Different Approach to Light/Dark Side skill ranks

General
#1

From a mechanical point of view, a Force-sensitive player would want to max out both the Light side and the Dark side of the force in order to “max out” their ideal stats.

As much as this may be an affront to RP (at least to a Jedi and a Sith compared to a Grey Force User) and the lore setting, it does allow more freedom for the players to choose how they want to build their characters.

However, to those that adhere to strickly Light or Dark side only characters, they are now at a disadvantage. They won’t get as much stats for their force powers, and they also have less mechanical choices.

The suggestion is to limit the player into making choices down the line (inspiration taken from Naia’s ramblings on Discord):
A total of 100 light side and dark side skill ranks can be earned. Both will increase Cha the same amount for as long as a total of 100 is reached. Light side skills will increase Wis more than Int, Dark Side skills will increase Int more than Wis.

So Force users can only have 100 Light & 0 Dark, 75 Light & 25 Dark, 50 Light & 50 Dark, 66 Light & 34 Dark, and etc. for as long as the sum of both skills are 100.

I can also imagine there being 95 Light & 5 Dark split allowing the possibilities of 5 dark skills allow the first rank of Force Choke or something, at the cost of 100 Light side rank perks.

The downside I can think of would be that 50/50 split “neutral/gray force users” players might be less optimal than it is currently. So I’d also suggest a diminishing return of the above 50 rank perks at some point. Somehow attempt to achieve a balance while not punishing players for their RP preferences.

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#2

I would say cap it at 150 total.
So you can go 100/50 or 75/75 or anything inbetween, it gives more freedom, with still giving the limited effect.

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#3

I’d be in favor of 100 total points personally. It would put all Force users on equal footing while at the same rewarding dedication to either side.

The 150 points total approach would still punish you for dedication and still make grey/neutral the best possible route. Which, I think, should not be encouraged.

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#4

Force powers need to expand further before we see about limiting Dark Side / Light Side investments.

#5

Question is: when expanding said light/dark side options, should one take future balancing/RP considerations into account? Both can be done at the same time and achieve better mechanical balance as well as RP interpretation of the mechanics.

#6

This is a great suggestion and could tie everything in from Auri’s post about perks needing meaningful unlocks. This dark/light side skill should be mostly an RP stat. BUT this stat unlocks skills in the combat/utility/support tree. For instance you should need some level of skill in force combat as a mechanical knowledge and some level of dark side affinity before unlocking force lightning. In this manner you would have similar choices along all the force powers to make and a few different ones depending on your RP choices.

Light Dark
Breach Lightning
Push Choke
Heal Drain Life
Aura Rage
Confusion Corruption

#7

honestly i don’t like putting lightning as full on dark, cause breach can be just as bad.

lemme explain: Breach works by finding flaws and making them worse, andro has rply used breach to fracture someones skull…then subsequently explode said skull. lightning and breach can be either either really and going down Radd’s list, aura and rage, same thing really ones offensive, the others defensive. sure a darksider is a raging maniac but vaapad users would likely use some form of rage in a sense

maybe have a special counter for dark and light somewhere that gives specific bonuses based on where that counter is, so dark rage can be murder machine super weapon while a light rage (or maybe focused assault or something) can be exactly the same only it’s more calcualted and gets more bab whilst dark rage gets more dmg

i still wanna see for destruction though just throwing an immense amount of energy to make an aoe attack…more than once i’ve needed a force aoe attack.