Personally, I think that the lightsaber forms are a balance issue as well and should not have been included.

33 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

Personally, I think that the lightsaber forms are a balance issue as well and should not have been included.

Well than that is a different view. But as long as they are included defineatly think brawl using agility is less powerful then lightsabers. And would still make it a 10 pt talent as a substitute for something else.

Thing with the Form Technique talents is that they have an inherent drawback of needing to use a Lightsaber weapon, the vast majority of which are going to get the PC noticed due to swinging around a laser sword, especially if the campaign is set in an era (such as Dark Times and Galactic Civil War) where carrying a lightsaber is a crime and draws the unfriendly attention of the authorities. To say nothing of a PC wielding a lightsaber is pretty much painting a big target on them, at least if the GM is doing their job half-right and playing NPCs of the Empire-controlled eras as seeing those Jedi wannabes as a threat. Even in eras where Jedi aren't rare or outlawed, drawing a lightsaber makes everyone notice you, and the denizens of the criminal underworld take a very dim view on such self-avowed interlopers and do-gooders interfering in their affairs.

Unarmed strikes don't have any of those problem, and can be used at will without drawing undue attention, on top of not being able to be removed (3 Advantage is all that's needed on a combat check, successful or not, to deprive one of those 'saber monkeys of their favored weapon). At worst, you might get a funny look or two for relying on your fists in an era where the blaster is king, but that's not much of a drawback.

But if you really do have a persistent hard-on for being able to substitute Agility for Brawn, then just replace Martial Grace's listed effects with "when making a Brawl check while unarmed, you may substitute your Agility for Brawn."

It is perhaps important to note that all of the lightsaber technique talents that substitute alternate characteristics are Force talents, and this goes back to why they only work with Lightsaber weapons (which themselves have been said to hold an affinity for the Force). It takes a Force-user wielding a Force-attuned weapon to pull off these tricks.

3 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

It is perhaps important to note that all of the lightsaber technique talents that substitute alternate characteristics are Force talent  s, and this goes back to why they only work with Lightsaber weapons (which themsel  ves have been said to hold an affinity  for the   Force). It takes a Force-user wielding a Force-attuned weapon to pull  off these tricks.

Unfortunately they went and added training sticks, ancient swords, and force field knives to the list of lightsaber weapons and now the talents have grown past what they originally were. That's the flaw of those sorts of talents IMO. I think they would have been better off building talents that gave bonuses for other attributes or skills like the coordination one for martial arts.

Just now, Ahrimon said:

Unfortunately they went and added training sticks, ancient swords, and force field knives to the list of lightsaber weapons and now the talents have grown past what they originally were. That's the flaw of those sorts of talents IMO. I think they would have been better off building talents that gave bonuses for other attributes or skills like the coordination one for martial arts.

Training sticks, Ancient Swords, etc. are all weapons shown in the actual lore as being used by the Jedi either as a precursor to the lightsaber (ancient sword) or as a safer means of learning how to wield a lightsaber without the risk of severely hurting yourself or another person (training stick). As such, these weapons are inherently linked to the lightsaber in how they are used.

As for the lightsaber style talents, those too are based upon the lore established in canon and Legends. For instance, the lore establishes Ataru as being a very acrobatic fighting style with a lot of flips and cartwheels. As such, it makes perfect sense that this style would allow the Lightsaber skill to be used with Agility instead of Brawn .

1 hour ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Training sticks, Ancient Swords, etc. are all weapons shown in the actual lore as being used by the Jedi either as a precursor to the lightsaber (ancient sword) or as a safer means of learning how to wield a lightsaber without the risk of severely hurting yourself or another person (training stick). As such, these weapons are inherently linked to the lightsaber in how they are used.

As for the lightsaber style talents, those too are based upon the lore established in canon and Legends. For instance, the lore establishes Ataru as being a very acrobatic fighting style with a lot of flips and cartwheels. As such, it makes perfect sense that this style would allow the Lightsaber skill to be used with Agility instead of Brawn .

I understand the history of those items. It's the implementation of the rules that I disagree with. Historically everyone talked about how dangerous a lightsaber would be to wield as to why it needed a special skill and perhaps that argument influences my perception of it. A training stick I can sort of see, since there's no edge, but they do that with regular weapons too. If Melee covers everything from a dagger to a halberd why does lightsaber have it's own skill? Why does an "ancient sword" get to use the lightsaber skill while a vibro-blade doesn't? It can't be the (physical) balance of the weapon based on how broad the categories are and that ancient swords can use lightsaber.

As far as the styles go, I think they could have done them better with talents similar to martial grace where you can get a bonus based on a skill tied to that form. Ataru is acrobatic? Coordination (agility) covers acrobatics. Just because someone is agile doesn't mean that they are good at flips and cartwheels. My knowledge of what form is what is limited since that's a bit too deep in the fan-minutia weeds for me, but I would think that Skullduggery (cunning), Vigilance (willpower), Cool (presence), and Education (intellect) would be better choices than using raw attributes. It opens up a lot more ground to work from and helps eliminate the one-attribute-to-rule-them-all builds. Maybe form 27 adds ranks of Skullduggery to damage but form 29 adds half your ranks of Deception in the Lethal Blows talent for lightsaber attacks, etc.

Edit: I see it coming down as being special for special's sake. I think they would have been better off if they had simply done something along the lines of: lightsabers are dangerous weapons to learn. Upgrade all melee attacks with a lightsaber. The GM may spend a despair to cause you to hit yourself while attacking inflicting the weapons base damage in wounds to the character." Lightsaber training talent: You do not upgrade the difficulty of melee lightsaber attacks and the GM may not spend a despair to cause you to hit yourself." Now that was totally off the top of my head, but combined with above fits the danger and uniqueness of a lightsaber much better than it having to have it's own special skill.

49 minutes ago, Ahrimon said:

I understand the history of those items. It's the implementation of the rules that I disagree with. Historically everyone talked about how dangerous a lightsaber would be to wield as to why it needed a special skill and perhaps that argument influences my perception of it. A training stick I can sort of see, since there's no edge, but they do that with regular weapons too. If Melee covers everything from a dagger to a halberd why does lightsaber have it's own skill? Why does an "ancient sword" get to use the lightsaber skill while a vibro-blade doesn't? It can't be the (physical) balance of the weapon based on how broad the categories are and that ancient swords can use lightsaber.

As far as the styles go, I think they could have done them better with talents similar to martial grace where you can get a bonus based on a skill tied to that form. Ataru is acrobatic? Coordination (agility) covers acrobatics. Just because someone is agile doesn't mean that they are good at flips and cartwheels. My knowledge of what form is what is limited since that's a bit too deep in the fan-minutia weeds for me, but I would think that Skullduggery (cunning), Vigilance (willpower), Cool (presence), and Education (intellect) would be better choices than using raw attributes. It opens up a lot more ground to work from and helps eliminate the one-attribute-to-rule-them-all builds. Maybe form 27 adds ranks of Skullduggery to damage but form 29 adds half your ranks of Deception in the Lethal Blows talent for lightsaber attacks, etc.

Edit: I see it coming down as being special for special's sake. I think they would have been better off if they had simply done something along the lines of: lightsabers are dangerous weapons to learn. Upgrade all melee attacks with a lightsaber. The GM may spend a despair to cause you to hit yourself while attacking inflicting the weapons base damage in wounds to the character." Lightsaber training talent: You do not upgrade the difficulty of melee lightsaber attacks and the GM may not spend a despair to cause you to hit yourself." Now that was totally off the top of my head, but combined with above fits the danger and uniqueness of a lightsaber much better than it having to have it's own special skill.

Except that lightsaber weapons (lightsabers, Sith Swords, training sticks, etc.) have always had their own skill since the days of WEG. As for the lightsaber styles, we see these styles inaction in the movies, particularly the Prequels. Yoda is a prime example of an Ataru practitioner. Watch his battle with Dooku in AotC and his fights against the clone troopers in front of the Jedi Temple and against Palpatine in the Senate chamber. Throughout these fights, he leaps, flips, sommersaults off of walls, furniture, etc. while striking at his opponents. That is the essence of Ataru . Likewise, Dooku is the poster boy of Makashi , with its flourishes, feints, polished thrusts, etc. of classical fencing. It’s a “gentleman’s style”, full of charisma, elegance, and showmanship ; hence relying on Presence rather than Brawn .

2 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Except that lightsaber weapons (lightsabers, Sith Swords, training sticks, etc.) have always  had th  eir own skill since the days of WEG. As for the ligh  ts  aber styles, we see these styles inaction in the movies, particularly the Prequels. Yoda is a prime example of an Ataru practitioner. Watch his battle with Dooku in AotC and his  fights against the clone troopers in front of the Jedi Temple and against Palpatine in the Senate chamber. Throughout these fights, he leaps, flips, sommersaults off of walls, furniture, etc. while striking at his opponents. That is the essence of Ataru . Likewise, Dooku is the poster boy of Makashi , with its flourishes, feints, polish  ed thrusts, etc. of class  ical fencing. It’s a “gentleman’s style”, full of charisma, elegance, and showmanship ; hence relying on Presence  rather than Brawn .

WEG was also a d6 system, does that mean that we should only use d6's? Just because something was the way it was before does not mean that's the only way to ever ever do it. I get that some fans are bit prone to panic and doom-saying when games change, but I think that would have been a good change.

You are missing the point on the attributes vs skills. I'm not saying that form talents shouldn't exist, I'm saying that they shouldn't change the attribute of the skill. I don't exactly see yoda as being a super high agility little muppet. But I would certainly give him a high coordination skill. And does Makashi really rely on presence? So any high presence person like a rock star (almost went with hitler as a joke) can grab a lightsaber and with a smidge of training be good at it? Or should there be a talent that uses charm or presence as some sort of bonus on top of your melee attacks with a lightsaber? Two different mechanical approaches. Same narrative result that the forms use other styles and are unique to different types of fighting.

Feel free to disagree, you're not going to change my mind on this one, and I don't think I've ever seen you change yours so I won't argue with you on it. But I think it could have been done much better than the way they did it.

And you’re right in that I disagree.

First, the Lightsaber skill was used in every incarnation of the game. That includes D6, D20 OCRB, D20 RCRB, and D20 Saga. And it’s shown in the lore that lightsabers, and those specific weapons which were either precursors to them or used in Lightsaber training, would use the same specialized skill.

This is also tru of the lightsaber forms. The reason why these forms rely on allowing a character to use different Attributes for using the Lightsaber skill is because of one key factor that differentiates this system from its predecessors: you can only make one action per turn period . All of the previous systems had a mechanic that allowed a character to take multiple actions in a round , in order to combine skills, or make multiple attacks, if necessary. This is not the case under FFG. One skill check per action, and only one action per round. The only exception being certain Force powers which can be combined with a normal skill by adding your Force dice to the check. As such, for the styles to work, they have to work with that one skill: Lightsaber. And that means applying different attributes to that skill.

When trying to do functional damage on an opponent, as opposed to just hitting them is a function of brawn , not agility. And I will use this argument to prove it.

DnD for many years has linked attacks to Strength and later added finesse weapons that allowed you to use Dexterity, because certain weapons were able to be utilized effectively with precision rather than simple brute force , so it made sense that a precision hit with a rapier would use someone's Dexterity. If truth be told its actually nothing to do with simply Strength /Dexterity it is more to do with training which DnD didnt really have (other than levelling), The NDS system has this it uses a factor of a skill and Brawn, which if you think about it makes a lot of sense. If you have two martial artists duking it out both sith equal skill then the one likely to be left standing is the one with the highest Brawn (remember here this isnt just brute strength, but is being able to leverage your muscles into causing damage , which is down to explosive muscle power, Ie how fast and how powerful you can strike, it is also affects your fitness and stamina) just hitting them is only going to get better with more skill or more fitness.

All that being said hitting someone with Precision is covered under many talents like the ones that add Intelligence , or Cunning to the damage, but very telling is the fact that the Martial Artist got the talent Martial Grace which adds damage equal to your coordination(aka accuracy) to your attack for a 2 strain spend. This is your finesse strike at its very core , while it doesnt help you hit them (which should remain a factor of both Brawn and training) it does help you hit more effectively when you do use it and lets you push damage to a level beyond soak. (it is also very telling that brawl gets so many potential damage boosts that you can reach 20 pts base damage quite easily and can raise this even beyond 30 that bypasses soak , repeatable twice per round for the cost of 1 adv , 6 strain and a destiny point for a total of 60 dmg in two checks in one round, although it does take over 1000xp iirc)

So the switching STR for Dexterity you get is in the game already but is actually a factor of stkill ranks and talents, not of Agility, at least when it comes to Brawl. To me this makes sense and is especially balancing ,

EDIT before anyone says that Agility or Dexterity helps you hit more often , it is actually true, but so does intelligence , cunning and even presence as well, intelligence lets you anticipate where or what your opponent is going to be , cunning lets you outwit your opponent , and do something they cant anticipate, letting you land a hit, even just flashing a smile at an opponent is enough to throw them off. Ive used all the above in martial arts. I have had training in over 9 different martial arts systems from both soft and hard styles, and also from grappling to more precision based systems, and to me most modern martial arts are competition based and not based on the live or die fighting systems that existed in the middle ages (both western and eastern), Check out World War 2 combatives , which techniques are responsible for the majority of deaths due to unarmed combat since their inception, the majority of martial artists these days arent trained to kill, they are trained to fight in competition, which is a different ball game.

Using Agility for the Brawl skill, but using Brawn for the damage would still allow for damage to still be dependent on Brawn.

16 minutes ago, Kilcannon said:

Using Agility for the Brawl skill, but using Brawn for the damage would still allow for damage to still be dependent on Brawn.

That's what I would do. I might allow the user to do damage based off Agility for a Destiny Point flip or a separate talent (once per encounter maybe), similar to the various talents that let you use Presence or Intellect or whatever for a use of a skill.