Big Joe Guns, on the other hand, doesn't get Pierce...

Methinks thou dost forgeteth attachments such as Augnmented Spin Barrels and Bowcaster Accelerators...

And all Pierce is, effectively, is a damage bonus in most cases. So what's the difference when you could have a Joe Gun using a heavy rifle doing minimum 16 damage a hit? And that's without going crazy and getting carried away...

I forgot about the augments, but again, I was also noting that these things are extra work.

If you were a new character with a lightsaber and someone else was playing a new character with a rifle, you'll notice that the damage output will probably heavily favor the lightsaber as it essentially ignores all soak.

Now, if you gave that rifleslinger a Disruptor Rifle, threw in a few mods to increase damage (many of which have setbacks) and pierce, then help them build their talent trees around the weapon, then yes, I will concede that the rifle is the way to go at the moment.

But once we start seeing some of the Jedi talent trees, determining how they get the defensive capabilities, and/or if we ever get a Duelist-type character (yes, FFG, I would love to see a Duelist Tree somewhere, even if it's Universal like I'm statting it up) or tweak the Marauder's melee ability into Lightsabers, then the glowstick is deadlier.

But again, we go back to the point I was making earlier: any weapon can be insanely deadly in the right hands. In this game, "the right hands" include skill ratings and talents, neither of which we have on hand to do this discussion justice.

Now, to the OPs original purpose for this discussion: I still say it's something to consider before just dropping into the game, as it will add more story elements (the Order 66 discussion and my comment on living up to the Jedi ways), possible ways around "closed doors," beastly damage potential from ignored soak in combat, and when combat starts, they will probably be the first one targetted as they are wielding a weapon that marks them as a sentient with a price on their head.

Just adding two more credits into the discussion here.

So the FSE gets a 10k Rarity 10 item, but the rifle guy...

EDIT: To elaborate... If your "new" FSE is getting a lightsaber, can my "new" rifle guy have a 10k rifle? After all, we should be comparing apples to apples here, right?

Anybody looked at DCs? So the 4 Brawn 4 Agility Joe Gun in Heavy gets to Rain of Death and decides to pack his superior laser sight modified Sidewinder..............I'm thinking Jedi will dance...................

Well logically there will be attachments for lightsabers eventually. That should help balance our your super sidewinder.

In the mean time the Jedi can dance if he wants to...

he can leave his friends behind...

Well logically there will be attachments for lightsabers eventually. That should help balance our your super sidewinder.

In the mean time the Jedi can dance if he wants to...

he can leave his friends behind...

Well logically there will be attachments for lightsabers eventually. That should help balance our your super sidewinder.

In the mean time the Jedi can dance if he wants to...

he can leave his friends behind...

Why do you think there will be attachments to Lightsabers? There aren't any HPs listed on them.

Well logically there will be attachments for lightsabers eventually. That should help balance our your super sidewinder.

In the mean time the Jedi can dance if he wants to...

he can leave his friends behind...

Well logically there will be attachments for lightsabers eventually. That should help balance our your super sidewinder.

In the mean time the Jedi can dance if he wants to...

he can leave his friends behind...

Why do you think there will be attachments to Lightsabers? There aren't any HPs listed on them.

Perhaps Jedi will get a version of Tinkerer or Jury-Rigged or some other talent that raises the HP of a lightsaber.

Perhaps when a Jedi is building a lightsaber, they are given a number of HPs as custom modifications to the saber.

Maybe FFG didn't want people to pick up a lightsaber, have the "official houserule" of the Lightsaber Skill, and then have people go insane with modifying the weapon when the art of their creation is consider to be gone.

Just my thoughts on what's to come, that's all.

Just basic logic and some brain muscle...

Most weapons that aren't grenades have attachments.

Past systems have had ways of modifying sabers

Past systems have also had different types of sabers beyond the standard

There are talents that allow you to exceed the number of hardpoints on an item...

So I'm just taking a wild guess, but it's totally within the existing mechanics to have a way to install special crystals (which may not have to take up an HP), or add attachments (either by getting a new saber that we haven't seen yet that does have HP, or through the use of a talent like tinkerer).

I could be entirely wrong though, maybe there will be some kind of class related talents that will fill that niche... or something else we haven't seen yet.

Bottom line is it's hard to get to excited over an unbalanced min/max situation when less than 1/3rd of the game is really out yet... So for now, either enjoy your heavy with his blaster, or be patient and meditate on the future...

I think attachments exist to add flavor to the weapons that have them. I think Jedi will be the flavor for the Lightsaber. Afterall you are talking about a weapon that comes out of the box able to ignore soak, hit as hard as a heavy blaster rifle, chop some opponents weapon in two with sufficient advantages, crits hard, and oh yah, will deflect blasters, how much more before power creep makes them OP?

There's always room for more.

Boost die on this, auto-advantage on that, mod that allows it to be all rainbow colors like a space unicorn...

Like I said, I could be totally wrong, we'll just have to wait.

Idea of attachments is that you can just slap them onto something in a couple minutes, typically just screwing it onto the exterior somewhere. So in that sense, there likely won't be anything like that for lightsabers; replacing parts/upgrading will probably require dismantling and then putting it back together (though this should probably not be as hard as building one from scratch).

I wouldn't imagine it's something like LibrariaNPC said, where lightsabers have HP during creation, since the standard lightsabers are listed, and they don't really have any HP, and I'd expect something so standard would have room for improvement, from fancier crystals or hilts, for example; so that would mean HP evaporates after initial creation.

So I'd imagine there's more of just a flatter system. Nothing costs hard points, but you get to choose from some basic default hilt selections that give inherent bonuses and have certain requirements, and then for each of the main parts of those lightsabers, you can pick from a variety of other options, each can be rarer and cost more for clear bonuses, cheaper but inferior, and so on. So you want a double-bladed lightsaber - you pick that hilt, but now you need twice the focusing crystals, twice the emitters, and so on - so unless you're stocked with parts and money, you're going to probably start with a weaker double-bladed, or probably just choose a less fancy option.

My FSE player made a up a pretty cool back story and made a way for me to give him a light saber. Not sure I want to do it, it might make him too powerful.

I certainly would not give one at chargen. Getting a lightsaber for someone who wasn't raised Jedi/Sith (and learned to craft their own/got one from their master) should be a quest unto itself. I wouldn't jettison that story potential just because the player's backstory could justify it.

My FSE player made a up a pretty cool back story and made a way for me to give him a light saber. Not sure I want to do it, it might make him too powerful.

I certainly would not give one at chargen. Getting a lightsaber for someone who wasn't raised Jedi/Sith (and learned to craft their own/got one from their master) should be a quest unto itself. I wouldn't jettison that story potential just because the player's backstory could justify it.

None of my earlier comments really touched on this part of the OP. But in this regard, I totally agree.

In most games, a starting FSE should just be handed a 10,000cr ® 10 Rarity weapon out of the gate. He should need to earn it first, IMO.

What are the social costs of wielding a lightsaber? Order 66 and all...

Now, I found this bit from the Kenobi novel interesting: there are people in the outer rim that don't know what a jedi is, even mere months after the end of the clone wars. Does that jive with what you all have seen? Could Kenobi have continued to wear his traditional jedi garb for decades and nobody noticed?

According to Edge of the Empire, only about 2% of the galaxy's habitable systems are part of the Empire. That leaves a great deal of the galaxy to play in if you're willing to stay away from the Empire.

Doesn't mean Imperial Inquisitors wouldn't be sniffing around out there. The Emperor wants all Force-users either dead or part of his bureaucracy.

Doesn't mean Imperial Inquisitors wouldn't be sniffing around out there. The Emperor wants all Force-users either dead or part of his bureaucracy.

That's a lot of space to be sniffing. I'm not suggesting that a Force-user shouldn't try to keep things subtle, but I am suggesting that a scuffle with a lightsaber on a backwater non-Imperial world is unlikely to draw immediate attention from Imperials (Inquisitors included).

The only thing that can stop a good guy with a lightsaber, is a bad guy with a lightsaber.

Or a hot looking senator from Naboo............................

Or a game of roshambo with an Ewok.

...or, really, just a Joe Gun with a heavy blaster rifle. Not sure how Mr. Glowstick survives that...

...or, really, just a Joe Gun with a heavy blaster rifle. Not sure how Mr. Glowstick survives that...

Easy, Force users use the best tool available to deal with ginormous guns - spending as much strain and destiny points to have Force Leap get you the hell away.

So you apparently have enough XP to invest in all those Kool Powrz, but Joe Gun can't have Barrage, Precise Aim, Sniper Shot, etc?

Sorry, but the hard fact of the matter is that the days of Force Users = Gawds is over. Everyone gets to play in the pool with this system. Not just the special magic snowflakes wielding glowsticks.

Doesn't mean Imperial Inquisitors wouldn't be sniffing around out there. The Emperor wants all Force-users either dead or part of his bureaucracy.

That's a lot of space to be sniffing. I'm not suggesting that a Force-user shouldn't try to keep things subtle, but I am suggesting that a scuffle with a lightsaber on a backwater non-Imperial world is unlikely to draw immediate attention from Imperials (Inquisitors included).

"Immediate" is relative. I doubt anyone would really notice much use of Sense or Enhance (without a lightsaber) but if someone is using a lightsaber, Move, or Force Leaping all over, well, the Empire has II and ISB, and both of them have expansive networks of informants for a reason.

I think attachments exist to add flavor to the weapons that have them. I think Jedi will be the flavor for the Lightsaber. Afterall you are talking about a weapon that comes out of the box able to ignore soak, hit as hard as a heavy blaster rifle, chop some opponents weapon in two with sufficient advantages, crits hard, and oh yah, will deflect blasters, how much more before power creep makes them OP?

Well, there was already a round of "lightsabers are overpowered!" back during the EotE Beta due to them having Defensive 2 (which gave +1 per rank to both melee and ranged defense with a Maneuver) and Deflection 1, thus enabling any wielder to suddenly have Melee Defense 2 and Ranged Defense 3 just by picking up the weapon.

Going by the Forsaken Jedi, odds are that Force & Destiny will provide talents to put Defensive and Deflection back into play, thus giving Jedi PCs an easy (relatively) way to boost their defenses. There's also the as-yet unrevealed means of handling blaster deflection, something that depending on how its implemented could make Joe Gun with his tricked-out heavy blaster rifle and combat talents galore not that much of a threat simply by being able to negate Joe Gun's attacks.

Granted, using those abilities would be the equivalent of holding up a gigantic "kick me!" sign since it's going to get folks' attention, and thanks to two decades of Imperial propaganda most folks that encounter a Jedi in 'civilized' space are going to be notifying the nearest Imperial authority that there's a Jedi criminal running loose in the region.

So you apparently have enough XP to invest in all those Kool Powrz, but Joe Gun can't have Barrage, Precise Aim, Sniper Shot, etc?

Sorry, but the hard fact of the matter is that the days of Force Users = Gawds is over. Everyone gets to play in the pool with this system. Not just the special magic snowflakes wielding glowsticks.

That still remains to be seen. Force & Destiny isn't out yet, and based on an answer I got from Sam Stewart on an aspect of activating Force powers, Jedi and their ilk may wind up being a great deal more powerful than anticipated.

Right now, Force-users are roughly on the same page as mundanes due to the extra costs of developing their powers and having to buy an extra specialization to even get access to those powers. Personally, I'm hoping that we don't see a return to the gross disparity in power between Force-users and mundanes that we had in prior systems, particularly Saga Edition and D6, though D6 had the same "increasing XP costs" that FFG's system has, the Force skills were incredibly broad in what they could cover.

One of my players is running a Pilot who gained FSEx in our second season. Late into the season I had them come across an off the charts world that had to do with a exploration mystery sub-plot running through the campaign. There he found an ancient lightsaber off a corpse. It was a saber from back when they still needed to use belt power packs. He found this out later on from a mentor type NPC he had met. She gave him a parts list of things he needed to modernize it before they parted ways.

A few episodes later the group was on Nar Shaddaa and he spent the better part of a session hunting through the markets there to find the odds and ends he needed. It cost him a significant chunk of credits to get everything.

Then there was trying to rebuild it with the new parts to modernize the power system. The whole time he worked secretly (the rest of the PCs aren't sure he's one of those Force weirdos, but they are starting to suspect something is up). When he finally got it rebuilt and working he practised with it in secret as well.

Finally near the end of this season, the group finds themselves assaulting the palace of the Hutt who has had a bounty on them for awhile making their lives increasingly difficult. After landing their ship, they fought to secure their LZ. That was when he finally fired it up in front of everyone as he engaged the goons fighting for the Hutt. After an impressive roll off base characteristic, he cleaved down a group of minions. I had the rest of the defenders on the landing pad make Fear checks at that point and those who failed withdrew back into the palace.

The crit 1 makes it death against minions... and it should be. Considering how much I made him work for it and the whole secrecy factor he's been dealing with up to this point, I think it is balanced.

Groups that don't RP the ramifications would likely find it unbalancing before 500-600xp range.

In the campaign I run one of my players (my significant other admittedly) is playing an Archaeologist Force Sensitive and we've decided that over her travels she found an ancient lightsaber badly damaged and pre-dating the color coding (re: Clone Wars Mandalorian Lightsaber) we stated it out as a Vibrosword and it has an infinite number of HP for customization. The goal is to invest in all the applicable modifications and track the total cost spend on the weapon, once she reaches 10k investment we'll be holding a quest into something probably very Imperial or Sith controlled to finally get it into a real lightsaber (removing all the other modifications).

Otherwise sure, roll a 5 difficulty on a Black Market check and have 10k ready to drop on a single character ignoring enemy soak in melee range, not too strong it doesn't even beat a 3 armor vehicle. I mean if it was would there be a talent in Heavy to give breach 1 for a Triumph? If the BBEG's only defense is soak there's probably a problem with the character.

Kicked off a new SW campaign last night, rebuilding my Force-Sensitive Street Rat character from a prior campaign for this one.

The GM and I did discuss the possibility of Valin getting his hands on a lightsaber at some point down the road, since his Motivation is to learn more about the Force and become a Jedi Knight. Right now, he's just a Force Emergent, but I'll probably be branching out into one of the Jedi specializations once the Force & Destiny Beta gets released. The GM did state that he's sticking to official material, so obviously my "Ways of the Force" stuff is off the table (which is fine by me), though he did say that he might revisit that decision down the road in regards to the Jedi Initiate spec.

Seeing as how Valin snagged himself a free heavy blaster pistol, I'm in no big hurry to pick up an everglowin' beatstick. Kid needs to get better at using the Force before he even starts thinking about that.