I would honestly rather not see that as an option. All this looks like is a one time, empty calories talent that serves no use. Talents should provide a recurring effect to the player, not be used to handwave money away. Furthermore, making some special Mechanics limit or otherwise making some special requirement turns Jedi and lightsabers into special snowflakes when they really don't need to be. This would take a huge dump on any technically focused character who was built with the intention of building a lightsaber when the time came, simply to meet some skewed demand to make lightsabers artificially harder to get.

While I'd rather not see a dice game to make them like in d20, I equally do not want to see special exception rules surrounding one single item. Because we really don't need this to get that complicated. And when you look at precedent, that kind of ruling doesn't line up with anything else in the game, so why should FFG start

I don't think you understand. How are you supposed to prevent someone having fun playing a Jedi if they have a lightsaber?

I disagree. I think I understand exactly what you said. I just think it is terrible idea and a poor game mechanic. It's an empty talent that add nothing to the game that a capable GM couldn't do. A talent should not be adding lightsabers; GMs and narrative should. Talents are not an "I win" button, and that's exactly what this looks like.

[...]

[...] It also doesn't address the reality that not every character in F&D will likely be a Force user, [...]

Well... AoR assumes all the characters are at least nominally associated with the Rebellion, and EotE pretty much assumed every character was, uhm, shall we say "on the edge" of civilization?

I think it'll be pretty safe to expect F&D to assume characters will be expected to be force users of some ilk.

Make no mistake that the Force will be an important part of the game. I'm just saying that it likely won't be the only part of the game.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't building a lightsaber the last "test" a Jedi-in-training (I refuse to use the "P" word ) went through before they were given the title of Jedi Knight? If that's still the case, then a lightsaber wouldn't make sense for all starting characters, since some of them will still be learning, and not at the Knight level.

I can see some wanting to start at the Knight level and play out what you see in The Clone Wars and such…but none of those characters were beginner characters, they all had quite a bit of XP under their belt…except for Ahsoka, who was not yet a Knights, so I guess my entire post is moot at this point, hey?

Anyway, I have a friend going to GenCon who's gonna grab me a copy, so next week I look forward to civil discussions with all of you about the actual contents of the book!

-EF

Well, that's been changed in the revised canon, as the Clone Wars series had a bunch of Initiate-level younglings go on a field trip with Yoda and Ahsoka to Ilum to construct their first lightsabers as part of their preparation to becoming full-fledged apprentices/Padawans.

I think the main reason it was considered a "final test" in older source material was that it was one of the final steps Luke took in becoming a Jedi Knight, and writers for the post-RotJ EU figured that Luke would do the same for many of his students, leaving lightsaber construction as one of the "final steps" for his students. But apparently for the Jedi Order, building a lightsaber is one of the earlier things an apprentice does, likely as a way of demonstrating that they do indeed have mastered the basic principles before going onto the advanced material. Of course, Luke didn't learn that because 1) Obi-Wan was pressed for time, and 2) he already had a perfectly functional lightsaber. He did apparently foresee that Luke would need the information, and left a secured tome in his hut in the Dune Sea that explained the various processes involved in building a lightsaber, including creating artificial crystals (though this is currently in the Legends category).

Of course, with the Jedi Order being defunct in the Rebellion Era, it remains to be seen if lightsaber construction will still be considered akin to an "entry exam" for being a Jedi apprentice, or if circumstances will force it to be one of the last things that a would-be Knight performs as part of their Trials.

One brief storyline in the Clone Wars does not a canon revision make.This merely shows that changing circumstances necessitate a new approach from time to time. Remembering that the Jedi are in the middle of a galactic civil war, Yoda was probably trying to fast track the younglings and provide them with a lesson, rather than stick to the strict formality that a padawan build their lightsaber later in life. All this shows is that a lightsaber is to be build at some time, not a major canon revision that younglings build their saber, not padawans.

Plus, this storyline sticks of storytelling needs and flashy special effects that are necessary only for storytelling and special effects' sake. It makes a better story for Yoda to take a group of younglings on a quest than it does to take a group of padawans who should be on the front lines with their masters. The story necessitates the change, nothing more.

There is absolutely no evidence to show that the canon has been changed to say that younglings specifically build their lightsaber, rather than a Jedi simply building it prior to Knighthood. Any argument to the contrary is rubbish and a power fantasy so that you can have a lightsaber to start.

ScooterAB,

Actually, that storyline in Clone Wars is canon while any other bits of EU have been shunted into non-canon/Legends status. And since FFG has to play ball with Lucasfilm's guidelines of what is and isn't canon. Even before the revision, the Clone Wars TV series was second only to the films in terms of canon hierarchy.

So in short, one brief storyline in Clone Wars does a canon revision make. You can stick your head in the sand about it all that you want, but the fact remains that in the revised canon, what we see in Clone Wars trumps every other source saying that it was the final step in a Jedi's training prior to becoming a Jedi Knight, at least during the time of the Jedi Order prior to it's decimation in the wake of Order 66 and the subsequent purge.

Now, that doesn't mean that PCs with the Jedi career in Force and Destiny are going to have lightsabers, as the lack of a Jedi Order cuts down quite a bit on formal training structures, leaving those surviving Jedi that opt to take on students of their own to come up with their own training regimens, which may or may not include how to build a lightsaber. Obi-Wan obviously skipped those lessons, but it looks like Kanan from SW: Rebels (which is part of the new canon) will be teaching Ezra the basics of lightsaber construction.

There is absolutely no evidence to show that the canon has been changed to say that younglings specifically build their lightsaber, rather than a Jedi simply building it prior to Knighthood. Any argument to the contrary is rubbish and a power fantasy so that you can have a lightsaber to start.

So certain are you...?

There is absolutely no evidence to show that the canon has been changed to say that younglings specifically build their lightsaber, rather than a Jedi simply building it prior to Knighthood. Any argument to the contrary is rubbish and a power fantasy so that you can have a lightsaber to start.

Actually no.

1. Lucasfilm has already said that until something appears in the films, current, or new media it's not canon anymore.
2. Anakin, Ahsoka, Obi-wan, Bariss, all are shown as padawans with lightsabers, in current accepted media.
3. In "The Gathering" the younglings are taken to Illum, put through a trial, get their crystals, and make their sabers.
4. In "The Gathering" no mention is made of this being a desperate move, or the younglings having some special advantage that allows them to do this before becoming a padawan.

Sorry, times change. Lightsaber construction isn't a key trial to becoming a knight... Though really is this a surprise? At the end of the day a saber is just a mechanical device. From a gaming perspective you get one when the GM says you do. No sooner, no later.

It'd be so nice to one day see something vaguely related to how to recreate the feel of something like

In the format of a tabletop roleplaying game.

Saber building being the final test of a Jedi knight is based entirely on off hand comments Vader made to Luke on Endor

It also makes sense for a padawan to start with a lightsaber. they need to train and become skilled with their saber before they become a knight. That however is not relevant to post order 66 rebellion era force users.

I'd even go so far as to say that The Gathering and following episodes portrayed younglings building their own lightsabers as perfectly normal and part of an ancient Jedi tradition.

There was also more added regarding the color of lightsaber crystals in that episode.

EDIT: The episode after The Gathering - A Test of Strength - specifically refers to a youngling getting a lightsaber crystal and constructing their own lightsaber as an ancient Jedi tradition. FWIW.

If F&D follows the hero's template from the films - Luke - then it follows that a lightsaber - of some sort - will be given to Jedi apprentices. Luke got one right out of the gate. It was also one of the primary tools Obi-wan used to get Luke to experience the Force.

And it's true that a Jedi training apprentices in the Rebellion era may not follow the tradition (for one thing accessing Ilum is very very dangerous) but I don't think that makes it less likely a Jedi would give an apprentice a lightsaber. It seems to me that it would make it more likely given how dangerous it is to be a Jedi. One might counter by saying that this would make it less likely because a Jedi would want their apprentice to be better hidden and avoid being exposed or succumbing to the temptation to misuse the lightsaber. But to me it seems like the Obi-wan approach would be more common - hide if you're going to hide but when you must be out doing something you need a lightsaber to defend yourself and others - do or do not.

Anyway, GMs are free to run this as they wish. It's just my preference that the game by default offer the lightsaber because it is necessary for the basic character archetype and fits in with how Jedi are portrayed in nearly all media, especially the movies.

It also makes sense for a padawan to start with a lightsaber. they need to train and become skilled with their saber before they become a knight. That however is not relevant to post order 66 rebellion era force users.

What makes it irrelevant? A Jedi doesn't have to follow the tradition of the Order but the same reasons for training younglings and Padawans in how to use a lightsaber and furnishing them with one still stands - the Galaxy is a dangerous place and a Jedi is likely to be in danger.

There is no order to give tests or decide when one gets a light saber or teach to make them. So what the order used to do is irrelevanr.

There is no order to give tests or decide when one gets a light saber or teach to make them. So what the order used to do is irrelevanr.

I wouldn't say 'irrelevant' per se - certainly there's no longer a structured order to induct neophytes, but the traditions are likely to be held by survivors - and occasionally resurrected by those stumbling upon it later, such as Luke. I would, however, agree it's unlikely to be a default option for RAW.

Wouldn't it screw all our predictions if they're actually doing a secret enclave of Jedi Order holdouts on some vanished planet, operating as if nothing had happened other than to generally stay hidden?

ScooterAB,

Actually, that storyline in Clone Wars is canon while any other bits of EU have been shunted into non-canon/Legends status. And since FFG has to play ball with Lucasfilm's guidelines of what is and isn't canon. Even before the revision, the Clone Wars TV series was second only to the films in terms of canon hierarchy.

So in short, one brief storyline in Clone Wars does a canon revision make. You can stick your head in the sand about it all that you want, but the fact remains that in the revised canon, what we see in Clone Wars trumps every other source saying that it was the final step in a Jedi's training prior to becoming a Jedi Knight, at least during the time of the Jedi Order prior to it's decimation in the wake of Order 66 and the subsequent purge.

Now, that doesn't mean that PCs with the Jedi career in Force and Destiny are going to have lightsabers, as the lack of a Jedi Order cuts down quite a bit on formal training structures, leaving those surviving Jedi that opt to take on students of their own to come up with their own training regimens, which may or may not include how to build a lightsaber. Obi-Wan obviously skipped those lessons, but it looks like Kanan from SW: Rebels (which is part of the new canon) will be teaching Ezra the basics of lightsaber construction.

Such a ridiculous and baseless statement that completely misconstrues Disney's comments regarding the canon. I haven't watched it in quite a while, but don't the prequels reference the standard practice of building a lightsaber as a padawan? Last time I checked, Disney didn't de-canonize the films. Again, all that storyline from Clone Wars shows is that there can be alternate circumstances. The galaxy is at war. The Jedi are forced to do things differently. Deal with it.

But this is not an argument I care to have, because no one knows what Disney's plans for Star Wars' canon are. Every statement about deconon this and revises canon that is pure speculation and nothing more, and is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Because at the end of the day, you are not a Jedi. You are not a youngling, or a padawan, or a Jedi Knight. This is not the Republic. The Jedi are extinct and Luke Skywalker is the last in their line. That is a reality that is going to have to be faced. You can claim the legacy of the Jedi and train using their tenants, but you are not, by definition, a Jedi at the start of the game. And because you are not a Jedi, with no other Jedi to train you and test you, you probably don't start with a 10 000 credit black market item just because you want to make noise about it and scream and moan about how iconic or important it is. Making up changes to the canon isn't going to change that.

You can make up a back story and if the GM approves and says yes you can have one. But most likely the book won't give you one. Even luke did not start with one.

Luke didn't start with a lightsaber but he was given one by an npc less than halfway through the beginner adventure.

Actually i wouldn't be surprised if in the future beginner game one of the pregen characters is jedi/padawan and has a lightsaber as equipment. It would fit with the pregens being slightly more poerful and better equipped than normal characters.

ScooterinAB,

All the prequel films state about lightsabers is how important they are when Obi-Wan scolds Anakin for (yet again) losing his lightsaber, and Anakin later in that same film (AotC) bemoaning that Obi-Wan was going to kill him after his 'saber got destroyed during the factory sequence. No mention is made in TPM or RotS, and as Revanchist7 noted RotJ only mentioned it as what amounted to a throwaway line about Luke's progression from a barely-trained boy into a competent warrior, while also indicating his paternal approval of that progress as a sign that Luke's starting to live up to his potential.

Luke treats it as a big deal because at the time, he frankly didn't know any better, being fairly clueless on so many Jedi traditions. Yoda's teachings were focused on making Luke into the warrior he needed to be in order to defeat Vader and the Emperor; it may also be that (in hindsight) after failing to defeat Sidious on RotS, Yoda felt that the Jedi Order needed a fresh start and that Luke was the one to do it, and that it might be better if Luke wasn't aware of all those traditions. And as Jedi Ronin mentioned, there's a line in that same Clone Wars story arc that mentions having Initiates construct their own lightsaber was "an ancient tradition," not a new thing done because the Jedi Order is in the midst of a war.

So according to Disney's new canon guidelines, since the films don't make any specific mention of when an apprentice builds their lightsaber (only that it has to be done prior to becoming a Jedi Knight) and the Clone Wars TV series does make a specific mention, that means having Initiates build their lightsabers prior to becoming formal apprentices under the traditions of old Jedi Order is canon, whether you like it or not.

As for what this has to do with the RPG? Odds are that if there is a Jedi career, the PCs will start out at the Initiate level (i.e. Force Rating 1) and that having a lightsaber isn't a sure thing, since as has been noted the Jedi Order is kaput and each teacher is now left with whatever resources they have on hand in terms of passing on the teachings of the Jedi. Obi-Wan luckily had Anakin's old lightsaber to pass on to Luke, but not every teacher is going to be so fortunate as to have a spare lightsaber. It could be that the character's mentor died off-screen in their backstory and said character is now using their fallen teacher's lightsaber, but that might be too trite for some folks. And it seems that Kanan of SW:Rebels only has his personal lightsaber, with Ezra needing to at some point build is own.

In the Rebellion Era Sourcebook for WotC's OCR line, they do mention that the GM will need to think about how the PC got their lightsaber, though it also includes a setting-based rule of PCs not being allowed to start in either of the Jedi classes at first level (they had to wait until at least 2nd or 3rd level to multiclass into Jedi Guardian, with Jedi Consular being a very uncommon option) so in that system you didn't have 1st level PCs with lightsabers anyway.

That said, I still suspect the default will be "no lightsabers for you!" at character creation, but as should be plainly obvious to most folks, if the GM wants to allow a Jedi-trained PC to start with a lightsaber, they're free to do so, just as they're free to give an EotE party a ship that costs more than 120,000 credits or they're free to hand out really expensive gear for free to a character because their backstory warrants it.

As LethalDose pointed out, it's far easier to set the baseline at the lower end of the spectrum (standard starting XP budgets based on species and 500 credits for equipment) and allow the individual GM to ramp it up if they wish (by adding bonus XP and credits), than it is to start on the higher end of things and work down. The WH40K proved that in regards to trying to have Dark Heresy (low-tier), Rogue Trader (mid-tier), and Death Watch (high-tier) all play nice with each other... which they generally don't .

And it seems that Kanan of SW:Rebels only has his personal lightsaber, with Ezra needing to at some point build is own.

According to the Rebels Visual Guide, Kanan's lightsaber breaks down and he keeps his hidden a majority of the time (at least until the time of Rebels). Ezra designs his own lightsaber. Whether or not we get see this in the series remains to be seen. His lightsaber is a little different in that it incorporates a plaster pistol in the hilt. So we may get some options like this, or not, as far as modifying lightsabers. It'll be interesting to see what is done.

And it seems that Kanan of SW:Rebels only has his personal lightsaber, with Ezra needing to at some point build is own.

According to the Rebels Visual Guide, Kanan's lightsaber breaks down and he keeps his hidden a majority of the time (at least until the time of Rebels). Ezra designs his own lightsaber. Whether or not we get see this in the series remains to be seen. His lightsaber is a little different in that it incorporates a plaster pistol in the hilt. So we may get some options like this, or not, as far as modifying lightsabers. It'll be interesting to see what is done.

Also along those lines, the Ezra example is completely different from the youngling arc. Ezra has grown up on the streets, surrounded by guns and the gritty reality of that world. It makes sense that when he gets to design a weapon it's going to be based on Kanan's but modified by his own life experience.

The younglings however, are immersed in Jedi tradition. They grew up in the temple, have been surrounded by dogma and history their whole lives, and are sitting on a starship with a droid whose entire purpose is helping jedi make their sabers. It's no wonder that when they sit and try to envisage their weapon they are (aside from cosmetic personalisations) very traditional weapons. Their thought processes can't be anything but narrow.

And it seems that Kanan of SW:Rebels only has his personal lightsaber, with Ezra needing to at some point build is own.

According to the Rebels Visual Guide, Kanan's lightsaber breaks down and he keeps his hidden a majority of the time (at least until the time of Rebels). Ezra designs his own lightsaber. Whether or not we get see this in the series remains to be seen. His lightsaber is a little different in that it incorporates a plaster pistol in the hilt. So we may get some options like this, or not, as far as modifying lightsabers. It'll be interesting to see what is done.

Ooh, a lightsaber with a pistol grip? That's more of an epee thing, so it'll be interesting to see if/how he uses it.

Yeah, Ezra is probably going to be more emblematic of a Force and Destiny "Jedi" PC set during the Rebellion Era than the younglings from the Clone Wars arc would be. Mainly in that Ezra's had a life of his own before being introduced to whatever traditions of the Jedi that Kanan chooses or is able to pass along; (I still say Kanan's going to bite it by the end of the first season, given his role as mentor to Ezra's viewpoint character, particularly if they stick to the general notion of the Hero's Journey.

But then I doubt Ezra would be stated as having a Jedi Career (he really looks like a Smuggler/Thief more than anything). If anything, I'd figure the crew of The Ghost are advanced PCs with a bunch of extra starting XP to account for their high degree of competence. Kanan's got the Jedi history, so him having a lightsaber (even one that doesn't work properly from what Mouthymerc has noted from the Visual Guide) does make sense. Sabine's got her Mando armor (though not a full suit), Zeb's got his staff-thingy, and Hera's presumably the owner of The Ghost, which likely has some special modifications. So each "PC" in that group got something special that's tied to their character.

Kanan's got the Jedi history, so him having a lightsaber (even one that doesn't work properly from what Mouthymerc has noted from the Visual Guide) does make sense. Sabine's got her Mando armor (though not a full suit), Zeb's got his staff-thingy, and Hera's presumably the owner of The Ghost, which likely has some special modifications. So each "PC" in that group got something special that's tied to their character.

Kanan's lightsaber breaks down so he can hide the pieces, not it breaks down so he can't use it or it is faulty.

Sabine's helmet is Mandalorian (built in macrobinoculars, sensors, comm).

Zeb's got a Bo-rifle. A blaster rifle which also doubles as a bo-staff similar to the staffs wielded by magnaguards. His weapon is a racial one and rare (although Agent Kallas carries one too have become proficient in one while bringing Zeb's homeworld to heel). It also wasn't clear if Zeb's bo-rifle is exclusively used only to stun, but seems implied.

And it is Hera's ship, even if Kanan is the defacto leader of the rebel cell.

Maybe starting with a lightsaber will be tied into FnD's version of Duty/Obligation. +10 Duty/Obligation gains a lightsaber.

I still hope that the more commitment you buy, the more you get

So if you want to start with a lightsaber you have to purchas a significant amount.

If you aren't sure what this commitment thing I talk about is, read the whoke thread or any thread about force and destiny. The short is it is the obligation/duty equivalent for this game that I proposed a while ago.

+10 Obligation or -10 Duty maybe?