usgrandprix said:

Yeah, an opposed check would be cumbersome in this system, and even in Saga it added another roll that needed to be resolved.

That's why I liked that ligthsabers had those defensive traits buit in.  And adding a pre-req to access those traits would be fairly simple to track, as it's either "Yes, you qualify and get to use those traits" or "No, you don't qualify and so don't get to use those traits."

Actually, I can handle defensive capabilities being skill/talent training and this should apply to ALL weapons (Vibro axe, etc..), it makes sense.  But, YES, Lightsabers need to have Breach. 

Perhaps, with Force training, one can get default Defense and Deflect.  Maybe the Lightsaber skill or a Lightsaber Combat talent (maybe even an ongoing effect of the Force) would do this.

Donovan Morningfire said:

I think it's to reflect how lightsabers are just plain harder to use than swords. Yes, a sword (and. perhaps, also lightsabers) is easier to parry with than most other weapons, but right now there's not really anything to indicate how hard a lightsaber is to wield without the training to do so. Removing the defensive quality is one way to do that. I don't really have an opinion on whether it's a good way to reflect that, though. :)

Slaunyeh said:

Well, a lightsaber is, at it's core design, a really fancy sword.  Given the business end has no mass and thus becomes difficult to properly wield, I think requiring the user to be trained (i.e. has ranks in the Lightsaber skill) in order to have access to the weapon's Defensive quality becomes a nice, easy way to reflect that.

So if you're not trained, no Defensive quality as you don't really know how to use the weapon to it's full advantage, namely the fact that there's no mass to overcome so it'd be incredibly easy to intercept/parry an incoming attack.  But once you've spent the time practicing with it (picked up a skill rank or two), you now have a feel for the weapon and how it handles, and thus can take full advantage of a mass-less blade that can cut through most materials like a hot knife through butter.

Upon reading the errata pages, and being offended that I bought a Beta book that now has some edits on practically every page, I can say this. After all is said and done, I really hope that one of the later books, once they have gotten over their fear of Jedi and their iconic weapons, and the unbalancing power both seem to bring to games (not often a problem in other games of mine, but whatever), gives us a Jedi-themed Specialization, and that one of its early to middle Talents is Jedi Battle Training. This Talent could give me back the Defensive quality, and make it accurate (no vibro-weapon should keep Defensive, if the Lightsabers famous for intercepting attacks don't), as in ranged, too, and maybe go back to giving it some of it's original power. I'm not saying the lightsaber has to be the be-all and end-all, penultimate weapon in Star Wars, but it should have the cool stuff we all know and love about them, AND I shouldn't have to burn through three talents to get them. This should be, for my Jedi, the one and only weapon I use throughout my whole life. It won't be getting frequently modified, upgraded with this kit I bought on Corellia, and I won't have two other weapons to whip out, as the battlefield conditions change, and so it should be a bit above and apart from some of these, especially being pracitvally the ONLY melee weapon in the universe; you can look at that chart, and see a list of melee toys, but this is a blaster universe, with Jedi that have melee weapons to compensate for it, you don't see many other melee weapons, in movies, games, or anywhere. Certainly they are there, but seen almost as rarely as lightsabers are perceived to be in this game.

I can understand wanting to keep them from being silly, and if they can do it in this game, where no PCs or NPCs will ever have one (you can't be a Jedi, you won't see any, and only the Emperor's most powerful servants will have them, even among his FS ones. You can't buy one, because who else did? They'd turn the seller in, or fear the Stormtroopers. How do you even offer it for sale? Having one is akin to a sign to every Stormtrooper to shoot you), it seems, then it can only help later, when the game has to step out of the Empire's shadow, and remember that lightsabers exist, and 2+ members of every party, as well as 75% of the bad guys will have them, which would be a terrible place for them to be a hand-held nuke, or a wet spaghetti noodle. It's also fine to make them Talent-driven, somewhat, as even General Grievous, a skilled warrior before, trained further by a Jedi Master + Sith Lord specialized in fighting WITH lightsabers against other enemies WITH lightsabers, still can't do everything with one that a Jedi can, experience and superior reflexes not being enough. To this end, a Talent, or two, to give them the ability to apply Defensive, Deflection, and/or Pierce might be appropriate.

Jedi Combat Training
Activation: Passive
Ranked: Yes
Trees: Lightsaber Master (some similarly named other future-made thing)
This Talent augments your combat capabilities with the favored weapon of the Jedi, the lightsaber. Each rank gives you two points to allocate between the following list of Weapon Qualities: Defensive, Deflection, Pierce. Once allocated, these points cannot be changed, but function with any lightsaber your character wields.

Put this Talent on a Jedi tree once, or maybe twice, and you can approach what a Lightsaber was going to be, without having them always be cheese, and it gives that player a bit of flexibility with what the lightsaber will do. It also reflects some of the "it takes time to master this weapon" feeling people always want lightsabers to have, even if no other weapons usually do.

Venkelos,

Regarding your talent idea, I came up with something similar for my Jedi Initiate specialization quite a while ago, but simplified it so that each level of Lightsaber Defense provided a rank of the Defensive and Deflection qualities to the Jedi's lightsaber when they were wielding it.  Works much cleaner, and ties into the classic lore than being adept at using a lightsaber was a mark of great prowess and a heads-up to the local criminal riff-raff to tread very carefully.

Also, given lightsabers already have Breach, which makes personal Soak all but worthless anyway, Pierce is pretty much unneeded, as it does so little against vehicle armor as to not be worth taking.

I think it would be cool to add another weapon quality, Dangerous. Any time a weapon with the Dangerous quality that is used untrained gains a difficulty die at rank 1 or a challenge die at rank 2. This would be good to showcase certain weapons as being dangerous to use untrained. I would see the lightsaber as having Dangerous 2.

Just a thought.

Yeah. Dangerous… sounds nice! Mostly applicable in relation to the UCT, any other weapons that could have it? A thermal detonator?

Anyways, I'd love to see some people's take on Jedi specialisations when the times come…

Donovan Morningfire said:

One supposes. I seem to remember reading in the last 16 pages possible plans to remove Breach, since they seem somewhat hellbent on making lightsabers "just another weapon", rather than a "swiss army ALL OF IT of twinks". In that case, having Pierce was better than nothing, even if lesser than Breach. Having both as equal options in said Talent, yeah probably dumb, but I can only say oops.

mouthymerc said:

Trying to make the lightsaber cool is nice, but why do people often want to make it so hard to use, compared to every other weapon. There are no Jedi, and no one else can learn how to use this thing, even with trial and error, so no Skill available for it,even as some "excluded from all trees, pay double" sort of skill, like a 40k Elite Advance. Then, they take an, admittedly, rather silly weapon, and try to nerf it down until, when the Empire is weakened, and the Jedi come back, they will probably look at the lightsaber and say "why did we ever use these? Let's just build something simpler, easier, and such. Oh, vibroblades used to work for us, way back when, let's grab those again." Taking a weapon with as many built in limits, and then making it have a mechanical probability of maiming you, or sucking, when you are already forbidden to get the training, smacks odf one more attempt to just make people not want them, or Jedi, and let their absence slide. You already have that every bad guy will either shoot you on sight, or call in the guys that will, as soon as you draw the thing, and that assumes you can find one. depending on who your allies are, they might not favor a saber-wielding Jedi much, either, or the attention you will inevitably draw to their operations, with your "I'm over here" flag. You also already lose out on dice for no training, or ability thereof. I know that the lightsaber is still a crazy weapon, with great damage, crazy crit, and Breach + Vicious, but I sort of wonder if, when trying to mechanically nerf it, they failed to realize some of the not-on-paper, non-mechanical parts of its balancing scale. Maybe we should just let them kind of stay cool, something the players can WANT to strive for, despite the risks, rather than a curiousity people question why it was ever used, and players saying it never should be.

My apologies, if I seem to be just roaring in your face, but I am still getting over the fact that it is Star Wars, bt without it's chief stars. I'm not sure yet what about Star Wars, sans Jedi and their lightsabers, is so appealing to people that they want to paly it, AND call it Star Wars, that several other RPGs don't already do. Smuggling, space exploration, adventures, firefights with the ______ Empire's finest, all of these are in numerous games. When I think Star Wars, I think that PLUS Jedi, Sith, and stuff; it's what sets it apart. And so much here is directed at playing the universe without them that I just wonder why they sat down and said "this is the game we want to build, today". I'm hoping that it more becomes a case of hammering out the rest of the details, getting the base system stable, and then, when the Jedi book comes out, integrating it back into the game, as Jedi, Force powers, and lightsabers CAN be one of the big balance-breakers. I know the book is coming, but I'm just iffy on it till then, and constant attempts to diminish the lightsaber, the weapon that won't even appear much in the game, just smacks the fan in me. That, and paying $30 for a book that, while I confess is a beta, has had changes to almost every page, by now, it feels. Sadly, you might have gotten the brunt of my whining rage ;)

venkelos said:

The removal of Breach from lightsabers was an admitted "oops!" by FFG courtesy, and all further updates (Weeks 4 thru 6) list them has having Breach, and there's been no official movement on FFG's part to remove the Breach quality in later updates.  So far, the only change to lightsaber has been the removal of Defensive and Deflection qualities; the thing still crits like nobody's business, with a decent roll being able to score an additional +20 on that Critical Hit result on top of the Vicious 2 quality, plus Soak is pretty much meaningless.  And the removal of Defensive and Deflection just paves the way for a Jedi specialization talent to add those qualities back in, making part of the lightsaber's awesomeness be due to the skill of the person wielding it rather than the Classic D&D route of "a character is only as awesome as their magic items," and let's face it, in Star Wars, a lightsaber is about as close to a magic item as you're generally going to find.

As for making the weapon "difficult and dangerous to use," some of that could very well tie back to WEG, where if you failed the basic attack difficulty by 10 or more, you wound up hurting yourself.  Personally, I don't care for it as it adds an extra and frankly unnecessary level of complexity, but it's not exactly a brand-new idea either.  As is, lightsabers are difficult enough to use because of the lack of an official combat skill, leaving most players with using just their Ability Dice.

And in all seriousness, maybe you are the one that needs to get over your bias towards a game and setting that is specifically not about Jedi, and right from the outside said that it wasn't going to be about Jedi.

After all, WEG did booming business for years with nary a peep about Jedi, and quite a few old-time gamers have some very fond memories of WEG adventures, back before Star Wars gaming became "all about teh Jediz!"  We've had two separate game systems (OCR/RCR and Saga Edition) where if you weren't a Force-user, you could get left in the dust pretty quick if the ones playing the Jedi/Force-user PCs were power-gaming assholes.

Maybe it's time for a change in perspective, to veer away from Jedi being the only characters that "really matter" in the game, and letting the other folks shine for a change.   One of the great strengths of the Original Trilogy was that it was an ensemble cast, with everyone able to contribute to the overall success of the Rebellion, where one of the larger complaints about the Prequels was "if you weren't a Jedi, you pretty much didn't matter," a fate that befell even Amidala, going from an active leader figure in TPM to a walking incubator in RotS, with most of her really good scenes ending up on the cutting room floor.  Yes, it was Luke that took out Emperor by giving Anakin the impetus to redeem himself, but Luke didn't do diddly in terms of taking out the Endor Shield Generator or blowing the 2nd Death Star.  Hell, the best damn starfighter pilot from the Rebellion Era onwards (Wedge Antilles) isn't even remotely Force-Sensitive.

Again, this is coming from a guy whose favorite character in the Original Trilogy was and remains to be Luke Skywalker, so I'm the last person that could be called "anti-Jedi."  I just don't see the need for full-blown Jedi Knights or even multiple Jedi specializations at this stage in the game's development.  The canon (movie and EU) has established that properly-trained Jedi are a rare and unusual thing, not dime-a-dozen like the post-combat-upgrade days of Star Wars Galaxy had where anyone and their grandma could be a Jedi if they wanted to.

I doubt any of the above is going to change your tune, but it might be something to consider instead of presuming that Jay Little and his crew as strong an anti-Jedi bias as Karen Traviss has a fangirlish crush on Boba Fett and all things Mandalorian.

venkelos said:

Lightsabers have always been described as extremely dangerous in untrained hands and I saw this as a way to showcase this. It makes them no harder to use by those actually trained in their use. They are only dangerous to those untrained in them.

mouthymerc said:

This is true, all the way back to the days of WEG. It required at the minimum difficulty of 20 to hit with it, and if you failed by a certain amount, you dealt damage to yourself.

This makes sense. It's a (debatably) weightless blade of frakkin' energy. It's not weighted like a vibroblade. You don't point the business end at someone and pull a trigger to get your result. It takes skill to use properly, and that skill takes discipline to master. 99% of the galaxy will probably never even *see* a lightsaber, even at the height of the Jedi Order. You're damn right it's harder to use than every other weapon out there.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Glad about Breach, since it helps cut through vehicles and doors, and such. I remember playing WEG d6, and my Jedi character was fun. He wasn't broken, by any stretch, and my only complaints were never rolling good damage (my 5d6 could HIT like I had a scope, but my dice always rolled crap for damage, which I can only blame on me) and the impsssibility of improving my Force powers without a teacher, who, between Ep 4 and 5 is nigh impossible to find.The poor drunk, washed up old Knight was still great fun to play, like a Kota before he existed.

I can certainly appreciate it that some of the lightsaber's awesome is based on the player, rather than the weapon; I just can't see that yet, with said book being a distant phantom.

As for full-blown Jedi, I don't need them, either. They are my preferred class, obviously, and my first choice in WEG, d20, revised d20, and Saga Edition. Force-Sensitive is also a nice option; it just saddens me that the base character concept I have for a game like this seems rather impossible. The idea is a guy who, during the fall of the Jedi was a fresh Padawan. He barely had any training before he had to be secreted away, and had to make his own way in the world, picking up other traits, and hiding his Jedi stuff from everyone for 20 years. It easily explains the class choices, the seemingly not so impressive Force powers, and to some extent, the lack of much, or any Lightsaber skill, but I was informed that this is a bad character idea, and that I am just clinging too much to what I want out of the game, even though, as you said, it's what the game is directly trying to veer away from. i don't want to seem as if I think they are anti-Jedi, in the publishing department, but I do wonder why someone said "let's make a Star Wars game, but without Jedi." It can work, certainly, but I can't be the only fanboy confused by their choice. D&D isn't likely to publish a game that says Clerics in, Fighters in, Monks in, Rogues in, Wizards and Sorcerers out; 4th Ed tried, by nerfing the wizard to a point where 5th Ed is already in the works, to save it, but the class was still present. If they wish to stay away from Jedi, they could have made Star Trek, Stargate, Andromeda, Firefly, or any of several other similar franchises (I know some of them already have books, but most are done, and FFG might've as easily bought those rights.)

Oh well, I often do come off as a super fan, the whiny kind, when I talk about these things, so I guess it isn't likely to change.

mouthymerc said:

I prefer them saying "hard to use = Exotic Weapon Proficiency, or it's own Skill." A dire flail is very hard to use, and also maybe kind of stupid to use, but I've never seen a game where the thing had a built in "you screw up, you hit yourself for 1d8 + SB", or whatever. on the other hand, I can see why that might be a reason for young students to use training sabers, either less powerful lightsabers that singe, but don't bisect, or the dumb shock rods one starts with in SWTOR MMORPG. Still, I prefer thinking that Luke never came that close to removing his limbs, himself.

I think it was partly to explain why Han Solo is a bit uneasy about it when he uses it at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back to slice open the Tauntaun.

Of course it would be quite dangerous, as it just destroys anything it touches, which means the slightest slip up with the blade can be fatal. Think how chainsaws can be dangerous if mishandled, but about twice as bad, and you don't even have the weight of the thing to judge it. You are also using it in risky combat situations, unlike a chainsaw, which you will only really use carefully with proper safety measures.

I also think it was at one point stated somewhere that the blades also generate some sort of gravity anomolies which only someone with trained force ability can compensate for properly, but truthfully I don't know if it is still canon (if it ever was) and frankly… what?

borithan said:

While I certainly see what people are talking about, more often, at least to me, it just works more as a mechanic for the player to hurt themselves, and be punished for picking the weapon maybe the GM didn't want them to have. Yes, they are dangerous, yes you could get hurt, but it can really kill the effect of the scene when, despite the odds, you are holding your own against insurmountable odds, only to maim yourself, and be defeated. Your foes will likely never share your problem; the GM can say they were trained, and so negate the rule, or roll behind the screen, and be a douche about it. If your GM was being "fair", it would be just as bad, possibly, if the NPC accidentally hacked off a leg, because lightsabers are friendly fire, masochist's best friend weapons.

Back in the old days, I think it was that the lightsaber handle was 20+ lbs. Lucas expected all Jedi to always use two hands to hold it, and swinging something with that much localized weight, but a business end 3 feet away is odd; there's really no other item like it to compare to. Vader did one handed against Luke, I believe, mostly out of a lack of concern for Luke's skill, coupled with his enhanced strength. The first lightsabers were cable-bound to your belt, where their archaic power pack hung, and it was good to keep your arms close in, so you didn't snap the cable, or expose it as a silly target.