So, as I’ve promised, (threatened?) in the past, this year the Force Wizard is sharing their wisdom (and strong opinions) about the Force talents in the FFG Star Wars RPG lines. This time I am starting off by a short discussion of Force Talents in general plus how I am setting up each installment.
What are Force talents (FTs)? In the rulebooks they are simply talents defined as being usable only by characters with a Force Rating of one or more. There are no specific mechanics associated with all FTs and many of the benefits are similar to those granted by other talents, such as a unique ability or adding narrative dice to a pool.
A variant of the latter is “Committing a Force die,” where the player dedicates 1+ Force dice to a given effect, so that the dice aren’t usable to trigger other Force abilities. The effect lasts until the wielder ends it by “un-committing” the dice. Example: A Force Rating 3 Consular/Healer commits a Force die to use the Healing Trance talent. Next round, they want to activate the Move Force power, but may only roll two Force dice, not the usual three — unless they end the Healing Trance (and almost certainly lose the talent’s benefit).
It can be important to know which talents are FTs as there are mechanics that affect these. For example, the Suppress Force power’s Mastery upgrade immediately shuts down the target’s active FTs if they require committing 1+ Force dice (among other effects).
In the rulebooks, FTs are visually distinguished in talent trees by the upper left corner of the talent box having a little sunburst or explosion:
Some FTs are “Conflict talents.” Once you buy the talent, at the beginning of each game session, your PC increases their Conflict score by one. Narratively, this can mean merely possessing the knowledge of how to use that talent creates conflict in your heart and mind, which brings you closer to the Dark Side. Perhaps you are often tempted to use this “Quick and Easy” but brutal way talent to solve your problems – and that scares you. Maybe you are lying to yourself and others about this knowledge, out of shame or for some other reason. Maybe the source of that knowledge is just plain evil. These talents also have a symbol in the tree, placed in the upper right border of the talent box:
Each Force Wizard’s Got Talent will cover several FTs. I plan to go in order of first appearance in the lines. This means I will start off with the Force-Sensitive Exile and Force-Sensitive Emergent universal specializations (specs) from Edge of the Empire and Age of Rebellion respectively. Later articles will be combined by Career and/or Specialization. The exception is that Improved/Supreme versions of “base” talents (E.g., Saber Throw/Improved Saber Throw) will be presented together. The number of talents per article may vary but I think most will feature four to six FTs. The specs have widely varying numbers of Force talents, many of which will be duplicates, especially in the case of specs published much later. (And the Force Wizard may even point out a few cool non-Force talents once in a while!)
Each talent entry will include the cost in XP, whether it is ranked or unranked, a list of all specs where it appears, and the book where it first appears. I am considering including an index at the end of each installment, possibly with links, much as I did with the Force powers series, but this may not happen depending on how complex it turns out to be.
I hope you find this latest Force Wizard series both enjoyable and useful. May the Force be with you always, Padawans and Disciples.
Linda Whitson
Latest posts by Linda Whitson (see all)
- Astral Projections – The Ripperdoc Is In - May 8, 2023
