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Did Mon Mothma know?
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MrNexx
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 6:44 pm    Post subject: Did Mon Mothma know? Reply with quote

So, listening to Moving Target, we know that Mon Mothma knew Bail, and knew Leia more or less from when Bail brought her home. Did she know who she was?
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Whill
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 29, 2017 10:41 pm    Post subject: Re: Did Mon Mothma know? Reply with quote

MrNexx wrote:
So, listening to Moving Target, we know that Mon Mothma knew Bail, and knew Leia more or less from when Bail brought her home. Did she know who she was?

In Legends, no she didn't know. Mon Mothma may have known that Padme was pregnant before she died, but she did not know about her secret marriage to Anakin or who the father might be. When Padme died she was made to look pregnant towards the illusion that the child died with her. I'm pretty sure it was Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader that explicitly stated that Bail didn't even tell Mon Mothma about Leia's true identity. He was desperate to keep her safe, so kept the secret. (There is a scene in the book where Darth Vader comes to their castle on Alderaan and Bail is frantically trying to keep Leia and the droids away from him.) I think Queen Breha may have not even been told about Leia, but it seems Breha did at least know Leia was Force-sensitive so kept that hidden from the Empire.

In Canon, it is explicit that only Yoda, Obi-Wan and Bail knew Leia's true identity. Mon Mothma, and not even Queen Breha knew.
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MrNexx
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 6:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

This gets to another question I had, though it more ties to the marriage of game rules to the movies.

Using sense powers on close relatives is a lot easier... but Leia's "resistance to the mind probe is considerable." Shouldn't the relative ease have twigged Vader?
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Whill
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 12:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

MrNexx wrote:
This gets to another question I had, though it more ties to the marriage of game rules to the movies.

Using sense powers on close relatives is a lot easier... but Leia's "resistance to the mind probe is considerable." Shouldn't the relative ease have twigged Vader?

Vader is not referring to using the Force on Leia there. He is referring to the interrogator droid. When ANH was made, Vader was not shown to have mind reading powers and Leia was not related Vader. However, Vader was able to read Luke's mind in RotJ so that does indeed beg the question of Vader trying to do that with Leia in ANH. If the Force can have a strong influence on the weak minded, then it is logical that the Force has a weak influence on the strong willed. To represent this in my game, the Willpower skill can resist the Force (and Leia could have a high Willpower skill).
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Bren
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 2:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
To represent this in my game, the Willpower skill can resist the Force (and Leia could have a high Willpower skill).
All uses?

Or did you mean only mental powers like reading and influencing thoughts and emotions.
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 30, 2017 3:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bren wrote:
Whill wrote:
To represent this in my game, the Willpower skill can resist the Force (and Leia could have a high Willpower skill).
All uses?

Or did you mean only mental powers like reading and influencing thoughts and emotions.

All uses RAW says Perception can be used to resist, I allow Willpower. In my game, Willpower is a Perception skill, so without the Willpower skill resistance would default to base Perception as in RAW.
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Bren
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 11:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
Bren wrote:
Whill wrote:
To represent this in my game, the Willpower skill can resist the Force (and Leia could have a high Willpower skill).
All uses?

Or did you mean only mental powers like reading and influencing thoughts and emotions.

All uses RAW says Perception can be used to resist, I allow Willpower. In my game, Willpower is a Perception skill, so without the Willpower skill resistance would default to base Perception as in RAW.
So not all Force Powers. That makes sense to me. I had forgotten that Force Lightning could be resisted by Perception. While that seems a bit peculiar, those are the rules.

For the pedantically minded let me note that there are some Force powers that can be resisted, but cannot be resisted by Perception (which is why I asked the question). For example Danger Sense and Life Sense (are resisted by Control only), Drain Life Essence (no resistance roll), and Force Scream (damage resisted by Alter or Strength) do not allow a Perception roll to resist. Telekinesis specifically says it can be used to lift another person but it does not specify any roll to resist that levitation. Telekinetically thrown objects can be dodged and based on the films it should be possible to parry thrown objects (we see that done more than once in the films it seems difficult to do), but the rules don’t mention parrying as an option.

Tangentially, I also note that helpful powers such as Accelerate Another's Healing, Control Another's Disease, Control Another's Pain, Place Another in Hibernation Trance, Return Another To Consciousness, Transfer Force do not allow a Perception roll to resist the power. Of course the vast majority of characters wouldn’t ever choose to resist the help, but in certain circumstances some characters might want to resist (for cultural, personal, or circumstantial reasons) even though the rules as written do not provide for any resistance roll. In such cases I think Willpower would be a good choice for a resistance roll.
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 11:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
Bren wrote:
Whill wrote:
To represent this in my game, the Willpower skill can resist the Force (and Leia could have a high Willpower skill).
All uses?

Or did you mean only mental powers like reading and influencing thoughts and emotions.

All uses RAW says Perception can be used to resist, I allow Willpower. In my game, Willpower is a Perception skill, so without the Willpower skill resistance would default to base Perception as in RAW.


Incorrect. Willpower is a knowledge skill.. Not perception.
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Bren
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 11:36 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
Incorrect. Willpower is a knowledge skill.. Not perception.
True, but Whillpower is a Perception skill. Wink
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Whill
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 5:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bren wrote:
True, but Whillpower is a Perception skill. Wink

Good one, but Whillpower is actually a whole other attribute!

Bren wrote:
...In such cases I think Willpower would be a good choice for a resistance roll.

I would probably allow Willpower to resist the Force in any circumstance I think a character's force of will could resist the Force. I'm going to try a couple revisions to Force rules to see what I can work out so it will be more formalized in my game when it can and can't. If I feel Willpower should be a smaller factor but still be a factor, there is always the option of adding 1 pip for every D in the target's Willpower to the Force-users difficulty. More on the relationship of Willpower to Perception and the Force below...

Whill wrote:
In my game, Willpower is a Perception skill, so without the Willpower skill resistance would default to base Perception as in RAW.
garhkal wrote:
Incorrect. Willpower is a knowledge skill.. Not perception.

No, you are incorrect. You're trying to correct me on my own house rules now? "In my game, Willpower is a Perception skill". It has been since the very day in 1992 that I bought the blue Vader book and read about the new skill. I adopted it as a full-fledged skill but immediately moved it to Perception.

Going back to 1e, Perception could be used by Force-users and non-Force-users to resist some Force powers such as Affect Mind and Receptive Telepathy. Before that, film dialogue established that the Force can have a strong influence on the weak minded (another term for weak willed). I feel Obi-Wan was telling the truth there, and if that statement is true then it would logically proceed that the Force would have a weak influenced on the strong willed. Stormtroopers have low Willpower and Leia has a high Willpower. Even back in the 1e days before the Willpower skill, uses of the future Willpower skill were already inherent aspects of the Perception attribute. Even outside of resisting the Force, if I needed a Willpower type of roll I asked for Perception. When I saw the new Willpower skill in the blue Vader 2e book, I saw that Perception was still used to resist Force powers but the new Willpower skill was placed in Knowledge. I immediately thought it was misplaced in Knowledge so moved it to Perception where it had already existed as an inherent aspect of the Perception attribute (for Force-related and non-Force uses).

The day I got blue Vader, I also moved Intimidation to Perception because yet again, aspects of the new skill had already existed in my game as inherent aspects of the Perception attribute. It has always been a part of the game that if you roll for things that do not have skills, the GM picks the most applicable attribute for it. It was obvious to me that RAW placed these new skills in Knowledge because Knowledge was unfortunately was a common dump stat by min-maxers. But I'm only explaining why I moved them from RAW and not arguing why anyone else should. I know a lot of you didn't start with this game until blue Vader or R&E so may feel Knowledge is a natural place for these skills. If you feel these skills are just fine in Knowledge, then great. I don't care where anyone else places the skills, so please do whatever works for you. But I clearly specified I was talking about my game and not RAW.
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 7:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The question of what attribute Willpower should fall under has come up many times before and I rather doubt there will be many minds changed by either Whill or I explaining our rationales. That said...

Other than the fact that in the rules Perception and Willpower can be used to resist some Force powers, I don't see that Perception and Willpower have any inherent relationship. In the real world Perceptive people can have weak wills and strong willed people can be unperceptive. Sometimes it seems like a certain lack of perception (or narrow perception) is sometimes even an asset in being strong willed. I don't see any compelling reason to think that the universe of Star Wars is very different than our universe in those respects. Now from the perspective of balancing attributes, Perception is already a very powerful and useful stat in the RAW. It governs initiative in combat and provides the base for a plethora of the most useful noncombat skills and characters with a good Perception already have a resistance to many Force powers. While I see no compelling reason to put Willpower under Knowledge, there isn't a more compelling reason to put it under any of the other five attributes. In addition I think it is more balanced to put it under the Knowledge attribute and for PCs it means that there are more PC templates that will provide some resistance to Force powers. And putting Willpower under Knowledge fits with the notion that the Jedi were not solely (and probably not even primarily) warriors but were supposed to be knowledgeable, persuasive, observant, and possessed of a calm mind and an even (or at least under control) temperament. Absent any good reason to change the RAW, I just leave Perception where the designers put it.

The case for Intimidation falling under Perception is better than the case for Willpower, but I don't really like the clever con man and debater also being the best at intimidating and scaring people. If I were going to change to another attribute, I'd most likely put intimidation under Strength since the non-villainous character who we most often see use intimidation is Chewie.
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PostPosted: Sun Oct 01, 2017 10:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Though, consider that Intimidation also includes Torture, which gets us back into "things for which knowledge is useful."

In a lot of ways, Mechanical winds up being Knowledge applied through Dexterity... a combination of reflexes and knowing the device you're working with. Technical might be viewed as Knowledge applied through Perception. You can be a wrench twiddler of great skill, but unless you can tell what is wrong and know how to fix it, you're going to be horrible at Technical skills.

If you approach it that way, you do wind up reclassifying a lot of skills... pure Perception skills are rarer, and its position as the default social attribute makes it natural to move many of them there... Intimidation can be pure Perception, but you might want to make Torture into a Technical skill.
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 12:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bren and Nexx, great points. Yes, the attributes themselves overlap. There is some Dexterity in Mechanical, Technical, and Strength. There is a "Knowledge" aspect to most all skills, so that argument for any skills being there is not too convincing to me.

Perception has physical awareness related skills, and character interaction/influence/social awareness skills. Most D6 games actually split those up into two separate attributes. From Star Wars' inception, Perception was a combo-attribute. Willpower is admittedly neither, so it is the odd man out. There really isn't any attribute for Willpower, so you've got to put it somewhere. If a GM's sense of attribute balance is helped by putting the odd man in Knowledge, I get that. I personally feel Perception wins out because I can see Willpower being somewhat related to 'force of personality', a phrase sometimes used to apply to influential people.

Other D6 games also split up Dexterity (and even Strength!), but I really think that Star Wars could stand with Perception being split up into two separate attributes. But that would make seven normal attributes and would require extra attribute dice for allocation. We've talked about that on D6 Online and most Star Wars fans I know just feel uneasy with altering the "magic numbers" of 6 attributes, an 12D attribute total for average characters and an 18D attribute total for most PCs. I don't think 7/14/21 would be a big deal, but ultimately I just decided to keep the combo-Perception and make The Force an attribute that most characters have 0D in. (And even if you did split up Perception into two attributes, yes Willpower would still be the odd man out.)

The point about characters being good to one area of skills not necessarily applying to another area of skills would have to apply to RAW's existing combo-Perception attribute. In real life, people with really good physical awareness are not necessarily good at interaction/influence/social awareness, and vice versa. But in the cinematic reality of the game, they all default the same. If you want a more realistic division, you'll have to split the attribute. If not, the good news is there is still a way to represent that with the game system as is. If you want a character that is really good at physical awareness and not social awareness, that can be represented with low Perception and skill dice in only physical awareness skill. Or vice versa. A character with a low Willpower can have skill dice in Perception skills and a character with high Willpower can have low skill dice in Perception skills, even in my game with Willpower in Perception. So this level of realism is still possible in my game. (If a GM really wants more realism in his game then he probably shouldn't put Willpower under any attribute and instead just make the skill its own attribute. But I wouldn't.)

Regarding attribute balance, I've also moved First Aid to Knowledge since it requires more than just technological abilities. First Aid is extremely important. And GMs are the ultimate source of attribute balance by making Knowledge important regardless of which skills are moved to Perception. And finally, I'm fine with the emphasis on Perception in my game. That's where all the skills most associated with roleplaying are, and this is a roleplaying game.
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 12:47 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
I personally feel Perception wins out because I can see Willpower being somewhat related to 'force of personality', a phrase sometimes used to apply to influential people.
I'm not seeing a connection. Willpower is internally directed at controlling oneself. Force of personality is outwardly directed at controlling or influencing others.

But I perceive neither of us are likely to change our opinions on this issue...regardless of our willpower or lack thereof.
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 02, 2017 11:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm not trying to change your opinion. I concede that Willpower is different than both the physical awareness and social awareness skills of Perception, and I always encourage all GMs to do whatever works for them.

I'm just explaining that (1) I feel Perception is slightly more relevant to Willpower than Knowledge, (2) I'm not as worried about the importance of Perception being unbalanced with Knowledge in my system because I as a GM make Knowledge important (GMs are the ultimate balancing factor), and (3) low attribute values and specific skill allocations allow for the "realism" of characters to be good at certain areas of skills and not others in the same attribute. It is not unrealistic for there to also be characters who are good at physical awareness, social awareness, and Willpower. Because all options are still possible in my game, I don't feel the need to disassociate physical awareness from social awareness (or Willpower from both).

I realize that this discussion is mostly just food for thought for other GMs reading this, most of whom are lurkers.
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Last edited by Whill on Mon Oct 02, 2017 6:37 pm; edited 1 time in total
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