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Hello Joel,
Normally, the “free maneuver” still takes a maneuver’s worth of time (it is not “performed as an incidental” which would allow it to happen during the action). Your GM is more than welcome to allow you to pull out your lightsaber and reflect the attack because of the Threat the attack generated, but that falls under GM license, not something doable within the rules.Hope that helps!Sam StewartRPG ManagerFantasy Flight GamesRules Question:
In the other night's game my jedi character was fired upon while not having her lightsaber drawn, and was hit. But since the shooter rolled two threats it opened up the possibility for me to "immediately perform one free maneuver in response to the active character's check" so I asked the GM if that would let me use reflect to reduce the damage, and after a moment's thought he decided to go with it for this time, but we'd look it up later. So, session over, I hit the books and page 211 of FaD informs us that you do indeed resolve threats (Step 4) before reducing damage (Step 5), and the word "immediately" certainly suggests that this maneuver is resolved before calculating damage. You could of course also argue that "in response" would mean "after the original action has been fully resolved", but that does seem a little bit forced. Turns out, that would be a moot point, since page 150 informs us that Reflect reduces damage at Step 3, before resolving threats. So, per RAW it wouldn't work. Or would it? Reflect is resolved immediately after Step 3, so logically that would mean between Step 3 and 4. Fine. You knock the damage down for the base attack, meaning that if the attacker decides to activate Linked, Blast or even Auto-fire, all hits, regardless of target, get their damage reduced if the original target used Reflect to reduce damage. It also means, that if someone is hit by auto-fire or blast when they were not the original target, they may not reflect per RAW, as Reflect is resolved after Step 3, but auto-fire and blast are resolved first at Step 4. Reflect also explicitly the states that it can only be used once per hit, despite earlier text suggesting that it would reduce damage across all hits resulting from a single attack. I am starting to suspect a typo here since the text states "after damage is calculated (but before soak is applied, so immediately after step 3" and damage is calculated at step 5. Resolving Reflect between step 4 and 5 instead of between 3 and 4 would make all this weirdness suddenly make sense. It would however introduce the issue that if a successful hit scores enough damage to allow a crit, and reflect then kicks in to reduce the damage (with or without soak) to zero, advantages can't be spent to cause a crit, but honestly that seems like a lesser headache to deal with, as you are already supposed to know if you beat the targets soak score at Step 4 when spending advantage, despite strictly speaking not calculating it until Step 5. When should you resolve Reflect, and would spending threat to take free maneuver in order to draw your lightsaber qualify you to use it? And which would be the correct way to handle muliple hits from from Linked, Auto-fire or Blast with Linked? Reducing damage (and taking strain) once per hit or just once per attack, which would then apply to all hits from that attack?
Edited by penpenpen