Hotfoot wrote:So when is violence dark side? Obi-Wan sliced a dude's arm off in a bar fight.
Who had a
fucking weapon and was pointing it at him and Luke.
After Obi-wan tried to defuse the situation and offered to buy them a drink.
I don't think I said justified violence was evil. In fact I'm pretty sure I didn't.
Jedi killed countless aliens in the Clone Wars.
What, indiscriminately? Or were these aliens fighting for the Separatists and trying to kill them?
Mace Windu sliced off Jango Fett's head in front of the man's son.
The same guy who
shot and killed a Jedi, and not only that but also tried to set Mace Windu on fire with his own personal flamethrower.
Not only that but was also responsible for murdering Zam Wessel and attempted murder of Padme. And when Mace Windu sliced off his head, the guy was shooting at him with his blaster. And
again, this was
after Mace attempted to tell Dooku to call off their arena style execution of Anakin, Obi-wan and Padme and arrest them.
Lightsabers are not tasers, they are extraordinarily lethal weapons that can tear apart creatures like hot knives through butter.
Um, duh? What, are you assuming I haven't watched the films or something?
PS Even tasers can kill.
Jedi use the Force to throw people around at dangerous speeds, knock them off ledges, and yes, to kill. Does it matter if they used Jedi Battle Mediation to guide their lightsaber to their target, or if they use telekinesis to crush their throats or throw them off a cliff? Does it matter if Mace Windu crushed Greivous's vital organs in their cybernetic shell, or if Obi-Wan blew him away with a blaster?
Yes, it does. "Life creates it, helps it grow." That's Yoda talking about how the Force works. In that context, using the Force to hurt another life form would be a bad thing to do, which is why Jedi arm themselves with lightsabres rather than go around force choking everyone. That's why Lightning is a Sith power for instance. It uses the Force to
fry a living being.
Jedi kill constantly. Their methods vary, but they use the force in some way to help make it happen. Hell, Luke killed thousands at the least in the Battle of Yavin, using the force to guide his shot to destroy the first Death Star.
You're manufacturing my argument it seems. Luke destroying the Death Star is justifiable. It's a battlestation and it's wartime. Everyone onboard is a combatant.
I never said that the Jedi don't or can't use the force to hurt or injure, it's that their philosophy is 'violence is a last resort', and that powers that seem to only be used for 'hurt/injure/kill' applications ought to be dark side. You're making it sound like I think the Jedi are pacifists or something, which is
nowhere near what I am saying.
I think it's pretty clear the Jedi do not have a problem using the force to injure or kill their opponents. The distinction comes, I believe, with how the Jedi come to the decision to kill and how they approach it. A Jedi should kill without becoming vengeful, kill because it's needed to save the lives of others or yourself, that sort of thing. Once anger, rage, becomes involved, that is the path to the Dark Side, not using a specific example of telekinesis. Anakin started his path to the dark side with nothing more than a heart full of rage and a lightsaber.
I'm fine with some powers only coming with devotion to the dark side, the embrace of excessive emotions, just like some powers should only come with accepting the balance of the light side, and the serenity that is ideal in that. However, something like telekinesis, which is a very basic Jedi Trick, should not be considered evil because you can use it to choke somebody. Sleeper and submission holds that cut off oxygen to the brain were at one point commonly used by police to subdue violent criminals. A Jedi, who can sense the life force of someone, could use choke to subdue without killing, given enough concentration.
You keep calling it telekinesis, yet when I say 'Force Choke' I am referring to specific examples where the Force is used to kill - and the way the Force works is told to us by Yoda. "Quicker, easier, more seductive" is what he calls the darkside. Anger, fear, hatred, Jedi don't use powers while influenced by those feelings (and Sith presumably do).
You can think up applications for TK that involve 'subduing' people and in a way that doesn't injure them - congratulations,
so did I (scroll up the thread). I'm not talking about 'lol use tk to put a sleepy hold on someone, n00b'. I'm talking about
Force Choke, the power Vader uses to
kill and injure arrogant Imperial officers and his own wife, the power that Luke uses on two Gamorreans at the start of ROTJ which is supposed to set him up as someone who might be 'skirting the edge' and thus could he fall, could he give in, like his father did (which is part of the plot of ROTJ).
You can say "Oh but intention matters a lot..." and I will say - yeah, the same thing (scroll up, where I basically agree with you that the way the Saga edition handles it is better). The complaint I have is that Force Choke is more than simple application of TK. You can use TK to hold someone, to subdue them, to stun them, to lift them up off their feet so they can't move, and all of those wouldn't cost you a DS point. Use it to hurt and injure someone, use it to
kill, and in an unjustified manner, then yes, you earned a DS point. Hell even if it's justified, how is it not a bad thing given how we know the Force works per Yoda's lines in ESB? Just because you earn a DS point isn't the end of the goddamn world and your character is now an Evil Sith. You have to earn a lot of DS points before that happens, and you can use Force points to cancel out a DS point. How do you know, in RPG terms, Luke didn't get a DS point for choking those two Gammoreans?
Imperial Overlord wrote:Stofsk wrote:That's the thing, if it's a power that 'mostly' has DS applications why not call it a DS power? If however circumstances are extenuating, leaving it to GM's discretion is my preferred recourse.
Under the Saga Edition system if its counted as a Dark Side power then any use is an automatic Dark Side point. That's how their classification system works. You can still get Dark Side points for use of other powers (say unjustifiably Force Choking someone to death or dropping them off a ledge or smooshing them with a heavy object) but that's at the GM's discretion.
And I already agreed that the way Saga Edition handles it is the way it generally ought to be.
The point of contention appears to be that I think Force Choke should be a DS power and made distinct from say, ordinary TK. In fact, everyone who has replied to me thus far has been arguing against my position that Force Choke is bad by giving me examples of TK being used... not Force Choke. Perhaps I'm not being understood.
I make a distinction between Move Object (or ordinary TK) and Force Choke (or Grip, whatever it was called) because the former is a 'neutral' application, but choking someone doesn't have any application other than using the Force to hurt. Given how Yoda says the Force works in ESB, I always took that to mean that if you use the Force to hurt a living being, you're basically (maybe literally or figuratively) using the Force to hurt itself, since life is what sustains its power. The other problem is people assume that "Oh if a Jedi does it, it's not evil/bad/ungood" which is specious reasoning. Why is Luke choking a Gamorrean, Yoda TK-shoving the Emperor, or Anakin smacking Genoshans necessarily proof that they aren't using a bad power? When Vader uses it it is clearly terrible. But when Yoda smashes the Emperor with the Force, it's ok. Well, maybe it is ok because the situation merits it - but if the Force works as Yoda describes in ESB, then maybe say Yoda using TK to smash the Emperor is still a bad but
necessary thing, because the Emperor is the greater evil. Under the revised edition rules, maybe using TK to shove the Emperor would have earned Yoda a DS point for using Force Grip... but it would have also earned him a Force Point because he's still smushing the Emperor (the BAD GUY RAR) so it cancels out. I hope that makes sense.
It's like violence is a last resort vs violence being used first. Here's an analogy: you can punch someone in the face and generally speaking it's considered a bad thing. But if you're defending yourself or someone it's not a bad thing, it's justified. Even if you are justified you can still get into trouble though. And you can punch a punching bag and it's not a bad thing because you're not hurting anyone. Maybe that illustrates what I'm getting at?
Yoda used the Force to throw the Emperor hard across the room and throw a Senate pod at the Emperor that would have smushed him if it connected. Those are offensive moves. And your argument supports that offensively using the Force in most cases should be ajudicated on a case by case basis as to whether or not it incurrs Dark Side points.
I agree.