Older Talents & New Applications:

After glancing at the original Star Wars: Edge of the Empire book while designing a character for a friend’s son for next week’s game, I had started to wonder how to apply some of the older talents to newer classes and skills.

Feral Strength: The Lightsaber has its own skill set for a weapon that would had been traditionally considered ‘Melee’. Would the Feral Strength talent apply to increasing its damage for a Marauder who could wield one? While the simplest answer is to hand wave it and say, “you can do that in your own campaign” too many times I’ve dealt with opposing views.

Flurry of Blows: Again, could a lightsaber be used instead of a melee or brawl weapon?

Point Blank: Could a character with the Lightsaber Throw talent increase their damage by one with this talent as well?

Just a few thoughts I had that I wanted to bounce around the forums.

Sign—

Wacky

Not necessary on any of those counts.

The talents referenced are already plenty good by themselves, and having them cover ligthsabers as well starts to make them too useful, particularly as those talents don't appear in Force and Destiny.

Lightsabers have enough damage potential already with Breach 1, so Feral Strength doesn't need to be made any better by letting Marauders dish out even more melee damage than they already can with a vibro-ax or equivalent weapon. Same rationale extends to Point Blank.

Lightsabers have enough damage potential already with Breach 1, so Feral Strength doesn't need to be made any better by letting Marauders dish out even more melee damage than they already can with a vibro-ax or equivalent weapon. Same rationale extends to Point Blank.

The damage that lightsabers do is fixed, and not variable based on your Brawn. So, I would say that things like Feral Strength probably wouldn’t be applicable to it.

I’d have to look at the other talents and see, but overall I think I agree.

There is a sidebar in EotE (p. 205) that defines melee attacks (lower-case m) as "an attack made in close combat with an opponent with a weapon designed for use in close combat, most likely an attack made with the Melee or Brawl skill" (emphasis mine.)

So talents that only specify "melee attack" (lower-case m) can be applied to your lightsaber, talents that specify "Melee and Brawl check" (upper-case M) cannot.

The same goes with "ranged attack" in case of Saber Throw and Point Blank.

Looking over your list of talents gives me the following answers:

Feral Strength: Brawl and Melee only.

Flurry of Blows: Not familiar with that talent, is it from one of the splatbooks? If you mean

Frenzied Attack: Brawl and Melee only.

Point Blank: Ranged (Heavy) and Ranged (Light) only.

Stuff that would work: Crippling Blow, Disorient, Knockdown, True Aim.