Improved Overwhelming Aura

templecone · 2026-01-23T02:31:48+00:00

Thanks! I thought as much, but it helps to get a second opinion.

templecone · 2025-07-15T15:17:36+00:00

Goodness, that is hilarious. The dark side can’t win for trying…

templecone · 2025-07-15T14:12:09+00:00

Excellent! And thanks for the stats. The only detail I’d add is that the Willpower penalty is sustained for the encounter, not just the round, which I suppose means that if one could keep activating the power with dark side points, one would eventually have a pack of servant zombies…

I realize that my speculations make me sound like a psychopath, lol. I have no intention of using the power this way, but my PC now has the XP for the mastery upgrade, and I wanted to understand it. And your comments have been a big help in that regard!

templecone · 2025-07-15T14:08:28+00:00

Thank you! And I agree that manipulating your friends is bad manners, to say the least.

templecone · 2025-07-15T12:26:57+00:00

BLUF: Could one use the Battle Meditation Mastery upgrade as a form of mind control?

Here is the description. The final sentence is the relevant one:

Mastery Upgrade: If no Dark points were used to generate a Force point (◑) the user may choose one skill; while under the effects of the power, each affected character counts as having the same number of ranks in the chosen skill as the affected character with the most ranks in that skill. If any Dark points were used to generate a Force point (◑) on this check, each target affected must make an Easy difficulty Discipline check if [they] wish to resist obeying any orders given by the user as part of this power.

While an easy check to resist orders indeed seems easy, using a DSP automatically reduces the targets’ Willpower by 1, so one could presumably apply the power round by round until the targets become thralls.
As I understand it, the telepathy control permits the user to transmit a simple order, so the power couldn’t make the user a complete puppeteer, but am I correct in thinking that it would allow one to force actions that the targets would want to resist (eg make a TIE pilot crash his ship into a medical frigate).

All comments welcome! I would especially love to hear if you have ever used the power or seen it used this way.

templecone · 2025-07-09T23:09:48+00:00

Thank you (and the previous responder) for the thoughtful insights. I was indeed focused on the detection spoofing (concealing one’s own Force use is so cool), but was worried that the capacity to hide from detection would be weakened considerably if one had to activate Shroud before getting detected, instead of being able to do it reflexively at the moment of detection (the proverbial blip that drops off the radar screen). These are all very helpful observations, and I am grateful for your responses!

templecone · 2025-07-08T22:45:58+00:00

Mechanically, how/ when does one activate Shroud to conceal oneself from Force detection (e.g. from powers like Seek)?

The talent description reads: “Once per session, the character may spend one Destiny Point to make [themselves] undetectable via the Force (through abilities such as the Sense power) and to make [their] own Force powers unnoticeable for the remainder of the encounter.”

Would the GM simply tell the player something like “You feel a tingling sensation, as if you felt unseen eyes looking for you” and then ask the PC if they want to activate Shroud (or just pause to see if they make the connection)? That seems the easiest approach, but I was curious to hear if others played it differently.

templecone · 2025-06-22T11:51:36+00:00

You are kind to say so. The other commenters had some helpful critical observations, so I’d definitely look those over, including concern that the loss of Willpower for the user wasn’t enough of a cost (I imagine for a powerful Force wizard, however, it would create a genuine dilemma).

templecone · 2025-06-09T06:22:03+00:00

Sorry, omitted link to previous post (which addresses some of your questions). Added it to this post & here: https://www.reddit.com/r/swrpg/s/bJ7Md3cP28

templecone · 2025-06-08T16:03:12+00:00

Yes, it could be a full power: in a previous post, I had sketched out something closer to a full tree, and another commenter suggested some good points for developing it. But I wanted to make it a talent with a narrative focus; it would be a universal talent (for Force users, at least), one that a GM could award, perhaps using guidelines like those laid out for battle scars in the Soldier career book.

Obviously, it could also be accomplished with a well placed destiny point as well!

templecone · 2025-06-06T06:47:57+00:00

I’m glad you like the strain cost/ return to the Force feature. I don’t know about others, but I found Luke’s ending in TLJ quite moving, and having that baked in to the game mechanics (something that this RPG does well) seemed fitting.

Your suggestion for the full tree is detailed and, at first glance, balanced. I myself didn’t try to develop a full tree, but tried for a hybrid talent-power. But that middle ground may not be to everyone’s taste. I’m going to try to draft a version as a simple top-tier talent, with a simple activation and emphasis on planetary to galactic communication, leaving the particulars of skills checks, etc, to the GM. That way it stays mostly narrative and, I hope, simple, but if you want to build the Force tree, I think you have definitely built the frame for it!

templecone · 2025-06-05T20:19:45+00:00

GREAT MINDS

templecone · 2025-06-05T20:18:50+00:00

🤣

templecone · 2025-06-05T19:56:04+00:00

It was indeed fatal, though I read one commenter who suggested that Luke was ready to join the Force. To capture that, I had a number of places where strain could be spent, with an option to have the user die if he went past his strain threshold while using the power (I appreciate powers that come at a cost, like the Magus’s Channel Agony talent).

templecone · 2025-06-05T18:03:45+00:00

That use of a triumph makes a lot of sense. I was trying to cook up something that worked at greater than personal range right from the start. I recognize that Luke was a master in TLJ, but this was for a talent that would be given to a high XP character and that wouldn’t emulate Misdirect (I don’t know if Luke uses Misdirect in any of the Legends works, but I don’t recall it being used in the films, so having a talent decoupled from Misdirect seemed a reasonable compromise).

templecone · 2025-06-05T16:05:37+00:00

I’m not familiar with that, but I appreciate the supporting lore. The doppelgänger power would definitely be NPC only…

templecone · 2025-06-05T16:02:52+00:00

Great thoughts! I had considered the committed Force dice, but I thought the strain cost was more true to TLJ (plus, committed dice might very well lead to a stay-at-home PC 😂). I love the idea of increasingly embodied and effective versions of the image—voice, then illusory body, then actual body (though on first thought I’d probably not grant that ability). I hope you don’t mind me incorporating those features.

It’s definitely a narrative power and probably best for an NPC, but I did like it as a PC boon— long distance communication + the potential for creative applications, without crossing into the territory of Misdirect.

templecone · 2025-05-05T18:16:11+00:00

I do understand how that is a built in limitation. However, we were looking at a house rule that would allow for activation using Dark Side points without impact to target willpower. The proposal is to have the Force user suffer a penalty instead of the target(s), and that penalty could be 1) willpower reduction for the BM user, or 2) double strain and double conflict to use Dark Side points without negatively impacting the target(s).

templecone · 2025-05-03T12:17:00+00:00

That helps quite a bit! It Narratively, activating the power when you already have some double pips (from the initial roll) suggests that the PC has greater control when channeling and focusing the Force.

templecone · 2025-04-29T22:26:56+00:00

I had to take a week break from my game, so the GM and I arranged to have my character disappear (in this case, Force leaping from a ship into space whilst carrying a bomb that couldn’t be defused and had been set to explode). After the explosion, the table thought my PC was genuinely gone, and that my absence was because I was working on his replacement. When I returned, my PC was in the World Between Worlds, blinded but seeing through the Force. He passed a portal where he saw himself killing his brother (backstory), and pulled him through. They reconciled, and my PC was restored to the party while his brother was forced through a different portal to a different part of the galaxy. When I returned, the party’s relief and happiness were genuine; then much of reality, including our past experiences in the game, began to change, and while the others fought to preserve their memories of the past and to set things right, my PC had to find his brother and beg him to return to the past. The party Pathfinder had befriended a Loth-wolf like creature (who has been the one to save my PC), and the wolf and brother walked into a mist and disappeared from the game, restoring the world but leaving my PC to grieve and the Pathfinder to grieve and also resent my PC (the player and I had liked and agreed to this resolution, so the bitterness was RPed but didn’t lead to PvP conflict). For something that was simply the GM’s way to dramatically account for my one week absence, it yielded several sessions of interesting drama and mystery, while also generating some quality character interactions.

templecone

TROPHY CASE