This is a game where combat rolls are based on a flat difficulty and not based on opposed rolls, i.e. you can be very good with the lightsaber skill but this does not make you better at defending yourself with this weapon against attacks.

Then, negative dice which can generate Disadvantages and Despairs (needed in order to activate Improved parry/reflect) are:

-Setback dice, mostly come from outside of character effects, like armor, cover, lack of light, etc. A few come from in character effects (talents), the Defensive Training talent (useful for Improved Parry only, there is not such talent for Reflect).

-Challenge dice, some come from out of character like flipping destiny points and also, depending on the GM, they may come from severe environmental effects. Then, you have in character effects (talents) like Side step (it help for Improved Reflect) and Defensive Stance (it helps for Improved Parry) and Dodge (which helps for both Parry and Reflect). Notice that this talents also cost strain to use, so using them in combination with Improved Parry / Reflect will cause your PC to suffer at least 4 strain.

That is, the use of Improved Parry / Reflect is not related at all with:

How good you are with the lightsaber skill; more important it has nothing to do at how good you are at Parry or Reflect (independent on the ranks you have on those talents), neither related with your force rank (reflect is a force talent)...

Your best chance to activate the Improved version of Parry and Reflect is by being under cover, wear armour and fighting in darkness (weird isn't it?) and by having ranks in Dodge and Side step / Defensive Stance (I think this is ok, since these three talents represent your character being a better fighter).

So, my concerns are

Improved Parry and Improved Reflect are not related to being good at Parry and Reflect. May be change the name? Improved Parry -> Riposte or Retaliate and Improved Reflect -> Deflect?

There is nothing like Defensive Training for Reflecting fire. I think there should be an equivalent talent that grants your lightsaber the Deflect X quality.

Most of the things that help activating Improved Parry/Reflect are out of character effects, or if you want to use in character effects (Dodge, side step, Defensive Stance) you have to spend even more strain.

These are just some ideas. Any comments on it?

I agree. There are actually two more big problems with Improved Reflect activating on threat and despair:

1. It steps on the "GM generally spends threat rule." I'm not sure why a GM would not always allow the threat he rolls to be spent this way by the player but what if they have something else in mind? Upset player? We actually play spending threat pretty cooperatively but adding a mechanic that makes how to spend threat or despair as a forgone conclusion is restrictive.

2. It's too easy to go defensive, let weak minions generate all that threat, and then auto hit a Nemesis. The Nemesis can do nothing to stop that. Therefore as a Gm I'll have to meta no minion attacks if I see this tactic.

I'm all for the activation of Improved Reflect/Deflect relying on something besides threat/despair (or in addition to those). We actually have some different rules for that that I've shared on this board.

I've voiced my concerns over Improved Parry/Reflect (particular Reflect) being a little to hard to trigger, since you need a Despair (which only happens if Challenge dice are in the pool) or 3 Threat. The 3 Threat option can become increasingly rare as the attacker becomes more and more proficient with their weapon of choice.

As for degree of skill not being involved, one element to keep in mind is that with Parry, said talent can be used with both Melee and Lightsaber weapons, so tying Parry and Reflect to a single weapon skill becomes a tad more complex, while also having the drawback of making said weapon skill become too good.

For my WotF Deflect Blasters talent, I wound up using a competitive check, which I suppose could be used with both Improved Parry and Improved Reflect, with the defender opting to activate the talent, make their own check against the base difficulty that the attacker started with (plus any defensive traits the intended target has, such as Adversary or melee/ranged defense), and if the defender wins, they get the free hit on the intended target. One concern with this for some is that this winds up adding another roll to combat, and slows down the game a little, as well as making the combat skill (usually Lightsaber) all the more valuable since it's both offensive and defense.

For WotF, it wasn't that big a deal since a PC with a lightsaber was intended to be a very rare occurance, and said talent was generally placed pretty high in the talent tree. But with Force and Destiny and the presence of 6 specializations that are built around using a lightsaber (thus making it possible that each PC in the group will be a saber-user), adding that extra roll during a combat turn for each PC with Improved Parry/Reflect will generally start dragging out the combats, particularly as the PCs get more and more capable.

In the thread I started to discuss some possible revisions to Parry and Reflect as well as the LS Form specs, I suggested changing Improved Parry/Reflect to trigger on either a Despair or 2 Threat, making it something that would crop up a little more often, but still not being a "sure thing" by any means.

In terms of Improved Parry/Reflect and defensive traits, the only spec that's really hurting is Shien Expert, as they have zero means to improved the attacker's difficulty with ranged attacks. Easiest solution would be to slip in a rank of Side Step to give them at least something, even if it means dropping a rank of Reflect to make room for it.

One idea I remember hearing way back during the early days of EotE was that for each rank in Lightsaber past the first, the character gets to add a +1 to either their melee defense or their ranged defense; it was suggested as a means of replicating how the Forsaken Jedi's lightsaber provided both the Defensive and Deflection qualities. It might be something worth revisiting, though it brings up the potential issue of having too many setback dice applied to an attack roll, something that FFG has generally tried to avert where possible (such as not letting cover and defense from armor stack, or the Defensive Training talent and ranks of Defensive from a weapon stacking).

At least if there is something called Defensive Training => Weapon gains Defensive X (x = ranks in defensive training); they could implement a (force) talent Talent name => Lightsaber gains Deflect X (x= ranks in name talent).

At least that I would say.

You can also take sense which upgrades incoming attacks. And dodge which also upgrades incoming attacks.

You can also take sense which upgrades incoming attacks. And dodge which also upgrades incoming attacks.

The most common answer to when I voiced my concerns about Improved Reflect being too unlikely to trigger for a Shien Expert was "just take Sense."

And while it is a solution, it's not an ideal one since it requires the Shien Expert to spend even more XP in order to use Improved Reflect. Even the Soresu Defender with their Circle of Shelter talent has better odds of getting Improved Reflect to trigger than the Shien Expert, and deflecting blaster fire is supposed to be the Shien aspect of Form V's big thing.

You can also take sense which upgrades incoming attacks. And dodge which also upgrades incoming attacks.

The most common answer to when I voiced my concerns about Improved Reflect being too unlikely to trigger for a Shien Expert was "just take Sense."

And while it is a solution, it's not an ideal one since it requires the Shien Expert to spend even more XP in order to use Improved Reflect. Even the Soresu Defender with their Circle of Shelter talent has better odds of getting Improved Reflect to trigger than the Shien Expert, and deflecting blaster fire is supposed to be the Shien aspect of Form V's big thing.

I keep seeing this response. But I see tons and tons of talents that work better when you take other things. Why this one irks people baffles me.

Even the Soresu Defender with their Circle of Shelter talent has better odds of getting Improved Reflect to trigger than the Shien Expert, and deflecting blaster fire is supposed to be the Shien aspect of Form V's big thing.

Defensive circle (if this is what you mean) is one of these talents that I wonder how much they will be used by PCs. Forego one attack (or two) with a Lightsaber to gain some defense (may be 2 or 3 if your are good and lucky) which does not stack with other sources, seems very week to me. Sessions and PCs will decide this.

It was my understanding that the defense from Defensive Circle can apply to an ally and stacks with armour and spent advaby ages that may have been applied.

*advantages. God **** smartphone touch pad spelling things oddly.

With Soresu Defender now gaining the Improved Reflect talent, Defensive Circle actually becomes a pretty good option if dealing with ranged attackers that the PC would otherwise not be able to engage with their lightsaber while also providing a handy defense boost to any allies within Short Range... which is exactly something you'd expect out of Soresu.

That said, I don't think it stacks with armor since the talent says "gain defense X" as opposed to "gain +X bonus to defense." So if the Soresu Defender is wearing armored clothing, the talent won't do a whole lot without at least a couple of advantage, but it's useful to the user if they are wearing concealing robes or padded armor. Plus there's the whole "defending my allies" angle while still having an opportunity for a counterattack with Improved Reflect.

Right, but anything that gave +x deflect or defensive would stack. So you could still get 4 or 5 threat dice for opponent attacks....and i was under the impression that you could only trigger improved parry on the one who generated the threat, not any other target in range.

Right, but anything that gave +x deflect or defensive would stack. So you could still get 4 or 5 threat dice for opponent attacks....and i was under the impression that you could only trigger improved parry on the one who generated the threat, not any other target in range.

You're correct that Improved Parry is limited to the person attacking you. It's Improved Reflect that can be used against a target of the defender's choice, which some folks don't like since it could feasibly allow a free hit on a foe the PC would otherwise have very little chance of actually hitting due to high ranks in Adversary and/or high defense scores.

It sounds like a part of Yepesnope's problem is that aside from the Lorrdian Gemstone, there isn't anyway to gain ranks in Deflection, thus making it easier to reflect incoming blaster fire via Improved Reflect.

Defensive circle is one of these talents that I wonder how much they will be used by PCs. Forego one attack (or two) with a Lightsaber to gain some defense (may be 2 or 3 if your are good and lucky) which does not stack with other sources, seems very week to me. Sessions and PCs will decide this.

This is another reason, I think, Supreme Reflect should be in found in Soresu Defender. It really seems very conspicuous in its absence. Master of defense, yet Shien is actually better at deflecting blasters? Never mind the Improved Redirect, which is Shien's strong suit anyway, but the Shien Expert has Supreme Parry? Soresu is supposed to be an expression of non-violence, not Shien