The issue I have with comparing lightsabers to other equipment is that most equipment is a commodity. A character can pay someone else to mod their other equipment or buy it already modded. I don't think there should be any lightsaber stores or repair shops. With the high XP cost of managing your actual Jedi talents and powers, it means the majority of Jedi are unlikely to develop their mechanic skills to 'level-up' their base saber to match the one listed in EOE.

I understand the devs desire to create another layer of play (a crafting mini-game) to add depth for characters, but I won't use it as a significant part in my games. I'll probably do something more abstract like provide padawans with base 6dmg sabers, knights 8dmg sabers, and masters 10dmg sabers with the narrative explanation that improving their blades was part of their trials and was done with guidance from their betters. Then different crystals are availble as a base and mainly for color choice or other factors (burn, viscous, disorient, ect..).

Out of curiosity, what would be the Craft/Artistry skill, to physically gemcut a crystal? (lightsaber or otherwise)

I hate asking a question as the last post of a page.

Out of curiosity, what would be the Craft/Artistry skill, to physically gemcut a crystal? (lightsaber or otherwise)

I hate asking a question as the last post of a page.

I would assume either Mechanics, Knowledge: Education, or a custom Knowledge or Skill specifically made for it. (This is assuming we're talking about gemcutting simply for the purposes of cutting a gem to make it pretty, not necessarily useful within the context of lightsaber construction.)

Out of curiosity, what would be the Craft/Artistry skill, to physically gemcut a crystal? (lightsaber or otherwise)

I hate asking a question as the last post of a page.

I would assume either Mechanics , Knowledge: Education, or a custom Knowledge or Skill specifically made for it. (This is assuming we're talking about gemcutting simply for the purposes of cutting a gem to make it pretty, not necessarily useful within the context of lightsaber construction.)

If mechanics can change the physical form of a crystal, it should be able to physically modify a lightsaber crystal to better project energy.

The tools would be different, but the end result would be the same.

Out of curiosity, what would be the Craft/Artistry skill, to physically gemcut a crystal? (lightsaber or otherwise)

I hate asking a question as the last post of a page.

I would assume either Mechanics , Knowledge: Education, or a custom Knowledge or Skill specifically made for it. (This is assuming we're talking about gemcutting simply for the purposes of cutting a gem to make it pretty, not necessarily useful within the context of lightsaber construction.)

If mechanics can change the physical form of a crystal, it should be able to physically modify a lightsaber crystal to better project energy.

The tools would be different, but the end result would be the same.

Right, but that's why I argue that Mechanics and Force Rating (Or something similar to include the 'mystical' aspect of the Force and recognize your personal connection to it.) should both be components in creating and improving a Lightsaber. I believe part of it is the physical mechanical aspect, and the other part is the spiritual, ethereal "awakening" or "attuning" of your crystal. I think you need them both and can't get the same results without both. Not just any random non-force sensitive person who is good with Mechanics can craft a Lightsaber. By the same token, not just any 'mystically' powerful force sensitive person can craft a lightsaber without the Mechanical training and know-how. Jedi don't just instinctively know how to create a lightsaber without ever having seen one or understanding how it works inside, it's a learned skill. That's the way I see it.

Dono: if people are so busy in combat how do you KNOW that Jango didn't lament his blaster being lost? How do you KNOW that Boba didn't lament his rifle being sliced in half?

Gigerstreak,

I think a lot of folks are under that same assumption. But if you read the entry under Base Modifiers for each crystal, it just says that "if the crystal is ever removed, the lightsaber loses these qualities (referring to the Damage, Crit Rating, and weapon qualities) and reverts to its previous base damage and critical rating." It says nothing about the modifications being lost, though that's much the same as standard attachments being mum on whether they can be removed at all from weapon or armor, with some of them sounding very much like they'd be a permanent part of the item, such as a serrated edge or the superior armor customization.

So it could very well be that it's the crystal that's being modified instead of the hilt components as everyone else has been assuming. in which case, using Discipline to modify the crystal makes sense.

Yes yes, a million times this.

I think mechanics can be used if it is adjustments FOR the Crystal, and Discipline for adjustments TO the Crystal. Two different ways of going about the same thing. (This is how I will run it in my games for now)

I will require a FR1 to craft a lightsaber in order to keep it rare and mystical.

I will add my reinforcement on the feedback.

edited out.

what if you used force rating the way it works in enhance for boosting skills. So you roll you discipline plus your force rating in force dice and can use the lightside pips if lightside and darkside pips if darkside.

By the way per the new beta update crystals can be removed from hilts with modifications intact.

Then it seems strange that you need to spend credits on extra parts on the crystals.

Then it seems strange that you need to spend credits on extra parts on the crystals.

It's...um...crystal polish. Yes, yes, that's it. You can't upgrade your crystal without 100cr worth of crystal polish, which I just so happen to have right here...

what if you used force rating the way it works in enhance for boosting skills. So you roll you discipline plus your force rating in force dice and can use the lightside pips if lightside and darkside pips if darkside.

It's...um...crystal polish. Yes, yes, that's it. You can't upgrade your crystal without 100cr worth of crystal polish, which I just so happen to have right here...

Again, i support splitting the upgrades between an emitter and a crystal.

However, to encourage the feeling of a special journey, I would not use the equipment mod rules at all. Instead make the quest to bond with a crystal a special journey, one that has an in game effect.

Using the basic illum crystal as an example, the crystal would provide a base of Breach 1, 6 damage, crit 3, and sunder

lets say that the rules for your "special journey" are... over 3 sessions, a character must spend time in meditation with the crystal of his light saber. This is represented by spending a destiny point, then making a discipline check and rolling FR against a daunting difficulty. Force points generated can be spent (either light or dark, as I'm sure the sith meditate on hate) to generate successes or advantage. If the player succeeds at at least 2 of the checks, he then focuses his energy into the crystal, and the crystal grants a benefit while installed in a light saber.

For the Illum, it could be a reduced crit rating.

For the Barab Ingot, the crystal is breach 1, 8 damage, crit rating 3, burn 1, sunder

When focused it could be an increase of 1 in the burn quality.

For Dantari, it could be that the normal benefit is only 1 strain instead of the beta's 2.

When focused the amount special benefit could be increased back to 2, or more.

For Checks that fail when trying to focus the crystal, your character gains conflict of x (where x is whatever seems appropriate by rule makers better than me. If already a dark character, maybe suffer reduced strain threshold for the next session, like when obligation is triggered. If you don't succeed at 2 of 3 successful checks, then it could have some other negative consequence.

Exceptional successes (triumph, lots of advantage) could result in some other benefits, again for a better or different mind than my own. Normally I would say you could only focus one crystal at a time, but maybe additional successes or triumphs or etc. could meant that this one doesn't count and you could focus a second (for an off hand blade, or even just a different crsytal for different effects).

Now, Emitters can become an actual mod type. so a lightsaber can have 1 emitter, one hilt, and one crystal. the stock emitter does nothing, but can be modded to a limitted degree. You can have a viscious emitter (not the actual name), or what have you, and that can enhance the weapon in a more direct and normal fashion (inline with the normal mechanics and modification rules).

Basically, what this does is two fold. It opens up design space to make crystals more flavorful by adding a broader range of specialabilities besides more stabby, more killy, moar DAMGE!!! The Dantari and Barab ingot are nice examples, since one provides a less common weapon quality, and the other provides something not related to combat swings at all. (Anyone remember mantle of the force from KOTOR?)

Second this actually helps to mimic the journey of bonding that Jedi take in relationship to their crystals. They aren't just spending credits on crystal wax and thinking about that crystal really hard to make sure it has the right amount of wax. To me this feels less "gamey" and more like an action that sure, every jedi will want to take, but one that requires time, effort, and resources, and presents risk.

Best of all, if the saber is destroyed, the mods are ruined, but the crystal (and it's focused bonus) can be recovered. since they run on different systems no rules confusion about losing "mods" on the crystal.

Hopefully people like this, since it better replicates the journey of the jedi, rather than turning the focus and importance of the lightsaber into a simple way to get more damage, and still rewards mechanically focused character types like the artisan. If you don't like it (on something other than a fundamental level), what seems wrong. More constructive discussion can only help this topic, as the jedi's journey with the lightsaber is important, but shouldn't come at the expense of diminishing other characters at the table.

Edit: The benefits above are pretty small for the level of task presented. I'm not saying those examples should be the scale of benefit that finishing this task would provide. Merely illustrative of something that could be done.

Also, I realize that this is a big shift from the rules provided, and I'm not under the delusion that this will happen. Just that simply substituting one powerful skill into an existing mechanic doesn't reinforce the journey any more than the basic mechanic. so if we really care, we should think outside the box.

TL:DR Simple solutions don't enhance the flavor, just imbalance the game.

This just does not seem KISS which is antithetical to the system.

Really? three checks, and you have benefit. That isn't simple?

I'm not saying that it's GOOD, just that I hardly think it's complex. What it is, is different, but maybe force users could use a simple system just a little different than the modification rules.

I'll restate that I like the idea of putting some of the upgrades a Lightsaber can go through into a separate "piece" of the mechanics of the weapon -- call it an emitter, a focusing lens, whatever -- that can upgrade the base stats like damage, viciousness, etc...

As for attuning a Lightsaber, and drawing out its intrinsic characteristics, it should be something different. Something that shows a character's personal, ahem, attachment to the crystal itself. Something that indicates that they have invested a bit of themselves into the crystal and made it their own.

However, we don't want to get all fiddly. We want to keep it simple. If you want to skip the narrative stuff (what a shame), you can, and still get the mechanical benefits of "attuning" your lightsaber...

...anyone see where I'm going?

Experience Points.

Make it a base cost of 5 XP to "attune" the lightsaber to yourself. Then for each additional mod you want to "attune" out of the shiny little piece of rock, make it cost another (mods + 1) x 5 XP to unlock the specific bonus.

Experience Points.

Make it a base cost of 5 XP to "attune" the lightsaber to yourself. Then for each additional mod you want to "attune" out of the shiny little piece of rock, make it cost another (mods + 1) x 5 XP to unlock the specific bonus.

Even if you cut the mods in a lightsaber crystal down to something like 4, you still enter into something where it costs 50 experience points to get the most out of a crystal that can still be lost (like down a garbage chute down to Bespin) or completely destroyed at some point (crushed in a manufacturing line, or Despair if you were to still require a check, in which you're also putting experience points into something that has a chance to not be perfected if just one check fails). And then it also just makes it hard for players to want to upgrade or change crystals since now there's more experience that needs to be spent.

So really that approach would probably boil down to players saying "pass" and just investing slightly more experience into something like Bounty Hunter/Gadgeteer to get talents that, for most crystals, would do the same things, but also be permanent, regardless of if they move to a new crystal for whatever reason.

Yah, but with the XP way, we forgo any twiddly checks of dice, spending destiny points (a group resource, I might add), deciding if its a Discipline or Mechanics check, and what have you.

You want the goods, pay for it in XP.

I'm not saying my math is the best. Just saying that we can get around a lot of this discussion of the best way to do it (which is all meta-game thinking anyway) if we just stick to a resource that people understand. The really good stuff that comes out of attuning a crystal, should cost you a bit of yourself.

Spending XP is guaranteed success. Modding a crystal is mechanically similar to modding an attachment for a weapon. There's a chance for failure in modding the attachment and breaking or nulling the mod. Why should the space wizards be so special that they get their souped up gear without that chance of failure?

Spending XP is guaranteed success. Modding a crystal is mechanically similar to modding an attachment for a weapon. There's a chance for failure in modding the attachment and breaking or nulling the mod. Why should the space wizards be so special that they get their souped up gear without that chance of failure?

As Lathrop points out, spending XP brings with it other issues that individual "space wizards" have to take into account. Spend the XP here and now, wait until I get a better crystal, what if I drop it? All of it being choices the character/player have to take into account.

The idea of "atuning" a lightsaber crystal seems to fall under the narrative part of the system. It provides a bonus, however, and needs to be accounted for. Hence XP.

(I'll expand on my idea more once I get back to the computer. Posting from a phone is a form of self-torture.)

Yeah, can't say I'm a fan of the idea of requiring a Force user to split their XP even more than they already have to between talents, skills, and Force powers.

Honestly, I can't see what the huge aversion to allowing a Force user the option of Discipline or Mechanics to upgrade their 'saber crystal really is, or even just the notion of letting them add boost dice equal to their Force Rating as someone else had suggested (and something I even used in my Ways of the Force for the Discipline check to construct a lightsaber).

Honestly, I can't see what the huge aversion to allowing a Force user the option of Discipline or Mechanics to upgrade their 'saber crystal really is, or even just the notion of letting them add boost dice equal to their Force Rating as someone else had suggested (and something I even used in my Ways of the Force for the Discipline check to construct a lightsaber).

But that's just my take on it.

Honestly, I can't see what the huge aversion to allowing a Force user the option of Discipline or Mechanics to upgrade their 'saber crystal really is, or even just the notion of letting them add boost dice equal to their Force Rating as someone else had suggested (and something I even used in my Ways of the Force for the Discipline check to construct a lightsaber).

Being highly Disciplined does not allow one to better solder a lose wire.

But that's just my take on it.

And who says that modifying the crystal involves soldering loose wires or adjusing the energy cells or any other bit of techno-babble?

It could just as easily be the Force user removing various impurities from the crystal via the Force. In fact, there's already precedence for exactly that sort of thing with synthetic crystals, which are created by a Force user (usually Sith but Luke had to use that process as well) creating an artificial crystal and then using the Force to remove various impurities while simulating the natural development of a proper Kyber crystal.

And who says that modifying the crystal involves soldering loose wires or adjusing the energy cells or any other bit of techno-babble?

I'm against the entire concept of "modding lightsabers" completely. There weren't none of that there nonsense in the Only Three Movie That Matter so...

Yeah, I'll be allowing it, but I don't have to like it. I'll be on my porch shaking my cane at those youngsters modding their lightsabers on my lawn...