Damn, I had not seen you answered...
On the contrary I Gamemastered the Dark Empire expansion for SWRPG and remember all the canonical descriptions of Force nuances, power and restrictions.
Emboldened clearly in the Core Rulebook however is the maxim, that all SWRPG is ultimately governed firstly by the romanticism of the scene, secondarily by rules, stats and mechanics.
That is a judgment and judgment may differ from one another. If I believe that these restrictions are meaningless, you have no way to convince me or any other that believes-it. Whatever your care socalled rulebook's are, there is a litteracy that contradict you.
The Force most certainly does have restrictions and nuances in the RPG environment. The Force Storm power requires a minimum of 6 Dark Side points (in game terms, 100% evil alignment) in order to use and begins at a Difficulty level of 30+ (very difficult) for the skill roll, under the d20 (ie. nwn) system. Under the d6 (original) system it required a minimum of around 25d6 to even think about using, and failing a roll by even a little bit has it turn around and engulf the user.
Funny I should be blamed for that as I did not do any change to that. So as Canderous said: "We will never speak about-it anymore."
Palpatine can use such extremes in the Force because essentially his stats are right off the dial. Even then the way he was defeated here was simply by being distracted by the efforts of Leia (now a Jedi Padawan), or actually it was her unborn child which distracted Palpatine in the midst of using Force Storm, which turned around and engulfed him in the Eclipse instead of continuing to ravage the planet below.
According to what you say, it would not be possible for Anakin Solo to distract the Emperor as he is very restricted is he not? I mean, being in a woman's womb would be a 100 times more "restrictive" than in any heavy armor....
Similarly in RPG under the d6 system armour restrictions are entirely represented by a Dexterity penalty, -1 pip for light armours, -2 pips for scout armours, -1d6 for heavy or powered armours, -2d6 for very heavy armours like armoured spacesuits (more like vehicles than armours).
Considering the average human has 2d6 in Dexterity, and dexterity rolls are the basis of hand-eye skills like blaster and melee fighting, or dodging, the penalties of wearing heavy armour were obvious and worked a lot like reducing your skills a few levels worth.
You could "han solo" your way around with a blaster much more quickly wearing no armour, otherwise you'd have to wait until very high character levels to hit much in a thick suit of alloy plate.
This above is off-topic with my mod. Not that I don't fancy reading more, but if you want to make mods about "2d6"... well, keep in mind that I restrict myself to "spells.2da" :P
Jedi added Sense skill die to lightsabre skill (dex base) and Control skill die to lightsabre damage (5d6 base), so it works like this: medium level jedi approaches an armoured elite stormtrooper of Vader's personal guard, the foe has 5d6 Dodge and the Jedi 4d6 Lightsabre plus 6d6 in Sense for a total of 10d6 to hit, does that easy.
The Stormtrooper has a 2d6 base STR to resist damage, plus 1d6 vs energy for the armour, for a total of 3d6, the Jedi has 5d6 for the lightsabre and will sever a head if he triples the opposing roll (5d6 vs 3d6), will sever a limb if he doubles the opposing roll and will wound the guy and put him on the ground if he exceeds the roll. But the Jedi adds 6d6+2 for Control, making a total of 11d6+2 vs 3d6.
Oh yeah that Stormtrooper is buggered. Now the story isn't much different up against another Jedi. It's all a matter of opposed rolls.
Well, here's another long paragraph that tries to legitimate that armors have a certain bonusZzzzz Uh what? Ah yes, restrictions... Do you remember when simple jedi knights united their powers on Yavin to move an entire fleet of star destroyer, vanir? Do you know how the empire failed their attack? Yeah, you just know-it, don't you? They failed to stick the Dorsk 81 and its friends in heavy armors, that way, I'm sure they would have been able to restrict them from moving star destroyer, even from moving simple ants! (Gosh, I forgot Horn's son is not doing this with telekinesis, but by force suggestion... oh my god, is this too restricted by armors???????)
But just look at the numbers you're working with in Jedi fighting with a lightsabre, compared to regular soldiery. 10d6 to hits, 11d6 damage, this is just a mid level character. High level Jedi, say Luke or Darth Vader and it's over 20 die on every roll they do and difficulties of only around 15 for any Force power or skill use they have to accomplish.
Armour isn't restricted under the d6 system per se, it's just plain superfluous. It doesn't help a Jedi one little bit and all it does is give him one less DEX die to work with for the Lightsabre skill and for reflex Ability rolls (like keeping your balance crossing a rope bridge).
Jedi just have so many die to work with, armour is a joke. If one wears it, it's just for show or because they need a life support system like Vader (and it's smart to armour one of those).
Okay now under the d20 system, the conversion is from the D&D/NWN system. Just like the Verbal/Semantic/Component requirements for spell casting, therefore the technical restriction on wizards in armour is that special suits can be made from enchanted materials (like mythril) and spells marked V,C but not S can be used in restrictive suits.
Sorry, but I don't really care for all the programming bioware and Obsidian did. If I don't like-it, I'll take the ultimate rebalance (
http://knightsoftheoldrepublic.filefront.com/file/KOTOR_Ultimate_Gameplay_Rebalance;117766) form Darkon... :D
Similarly for Jedi the concern is about physical restriction and specific Force power usage. Some powers are fine in restrictive armour. Ones like Burst of Speed work not by magical means, the Force is not magic, they work by (fictionally) speeding up the metabolism of the PC to such a degree that movement speed is doubled and more attacks are gained. Inherently they require an unrestrictive physical environment to work.
If I put a Jedi's feet in concrete trust me, Burst of Speed is NOT going to add to his AC anymore. It's a physical restriction.
Now that is something which I find highly appropriate to scenes in the RPG, heavy armours that are unrestrictive would be special/unique suits, otherwise heavy armours are indeed physically restrictive. Special armours might include powered armours though, with servos to counter movement restriction rather than provide coarse strength bonuses (the technological version of "magical"). Still that's special suits.
Uh, the force is magic. No such thing. It is describe in some way by certain authoras and in other way by others. Also, Force speed, as you call-it, is not only a physical thing, it is also psychological. Accelerate your reaction times and the such. By the way, have I mentionned that this mod is not an obligation if it hurts you to use-it? Have I added that maybe, just maybe, the other 353 persons that downloaded-it do think this mod has a reason to download-it? It is not logical for a Jedi like bastilla to walk in undie in the Jedi Enclave or else. But why then do modders make underwear mods for kotor? You see, just because you think something is not RPG enough, it doesn't mean it doeasn't have its reason to be.
But you might find something else entirely to be "romantic" and that's fair. Just my points were well thought out variances.
Nope, I don't find it romantic, I find-it more logical. Because you will find that life is not a RPG. If you speak in an ill way to your superior, there is not 2d6 chance that he'll kick your arse. There may be some probability, but you may decide not to do-it without launching a 2d6 (at least, I hope you won't use one :D)
In other words I really don't think we ought to be talking about "realism" when making heavy armours unrestrictive to Force powers like Burst of Speed. In fact to avoid the whole "realism in RPG argument" it's probably best keeping it within the realms of RPG for discussion.
In other words, you have the RPG view which places restrictions to make things playable on a scrap of paper, while I use the litteracy view which is much more restricted. Your view is good for your things and mine is for something else. All in all, what I could give you is that we don't speak about realism, but then, RPG is the furthest thing from realism I know, so I gotta maintain what I said about realism.
Sorry I wasn't meaning to poo poo your mod. I just wondered first off why you didn't just redefine armours in the baseitems.2da as a much easier way of removing armour restrictions.
As I said, this mod's purpose is to be compatibility friendly. If there are other heavy armors added by other mods, they will be compatible with my mod (it means that you fill be able to use force speed and force storm with them). This could not have been achieved using your way, or so I think. Besides, if that is waht you seek, there is another mmod that modifies this particular .2da, look for-it and you may be happier. I prefer mine because it is more compatible with more mods, as it uses the TSL Patcher.
But then secondarily the baseitems columns are there for a reason, to describe armour characteristics in game terms. And what we're doing by changing the column to make armour force compatable is to redefine the particular AC class as unrestrictive physically.
What we're actually doing by doing it this way is stating that restrictive heavy armours aren't actually physically restrictive, and that's just not true.
And I don't feel like making this simple mod into something more complicated and less efficient.
Remember that most Force powers can be used in any armour already. The main ones which can't are those designed to protect Jedi in the absence of wearing armour, or otherwise those which necessarily require a completely unrestrictive physical environment in which to work.
So me and the 354 (yeah, now, its already plus 1, for the time it takes to answer you...) other people will be able to enjoy our game without these restrictions and you'll have fun with your vanilla restrictions.