If folks want to revisit this, I'm cool with that. I think it's a difficult issue to address. On the one hand we have Yoda saying "a Jedi uses the force only for knowledge and defense, never for attack" and then we have all these cool powers in the books that let you attack.erilar wrote:Aside from the direction of the plot, I was also having trouble playing a force wizard. While it's okay for any of the combat jedi to chop up any number of bad guys with lightsabers, if Rade did one in with the Force, it meant a Dark Side point?
The movies and TV series are no help because most of the Force powers are used against droids, and those who do use force powers against the living are almost always Sith. Based on that, killing someone with the Force does seem DSP-worthy. But then flip it over to the KOTOR video game, and you're slamming people left and right with Force powers, often killing them in the process. So in that case, no DSP.
Given that we're headed into the Mandalorian Wars, and that we'll be seeing a lot of Force powers in play against the bucketheads, I think it's worth revisiting. I think the only one who's actually gotten a DSP from using Force powers aggressively is Zulen, though in almost every case he would have gotten a DSP anyway because he was purposefully giving into his rage. I think Rade and Quest might have gotten a DSP each over the course of the campaign, but to Lance's point, avoiding the DSPs by not using your force powers is just as big an issue as getting the DSPs in the first place.
I do think the Revised Core Rules (the previous edition of Star Wars) handled this better by giving Force users a quick-and-easy path to power by giving them bonus dice to use in their Force checks (IIRC), thus providing a very real temptation for using Dark Side Points.
I don't think we have a good temptation mechanic for DSPs in Saga Editon as it stands now. I'd be fine with allowing for non-gratuitous force killing if we could come up with a good DSP alternative, just so the threat (and temptation) of the Dark Side is still there. I think this becomes even more important during the Mandalorian Wars, where so many Jedi end up turning to the Dark Side.