turning it into one big numerical scale.

2) Force powers are G A R B A G E and the force classes are hilariously inept at them. Not only do you not have to worry about force users eclipsing other characters, you probably have to worry about the reverse if any force characters actually try to buy and use their powers. As it stands any given force initiate character who has spent their life training either publicly or in secret is no better then literally any yahoo who spends the 20 xp to buy the force sensitive tree. I dunno if it's because of how stingy the system is with force or with how the actual force dice are set up, but you start off with a massive fail rate and it costs a lot of XP to increase that, as generally improvements to Force Rating are only found at the bottom of a tree next to raising attribute scores (and not even present in the lightsaber trees). Then you add on that each additional force die doesn't actually help your failure rate by a ton because of how the dice are set up, and the fact that all but one force power actively needs successful rolls to do ANYTHING, and you end up with awesome, super high XP jedi masters who still flub moving around their lightsaber to their own hand.

3) It's just really weird that all the lightsaber stuff has a price tag connected to it.

devilmaydry
Sep 3, 2012

I only take special jobs, if you know what I mean.
I'm... pretty ok with how morality works. It tracks a character progress towards the dark/light without taking control away from the player.

It has no teeth, though. The problems with being a darksider are so small they basically don't exist, which I'm personally ok with because then players can role play what they want. Not only that, but the system as written allows for moral darksiders, which is neat, although that might not have been intended.

Oh and when it comes to Jedi stuff. Yeah, you are not gonna be a jedi out the gate, I'm also totally ok with that. The only issue is that the force powers outside of the Commit stuff is SUCH a trap option for a new character because you will succeed less than half the time. It only takes one or two characters to realize it, but it is still annoying.

I do think that a way to get Force Rating 2 at chargen at a cost would help a lot, but I don't know how balanced that'd be.

devilmaydry fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Aug 14, 2014

alg
Mar 14, 2007

A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

The Emergent in AoR can get FR2 for 75 exp

devilmaydry
Sep 3, 2012

I only take special jobs, if you know what I mean.

alg posted:

The Emergent in AoR can get FR2 for 75 exp

At Chargen that is most of your EXP.

Which you should totally be spending on characteristics.

alg
Mar 14, 2007

A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

devilmaydry posted:

At Chargen that is most of your EXP.

Which you should totally be spending on characteristics.

Right. But its a couple of adventures of xp.

ProfessorCirno
Feb 17, 2011

The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!
The problem is that even with FR2, your chance at failing to do literally anything with the force is still exceptionally high.

I feel like they messed up hard on the force powers themselves. Like, I'm buying basically a new talent tree, except every time I try to use it, I have to roll the bones to see if it works, and my initial chance is less then 50/50. I remember Luke messing up at bringing his lightsaber to his hand once. Or to put it another way, all the force powers are written from the perspective of the earlier books, where you're some schmuck who's learning this poo poo as you go with no real training or master. It works for the previous books, but when you're still just some schmuck despite what is meant to be a lifetime of training - when literally any scoundrel can pop out a talent tree and instantly be as good as you are - there's a narrative gap.

-Fish-
Oct 10, 2005

Glub glub.
Glub glub.

Would Force Rating make more sense if you could buy ranks in it with the same cost as characteristics? Xp equal to 10x the rating you're buying?

devilmaydry
Sep 3, 2012

I only take special jobs, if you know what I mean.
But then to reliably use powers you need about 3 Force Dice.

Which'd require more EXP, and THEN you can start buying some other force powers without it being a waste.

The issue is, "Knight Level Play" starts after gaining 150 EXP, and basically no one will have a Force Rating of 3 at that point. Which feels really odd to me. It just seems like the slow burn to Force Powers might be TOO slow. I'd need to play a F&D game myself for a while to know for sure, though.

-Fish- posted:

Would Force Rating make more sense if you could buy ranks in it with the same cost as characteristics? Xp equal to 10x the rating you're buying?

Right, I was thinking that what could happen is this:

F&D players get a tradeoff similar to AoR and EotE players, if raising the Force Rating to 2 was an option, but they couldn't gain any more credits or Exp at chargen, then it might work.

This means that there's no stacking Force Ratings on top of each other(because FR 4 or 5 is pretty crazy), and there's a larger trade off than 20 exp without being amazingly terrible, I think.

devilmaydry fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Aug 14, 2014

ProfessorCirno
Feb 17, 2011

The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!
The main issue I've come to think is with the powers themselves.

How they work is, when you use an action to use a power, you roll force dice equal to your force rating. So...1. You then spend light side pips on activating the power. Note: the power does NOTHING on it's own unless you get those light side pips, and the actual force die has more squares without light side then with, so you've less then a 50/50 chance. This also means you are wasting your action more then half the time you try to use a power, and still an absolutely inexcusable amount of the time even at higher force rating levels. Now, mind you, you then roll a second time in a contested roll if you're trying to use the force power against someone. So that's TWO failure chances.

I think the powers would work far better if, after buying the power, that's it. You get to use it. The end. You spend the pips on making it STRONGER, but like, if you have Move at level one, sure, you can grab your lightsaber, if you have Sense then you can totally sense the force without needing to fail a bunch of times.

PantsOptional
Dec 27, 2012

All I wanna do is make you bounce

ProfessorCirno posted:

The main issue I've come to think is with the powers themselves.

How they work is, when you use an action to use a power, you roll force dice equal to your force rating. So...1. You then spend light side pips on activating the power. Note: the power does NOTHING on it's own unless you get those light side pips, and the actual force die has more squares without light side then with, so you've less then a 50/50 chance.

Not true; the other results on the force dice aren't blank. They're simply results you have to pay a price to use.

Bedurndurn
Dec 4, 2008
My opinion might change when I get F&D, but from the other two books, the most useful force power stuff I've seen are all 'Commit a force die for something awesome' type powers or the amazing utility you can get from Sense, Forsee or Influence.

quote:

This also means you are wasting your action more then half the time you try to use a power, and still an absolutely inexcusable amount of the time even at higher force rating levels.

This is especially crazy with something like Move. I might either do nothing whatsoever or I might roll enough pips to instantly end the encounter. That feels too swingy. I don't feel too bad about the opposed rolls, mainly because without it, a force user wouldn't actually need any stats or skills at all, so they could just go whole hog on the force trees.

quote:

Not true; the other results on the force dice aren't blank. They're simply results you have to pay a price to use.

Force the in combat stuff, one pip (light or dark) usually doesn't do anything of merit. If you're rolling only one force die, only 1/3rd of your checks will get the two pips you need to accomplish something (and one of those will be dark side pips, so you'll have to spend strain and a destiny point).

I was curious so I scripted a little Trolldice expression to check how things worked with more force dice.

Obviously you get at least as many pips as dice you roll (since none of the faces are blank). To keep this from being too long, I'll only concern myself with total pip count.

1 Force die -> 1 pip 66.7% of the time, 2 pips 33.3% of the time
2 Force dice -> 2 pips 44.5% of the time, 3 pips 44.4% of the time, 4 pips 6.9% of the time
3 Force dice -> 3 pips 25.5% of the time, 4 pips 44.4% of the time, 5 pips 22.1% of the time, 6 pips 3.8% of the time

Since your first force die is literally 20XP away from a starting character, I don't know that I feel too badly that it's really crappy at actually accomplishing anything. Your second and third force dice cost 75/100xp and 135/105 (if you started as an exile or an emergent), but once you're there you can start some serious poo poo. 80 XP into move and 3 pips will let you club someone over the head with a loving YT-1300 at medium range. 300 XP (for 80 points in move and getting up to 3 force dice) is as expensive as buying every box in a career, so that's not even insanely expensive when you come right down to it. Calling 150XP 'Knight level' is probably lowballing it though.

Bedurndurn fucked around with this message at 06:15 on Aug 14, 2014

ProfessorCirno
Feb 17, 2011

The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

PantsOptional posted:

Not true; the other results on the force dice aren't blank. They're simply results you have to pay a price to use.

Yeah that's great, let's make turning to the dark side a matter of mundane accountancy because your powers have no point between "worthless" and "destroys everything"

The more I look at the powers, the more I'm convinced that they're just terribly written. It doesn't take too much XP to make some of them do absolutely absurd amounts of damage (lookin' at you, Move), and the "balancing" factor is that you have to get the pips in the first place. But that in turn means you can't actually use it for simple mundane ordinary jedi things like, you know, just bringing up and catching your lightsaber.

Mendrian
Jan 6, 2013

I don't think playing a Jedi assumes 1 Force Die.

One thing of note is that activating a Force Power often doesn't require you to roll any other dice. Outside of combat, that means using your powers is going to be a foregone conclusion isn't it?

Finally if you want certainty out of your powers, focus on powers that let you dedicate a die to them. Then they always work!

ProfessorCirno
Feb 17, 2011

The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

Mendrian posted:

I don't think playing a Jedi assumes 1 Force Die.

One thing of note is that activating a Force Power often doesn't require you to roll any other dice. Outside of combat, that means using your powers is going to be a foregone conclusion isn't it?

Finally if you want certainty out of your powers, focus on powers that let you dedicate a die to them. Then they always work!

That's actually all wrong, I'm araid.

All force characters period start at FR1. If you bought the three for 20 xp or started as a force character, FR1. Gaining additional points only happens deep in the three, and not every tree has it (lightsaber ones don't). Most powers also have an additional cost to them, so you can't just spam them outside of combat until you succeed.

ALL powers require you roll force die, and unless you're dark sided, only light side pips count for successes. You can flip a destiny point and lose "morality" to count dark side pips instead.

The dedicated die powers tend to be rather deep in the tree, and like...I dunno man. Being a jedi with no jedi powers ever? Ehhhhhh.

SO, CIRNO FIXES.

The math is just plain off in some of these. Now, I'm gonna focus on Move, because I don't give a poo poo about most of the other ones, I want to make a cool Jedi with a laser sword who's all acrobatic and throws crates and sometimes people around.

To start off, move costs no pips to use on it's own. You spent XP on move? You can move silhouette 0 items in a short range. Done. Luke never spent hours sighing and gesturing impatiently for his lightsaber, he hosed up like once.

Now, instead of one pip giving you basically all your benefits for each category, you gotta spend pips on each. Wanna move a PERSON, silhouette 1? Pip. Silhouette 2? Two pips. Wanna move a box? You're fine. A BUNCH of boxes? Pips.

Basically rather then one pip unlocking basically everything and the REAL thing being improving IR just to use any force powers, I'd rather force powers start weak and get strong. You want weak force powers? Buy it for XP, no problem. You wanna lift an X-Wing? You gotta be like Luke - gotta train up your force potential.

EDIT: Also silhouette*10 is absolutely absurd, christ, the same poo poo happened in SWSE where Force Move was the deadliest power. Why does this keep happening?!

Grey Hunter
Oct 17, 2007

Hero of the soviet union.
Accidental destroyer of planets

ProfessorCirno posted:

EDIT: Also silhouette*10 is absolutely absurd, christ, the same poo poo happened in SWSE where Force Move was the deadliest power. Why does this keep happening?!

Because the designers are thinking in Original trilogy terms, where throwing stuff around is a limited thing, and most of the time its used to pull your light sabre into you hand. The Players on the other hand are thinking prequels, where the Jedi basically smash droids apart with their minds.

Carteret
Nov 10, 2012


Grey Hunter posted:

Because the designers are thinking in Original trilogy terms, where throwing stuff around is a limited thing, and most of the time its used to pull your light sabre into you hand. The Players on the other hand are thinking prequels, where the Jedi basically smash droids apart with their minds.

This is actually a really good point. If you look at all the Jedi stuff in the OG films, the most badass stuff in empire was Luke not being able to lift his x wing out of a swamp. Yoda did it, but it wasn't easy and he was burned out after it.

Grey Hunter
Oct 17, 2007

Hero of the soviet union.
Accidental destroyer of planets

Carteret posted:

This is actually a really good point. If you look at all the Jedi stuff in the OG films, the most badass stuff in empire was Luke not being able to lift his x wing out of a swamp. Yoda did it, but it wasn't easy and he was burned out after it.

The only combat examples we see apart form lightsaber dickery is the scene on Could City where Vader is pelting Luke with bits of machinery, even that is not enough to do more than wind him, and Vader is the most powerful force user in the galaxy.

devilmaydry
Sep 3, 2012

I only take special jobs, if you know what I mean.
Trouble is, the way the Move power is set up, you can move an X-Wing or something of similar size at Silhouette 3, which is easy to do if you have the Strength upgrades. Then, you either chuck it at something that's Close to the object you threw, or pick up the ranged upgrade.

So, that's 3 pips to throw a star fighter at a Hard discipline difficulty. Let's see how hard that is to achieve with some pretty rough probabilities I got through someones probability calculator, which used the Monte Carlo method with 100000 samples.



At Force Rating 4 there is about a coinflip's chance of being able to deal up to 30 damage to someone. But that example is kind of ridiculous. Let's go with Silhouette one and say that the enemy is Close to the object. Which means the difficulty to hit is Easy and you do 10 damage.

So at FR 3 that's a bit better than a coin flip and about 12% or so worse than a character specced for hurting people can do straight out of chargen. Force Rating 4 is when it gets a bit silly.

Remember though, there is no difference in cost between Silhouette 1 and Silhouette 4 once you buy the upgrades, same with Range.

I don't know if this will be a problem yet until I play the game for a while. But the Move tree very much gives off the vibe of being utter crap or amazingly good depending on when you use it, with absolutely no middle ground.

alg
Mar 14, 2007

A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

Grey Hunter posted:

Because the designers are thinking in Original trilogy terms, where throwing stuff around is a limited thing, and most of the time its used to pull your light sabre into you hand. The Players on the other hand are thinking prequels, where the Jedi basically smash droids apart with their minds.

Yea, even this new book says you are an untrained force user, not a prequel jedi. That's why most of the powers are so tame.

PantsOptional
Dec 27, 2012

All I wanna do is make you bounce

ProfessorCirno posted:

Yeah that's great, let's make turning to the dark side a matter of mundane accountancy because your powers have no point between "worthless" and "destroys everything"

Using a couple of Dark Side results doesn't mean you immediately become a cackling space necromancer, though. It just means that you tapped into your negative emotions, which mechanically might make you more prone to such in the future.

Let's use your "pick up your lightsaber with your mind" argument as an example. If you're just hanging around and using Move to pick up your lightsaber, there shouldn't even be a roll (and I believe this is what Mendrian was getting at) because it's inconsequential and there's no reason to roll for something like this when there are no repercussions for failure. But if, for example, you're in the middle of a fight and you get disarmed and you need to grab your lightsaber, it's more than reasonable to justify that your fear or anger taint your actions as you accept those Dark Side results.

Also, in general, and not as a response to you: I feel like it can't be emphasized enough that this is not a book about playing a prequel Jedi, this is a book about playing someone more like Luke - someone who slipped through the cracks and barely has any training. If I were them I might rename the "Knight level play" notion to something a little less suggestive of proper training, but that's just me.

ProfessorCirno
Feb 17, 2011

The strongest! The smartest!
The rightest!

PantsOptional posted:

Using a couple of Dark Side results doesn't mean you immediately become a cackling space necromancer, though. It just means that you tapped into your negative emotions, which mechanically might make you more prone to such in the future.

Let's use your "pick up your lightsaber with your mind" argument as an example. If you're just hanging around and using Move to pick up your lightsaber, there shouldn't even be a roll (and I believe this is what Mendrian was getting at) because it's inconsequential and there's no reason to roll for something like this when there are no repercussions for failure. But if, for example, you're in the middle of a fight and you get disarmed and you need to grab your lightsaber, it's more than reasonable to justify that your fear or anger taint your actions as you accept those Dark Side results.

Also, in general, and not as a response to you: I feel like it can't be emphasized enough that this is not a book about playing a prequel Jedi, this is a book about playing someone more like Luke - someone who slipped through the cracks and barely has any training. If I were them I might rename the "Knight level play" notion to something a little less suggestive of proper training, but that's just me.

Ok first thing is first, gently caress right off with the "YOU AREN'T A PREQUEL JEDI" because literally nobody in the thread is asking for that.

Look at your own example. How often did Luke gesture towards his lightsaber and it just sat there, and he just impatiently kept gesturing at it? How often did he close his eyes to feel the force and then open them to say "hah hah sorry guys I can't sense a drat thing, CRAZY DICE EH?"

And consequently, how long after Yoda's training did Luke just start throwing X-wings with the Force at his enemies?

YOu want no prequel jedi? Then your problem is the same as mine. The Force Powers as they're currently written - especially Move, which is why it's being used as an example - are all cases where you either hit way too big, or you flop. It takes a relatively minute amount of XP to go from simple levitation of boxes and stones to just hurling, but a VAST gap of XP to go from being able to do any of that easily, or failing more then half the time. My suggestion is that Force Powers start generally very usable but weak; Luke trusts his instincts and learns to deflect blaster bolts, he moves on to levitating his lightsaber, then moves on to fully lifting stones, then lifting stones while hand-standing one handed with Yoda chillin' on his foot, then moves on to mimicking his old master's mind trick, and so on, and so forth. Because that's not how powers work. The way powers work right NOW is that Luke can barely use the force for anything, meets with Yoda, and then just throws Jabba's goddamn barge and everyone on it into the Sarlacc pit with the power of the Force.

As for the Dark Side, that goes back to a simple argument: should turning to the Dark Side be something everpresent and relatively normal and mundane, or rare but very powerful in the narrative? The original trilogy suggests the latter. Luke has no slow buildup of rage or anger, he isn't just casually slowly being more and more of a jerk until his final fight with Vader. Luke is super good guy devoted to trying to redeem is father, and then Vader hits that button. He finds the switch. And then Luke goes ENTIRELY into the Dark Side to the point of nearly killing Vader and replacing him. That's why the Emperor is cackling so much, because Luke is just a breath away from becoming the new Vader! And speaking of Vader, do we watch Vader slowly warm up to his son and go out of his way to be a little bit nicer day by day, or does he see his son in peril, about to die, to be killed by his own master, and then that pushes his OWN button and the redemption hammer swings full force into him?

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

ProfessorCirno posted:

As for the Dark Side, that goes back to a simple argument: should turning to the Dark Side be something everpresent and relatively normal and mundane, or rare but very powerful in the narrative? The original trilogy suggests the latter. Luke has no slow buildup of rage or anger, he isn't just casually slowly being more and more of a jerk until his final fight with Vader. Luke is super good guy devoted to trying to redeem is father, and then Vader hits that button. He finds the switch. And then Luke goes ENTIRELY into the Dark Side to the point of nearly killing Vader and replacing him. That's why the Emperor is cackling so much, because Luke is just a breath away from becoming the new Vader! And speaking of Vader, do we watch Vader slowly warm up to his son and go out of his way to be a little bit nicer day by day, or does he see his son in peril, about to die, to be killed by his own master, and then that pushes his OWN button and the redemption hammer swings full force into him?

My view of Star Wars is different from yours. Luke does a lot of things out of fear and anger before "Vader pushes that button". Vader attempts to subvert the Emperor and save Luke long before button-pushing. And the Emperor himself fails to foresee Vader killing him, so . . . crazy dice, eh?

alg
Mar 14, 2007

A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

Picking up Anakin's lightsaber in the wampa cave was iffy as heck. He couldn't pick up the X-Wing on Dagobah. He failed at the cave, fighting the Darth Vader with his face. He took the easy path going to Cloud City and almost ruined things. He wasn't just the super good guy the whole time.

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alg
Mar 14, 2007

A wolf was no less a wolf because a whim of chance caused him to run with the watch-dogs.

Aces sourcebook "Stay on Target" ?

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