Character Sheet 2.0 - Q&A

Hey guys, Wally here. I’d like to use this thread to create an open discussion on the new CS 2.0 Launch. Feel free to ask your questions here, and the Team will do their best to answer them accordingly.

Make sure to read and comment on the report here.

In the forum below, answers will be provided not just by the Combat Master, but the Character Sheet Developemt team. We are all in a chat together on Telegram, so if they are answering, it means they have already discussed something with me prior and are speaking with my voice as well.

The team consists of:

@VivackusKavon, @TerranKoul, Denath/Nathan, @AloraKituri @AtraVentus @TurelSorenn and @Kzset

Thanks!

-W

A question about Telepathy: It talks about reading thoughts/intentions in the power description, but doesn’t address it in the point number descriptions. I’ve always used it more for the mind reading part than the cell-phone-telephone part, so how’s it break down for that function now?

• Is there an appreciable difference in the overall skill between the non-saber +3 Weapons Skills’ chosen ‘expert’ weapon and the +4’s ‘expert’ across the board?
• Telepathy and Force Bond - would Telepathy’s power/ability increase for that single person in question?
• Force Lightning - Is it just a single level of power across the board with what is effectively increase focus/cast time/cooldown time for lower levels? The wording seems to indicate so, but I’m curious mostly for academic purposes.
• A question about Barrier/Deflection that I’ve always wondered. I know it’s not strictly movie canon, but we do see Satele Shan absorb Malgus’ lightsaber in the TOR Hope trailer. Is that possible - the blocking of a saber with the Force - and what power covers that?
• And finally (I swear I’m done) - given that we now have huge amounts of piloting-related feats and such, will there be dedicated space venues available such as the asteroids over Geonosis for duel-style things, and how would starship choice be potentially determined eg drawing from your unit’s available pool for the match?

Everything is explained in the Force Power table. That is the information for the powers use. There is no dice roll mechanic, and the time scaling is pretty simple.

I don’t understand what you are actually asking. Please elaborate or provide an example.

It would be a form of point-blank Deflection. The power is supposed to be what Darth Vader users against Han Solo in Empire Strikes back, though.

I’ve said multiple times: I will entertain Space-Based ACC. There are plenty of people interested in it, but not a single person has submitted a proposal with how it would work.

Details to include are:

a.) How is it judged/critera?
b.) What ships are used? What are the “Speces” of ships and as a judge, how am I supposed to grade a match on realism? I would need a “character” sheet for the ships.
c.) Rules? Etequite? Logistics?

The character sheets are for all DB writing, not just the ACC. The additional piloting Feats are there to give people who want to play a strict “super pilot” more options.

No. Force Bonds do exactly what the description says. Keep in mind, those are just Templates, and you’d probably want to explain WHY the bond with your Force Bond/Master-Student is important.

Important note: You can still have connections with your friends/master-students without an Aspect. This is SPECIFICALLY for people who want to be able to have a spider-sense for their bonded person through the Force.

It should be justified, hence why it files under Aspects and not just a Feat. If it’s a major part of your character, it deserves a Aspect.

For example: Marick and Legorii have worked/fought/trained together for years. They know each other intricately. When writing them, I can use that relationship organically to have them work well together. I don’t ever write them “Sensing” when the other is in trouble, though, so I don’t use an Aspect describing it.

Just a quick example.

Not so much that. I’m more asking if someone at +1 using Lightning would do the same amount of damage as someone at, say, +4 doing it - the primary difference in the power being how long it takes to conjure the Lightning and then the refractory period afterwards.

From Bladed Weapons:
+3 You know enough about bladed weapons to pick up and fight competently with any type of bladed weapon and are able to fight expertly with one of your choice.
+4 You are highly skilled with bladed weapons, able to pick up and expertly wield any bladed weapon type.

I’m guessing that ‘expertly’ on both tiers of skill entails a single weapon at the same rough level of skill - a movement away from the pure ‘I have +3 but you have +4 so you’re automatically better’ sort of mechanic?

The rest is great. Thanks, Wally, you’re a star. <3

Well, the Sorcery side of any jedi is nerfed into oblivion. Pick Resolve as high as possible, pick Suppression as high as possible, focus on combat stuff and you are settled.

Because: “Resolve” counters: Illusions, Mind Tricks, Terror. Making them absolutely pointless now. And there is NOTHING to counter resolve - as it is a skill.

But for all other powers there is nothing that counters them as hard as this combination. Other powers still have their uses and cant be completely negated (besides with Suppression for a certain amount of time).

All the other powers do have their uses still, but Illusion, Force Cloak, Mind Trick, Terror fall completely apart against ONE single SKILL. And this skill needs NO activation, no concentration, has an uptime of 100% and does have 0 drawback.

E.g.: If your Barrier is negated a bit,… you only absorb a bit less. If your Amp is diminished, you are not as strong as under the full effect.
On the opposite: If Illusion, Force Cloak, Mind Trick, Terror is negated only a bit,… the effect is like zero, because people realise it is not real / see you. And thus counter it completely.

E.g. What use is picking the discipline Shadow if you just need this one skill Resolve high enough to counter all of the vital stuff a Shadow is suppossed to be?

Can you fix this please?

Sil’s point about Resolve is good, as yeah, its description is quite direct about being able to directly counter mind powers, whereas its physical equivalent, which I guess is Endurance, doesn’t come across in the same way, as it doesn’t sound like Endurance +5 makes you into the Incredible Hulk and resistant to everything someone could possibly throw at you.

Not really sure the solution admittedly, since I like Resolve +5 protecting me, but vice versa, as an illusionist, having my stuff able to be countered entirely is more problematic than if I was roleplaying a Juggernaut and might not do as much damage to Endurance +5, but could still club you to death eventually.

Though I accept it’s hard to describe the idea of it “kinda half-mind tricking you” in a brief summary, so it may be less an issue in actual practice?

Concealment:
Can concealment at higher levels also be used to hide also the signature of a different person?

Damage does not change. You are still being hit with electricity.

1-5 is about control, effort, and fatigue from using it too much.

That’s a good catch, Mirus. +3 is "you’re proficient/good at something. +4 is you’re elite. Only a few people are better at it than you (+5ers, which is only Elders). I will update the wording on this.

The power by itself, no.

There are two Feats, however, that are perfect for what you’re talking about. Check out ‘Smoker’ and ‘Hazer’ in the Feats database.

Species:
My character is half Sephi half Human, how do I reflect this in the character sheet?

It is not direct 1 verses 1. You are getting caught up on Dice-roll mechanics, which is the hardest thing to adapt when using a writing based system that doesn’t involve the numbers. (The numbers are just there as guidelines).

It simply means that if you try and Mind Trick someone with +5 Resolve, you’re going to have a hard time.It does not mean you can’t do it.

In that same light, you are not going to out-pace someone with +5 in Endurance in a Marathon or on the Battlefield. They will be able to fight at peak efficiency for longer.

It doesn’t counter. It is simply the most relevant skill that addresses each of these. There is no 1-to-1 check off. Perception and Intellect factor into defending against mental attacks just as much. If you’re truly perceptive, you can probably figure out when someone is trying to dupe you. It combines with your Resolve score.

In any given mind vs mind powers situation, the scenario is more important than the numbers. If I’m fighting for 2 days straight, planning and coordinating and doing all the strategy-brain things…I’m going to get tired. If I’m distracted by something, I’m not going to always be at a resting “+5” Resolve.

High Resolve is important as its our Willpower stat. The Force in general is about using your MIND to manipulate the Force to do your will.

I will look into how Resolve plays. It really hasn’t changed from how it always has been the last 2 years. If anything, all I did was clarify what it can’t do. Up until now, Resolve was a “direct” check 1-to-1. Now it’s not, and it leaves the writers more freedom to play with “strong willed” characters.

Define Sorcery. And how Nerfed? Do you mean that we made the Force Powers realistic to the Star Wars Universe? You don’t get to run around like Starkiller, no. We are not Space Wizards.

Every time you watch a Jedi Master or Sith Lord use the Force, there is concentration and willpower and time. This is all reflected in the new Force Power tables.

Hope that answers some questions!

Mother Talzin is more Wizard than Gandalf

As for the Resolve stuff, thanks for the clarification Wally.

We are not?
So Mother Talzin is a Space Warrior? (And Aleema Keto too?).

So you give us sorcery like powers and still want to tell us that we can’t define our characters the more sorcery type?

I feel like I’m missing something here. Scorers have their own Discipline. You get the ability to use the Force at longer ranges, and can effectively never get interrupted in your “casting”.

Mother Talzin is more in lines with a character like Darth Vader. A unique character with unique power in the SW universe. She does some pretty powerful things that I just don’t see even our Elders being able to really compete with, realistically. You don’t see any of the other Sisters having her power.

That’s just my take from seeing the animated Clone Wars, at least.

We created Arcanist to give you a better line on playing someone similar to the powers that the Dothamari witches have. Not all of them, no, but it was a good compromise, we felt.

Aleema Keto is a Legends character, which means we’ve never seen her in Canon-action like a movie or show. So, not exactly the best example of someone using the Force realistically.

Yes, and Palpatetine makes Little Fingers manipulations in GoT look like childs play. Mother Talzin is awesome, has stupid powers that let her do ALL the things, but even our GMs would have problems pacing her, realistically.

Even our GMs are going to be on a close-to-but-not-exact scale to the greatest Sith Lord to ever live.

Likewise, Darth Vader is a prodigy and prophecy child–he’s unique and while he sits as a “DP/GM” in our System, it’s kind of hard to justify him in it because Vader is just so unique/special.

Talzin’s not that unique really, you had Dooku and Palps doing that weird Sith blood ritual in that last Clone Wars episode near the end too… it practically made it look like Sith sorcery is voodoo magick

Yea. That shit creeped me out. Damn Sith.

So it exists, but we are not allowed to go that direction because you don’t want us to.

You can go in whatever direction you want to.

This is the guidelines that have been put into place by the Grand Master of the Brotherhood. I just work here and pretend to be a Dark Jedi from time to time ;).

vs

The whole system reflects “We are not Space Wizards.” with putting up quite some restrictions towards the more sorcery aspect (which DOES exist in the SW universe). I can’t even go remotely into that direction. Instead I am pushed into the Space Samurai direction.

A question about Telepathy: It talks about reading thoughts/intentions in the power description, but doesn’t address it in the point number descriptions. I’ve always used it more for the mind reading part than the cell-phone-telephone part, so how’s it break down for that function now?

There is some degree of overlap between Telepathy and Sense, and the important thing to note is that Telepathy works in both directions, whereas sense doesn’t let you tell anything to your target. If you’re trying to proactively transmit a message (as simple as a feeling, or as complex as set of combat maneuvers), you need Telepathy. The complexity of the message isn’t strictly gated by rank for Telepathy, but you do need the distance/line of sight requirements.

With Telepathy, if you’re trying to receive info from them, it’s sort of implied that they’re consenting to communicating with you, whereas that doesn’t exist with Sense (They ‘picked up the phone’, so to speak). So if you’re fighting against them, Telepathy won’t really give you any information about their mental state, but Sense could. Does that clear it up?

This is really more of a Paths thing than CS 2.0, but since it was implemented alongside CS 2.0 I’ll address it here; the loss of the old Order point allocations (+3 skills /-3 Force for Obbies/Guardians, 0/0 for Sith/Sentinel, -3/+3 for Krath/Consular).

I’m going to try to be as constructive as possible and humbly offer a suggestion instead of bemoaning the loss of my sweet sweet Obbie/Guardian skill points :P.

Would it be possible to still allow for members to have the option to tilt skills, tilt Force or balance their point allocations in the same manner as before only not tied to a particular Order? (For example member selects “tilt skills” and gets the old Obbie point allocations)

This works fictionally in my mind because some Jedi would focus more on their Force studies and others would focus more on their mundane or combat skills. I’m sure this was discussed before the change, but I just wanted to throw the idea out in case it wasn’t. Overall, I’m stoked about the existing changes and the ones to come.

Couple things:

1. Resolve does not directly counter force powers. It aids in reducing their effectiveness because of how damn powerful they could be. Remember, there’s no dice rolling here and a lot of stuff is very open to you writing. But circumstance is absolutely the most important thing here. What else is going on? What else has happened? What is the illusion etc being conjured? When writing, it is important to take into account Resolve by describing the power in a way that shows it is not as effective. How exactly you do that is up to you. There can be better documentation of this and I believe there will be some clarification here, but the wording was chosen specifically to prevent the idea that it was rendering anything totally ineffective. For instance, a skill may work for a while, but fade sooner than expected. It may take longer to work. It may have reduced effectiveness in terms of the desired “outcome” (e.g. someone isn’t paralyzed in fear but merely shaken). The writer could choose to make the attack totally ineffective if they want, but it is not a requirement (and I’ve docked realism for people writing their own powers too dismissively :p). Ultimately the situation and circumstance dictates how much should happen, and what that how much exactly is. Thus, it is hard to give hard and fast examples of “Resolve Versus Force Power X.”

2. We are not space wizards and pretty much every Jedi receives some training in sabers or the like… but there is still more than enough room for a strong Sorcerer character to exist. While you would be heavily hampering yourself if you chose not to use a lightsaber at all, there are defensive and offensive options for such a character. However, we do not intend to build a system in which an individual can simply pretend lightsabers don’t exist and be as effective offensively and defensively as if they were to use one at all. I strongly disagree that you can’t have a “pound for pound” combat-effective character that primarily relies on FPs. However, we do not care if every single archetype is equally effective in a combat vacuum. Because of how grading fiction works (and the ACC), that is largely irrelevant. We specifically wanted a system where people COULD build characters that were not so great at 1 v 1 combat.

1. Ok

2. Where did I say I would never use a lightsaber at all and pretent they don’t exist? This is not what I wrote.

To expand on Mav’s second point, because I think it’s important, all writing isn’t the ACC and the ACC isn’t all that your character sheet is good for. Not every way that you “build” your character is going to be equally combat effective in a 1v1 match against an arbitrary opponent. We aren’t TOR classes here. If all you care about is being able to 1v1 someone effectively, then chose the options that let you do that the best.

The argument about Resolve “countering” mental offensive powers rarely is relevant outside the ACC. Most fiction writing, your opponents are average characters without significant resolve, so a Sorcerer style character wouldn’t be significantly hampered that way. In general fiction writing, the only way Resolve countering your abilities would come up is if you want to make it a plot point, in which case… it’s working as intended.

I don’t do the ACC. I am about runons. And being effective in the ACC you shoudl pick the best options for 1v1? Having an op fotm build for the ACC isn’t good for the balance.

And you say resolve is without significant outside the ACC? It is not. Some of my opponents do have good resolve. Along with all the other restrictions it is … quite hampering.

I think part of the problem in the discussion here is that we are using terms that have no real meaning to the discussion - space wizard etc. The you was a general you here towards people that wish to not be built around a lightsaber, but it applies to the idea of “the system is built against Sorcerers!”, which I do not think it is. The point of point 2 is, though, that we are not overly concerned with balance being totally equal in the ACC, as Viv details. Even in the ACC, situation is equally as important as the particular skills characters have. So I’d argue against picking the best “1v1” skill sets or the like.

While we want to make sure people can build a variety of archetypes, we are not worried if they are not all completely equal. That being said - some of our better writers play very heavily FP-oriented characters and do so quite well. So I think there is room for that sort of character in the ACC.

I would suggest that you take your opponents having good resolve as a chance to write a better story. It gives you an opportunity to build more conflict into your story, I think, than if you merely made them into mental goo

I did that already and turned some of my clan members opponents already into mental goo. The rest will follow in time.

But maybe I should rather take my lightsaber, swing it and scream “RAAAAWRR KILL” and copy the generic Sith so my posts won’t get downrated in case of judgments? Since: “We are not space wizards.”

Or will my more sorcery posts be treated equally to those saber-swingy posts if written as well? With the statement “We are not space wizards” I doubt it will be.

Just to counter some of the concerns about sorcy types from the perspective of somebody who writes a Sorc type character (yes, I know she’s technically a “seeker”, but that is because she’s a screwy-mind sorc as opposed to flashy powers sorc). As far as sorc posts being treated equally with saber-swingy posts, I wrote sorc influenced posts and made it to the quarter finals of the Fading Light ACC tournament (and went through Lego and Trouty on the way and had a close match against Shad) so I don’t think there is any institutional bias against that type of writing. Second, I think that equating one’s character being good at combat to a person being successful in the ACC is a seriously problematic mindset that it seems to me that the current staff of the ACC (and Sarin and Mav in my personal experience) are attempting to eradicate. You, as the author, win at the ACC activity by writing better than the other author, and that is independent from your character winning at the fight. I’ve always said that you can win at the ACC by writing your character taking the beating better than the other guy writes giving it, and I ended up killing my character at the end of one of my FL matches and won. Having a character that is the perceived BAMF FOTM build for the ACC should make it harder to win at the activity because it makes it harder for you to tell compelling stories. Reading somebody ROFL stomping through every challenge makes for a boring read, having limitations and flaws makes for a far more interesting one. I’d almost go so far as to say that the flawed character that isn’t a min/maxed munchkin has the advantage in the ACC.

As far as the issue of not being able to do Aleema Keto, the current system actually allows you to function much as she did. Yes, she did quite well with her illusions against non-Force users. Most of the time when she tried to toss illusions or various other Sith “magic” at Jedi or Sith she didn’t fare nearly as well. At the Battle of Koros Major she threw illusions against the Republic fleet and Naomi Sunrider nixed that. Then, a few issues later in Tales of the Jedi: Dark Lords of the Sith #6 she goes up against both Sunrider and Exar Kun in the span of a few pages and is pretty ineffective both times. There aren’t many instances of Keto throwing her powers at Jedi or Sith with any great success. I think that shows that the current system is working within the bounds of the established Star Wars universe. Force Powers are always going to be better against those that don’t have them, be they mind focused or more physical.

I would like to second this. It gives us more options - I know it’s probably a pain but for a lot of us it makes more sense (and, also, lets us build more varied characters).

We will consider this as we look into how we evolve Skills overall. We are also working out how mundanes will fit into our system, so there is a lot of things on the table, but no hard answers for right now. Thanks for the patience and understanding.

On skill point allotment, etc: This is not something we will be altering in the near term, so it is not something I’d wait on a CS for. It is possible in the future we will be changing how skill points are earned/granted/whatever you want to say that could accomplish some of what people are requesting here.

Idea from the recent comments on the news thread.

How hard would it be to add something like a “Phobias” box to the CSs? At the start, we have people’s basic physical profile, which is good for knowing whether to punch them in the chest, or if that will shatter your own hand when you actually slam your fist into a massive durasteel chestplate, but things like Terror are tough to write unless someone has helpfully included a Custom Aspect for their Fear of Kitties.

I admit, I always used to find the Phobias field on the old CSs pointless, but now we’ve got a dedicated Terror power, it feels like an extra box at the top for a very brief blurb about someone’s psychological profile, not just their physical, would be handy, otherwise they’ll find themselves fleeing in terror from a Rancor, and go: “But my character loves Rancors!!” and shake their heads.

Perception:
Why was this changed? Formerly it was:

An ability to detect and perceive things in the physical world. Like traps or dangers difficult to detect.

Now it also involves interacting with people.

Measures an individual’s ability to read their surroundings through observation alone. It highlights your character’s attention to detail without aid from the Force, and how well they can react to changes in their surroundings. Perception manifests itself when scanning a room for traps or weighing the truth of someone’s words.

You have now even more overlapping skills. You spread social skills over SO many skills - in opposite to combat skills.

E.g. we don’t have something like “Defence / block / parry” skills and just “Bladed Weapons” or “Primary Lightsaber Combat”.

But for social stuff we have now:

• empathy
• intimidate
• perception
• diplomacy
• manipulation
• interrogate

Why is someone highly diplomatic not capable to manipulate others? Or vice versa.
Why is someone highly intimidating not capable to interrogate someone and get information out of him / her? (granted, you don’t know how to use torture instruments very good)
Is someone highly manipulative not able to trick / bluff someone?
How is someone highly diplomatic, but has zero empathy?
How can someone manipulate and direct others without having any kind of empathy and thus havign no idea how their psyche works?

Why can’t we just have 3 skills?

• Bluff
• Diplomacy
• Intimidation

In a couple of other rpg systems they also reduced / merged social skills as they realised that too many overlap.

On top: it isn’t hard to explain you can “sense” if someone lies by saying you have a high empathy skill.

But what e.g. doesn’t work:
I am highly manipulative +5, but I am no use with diplomatics +0. How can that work?

How can I only scare a child by taking away its lollipop (intimidate +0), but I can still crack informations from an expert spy (Interrogate +5)?

Why can’t I get an expert spy to tell me all what I want to know if I have intimidate +5, but have Interrogate +0?

You may now say: It is all how you write it. Of course. But then I say: A lot of the skills are obsolete then. Because you can pin it down to about 3 skills and cover up the rest with it. On top it makes it way too confusing for people if you keep too many.

I feel this is an inaccurate statement. The major weapon skills are usually tie-broken by the existence of the physical skills. Equal in saber but one has higher Endurance? They can fight longer without physical exhaustion. Higher Might? You can break saber-locks or overpower blocks successfully. Better Athletics? You’ll be coming in at different angles a lot more. Higher Perception, even, would lend itself to something like Sokan, where you use your terrain to your advantage - knowing what’s going on better than your opponent can help you lure them into a trap. Even Intellect can be applied here, in conjunction with Tactics. Combat skills are equally not as cut and dry as social skills.

It’s all in how you use these skills. Yes it seems like some of these are obsolete, but it’s also in the after-effect and in their employment, too. I could use my Intimidate to make someone do what I want, but they’re going to resent me afterwards. If I did it with Diplomacy, they’d like me afterwards - and it’s a little more honest than Manipulation is anyway. I can’t use my Intimidate to enter diplomatic negotiations (unleeeeeeeess I take that one feat - Fear Will Keep Them In Line, I think?) and I could maybe do a little better with Manipulate, but if I wanted to negotiate a CEO down in front of his board of directors, they’d probably bash me for not being tactful about it. Empathy helps across the board for all three.

I think there’s also a certain level of ‘how your character expresses themselves’ involved here too. High Intimidate? Very gruff and angry in their expression. High Manipulation? Great with lies, sugar-coated words; sickly sweet tone. High Diplomacy? Polite, refined. There’s a certain feel to each skill, in my mind. Maybe your voice is too high-pitched for a good Intimidate, or your body posture just doesn’t lean towards being scary - but people are more inclined to believe your lies. It happens.

Skills cross to make a beautiful interweaving of a character. For me, the fact that they interact like that in the first place is awesome and I love how they work together.

You have now even more overlapping skills. You spread social skills over SO many skills - in opposite to combat skills.

I’d argue that this isn’t actually true. We have 23 martial arts and 12 lightsaber forms (not counting 0), and members can chose a maximum of 2 each. Someone who wants to be good at all the fighting things literally can’t. While you’re correct that there is a good deal of overlap between the social skills, at least our system lets members put points in all of them.

Why can’t we just have 3 skills?

• Bluff
• Diplomacy
• Intimidation
  [snip]
  A lot of the skills are obsolete then. Because you can pin it down to about 3 skills and cover up the rest with it. On top it makes it way too confusing for people if you keep too many.

This point was one that I myself made pretty early into the process when we were looking at skills. The important distinction is that just because you can easily think of situations where one could reasonably be substituted for another does not mean that there is enough overlap between the two that they aren’t’ distinct. If we had 3 social skills, every socially inclined character would be pretty much interchangeable. It would be like if we had a skill category for “lightsaber combat” but didn’t have you specify which Form you practiced. Suddenly large segments of the Brotherhood have more or less identical character sheets.

The different social skills imply different things about the character. Say you want your guy to be like the squad leader of a group of special forces soldiers. High leadership, high empathy, and high intimidation. He’s tough, and his squad would follow him to hell and back. Do you want this guy negotiating a treaty (diplomacy)? Doubtful. Just because his team would take a bullet for him doesn’t mean you want him sitting across a desk discussing a ceasefire.

There is a large degree of overlap between intimidation and interrogate. You’re right, but a character sheet with high interrogation and low intimidate implies a very different personality and feel than one with high intimidate and low interrogation. If you have high intimidation, you’re probably good at a good-cop, bad-cop routine. That doesn’t mean you know anything about how much sodium pentathol to give a prisoner to make them talk (but not kill them)

Remember, character sheets serve a vital function in helping other people know how to write your character as well and these distinctions really help that. As far as judging fiction goes, at no point did anyone argue that a member couldn’t reasonably substitute one of these for another if appropriate.

We’d be happy to put this formally on the wiki in the FAQ.

You mix up skills that don’t overlap.

Skills that I think that overlap:
Manipulation + diplomacy
Empathy + perception now
Intimidate + interrogate.

If you explain the big amount of skills by saying: So people know how to write your character…
You will have to add also a lot of more details tbh. It doesn’t cover loyalty (will you help others? Will you run? Are you a coward?). Is your character more shy? What are the phobia of a person?

You toss in all those details into social skills, but yet neglect a wide range of other aspects. I think you put too much into character sheets and willingly accepting the fact that you will confuse people by this.

It is all about the writing, or not? Not just the skills, but the way you write a person.

I will now turn the spear around:

Now we are going into a very very very specific situation.
Please ask yourself: How often do we get into the situation to interrogate someone?
It is a bit weird that we got something that is not quite a daily business of a Sith’s life on the skill list. We could also add Alchemy to this list. Or “Teaching”. Or also “Swimming”. Just because you are good at climbing and tumbling around, doesn’t mean you are able to swim.

Still no one answered my direct question: Why did you make Perception also work on people and added another skill to social skills? It was formerly just about the physical world.

That’s actually something I’m surprised CS 2.0 didn’t add, as I’d been expecting that.

For example, take someone like Muz, I could see them potentially (not saying Muz himself necessarily would) pumping a ton of Skills into more than just the 2 Lightsaber Forms, and making themselves a pure Swordsman. Handicapped? Lacking in other Skills? You bet it would be-- but that’s the glory of letting someone build such a char if they chose.

As like you say, there’s a lot of non-combat stuff that someone could max out en masse if they wanted to be a… wordsmith or something, whereas the combat route is lacking that, which is a shame really. I mean, I could very easily picture someone, say, not wanting to use a saber, but instead wanting to be a pure martial artist, and preferring to sink two extra Skills into two extra Martial Art forms instead, which would have enabled another character type, rather than everyone being good at just two, and nobody being able to specialise as a true Master Swordsman or Martial Artist where that is the core of their character on a increased level than every other Tom, Dick and Harry.

None of these things relate to a character’s competency at an action. They’re not skills. Happily, we do have a section that covers such things. That’s what Aspects are for.

True. Though considering your character sheet’s aspects (and character sheet in general), I can’t see how loyal you are to your clan. Nor what your phobias are. Are you shy? Are you rather bold? Or remain in the background and control things? Would you sacrifice your life for others? Would you betray your clansmen if you could gain more powers for that? Do you respect your leaders? If you are injured, would your clansmen help you or are you looked at with distrust? Would you follow orders from your leaders even if you don’t agree to their decisions?

At least I know you are highly manipulative, intelligent and also zap people with your lightnings and swing your saber at people that you wear down emotionally. In honesty - this fits to like 50% of the DJB people

We’re going down a rabbit hole here with what’s realistic to define in any given size of a CS. Any line that we draw would be arbitrary to an extent.

To get back to the original issue, we thought that it was valuable to allow for the customization with respect to social skills. You’re right that it does invite a bit of confusion, but that’s the point of this discussion thread (and the wiki articles including the FAQ).

If the purpose of the character sheets is to help people write other characters, then journeymen have a hard time to define how to write their characters, because they have less skill points.

Does this mean a Journeyman is lesser social and more 2dimensional than an Elder, because he has lesser skill points?

Journeymen get less cool things than Elders. That’s not something that’s unique to this system. It’s been that way in every CS system we’ve ever used. Overall, though, I think the latest iterations are actually scaling back that discrepancy. The gulf in power between Elders and Journeymen in some of the previous iterations was frankly stupidly large in the past.

I’m not sure I agree with the premise that a character which can chose to be good at one or two types of social dynamics is by definition a less rounded character that can be good at all of them. Someone who can be good at everything isn’t more interesting than someone who’s good at one thing, but has real weaknesses elsewhere.

You said the character sheet is also something how to write other characters.
Journeymen characters are in general just 2 dimensional. Because they are very limited to define what their characters are good / bad at.

To me the scaling for skills should be from 0 to +5 for EVERY RANK.
But Elders could get more skills to +5 than a journeyman.
(You woudl have to remove the pyramid thing, but the skill points limits it all well enough anways).

This would tell me more about characters than this system does. And it doesn’t even hurt nor makes journeymen overpowered.

I agree entirely. Unfortunately, that particular change was, as Wally likes to say, “above our pay grade.”

Hey Sarin,

let all ranks be equally able to define their characters by the skill page please.

My suggestion in steps:

1. Seperate social skills from combat skills.
2. Make a combat pyramid with your combat points based on your discipline. (Marauders e.g. get more than e.g. sorcerers, etc.): blasters, prim saber, bladed weapons, etc…
3. Make the skills without a pyramid. Make a list with the skills ranging from 0 to +5. The amount of skills points restrict anyways how many skills you could get to +5: Empathy, Manipulation, Piloting, etc.
   If you dont want journeymen to have +5, consider this:
   Why should an elder be able to paint a picture (crafting) at +5 and a journeyman not?
4. (tie the disciplines also into the force powers; e.g. Marauders get “-3” points, sorcerers “+3”, since e.g. Marauders get more combat points in opposite to sorcerers)

What do you guys think?

Sarin?

p.s.: With this system still no one can get too OP. E.g. a journeyman could maybe get 3 skills up to +5, but nothing else. Which would mean a one trick pony. So its still balanced.
The combat points and force points are together tied to a discipline; which is easy to balance those two. Marauders are kickass fighters with a huge arsenal. But can’t use many force powers. Sorcerers are happy if they can use their sabers and maybe 1 more weapon. Their focus is on the force. Seekers could be in the middle.

Just to throw in my two cents;

I think you’re ignoring the biggest factor in helping others write your character: Aspects. In addition to all the prewritten ones, you can create custom Aspects that tell whatever you want about your character. Are they loyal to their Clan but not to their Clanmates? That would make an excellent Aspect.

Skills are what a person knows how to do, or areas in which a person can train, for the most part. Yes, there are some oddball exceptions, but those are few and far between. And since Journeymen are (theoretically) less experienced than Elders, they have less experience to justify the training necessary for higher skills. I’m not a personal fan of this, but it’s a workable system for the moment. This might change with Mundanes, but for now that’s how it works.

And in regards to Perception: it wasn’t changed. Perception always helped with other people. All that was done was a clarification of the description to make people more aware of that fact.

Lastly, regarding the skill overlaps: skills should overlap to an extent. Manipulation and Diplomacy, for instance, can accomplish the same goals. They accomplish then differently, though, and the outcome may not be identical. Some situations are better suited for one or the other. I’d like to expand on this more, but I’m on my phone at the moment.

Hopefully this helps.

Alright. I’m sorry for not responding to this thread sooner. I do pretend to be an adult with a job outside of my role as a Dark Jedi and Combat Master :P.

I also realize that this thread is banking off course from its original purpose. This was not a call for “How could I redesign the current system”. This was a forum for getting questions answered that confused about the current system we have put in place, and spent the last 5 months updating.

@XiaLong - I appreciate all of your ideas. A lot of the concepts you bring up are something that various members of the team have also considered. We have been discussing the CS’s for 5 months now as a team, and a lot of these ideas have already popped up.

I am not trying to stifle your input or shut down your passion and desire to make the system better. However, I am going to drop a divider line and say that we are going to move forward from this point (this post) with a clear division of feedback.

This Forum will continue to be used for Questions about CS 2.0. For the immediate future of the Character Sheets used in the Dark Jedi Brotherhood, this is the system we will be sticking with.

For now, the focus remains to keep making CS 2.0 better. This was the goal coming in from CS 1.0 Launch. And having worked both launches, I think this one has been much better received by the membership base in general. The Creation Teams (and myself) have been as communicative and transparent as we can possibly be.

Again, there is no timetable on when these changes would be looked at. The club has a lot of other focuses right now. I just don’t want anyone to feel like we’re ignorant to change. We just have jobs to do, and making these decisions are why we hold our positions as leaders.

This is not the first time. I wrote already a huge document (about 28 pages) with ideas and suggessions about 1.5 years (!) ago. (And believe me, these suggestions up here were already in that document).
None of those were taken into account - on top everything of it was ignored. And all on top… no one cared about it.

How I know? I do know, because I had published that document via gdrive, but revoked the public access a couple of hours later. No one asked me what happened to it. No one ever did more than probably just briefly reading it. No one opened it to check suggestions from your base membership. (No one ever wanted any kind of further feedback).

And you say you don’t want anyone to feel ignored?..

Well, my passion and desire has now shut down completely to zero.

I’m very sorry to hear that, @XiaLong. As I mentioned before, I do not make these decisions. The direction and vision of the Character Sheets (and the Brotherhoods fictional development, its Paths systems, and societies) are all in the hands of the Grand Master and Deputy Grand Master with help from the Voices.

I just work here. And I’m just trying to tell you that while I love a lot of the ideas, there is physically nothing I can do to help implement them, because they are big changes to the core system.

What I can do is continue to answer questions, and do my very best to help explain the changes we made while keeping the interest of the members at heart. Keep in mind (if you’ve actually read any of my reports) that my CS Development team consists of leaders and members from every unit. The things presented in CS 2.0 are not restricted to one persons writing or detail.

However, even I work within the system set up for me. That, ultimately, falls back on the people in charge with making the decisions day to day for our club.

But again, I just work here, and wish I could do more. I’m more than happy to continue answering any questions about what we have on the table now to work with. There is a lot in this thread and I will work my way through them with the team.

Thank you!

Post script:

I don’t honestly know about this. That sounds like something for the DGM/GM/and VOICE. Sorry, I wish I could better help answer what happened there, but I’m not prithee to it.

P.s.:I would love to hand back the medal that I got shoved into my mouth (maybe it was a weak try to silence me that way) for writing this document and rather have some of the suggestions being worked / being taken into account.

Sil, your work was not ignored, it just wasn’t implemented. It was read, multiple times. We discussed elements of your proposal in a few places. I have in fact remarked to people even recently that while multiple pyramids may have some merit it is more confusing and less useful and most importantly, completely avoids what we were trying to do with the skill system. I disagreed with the premise, as did Sarin. I’m sorry you feel ignored over it - perhaps we should discuss your personal feelings about that over email? It is hardly worth clouding this thread with our disagreements on how skills, pyramids, and disciplines should be handled.

I would ask that if you wish to continue this discussion related to your four items above we either move to email, or if you want, another Discourse thread. While I welcome your input, I don’t think it is relevant to a Q&A session on CS2.0.

Wait, what? That medal was a sneaky way to silence you?

Or maybe I like to award dissent (go ahead and take a look at the members I’ve promoted to Elder, given leadership jobs, ect. youll find a a who’s who of members that have a history of disagreeing with me). Some real world organizations actually award yearly medals to those members who are “disruptive thinkers” or those members who offer alternative points of view. We read your document. I read your document. I appreciated the effort you put into it and appreciated your point of view.

Bottom line, I didn’t agree with it. Neither did any other decision makers at the time. That doesn’t mean your work didn’t have merit or that we didn’t appreciate you sending it in an effort to make the systems better.

Ohai… Question about a specific feat, because every time I read it I feel like it means a different thing.

Yes, I Said Closer

Keirdagh Taldrya Cantor has become adept at naval tactics to the point that they are now considered among the sharpest minds in the field. Keirdagh Taldrya Cantor can substitute his Leadership skill for his Piloting (L) skill when organising a fleet under their command.

Now, on my sheet I have Leadership 5, and Pilot (L) 1. Because big ships aren’t as fun as little ships.

However, I am unsure if this feat means that when using this feat my Pilot (L) skill would become 5, or my Leadership skill would become 1. Plz halp.

This feat: Instead of having to use your Pilot (L) skill, you instead your awesome leadership skills to organise your crew to enable flying that big ship. You have with Pilot (L) 1 no idea which button does what when you look over the shoulder of one of your crew members. But with your Leadership 5 you stand on the command bridge, you simply snap off the command e.g. to get the ship closer to the target. The crew listens willingly to your orders and trust in your leadership skills and will immediately act on their own to execute your orders

You don’t need to know how the engines work or what the buttons do, but oh boy… you can lead a crew and they will do everything to fulfill your glorious tactical ideas.

Over all the years I see 0% of the suggestions being implemented. (I am currently talking for myself, though I do know there are suggestions from other people that were fully rejected).

In the end it comes to this:
Resignation.
Why should I offer in future time any input or suggestions to you if they are always fully rejected and not the tiniest fraction of it is ever implemented?
I often see this: a mere shrug and the sentence: “It won’t be changed anyways. So why should I offer input?”.

The way these feats are designed is to let you take something you’re good at and use it in place of something that you’re less good at (in limited scenarios). This specific feat lets you take the thing you’re good at (Leadership, at +5) and use that instead of the thing you’re less good at (Piloting - L, at +1). Basically, it’s implying that rather than being the person physically piloting the craft, you’re giving orders, and because you are so accomplished at the naval tactics, the people who are actually doing the physical work trust you implicitly and will execute your will better than you would be physically capable of doing.

Of note for these sort of things, if for some reason your skill values were reversed, and you had high Pilot (L) and low Ledership, we’d never force you down to use the skill that you’re worse at.

Edit: Xia’s answer is effectively correct.

Also relevant, then: Your Reputation Precedes you. By the look of it, it completely negates the need for Leadership or Diplomacy in a single instance; how does it function?

The famous Mirus Hi’ija was onboard of this mighty ship. The first officer clinged to this legend’s lips awaiting his orders. There was a tension on the command bridge. Finally Mirus said with a cold voice: "Command the attack."
The first officer snapped into attention, quickly shouting commands to his crew to carry out the command. The crew sprung into action, eager to please their leader.

Something like this?

Edit: Another example:
Some warlords from your clan’s system have gathered with you to negotiate some deals. The famous Mirus walks in and demands that his clan gets the biggest share. Because of your high reputation - your name often whispered in awe or maybe in fear - they simply accept your demand.

So it’s designed to be a two-way street? Much confusion.

Er… no. It’s definitely not supposed to be a two way street. If you’re better at Leadership than you are at Pilot (L), you can use Leadership instead. If you’re not, you don’t have to (but why would you have that feat if your CS was set up that way?).

OK, So your Pilot (L) skill # is replaced by your Leadership skill # then, that’s what I was looking for. It might be worth revisiting and trying to tighten up the language a bit to remove the ambiguity whenever someone has time. Thanks Viv.

The idea is that you can “buy” skill points with a feat.
Sometimes it may be a nice idea if you lack skill points, but believe your character can allow to drop 1 feat to gain more skills.

If you have a +5 Leadership and use this feat, you basically got 5 skill points to have pilot (L) also +5.

The disadvantage: You spend a feat and sometimes the feat puts up limitatons (like “replace in a single instance” or others).

(Yeah. The language could be tightened up a bit.)

If you’ve got a suggestion for how to word it better, we’d be happy to hear it. This kind of thing makes sense to me pretty intuitively (because I helped write it all). I’m not sure I can personally come up with a wording that makes more sense than what’s currently there.

Same goes here. Clarifications in wording is definitely within scope of what we can definitely “patch.”

Maybe something like…

Let me catch up on things.

I will talk to @TelarisCantor and @JamesEntar about this. I don’t mind having a “Phobias” input field. However, it is something that could also very easily be incorporated into a Custom Aspect, or listed on a Wikipedia page as part of the characters “Backstory”. Depends on how pertinent the phobia is to the character as a whole.

Yea. The system is set that you can do that, but you’re going to be useless for anything else other than hitting things. If that’s the kind of thing you’re into, awesome.

This is something we’ve explained multiple times. You can’t be a master of everything. It’s poor character development, marry sue-ish, and boring. Show me a single character in the canon Star Wars universe that is a Master of more than 2 Lightsaber forms and more than 1-2 Martial Arts forms?

I’ll wait. We all have active imaginations and love movies about Master Martial Artists. But, even in other media…think about it. Tony Jaa is a Muy Thai action start. He beats the crap out of literally everyone, but he is limited to his Muy Thai. Sure, there are people like Bruce Lee…but he was a prodigy and to this day there is still no one quite like him.

In Star Wars, the only real prodigy is Vader. And I’ve covered why not everyone in the DB can be throwing around the Force the same way Vader does in the books or movies. (He’s more active in the new books, in the films he’s actually pretty refined and his power only comes out in certain instances like deflecting Han Solo’s blaster bolts like a boss).

Hope that answers a few questions.

I have re-written “Your Reputation Precedes You” to be more clear for what it does:

Before entering into negotiations with a new person or party, {{member}}'s name, alias, or title alone is enough to sway opinions in {{gender:his,her}} favor. To this end, {{member}} can use {{gender:his,her}} Diplomacy Skill at on skill point higher.

Heya @KeirdaghCantor I realize there are two kind of conflicting things here.

Here is what I’ve re-written: “Yes, I Said Closer”

{{member}} has earned a reputation for {{gender:his,her}} brilliant naval tactics, and can leverage that reputation when issuing orders to ships under {{gender:his,her}} command. To this end, {{member}}'s can ues {{gender:his,her}} Tactcs skill in place of {{gender:his,her}} Leadership skill to instil a sense of loyalty and obedience in the crews of {{gender:his,her}} ships.

This is really for a character who is a tactical genius, but doesn’t have the best charisma. It doesn’t mean you’re going to become Admiral Thrawn with a +1 in Leadership, but it would be enough to convince one of your freighters to pull a Crazy Ivan even if the pilot thinks it’s a crazy idea.

The definition for Piloting (L) is more about how you know the finer workings of a Cap ship and its operation. It’s more about technical skill and applicable knowledge than your ability to “command” a ship.

An individual’s ability to operate and coordinate any vehicle that requires more than one pilot, anything from an AT-AT to a Capital Ship. This includes larger freighters, barges, and mobile artillery.

If I recall correctly with what little I remember about your character, Yacks, I think the way I’ve re-written the Feat might be something up your alley. Let me know what you think.

Makes a bunch more sense for Tactics to replace Leadership in that feat, rather than Piloting (L) as far as I’m concerned. For me, since my character has always been leadership and tactics based, it’s kinda like replacing an apple with an apple, but I can see it being great in situations like you’re describing. (Spell check it before you upload it though ;))

I have minions spot checking that stuff. It has been added and proofed properly

In regards to canon status of planets moving forwards: Will ‘Legends’ languages for existing canon planets count in the new DB canon and thus be acceptable on character sheets? Specifically, Paecian is the language of the Humans of Dathomir, but these guys are effectively non-canon (mostly replaced by the half-Zabrak-ish Dathomiri) now. Is Paecian still an acceptable language due to the club’s shift towards true canon? (Wouldn’t be upset if that was a no, honestly.)

Or, to rephrase the question more simply (for the FAQ!): Does the current-Canon status and culture of a planet supersede the Legends status?

@Marick Re: Phobias and stuff, I agree that Custom Aspects can cover it if someone has a deep rooted Fear of Ewoks, but what makes me ponder it being a fixed box is due to how many typically behave like their characters are fearless and unbeatable, but everyone has a phobia-- even if their phobia is the fear of being weak and having one!-- so it’s something that might be good to encourage people to think about that aspect of their characters, as I often worry that if I used a generic Terror they’re going to grumble and complain “I AM AFRAID OF NOTHING!!!” because they’ve simply never sat down and thought about the things that their character is afraid of-- even if, like I say, their fear is as simple as losing their power and being a weakling and no longer uberpowered.

The inability to be a master of everything is actually where I’ve always figured making the different Lightsaber Forms their own Skills on the Skill Tree itself does prevent universal l337 mastery of everything, as you’d be limited by the pyramid (and your Skill points), so would work just the same as the current situation if you just wanted a Primary and Secondary.

But if someone did want to roleplay a very one-dimensional swordmaster who spent their life in the dojo training, training, training, it’s something I think could add that extra freedom for those who might want that-- without making them able to become overpowered, as they’d be doing it at the cost of being able to do anything else like Leadership, Explosives, yadda, yadda.

It’s not something I’d use myself as I scarcely even make use of one Form-- and am debating even axing that off my CS rewrite-- but I’ve always imagined some might enjoy the ability to add a third or fourth if they roleplay a pure swordsman archetype, and due to the pyramid it inherently shields what you said about how nobody was ever brilliant at everything, as you can’t do that on the pyramid so even Muz would probably have difficulty being totally imbalanced unless he was prepared to sacrifice everything else and just become a Weapon Master like Cin Drallig or whatever (Drallig still being Canon ofc ;)).

We are meant to cover a lot with custom aspects as I see.

We only have 2 General and 2 Personal aspects. I don’t know how to cover all those details of characterisation with just 4.

Sil makes a good point… maybe a couple more Aspect slots might be helpful for a lot of the points people have brought up?

I’d be more than happy to help you with working out your 6 Aspects. I’ve been helping write them for a few years now and have it down to a science ;). Most of the time, you want to say 21 Questions about your character. But often, you can sum up multiple questions into a single Aspect, and hone it down.

Less is (in most cases when it comes to story telling) more. I’m not sure if this comes from my screenwriting background over more conventional narrative writing, but if you’re struggling to explain your character to someone in more than 6 “talking points”, you’re probably overthinking.

There are primary traits that make a character stand out, and then there are secondary traits. When invested in our characters, we can escalate the importance of a lot of these “secondary” traits that we feel are super important for people to know, but can really be covered within your characters backstory or in a section on your Wiki.

If being afraid of fire stems from a childhood accident in which they were trapped in a burning building–you can treat this two ways. A.) It was traumatizing enough that anytime your character sees fire they have flashbacks and fear overwhelms them. This is worthy of an Aspect, as it’s important to how your character goes about their life and would be presented in a world of Dark Jedi that are always going off to war or vendettas. Or, maybe that fear is what drives them to avoid combat altogether, and stay with the safety of books and tomes. (I just pretty much wrote an Aspect right there as I was typing this out. Heh.)

Option B.) Your character doesn’t like fire, but it is not debilitating or something that will cause them to stop. It is an important part of their character history, and something that, if delving deep into the character, you could easily bring up, or organically work into a story.

But…the Character Sheets are designed to be a “snapshot” of your character. A synopsis. Let’s take a popular character for example. Han Solo.

When you describe Han Solo to someone, how do you do it?

1. He’s a smooth talker.

2. He’s a survivor.

3. Has a long lasting friendship with a Wookie who owes him a lifedebt.

4. He’s a quick shot with a blaster.

5. He’s an ace pilot.

6. He’s fearless enough to try and blast the most terrifying figure in the universe with his blaster instead of running away.

Sure, there are other smaller elements that make Han Solo cool and likeable. But really, that’s what you’re looking at. It’s a snapshot. And from that, I was able to pick 6 important elements of Han Solo’s character that help describe the archetype that has been mirrored endlessly of the years in other fiction.

We will not be adding any additional Aspects slots.

The Voice Staff has helped countless members of varying backgrounds with their custom aspects. I personally will sit down with you if you’re really struggling, just shoot the Voice Staff an email at djb-voice-staff.googlegroups.com. If you’re really REALLY struggling, feel free to poke me directly at djbwally@gmail.com.

Typically, it’s easier for me to work out of a Google Doc, so if you draft your notes and get everything that you feel “defines” your character and get into one, I can then slip in, comment, and offer suggestions on how to craft your characters 6 defining Aspects.

Touching again on phobias in general: the way that myself and the powers that be see it is that if a phobia is a big enough deal to your character, it can be worked into an Aspect. If it’s something that just adds more flavor to your character? It can stay on your wiki with your character history.

The CS’s were not meant to replace your characters wiki. They do, however, work together.

You eventually get to the point where you need to have a “field” for a characters “favorite color” field. Things like this are great to be added to a wiki page.

Sil, the Questionnaire you sent me about your character? All of those things could be put into a section on the wiki for “things to know about Sil”. I’ve seen that done a few times really well.

Hopefully this helps explain the collective thinking behind Aspects and you don’t think that we’re just bluntly saying “no”.

-W

I think you got my intention wrong with the hint of saying that 4 aspects can’t cover all that. I got my aspects settled already anyways.

The phobia thing is something we had in the old char stuff; basically I enjoyed pulling that out for the usage of e.g. Terror. What can I do now? I can use Terror on someone I don’t know and try to figure out what this person may be scared of. I could make up things: Marick is scared of pink little bunnies or is scared of spiders or is scared to run around with dirty clothes? But I will probably never hit it correctly. If there was a phobia box, it would be easier.

Or I make the description of Terror very very vague which doesn’t offer me a lot of writing possibilities.

I thought the CS were there to help how to write e.g. a character in the ACC or runon, but having e.g. Terror as a power and no phobia box, …

But I guess I will just keep Terror vague. Blah blah something lurked within his mind, surfacing his thoughts. Blah blah he screamed out from the terrors within his mind, tearing at his eyes so they might stop showing him what he wished to fade from his sight.

This might be a nice copy & paste boiler plate I have to reuse over and over for the use of Terror, because barely anyone adds in their phobia on their CS.

My Han Solo’s aspects:

• can be a cold blooded murderer if he is threatened (Greedo; not the Special Edition)
• is loyal to friends and still has the heart on the right spot (freed the Wookie and defected the Empire when he realised it was wrong, helped his friends despite a bounty on his head)
• has always a snidy remark on his lips
• sometimes acts before thinking
• has a lot of connections to smugglers in the underground

Yours:
He’s a smooth talker: manipulation skill at a higher level

He’s a survivor. - Divine Intervention feat / Endurance / Survival Skill

Has a long lasting friendship with a Wookie who owes him a lifedebt. - jupp. aspect.

He’s a quick shot with a blaster. - skill: Blaster

He’s an ace pilot. - Skill: pilot (s)

He’s fearless enough to try and blast the most terrifying figure in the universe with his blaster instead of running away. (lightning reflexes feat + aspect: very brave / fearless … or maybe desperate? )

Basically you wasted 4.5 aspects with things that could be covered by Skills and Feats

[quote=“Marick, post:76, topic:902, full:true”]The Voice Staff has helped countless members of varying backgrounds with their custom aspects. I personally will sit down with you if you’re really struggling, just shoot the Voice Staff an email at djb-voice-staff.googlegroups.com. If you’re really REALLY struggling, feel free to poke me directly at djbwally@gmail.com.
[/quote]
It’s not that I want the extra Aspects, the point I’m getting at is how it’s something I’d like other people to do more regularly, but which most people have a habit of not giving away- even on their wiki pages- as people have a tendency of not wanting to draw attention to their own weaknesses.

And that’s the point I’m getting at: how it’s easy to know how to bash someone’s head in with an axe, but if you’re trying to mind trick them and stuff, you need to know a bit more about their character’s state of mind to do that in a way that fits with their character’s fears and things, but most people tend not to bother to tell other people about that on their wikis or in their own Aspects, which is where I think it’d help other people. As if someone is playing a Juggernaut or Marauder, they’re less likely to waste a Custom on “Btw, I’m scared of Ewoks” but more likely to have one about “I trained with the Mandalorians” or whatever.

(Well, unless they go “I trained with the Mandalorians, however as part of my training, they made me fight against an angry pack of savage Ewoks, which has left me with a deep fear of Ewoks, even if I am now a strong Mandalorian fighter” but… yeah, nobody is gonna write that :P)

[quote=“XiaLong, post:77, topic:902, full:true”]Or I make the description of Terror very very vague which doesn’t offer me a lot of writing possibilities.
[/quote]
Edit Er, I see Sil already said this, didn’t see her post before I did mine, sorry

Yes. That’s exactly what I did. So allow me to retort ;). I wrote those quickly, as examples, and of course if you really wanted to I could delve into much greater detail. Alas, I’m busy repressing your ability to write creatively.

Killing someone for survival != cold blooded murderer. Sorry. I don’t see this as a viable Aspect of Han Solo. At least in your representation.

Tihs could all be covered under the Aspect revolving around Chewie/the Lifedebt. Defying the empire could also go with a fearlessness to do what he believes in.

So, exactly what I said as a smooth talker? I don’t see your point of separation or distinction.

This is good, but also falls under smooth talker–where the balancing act is that his tongue can also get him into just as much trouble.

Survivor.

…Anyway, my point is, you just proved my point. You broke down my Aspects that I came up with on the spot with what skills/feats support them. You now see the entire point of the CS’s :P. Good job.

…is not an issue. If you want to use Terror, do your research into a character. If the character has nothing that indicates fear on their Character Sheet or their wiki, it’s not going to work. Even if there is a phobia box, and I don’t fill it in, you’re not going to be able to use “terror” on me. This is just a part of how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

[quote=“Marick, post:80, topic:902, full:true”]…is not an issue. If you want to use Terror, do your research into a character. If the character has nothing that indicates fear on their Character Sheet or their wiki, it’s not going to work. Even if there is a phobia box, and I don’t fill it in, you’re not going to be able to use “terror” on me. This is just a part of how the cookie crumbles sometimes.
[/quote]
And that highlights the issue, no? That if people think they can be “immune” to something just by not bothering, they’re not playing sportsmanlike, and so should be prepared to have their mind karked in a more generic fashion-- because even Darth Vader and Palpatine feared things.

It’s akin to saying that if someone doesn’t explicitly say “where” their armour covers, they can later act surprised if their opponent doesn’t treat it like an impenetrable full body suit and assumes it has the same weak spots that 99% of other Star Wars armour does around joints and such.

Likewise, if your CS didn’t tell me what you were scared of, I will have to conclude you’re human and like any other human-- Palpatine included.

However, if you want to be “Fearless” then you’re going to want to make a Custom Aspect for that-- and that’s then going to be vetted for a weakness to make it balanced-- so nobody is immune to Terror unless they want to godmode and act more superhuman than even Palpatine.

Relevant actual question instead of questioning the existence of CSes (which I love in their entirety.)

There Are Many Like It, But This One Is Mine: When choosing a favoured weapon, do I nominate ‘sword’ (so all sword subtype weapons) or would I nominate a specific sword (for example, this golden cutlass)? In addition, would a specific pair of favoured swords be acceptable for this? So one specific off-hand sword and one specific main-hand sword?

Just a quick note on the Phobias:

Personally, I always liked the Phobias box on the old Character Sheets, and I consistently checked it when paired with a new opponent. That being said, the lack of listed Phobias never indicated that your opponent was fearless. It just meant that it was up to you to make something up. You look at their CS, and you look at their wiki, and come up with something vaguely plausible. As long as you aren’t directly contradicting what they’ve said in their Character Sheet or their Wiki, there’s no reason you can’t make something up.

You would choose a weapon such as vibrosword or billy club, as long as it is a specific type and is a melee weapon (there is a separate feat for firearms).

It can’t just be any old club. Even sword is likely too broad, as there are many types of swords. But katanas? Certainly.

Exactly. I can both see the appeal behind it, but also the argument against it (if there is one).

While phobias are good to use for the Terror power, it isn’t always needed for when someone chooses a different approach. Using the image of some long-lost relative from the member’s wiki? A friend? A loved one? These all should work just as well, if not better. A powerful user of it might be able to make the target relive some traumatic moment in their character’s history (Though, I’m unsure of this one). Any of these have a chance to send even the hardiest Jedi to their breaking points in certain circumstances, if the image is traumatic enough. Did that member just suffer under interrogation while being reminded of their comrade’s death over and over again?

Terran’s correct in that this information can be gleaned just as readily from the Character Sheet or Wiki without reading through the entire thing. If that member decide to mention their weaknesses in their aspects? cool. If not, either look to their wiki or make something up. Toss enough fangs on something, and it can easily be something just as terrifying as their worst fear. If that member fails to mention how much they adore Akk Dogs with fourteen rows of teeth in their aspects - that’s on them.

So based purely on Wally’s last two sentences Terror can basically be completely negated just by making sure you don’t write any fears or phobias your character may have. That doesn’t seem right to me.

I think people are placing too much emphasis on “phobias”.

Adding onto what I replied to Terran, if a member has no phobias listed or mentioned, make something up based on the situation or draw from their character’s wiki. If a phobia box were added, it might be nice for those who want to see them listed in one place, but those who leave the box blank forces the other to get creative in their Force usage (falling in line with the purpose of the ACC). That’s it. As I said earlier in my reply to Terran, each approach has its own merits and consequences. A phobia is just one thing that can be used to instill terror in an opponent - fear (Which is used in the actual power description) is a fairly broad concept and can cover everything from phobias, paranoia, or the (possibly recurring) loss of someone close to the person. In fact, the writer can choose to be situational in his or her writing.

Did the target just lose an entire platoon of soldiers? Hearing their voices might be enough to drive a person insane. Did the person just escape from a week-long torture session? Seeing the interrogator polishing one of his tools could instill fear. Did the target lose a close relative? Reliving the moment of their death and being helpless to prevent it is another less conventional way to use the power. If you have major skills in Empathy, it shouldn’t be too hard for your character to find something that makes sense for the other person to fear in the circumstances.

Even Darth Bane (Yes, Legends. blah, blah), who conquered his fears long ago, was forced to fight in order to resist Zannah’s attempt at using the power on him. I can’t see the power being “negated” based on a lack of phobias - there’s always something that can be used. From seeing it used throughout Legends, wherever a fear pertaining to the individual wasn’t used, nightmarish creatures almost always made an appearance. Yes, Zannah was a master of the ability, but Bane would have had some serious resolve if he was able to conquer his fears and resist Zannah’s attempt.

I’m sure someone will correct me if these examples don’t fit with the usage of the Terror power, but I do think that there’s definitely ways to circumvent the lack of a distinct phobia if one were to use the power.

I’m not actually disagreeing with your point Alora, but Wally just said the complete opposite.

Not exactly. We’re all talking about different parts of the answer, but not doing a very good job of linking it together.

Let me take like 5 steps back from the immediate question and consider a different scenario. Let’s think that I’m an Equite that prefers to use a blaster over a lightsaber, and you’re my opponent and you’ve got +5 in Soresu. How do I beat you? The first order answer is: I probably don’t. The entire point of Soresu is that it’s really good against that scenario. Does that mean that every altercation has to go the same way? Of course not, and it is possible to build a scenario where the blaster guy beats the Soresu guy, as long as I’m creative. The qualifier there is that you have to come up with a good story justification. In this scenario, it’s not the Soresu guy’s job to lay out a way to beat him, it’s yours.

So let’s go back to the Terror example at hand. Wally’s answer was saying something similar to what I just said. It’s your job as the author of the character using Terror to craft a justification for it working in the story. Sometimes it’s going to be easier, (just like sometimes instead of going up against the Soresu guy, you’re going up against the Niman guy), sometimes it’s going to be harder. If you can’t think of a good reason for why/how the power should work on a given opponent effectively, it’s not good writing to say that it works (just like if you can’t write a good reason why your blaster guy can beat the Soresu guy, you need to adjust your story).

A’lor and Terran’s comments aren’t contradicting the above. They’re just saying that it’s a lot easier than you’re making it out to be to come up with a plausible Terror application than it might seem at first glance.

Except that’s not what Wally said, he explicitely said that if someone doesn’t list fears or phobias or anything like it anywhere then Terror wouldn’t affect them.

@Malik I see what you’re saying, but I think you’re misunderstanding Wally - not your fault, as a lot of nuance and inflection is lost online.

Wally is really making two separate and distinct statements here. The first is “If you want to use Terror, do your research into a character.” That’s the real answer in this situation. Do your research and make it something believable. For further clarification, see the other answers so far in this thread from A’lora, Viv and myself.

The remainder of the quoted reply is really him saying “let’s assume the people worried about Phobias here are right and that was the only option (even though it isn’t)…you’d still have the same problem that you’re saying you are worried about now, so having a Phobias box wouldn’t change anything. When people don’t fill it out, you’ll have to make something up to use it - that’s just how the cookie crumbles.”

I can see where the confusion comes from. @AloraKituri & @VivackusKavon are right, though, in how this particular power works and its usage. Basically, not having Phobias listed explicitly in no way affects whether or not you can use Terror on a character.

Again, I’m not trying to disagree with Alora or Viv, I’m just pointing out what Wally, the Combat Master, said. Word for word.

You’re trying to interpret what he may be saying, and again you may be correct, but when you read it word for word he is saying terror is useless.

Personally it doesn’t affect myself much since I only have terror at +1 and that’s just because I had one point to spare.

Malik, Wally didn’t mean to imply that Terror wouldn’t work without phobias. He intended you would have to do research even if someone left the field blank, because you wouldn’t have that phobia to lean on for use in Terror. Terror works with or without phobias present. He can’t post right now or he’d clarify that for you himself (which he probably will get to later).

I believed the Character Sheets are there to help you writing other characters without doing a lot of research, but I guess I was wrong.

Sil, “Research” in this context can mean anything from reading the battle you are posting in, to the prompt you are writing about, to the aspects a character has. It doesn’t require you pull out a roll of microfilm and dig in, nor that you need to comb a Wiki, though the later may be useful for some battles if a writer wants to do so. In context, it is referring to the idea that even if a Phobias box was present, if it is not filled in, one must think a bit and try to figure out what works best given the situation. Thus, my suggestion remains as it was and always has been: If a Phobia is a major concern for a character, incorporate it into an Aspect. This is the easiest way to be sure a feature of a character is reflected by other authors.

Additionally, while I appreciate that not everyone has the same love for the character sheets, and that is okay, I will begin to remove sniping/distracting comments from this thread, with input from the CS team, as needed to keep it on target related to questions and answers about the CS system. If anyone has questions or comments about the CS system or any of its elements (even if they are critical in nature), please do not hesitate to ask, but I would ask that we keep this thread on target from here on out to manage the size and readability of it all as the CS Staff continues to work hard to address concerns and questions.

Question for this:

Alter Image

Xia Long is able to use her Illusion power on herself for the sole purpose of projecting an alternate image. This can change Xia Long’s appearance from head to toe to reflect her desired description so long as full concentration is maintained. Droids and security cameras are not affected by the altered image.

Why do a person need a feat to cover himself with an illusion?

Illusion:
Allows a Jedi the ability to use the Force to trick the five senses (sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch) of a sentient being into perceiving something other than reality. The more accomplished a Jedi is with Illusions, the easier it is to affect the mind of other sentient beings.

It seems as if I could make a different person cover up with an illusion to look like someone else, or make an apple look like a pear; but I can’t make myself look differently without this feat?

P.s.: Does Alter Image mean I can manipulate unlimited amount of people to only see the illusion I casted upon myself?

We’ll try to clarify the wording. The important thing to remember with respect to those things is that when you’re using an Illusion power, you’re specifically tricking an individual person; you’re putting a picture into their head.

Alter Image is closer to using the polyjuice potion from Harry Potter. You’re appearance will change for anyone who looks at you, not just a single person. I’ll let Wally speak to the limitations of what you can do when you’re altered.

I kinda assume that Alter Image is limitless, as I could also use Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain with that.

Also worth noting is that there is a feat that let’s you use Illusion on multiple people, beyond the constraints of Alter Image (which only works for projecting the image of another person).

Reflexive Counter

Xia Long has a knack for using her Precognition to instinctively counter a potentially lethal blow and retaliate with a strike of her own.

Can I counter sith lightning / telekinesis? How often can I use this? What kind of strikes of my own can I use? Can it only be strikes from weapons or could it also be force powers?

You Killed My Father, Prepare To Die

Xia Long is able to overcome a crippling injury through sheer willpower and toughness to complete her fight or mission. When activated, her focus is locked into finishing the conflict, ignoring her pain from injury conditions without any aid from the Force until success or failure. Even if Xia Long is succesful, {{gender:he.she}} will collapse from exhastion and need medical attention.

vs

Reflexive Counter

Xia Long has a knack for using her Precognition to instinctively counter a potentially lethal blow and retaliate with a strike of her own.

Could you explain a situation where “You killed my father…” could be superior over Reflexive Counter?

It’s specifically a physical blow, not a Force Power. As for the kind of strikes you can use - whatever works with your chosen martial arts, saber styles, offensive Force Powers, etc.

Hammer Time

Xia Long can turn her Telekinesis into a powerful blunt weapon that is capable of smashing foes with devestating force.

So I can’t counter this?

One isn’t necessarily superior to the other - nor do you have to pick one or the other. You could have both, or neither.

Also, Reflexive Counter completely evades the blow and any corresponding damage, whereas the Montoya feat has you take the damage, and you have to write accordingly, despite the fact that you are ignoring the pain.

That’s correct. There’s nothing physical to counter, so Reflexive Counter wouldn’t work against it. That’s not to say it couldn’t be stopped by other means, though.

If you are a masochist… sure. .go ahead and take it I would pick the feat where I avoid the damage completely.

Sociopath

While not actually feeling or relating to the emotions of others, Xia Long is able to see and understand them, allowing Xia Long to substitute her Manipulation skill for their Empathy skill.

I pick Manipulation Skill and can use it when I need Empathy? Or the other way around? This is a confusing sentence.

Yes,this.

It really depends on what fits your character, better. My old character, Invictus, was a consumate duelist, and would definitely dodge things.

Terran, on the other hand, enjoys slugging it out. Consequently, the Montoya feat would fit him excellently in that regard.

From what I understand if one were to apply this in writing, the “You Killed My Father” feat would excel where you might be fighting a losing battle against someone much more powerful. As a death post, you write a last-ditch effort to take a blade to the ribs, if it means driving your lightsaber through his heart. You ignore the pain in your ribs long enough to skewer him, before stumbling - and eventually collapsing - onto the landing pad of your shuttle. It forces an opening in your opponent’s defences by lowering your own and ignoring the consequences until later.

Clarification on Lightning Reflexes, please:

‘knack for catching or avoiding projectiles’ - does this include blaster fire?

Same is for Reflexice Counter, only you don’t necessarily take the damage.

Will we get updates in the descriptions that reflect all these answers here?

That’s a negative. Blasters would be energy, not projectiles. Projectiles would be things like thrown knives, etc.

That’s the plan, yes. We’re maintaining a list of all the ones people spot errors in or that seem prone to cause confusion and will be updating them as appropriate.

Force Pulse

Xia Long can negate the full effects of Force-imbued ailments that slow, hinder, stun, or disorient a cluster of allies in close proximity as long as her full concentration is on the task. This ability works against Slow, Illusion, Blackness, Blinding, and Terror.

Does this feat require Suppression to be taken?
Does this feat also include the user himself?

Synergy X Feat:
Why is there a list of what explicit effects the user can share, but also a list of those powers that can’t be shared? The explicit effects are listed already. Or can other powers be shared like e.g. Precognition?

Note the following text from the Discipline description for Defender:

[quote]Defenders gain:

Force Pulse, which modifies the Force Power: Suppression[/quote]

Basically, without Suppression, there’s nothing for it to modify, so no dice.
However, as it is a support power (Defender is designed as a support class), it doesn’t affect the user themselves, just their allies.

The only powers that can be shared are those specifically listed. There were questions initially raised about if Barrier and Deflection could be as well, so a special note was made to indicate that those were intentionally left out and not an oversight. If you think that’s more confusing than clarifying, we can certainly remove it.

Aura of Fear

Xia Long has the ability to wear the Dark Side as a perpetual aura of fear that stretches out around her. This fear causes mundanes to steer clear of {gender:his,her}} path and can even cast doubt in those of lower Resolve than {{members}} Terror ability.

The sentence says: “can even cast doubt in those of lower resolve than the terror”. Why implying the terror ability to be able to do somethign special, but then say those of “lower” resolve?

Shouldn’t it be: can even cast doubt in those of higher resolve than the terror?

Can’t the Defender be given some more positive things for the ACC? As the other disciplines offer useful things for 1vs1 in the ACC, yet Defenders don’t have anything for this case. They can’t use their powers on themselves.

So Suppression has to be at the same level or higher to counter those powers?

Yes and No. The description mostly says what it means. The idea is that the user radiates an aura of fear based on the Terror power - but it’s not an active use of Terror. You’re not making them see things, or even making them petrified. You’re just (passively) making people around you uneasy - and because it’s non-targeted, it doesn’t work on people with a high Resolve. There is, however, an error in the wording, in that it’s not a direct comparison to the member’s Terror level. It’s just a flat Resolve check (there’s no comparison between the relative level of Terror and Resolve). Currently, the proposed revision for the text is:

This is a valid point, and something that I think can be addressed with the rest of the CS 2.0 team. I’m personally a fan of updating the descriptions to match the distinctions, given that they do exist. Until further notice, consider it under strong consideration. Thanks for dropping us a suggestion on how this problem could be solved, we appreciate constructive criticism.

It’s a situational difference. Small, that is true, but in cases where an opponent might be at an Elder level, or just having the upper hand? Sometimes to make a death post interesting, this can be used to say “If I’m going down, I’m taking you with me.” How severe are the injuries, and the consequences after the damage takes its toll? That’s up to the writer.

Out of personal opinions on the two feats, I see Reflexive Counter as catering towards agile characters, while You Killed My Father leans towards those with a higher endurance. Someone with a high endurance skill and a low agility skill might be able to take a blade to the gut in order to skewer their opponent, and not suffer the consequences as severely when the wound takes its toll. Conversely, a character with a high agility and low endurance would be quick enough to both dodge and mount a swift counter attack for maximum effect, while the character from the first example would dodge, but the counter attack might be slow enough to just graze the opponent’s forearm. It doesn’t have to be written in that manner, but it’s my personal preference for “keeping it real.”

Having your back against a corner, with a juggernaut crashing blows onto your weakening defenses might not allow enough room for your reflexes to do much to avoid damage. That’s one case where it might be best to take a blade to the gut, while driving a knife through his jugular.

Is the feat for everyone? No, it isn’t. Some people don’t like the idea of intentionally causing self-harm to their characters, and that’s fine. It might be a perfectly acceptable solution for a character that always goes for the killing blow if it means risking the loss of life or limb. That’s the reason we have a large assortment of feats to choose from, to pick what would fit in with your character’s behaviour, which could be reflected as a combat-oriented aspect.

So… Satele was “just” a Jedi Padawan at that point, I think from memory, yes?

Now, she’s the prodigy of Revan, so it’s a bit ambiguous how much her raw talent comes into it, but what would we call that? Deflection? Or just totally imba power that doesn’t fall into Deflection or Barrier or whatever feat it might class under?

Appreciate you obviously need lightning fast reflexes and total concentration to pull that off without getting your hand cut off though, as I doubt even Satele could have just waltzed around through a battlefield like she was indestructible.

@Vexatus After discussing your question further as a group, we decided to make a question on the F.A.Q. to answer this. The short version is that Barrier can block a lightsaber and Deflection can’t. For further details (including the canon quote we based this on), see the answer [here][1].

Edited as my original answer was flat-out wrong. Sorry, Vex.
[1]: https://wiki.darkjedibrotherhood.com/view/Character_Sheet_FAQ#Lightsabers:_Particles_of_Waves.3F

Interesting… hadn’t thought of Barrier, though that does make sense.

And canon wise, hmm, the Father did it on Mortis, although how “real” Mortis was is anyone’s guess admittedly. Vague recollection they had another char do it in a later do too, though forget who it was, probably Talzin or Palps I guess.

I haven’t seen all of Clone Wars, so I can’t comment on the encounter you’re talking about (the wiki is sparse on details), however given the oddities of the planet, it seems like any discrepancies could be chalked up to Mortis’ ethereal nature and it being a conduit to the Force itself.

Yeah, there was a lot of weird stuff in those eps. Oddest thing from a viewer’s perspective though, really, was how little Obi-Wan or Anakin reacted to a lot of the stuff, like it wasn’t surprising to them.

Not sure if this is the right forum for this question, but I’ve been meaning to ask about Mechu-deru and just noticed and item pop up in the Wiki FAQ.

From the Wiki:

Do I need to be touching the droid in order to use Mechu-deru?
No, physical contact is not required to bestow sentience upon a targeted droid.

My follow on question is: “So, what is the effective range of Mechu-deru?”

We talking ‘not touching’ but close enough that you could be touching? Couple meters? Few rooms over (or down the end of a long hall)? Kilometers!?

The “range” and “control” is relative to Mechu-deru I, II, III.

The original question was “do you need to be touching to bestow sentience”. The answer, as Atra said, is “no”, but to further expand on that, it would need to be within line of sight. The mind moves the Force, and the Force is what then imbues sentience. You would need to be looking at the object. The closer it is, the less concentration it would need, the further away it is, the more concentration you would need.

Thank you good sir, concise and easy to understand (and more importantly, apply).

I feel like we are making Asimov roll over in his grave or something. #DroidRights #Droidception

On the subject of techweavers, in this case Hexing, at the elder level it mentions that you can disable an entire network of computers just by looking at it.

What is the limit to this, because myself and others discussed it a bit and the suggestion that you could technically take over, or at least render useless, an enemy capital ship just by looking at it came up. Or in a fighter battle you could just look at your opponents fighter and cause it to shut down.

Which Skill can be used for something such as Sleight of Hand? If you have e.g. a more thief-like character or one with a thief background.

Which skill is for e.g. estimate the value of an item? Intellect?

I don’t see how estimating a value would fall under any particular skill. It would be a mixture of Intellect, Perception.

Sleight of Hand would fall under a combination of Subterfuge and Athletics. Not that you need overly high Athletics to pick-pocket someone (you could even have +1 and be logically able to do it), but Athletics covers manual-dexterity within it so you could point at that Skill. The real kicker would be Subterfuge, which would be “pretending” to bump into someone and stealing their Wallet. Subterfuge would cover the diversion of attention/memory as well, which is key to pickpockets.

There is a really cool show on Netflix that NPH narrated at first about illusions and the psychology of the mind. Can’t remember the program, but the guy shows off how during a conversation with someone, he swaps their wallet, phone, and you can barely track it even on camera.

Good question.

Ships (I assume) are shielded from the outside and would be difficult even for an Elder to take out remotely. If that Elder was standing on the bridge of the ship, they could probably knock out the entire navigation system, sure. It would not allow you to shut down an entire Cap Ship, though, but definitely mess with the systems.

It’s really targeted at security systems, which (in my make-stuff-up-its-fiction defense) all tend to be connected on the same circuit. So, you see a camera, point at it, and disable it, and create a chain reaction to whatever the camera is attached to. The larger the facility, the more backup generators and alternating power sources their probably is.

Yeah I kinda assumed that was the idea behind the power, but the same “make-stuff-up-its-fiction” defense could have been used to do what I described as well, so thanks for clearing it up.

@Marick can scold me if I’m wrong, but here’s my idea:

Maybe lore? I mean, I wanted my slicing/techweaver/decker (shadowrun, woo!) type character to be extra specially read up on his field of expertise so I gave him lore topic “Obscure Computers and Droid Brains of the last 100 years.”

You could always have a lore topic along the lines of “Appraisals of valuable items in the last five years.” (yes, that name is randomly thrown together.)

Point being, you character could dedicate time to following auctions or whatever and as such has a good understanding of valuable items and how much they are worth on the market.

Also two ways to get lore topics: The lore skill or making a special case for it in an aspect (which for a dedicated thief character may work well?)

Would be nice to have a list of Lore topics to choose from. Although it would limit us extremely. If someone were to create a character who was an expert in dancing or art, would that still fall under Crafting?

Thanks Wally!

Wouldn’t dancing being sorta umbrella’d under Athletics?
Actually the more I am reading the more the character sheets seem more abstract in concept than say a 3rd edition Dungeons and Dragon’s character sheet. At least how they seem to be coming across.

They are meant to be abstract. This is a fiction based system after all. The sheets provide context for the nature of the characters while encouraging room for fictional creativity.

Accelerated Healing: What are some of the more ‘extreme’ cases of minor wounds? Just for my personal reference.

James has something really cool cooked up for this. I will talk more about it later. Meanwhile, check this out: https://wiki.darkjedibrotherhood.com/view/Skills#Appendix_A:_Sample_Lore_Topics

Surface wounds. Cuts, lacerations, gashes, paper cuts, something you’d expect to get if Bulbasaur used razor leaf on you (nicks/scratches). Non-major arteries, and no bones, ligaments, or muscle damage.

Dancing falls under Athletics. If you want to be a space ballerina specifically, I’d suggest a Lore Topic.

How can you combine +5 Slicing and Miraluka / Behind Blue Eyes? Do you need to constantly carry a Braille keyboard with you?

From a keyboard sense… if they had high slicing skill or were otherwise ‘computer-literate’, I’d assume they’d have developed pretty good touch typing skills. Just like a decent typist IRL not needing to look as a keyboard when typing quickly.

Not sure how one would get there though, they might need to learn on a terminal that reads back each key they press out loud as they hit them?

Input isn’t the big issue I see there. Knowing what’s on the screen would be more difficult. In general they may need to keep a device on them which can watch a display and read it back.

Does Nullify / Suppression remove an applied Amplification(s) or only as long as the person is under the effect of those powers / the feat?

Like Google Glasses with an OCR software that is connected with a Siri-like software that talks to you via a e.g. a headset might be a possible solution here.

Does Nullify / Suppression remove an applied Amplification(s) or only as long as the person is under the effect of those powers / the feat?

As with how Suppression has always functioned, it only inhibits a target while the user is actively applying the Suppression. So, you can “amplify” yourself in line with your capabilities once you are no longer under the effects of Suppression/Nullify. It isn’t permanent.

I never asked if its permanent. I want to know if you have to reapply it or if the already applied amplify effect kicks back in without counting towards the Cooldown (not that it would matter much as its a basic power but it still drains someone).

Yes, the permanent clarification was meant as an additional note just in case someone else might be wondering given the nature of Nullify, apologies if it seemed like I assumed that was your question.

Both of your options are correct depending on if it is an ability that is actively channelled or a “one off”. If you were attempting Force Lightning before/during the Suppression, you would have to deal with the normal “cooldown”. In regards to amplification, if you managed to maintain channelling it while suppressed it would “ramp up” to the expected level of effectiveness once the Suppression was removed.

How can you maintain to channel a Force Power if you or that specific power is cut off from the Force?

Only Nullify cuts you off from the Force. Suppression just lowers your ability to use powers but doesn’t cut you off entirely.

uses Time Out on Atra

Just doin’ my part as a member of the team and answering questions. to your Time Out.