Since last session, half of my Edge of the Empire group is Force-sensitive, so I’m currently in the progress of filling in the full descriptions of all the Force Powers for my Campaign-Group’s internal Wiki and came across something that has me at a disadvantage to be honest.
The Perception / Vigilance Control Upgrade of the Farsight Force power:
“When making a Vigilance or Perception check, you may roll a Farsight power check as part of that check.
You may spend :forcepoint: to gain either 1 :success: or 1 :advantage: (your choice) on the check.”
Now what baffles me is that there is not as usual any mentions of “May not be activated multiple times” but sadly there also is not alot of consistency in the Rulebooks and so in some it does explicitly say “May be activated multiple times” or “May not be activated multiple times” and some others like Savage Spirit where the Farsight Force power is from, does mention nothing of the sort.
So to make things easier for my players I want to describe the rules as explicit as possible,
but I can’t wrap my head around if it’s supposed to be a 1 time thing so capped at 1 Success / Advantage or a convert 1 or more FP into Successes / Advantages.
The duration upgrade also does not state that it can be activated multiple times, so this might be intentional (or simply oversight).
If both Upgrades would be one-time only, this would greatly limit the usability of this Force power to characters with higher Force Ratings.
(And making it more or less useless for the described use of making blind characters able to see normally except for very short amounts of time).
Am I missing something,
how would you guys handle this?
Thanks for any insights =)
I view the Farsight Control upgrade you are asking about as equivalent to the Influence Control upgrade that lets you roll an Influence Power check with your dice pool for any of the social skills. When you’re rolling your yellow and green dice, you include white dice equal to your Force Rating (assume none are committed elsewhere). Then you spend Force pips as advantages or successes as you see fit.
Multiple activations is meaningless in this context. You’re just rolling the dice and assigning all the O that match your leanings in the Force. You can do this whenever you are rolling the skill check. And the higher your Force Rating, the more white dice you are rolling, so the more opportunity for success you have. Thus, someone with this Control upgrade for Farsight always has a better Vigilance/Perception pool than an equivalent character without it. (Unless all their Force dice are committed elsewhere.)
This is the correct interpretation. There are several other force powers using this mechanic (Enhance for instance).
The Order 66 podcast covers this, at least in part, in episode 80 “An Interview with Savages”.
The duration upgrade seems ok without multiple activations, however the control upgrade with the ongoing effect is a bit odd in my book, as it seems to only provide +1 rank in Perception. Not bad, but it’s at the bottom of the tree.
As none of my players have ever taken this power I haven’t felt the need to house-rule it, but I’ve considered that the ongoing effect is more similar to Battle Meditation in this case, so you roll to activate (activate basic, and pick your upgrades), and by committing you have this benefit for as long as the Force die is committed. Arguably, it is a bit powerful, but you could increase it so that it requires two Force dice.
I concur with all the above. The intention is quite clearly that you’d spend as many Force points as you can to add the results desired.
There is also the matter that all like talents that specify, specify that it can be “activated multiple times.” None specify otherwise. So sense this one doesn’t specify that it can’t, I’d definitely rule that you can spend as many Force points as you want.