I agree. I feel that the mechanics check(s) for the components should be rather routine. I would like a Will+Discipline check that gets harder based on the crystal related improvement but is still reasonable.

In the TCW cartoon, only one of those kids had any serious mechanical ability. They were all at the early padawan or initiate stage of their force training. I doubt they could have managed more than 3 to 5 dice to throw at a Will+Dicipline check and much less for a mechanics check.

Chances are those kids will use that lightsaber unmodified for most of their careers. There is nothing in the movies or cartoon that suggests jedi tinker with their lightsabers much over time. Most of them, seem to make maybe one or two serious changes to their lightsaber during their career. Usually as they transition from padawan to knight or knight to master. In those cases, I see the jedi creating a new lightsaber because they are stronger in the force not because they just graduated from advanced lightsaber metal shop.

In regards to that TCW episode, the kids were assembling a basic lightsaber, using an Ilum crystal with zero modifications, which the Beta goes out to say in the sidebar about lightsaber hilts doesn't require any dice rolling on the player's part, with the notion that the time spent to gather and assemble the necessary parts for a lightsaber hilt is already covered as part of the Negotiation (or Streetwise) check to obtain the item as you would any other item.

In regards to that TCW episode, the kids were assembling a basic lightsaber, using an Ilum crystal with zero modifications, which the Beta goes out to say in the sidebar about lightsaber hilts doesn't require any dice rolling on the player's part, with the notion that the time spent to gather and assemble the necessary parts for a lightsaber hilt is already covered as part of the Negotiation (or Streetwise) check to obtain the item as you would any other item.

Yeah, exactly. It isn't hard to create a basic lightsaber. It isn't even hard to swap out a crystal or make minor modifications. What is hard is the final few checks to make a *fully modified* lightsaber - you know, the kind of thing an artisan might labour over for years to get just perfect.

I don't have a problem with that check being hard, and I wouldn't like to see it become a routine thing. I think that some of the more extreme difficulties should probably be toned down a bit, but I'm not a fan of making it routine for any old Jedi to mod a lightsaber to that degree. As pointed out, it isn't something we see in the canon, and IMO it should be the domain of specialists.

A thought I had, which would sort of mimic imbuing lightsaber crystals with the force, would be to allow Force sensitive characters to roll force die up to their Force Rating on modification checks for lightsaber crystals. Pips could be used to generate successes.

I'm not a huge fan of letting people take more time to reduce the difficulty of modification checks. Time is fairly meta in game. If a player knows that they can benefit by spending a week doing something instead of an our, they'll do it because what takes a week (or an hour) in game takes about 5 minutes IRL.

Also, I'm pretty sure the rules for difficulties past Formidable are in the rules, though perhaps not in the F&D rules. I recall seeing them in Edge of the Empire, but I don't have my book handy. If those rules aren't spelled out in F&D, that's another thing the designers should be made aware of. Basically, they said what Sam said in the podcast.

MrBaldwin,

Perhaps to build on that idea a little, for every Light Side pip, the character adds a success to their check, but every Dark Side pip instead generates a Threat. Thus, it's possible that a more capable Force user (FR 2+) may succeed in making those more difficult modifications to their lightsaber, but could suffer some unintended consequences (such as strain) from putting so much effort into that one particular task.

I like idea of integrating the force rating of a character with the success/threat idea.

I recently looked through the Jedi Path book and the description of a Jedi assembling their lightsaber indicates that they "...use the Force to fuse pieces together on a molecular level..."

Or maybe, for reducing the difficulty (and having looked at Obi-Wan's napkin scribble of his planned lightsaber), why not spread the modifications across three attachments: "crystal", "focusing emitter" and a "power cell/converter" (not 100% sure about the name of this one).

The emitter and power-thingy could be modified by anyone with mechanics, however, the crystal could only be modified by a Force Sensitive individual. (I'm thinking still using mechanics, although if Force Rating is used, it suits the milieu that a higher rating would allow for attuning the crystal better)

This would allow for more variation of lightsabers. The signature modifications are provided by the crystal, but some damage mods (and others I can't think of) could be spread to the emitter and power-thingy.

I like the idea of allowing Jedi to add Force Rating to the roll a lot more than I like substituting it for a discipline check.

That plays well into the idea that a force related check is necessary to build a powerful saber. I don't like the idea that any non-force using mechanic can create a powerful saber.

I'm not a huge fan of letting people take more time to reduce the difficulty of modification checks. Time is fairly meta in game. If a player knows that they can benefit by spending a week doing something instead of an our, they'll do it because what takes a week (or an hour) in game takes about 5 minutes IRL.

I like the idea of two different kinds of checks. The check to work on a crystal feels like it could be fundamentally different than a mechanics check to work on, well, mechanical components. I get that it would be more complicated to add a different rule to modify one specific type of component and that could very well be a valid reason for them not to include something like that.

However let's be honest, if you handed a crystal over to your mechanic and told him you wanted it upgraded, he'd look at you like you were crazy compared to something like an emitter or hilt.