[member="Danger Arceneau"]
There’s generally a few NFU professions where one can flourish.
- Droid or cyborg
- Admiral or general
- Scavenger, politician, criminal or pirate
- Merchant or businessperson
- Mandalorian, bounty hunter or soldier
You’ll note something about that list – only the last group actively compete with FUs in PVP combat.
Force Users are they key point about Star Wars. It’s what makes it unique from other settings and provides most of the heroes and villains as well as the flashy lightsabres and Force powers. I admit I often think this when I’m creating a character, though I’m certainly not against NFUs as my inclusion on the list of special people with Tegaea shows.
On a more OOC level many of came from boards where FUs and NFUs were segregated on a faction level. In cases like this the Republic would be NFU only whilst a Jedi faction would be FU only. Whilst I think combining the types is beneficial one downside is that Force Users have absorbed 75%+ of the leadership positions on the board.
Switching to PVP I hate to say it but power creep has virtually ensured that the majority of NFUs stand no chance in an invasion against a Master level Force User. There are exceptions etc but the overwhelming impression one gets is that NFUs for the most part are fodder. After all, when all you have are firearms against someone who can throw boulders with their mind and whose weapons can block your shots, you have a problem.
Now, I don’t think this is wrong per se. Canon is quite clear that NFUs are not the match of FUs except in special cases (Mandalorians, elite soldiers, unusual species). The issue is that SWRP has a
lot of Master level Force Users. As we rightly allow advancement rather than imposing arbitrary restrictions we have a situation where fully 25-40% of active Force users are Masters, and the same again are knights. Force users are meant to be powerful, but there isn’t meant to be 10 of them to 1 NFU.
So NFUs mostly take to non-combat roles. The IC 99% become the exceptions rather than the rule. After all, if you can make the character you want but also give them neat powers…why wouldn’t you?
The point really hit home during the Anti-Sith League meeting between the GA and SSC. Tegaea was the only one of 9 characters at the meeting who was not a Force User. If one looks around the factions only the Republic has consistently had an NFU leadership because they have the political game going.
Now, a parallel ranking system for NFUs has been tried in the past, as many of us remember from other boards. It had the advantage of providing a PVP ‘level’ for people so they could understand how to react. It also came with some serious issues, not least of which was that NFUs ended up with their IC and an OOC rank, some of which were at odds with each other.
So what’s to do? Well…nothing. SWRP does not want to go down the path of boards I’ve been at in the past where Force Users are either arbitrarily restricted in rank or number. That creates elitism and actually makes the whole FU vs NFU situation worse.
What I would like to see though is more NFUs taking part in Invasions to be given a fair go. We’re writing collaboratively here and ‘I block your attack and Force Lightning you’ ten times is not much fun.
Now I’m sure people will spring forward to offer how gracious and fair they’ve been in the past. It’s cool, you don’t need to justify yourself to me or anyone. I’m sure you’ve been beaten up by NFUs and so on. It doesn’t change the fact that NFUs account for much less of the long term, high activity characters, and that they clearly are less respected in PVP combat.
