Look out! He's got a Lightsaber!

By Darcune, in Star Wars: Edge of the Empire RPG

Another question of you fellas.

As we know, Lightsabers have a Breach quality, reflecting their ability to cut through anything short of Beskar Iron or Cortosis Weave. As such, they are a terrifying weapon to face, as they tell your soak to go sulk in a corner for the duration of the fight.

If you have to fight someone wielding a lightsaber and you can't afford the Cortosis quality on your armor, the best option is to not get hit and there's many ways to upgrade difficulty on combat checks. One of the ways is by increasing your defense.

Slight issue: Say you have melee defense from a Riot shield and Superior quality armor. The implication is that the Shield makes it harder to strike that damaging blow, and the armor is so well made that it presents the same difficulty. But a lightsaber cuts right through standard metals.

Would it ignore the defense gained from the shield and armor?

Again Thanks.

Force on

If you stick to the RAW rules it is a clear NO. Breach only affects SOAK.

It can be explained narratively

"He raises the lightsaber to swing at you, leaving himself open for you to bash him with your riot shield. He swings at you, and misses do to you knocking him off balance."

Plus that, many materials will 1) offer some small resistance (though ultimately unsuccessful) to lightsabers and 2) present a bigger target to ablate glancing blows.

You can take the same argument with blasters. Not even stormtroopers can take a blaster bolt to the chest; nothing short of beskar can protect the wearer against a full-on hit from a blaster weapon. But it can help against burns and nicks from glancing blows. In the lightsaber's case, armor could aid the user in being able to dodge quick enough so that the lightsaber bites into the armor and not the arm.

It's really not immersion breaking to apply defense to lightsabers. KISS, and run it as written for full peace of mind and ease of play :)