I have a question I wanted to clarify which one of my players bought up and made me think about.

I mentioned to my group that one of the species in one of the upcoming expansion books (Smuggler?) had four arms. A member of my game immediately said one of them wielding 4 blasters would be an instant Jedi-killer, arguing that if they fired four blasters at once (with some use of Linked or duel-wielding with a LOT of advantages), a Jedi wouldn't narratively be able to Reflect 4 shots at once.

My response was that the 'round' is narrative in nature, so it isn't the case of a single lightsaber reflecting four incoming blaster bolts at the same time, rather (given the Jedi has enough strain to use Reflect multiple times) they'd be spinning/twirling for all their worth to handle the incoming flurry.

Is this an adequate argument to explain it the mechanics? Or have I missed a rule where Reflect could only be applied to one attack made per turn?

This then led me to a second question for something like Supreme Parry (only costing 1 strain if no attack action was made the last round), is it confirmed that Supreme Parry only applies to the first Parry made following the character's round? Or would it apply to all uses of Parry until the next round (when the Jedi could then choose not to make a combat check and go nuts with Parrying again)?

To the first part, Linked shots are mechanically treated separately for damage application, so in this instance you'd need to reflect each one (active incidental out of turn, so this can be activated as often as strain allows) however, blasters with auto-fire would probably be limited to 2 and not 4 due to their size unless they introduce pistols with the ability......and unless there's a rules adaption for the extra limbs you could only fire with 2 weapons at once anyway for dual-wielding with each action. So....probably no deadlier than an assassin droid.

As for the second part, I'm AFB right now but as I recall the definition doesn't state it applying only to the first parry/reflect that round, but applies to any made that round....Turtle Power!

The soak before soak gets a little complicated but here's my understanding:

Linked: Parry/Reflect do reduce damage from all hits. You lower the damage of the initial hit. After that the attacker spends the advantage to active linked on a double bladed saber and that damage is based on the initial, reduced hit.

Dual wield: Parry/Reflect do not reduce damage from all hits. The damage of the initial hit is reduced. If you can spend the advantage to hit with the second weapon it's damage is not reduced. So think about the "first" and "second" weapon. The attacker determines this, not the defender. A good tactic is to make the first weapon weak but still something you can hit with and get two advantage and there's nothing they can do about the second weapon (make that the lightsaber). Or dual wield sabers.

Autofire: Reflect does reduce damage from all hits since the extra hits are based on the damage of the initial (reduced) hit.

And I'm away from book but I think you can use Parry and Reflect more than once on the same combat check if you have the strain.

Anyway, we simplified it a lot becasue of a few quirks in the above.

Edit: I don't think one use of Reflect reduces any additional hits regardless of their source.

The soak before soak gets a little complicated but here's my understanding:

Linked: Parry/Reflect do reduce damage from all hits. You lower the damage of the initial hit. After that the attacker spends the advantage to active linked on a double bladed saber and that damage is based on the initial, reduced hit.

Dual wield: Parry/Reflect do not reduce damage from all hits. The damage of the initial hit is reduced. If you can spend the advantage to hit with the second weapon it's damage is not reduced. So think about the "first" and "second" weapon. The attacker determines this, not the defender. A good tactic is to make the first weapon weak but still something you can hit with and get two advantage and there's nothing they can do about the second weapon (make that the lightsaber). Or dual wield sabers.

Autofire: Reflect does reduce damage from all hits since the extra hits are based on the damage of the initial (reduced) hit.

And I'm away from book but I think you can use Parry and Reflect more than once on the same combat check if you have the strain.

Anyway, we simplified it a lot becasue of a few quirks in the above.

I believe you are incorrect here. With Two-Weapon Fighting (not Dual Wield which and works differently than other systems) you only roll once to hit and, just as in Auto-Fire, you Activate the additional damage with Advantages. Mechanically it's not different than Auto-Fire in this respect.

Could be. I'm away from book. But linked and autofire both specifically say the damage is based on the initial damage, which Parry and Reflect reduce .

However, two-weapon does not say the second weapon hit is based on the damage of the first weapon like linked and autofire say. It's the second weapon's damage plus successes straight up and then regular soak (which does not matter with a saber). The "piercing soak" from Reflect/Parry already went off (it says specifically when it happens) and does not apply to the second weapon, right?

Edit: Got a few things wrong here.

The damage is calculated separately but it's still considered a single "Hit" because like Linked and Auto-Fire you only roll once.

Here's how I see it:

Hit with a double-bladed saber: 2 successes, 2 advantage, damage 6, breach, linked

Reflected

Damage 8 (6 damage + 2 successes) - 3 (reflect) = 5

Apply soak: 5 - 0 (no soak becasue of breach) = 5

Linked damage (based on bold above) = 5 - 0 (no soak becasue of breach) = 5

Edit: This is not right so I'm crossing it out so I don't mess up anyone's game.

Hit with two sabers: 2 successes, 2 advantage, damage 6, breach

Reflected

Damage 8 (6 damage + 2 successes) - 3 (reflect) = 5

Apply soak: 5 - 0 (no soak becasue of breach) = 5

Yeah you've over-complicating things Prix.

It's like this:

You have Reflect 1 and a Lightsaber

I shoot a Hvy pistol and a pistol at you, landing 1 Success and 2 Advantage.

I use the advantage to hit with both weapons

The Hvy pistol does 8 damage.

You spend 3 strain, reduce the damage by 3 and then apply your soak.

The Pistol does 7

You spend 3 strain (so now you've spent 6 total) reduce the damage by 3 and then apply your soak.

That's it.

Reflect and Parry are out-of-turn incidentals, so you can perform it as many times as you like until you strain out. There's no sudden limit because I used two guns instead of one.

Every hit from linked, auto-fire, and two-weapon combat is still a hit generated from the attached combat check, which is all the talent requires. It doesn't differentiate if the hit is generated by the successes from the check, or the advantage, or a combination of both.

I see what you mean but what you are presenting, even if it was RAW which it likely isn't, would be an exploit. If you read the descriptions of Auto-Fire, Linked, and Two Weapon Fighting you will see the same language is used (all of them generate additional hits when you spend Advantages) so the same Reflect rules will apply to all of them. The fact that Auto-Fire and Linked use a single damage value is irrelevant.

OK I just read some things and I think the long and short of it is that Reflect only applies to one hit .

I do not think by RAW additional hits from linked, autofire, and two-weapon are reduced when you use Reflect to reduce the initial hit. Not sure about RAI.

_________________________________________________________________________

REFLECT

When the character suffers a hit from a Ranged (Light), Ranged (Heavy), or Gunnery combat check, and after damage is calculated (but before soak is applied, so immediately after step 3 of Perform a Combat Check, page 148), if the character is wielding a lightsaber, he may take the Reflect incidental. He suffers 3 strain and reduces the damage dealt by that hit from the attack by a number equal to two plus his ranks in Reflect. This talent may only be used when the character is wielding a Lightsaber weapon.

_________________________________________________________________________

Notice the bold .

Now...

From Linked: "The wielder may spend [2 advantage] to gain an additional hit ...”

From Autofire: “Each time the attacker triggers Auto-fire, it deals an additional hit to the target.”

From Two-Weapon Combat: “ Each hit deals its base damage, +1 damage per uncanceled success.”

So actually I don't think one use of Reflect reduces any additional hits regardless of their source.

Now you might be able to active Reflect again to reduce the additional hits, but that costs each time.

Note that making the damage zero does not necessarily turn a successful check into an unsuccessful one for that requirement regarding weapon qualities, which is interesting.

Either way this is not the way we play it. We just have Reflect apply flat failures or threats.

Yeah you've over-complicating things Prix.

It's like this:

You have Reflect 1 and a Lightsaber

I shoot a Hvy pistol and a pistol at you, landing 1 Success and 2 Advantage.

I use the advantage to hit with both weapons

The Hvy pistol does 8 damage.

You spend 3 strain, reduce the damage by 3 and then apply your soak.

The Pistol does 7

You spend 3 strain (so now you've spent 6 total) reduce the damage by 3 and then apply your soak.

That's it.

Reflect and Parry are out-of-turn incidentals, so you can perform it as many times as you like until you strain out. There's no sudden limit because I used two guns instead of one.

Every hit from linked, auto-fire, and two-weapon combat is still a hit generated from the attached combat check, which is all the talent requires. It doesn't differentiate if the hit is generated by the successes from the check, or the advantage, or a combination of both.

Right you are. So using Reflect one time does not reduce any additional hits. Thanks.

The damage is calculated separately but it's still considered a single "Hit" because like Linked and Auto-Fire you only roll once.

FYI, I just read and it clearly says they are additional hits so I don't think Reflect on the initial hit reduces them. I think you have to activate Reflect again for each hit.

Thats fair, so there is no difference between Linked, Auto-Fire, and Two Weapon Fighting in this regard.

Reflect and Parry are out-of-turn incidentals, so you can perform it as many times as you like until you strain out.

Ghost, thanks for setting me straight. Do you allow Reflect to be applied to hits from Improved Reflect? In particular I'm looking at the "hit from a... combat check " requirement to use Reflect.

Reflect and Parry are out-of-turn incidentals, so you can perform it as many times as you like until you strain out.

Ghost, thanks for setting me straight. Do you allow Reflect to be applied to hits from Improved Reflect? In particular I'm looking at the "hit from a... combat check " requirement to use Reflect.

Ooooh good one!

Ok, as i read it, to activate the improved reflect you have to spend 3 Threat or 1 Despair. The only place to get those would be from that original combat check, so technically yes, I'd say you can reflect a reflected shot....

Not sure if you can rereflect a reflected shot and get a blaster ping-pong game going... I want to say no, but it seems possible if you have enough threats and/or despairs. fortunately this might not be an issue seeing as how you'll rarely have enough to do that...

You probably can't use Improved Reflect on an a hit that was sent your way by Improved Reflect (as you don't have any Threat or Despair to spend to trigger Improved Reflect), so "Jedi Tennis Matches" aren't possible in this system. Though it could happen in WEG thanks to the oddities of the Lightsaber Combat power and was potentially possible for short exchanges in Saga Edition if both Jedi and Deflect and Redirect Shot, although the escalating penalty to UtF checks made them very short.

But I don't see why you couldn't use Reflect against a hit generated by Improved Reflect, as that attack is still the end result of a combat check, and neither Reflect or Parry say that it has to be your opponent's combat check that triggers the usage of Parry/Reflect, just a combat check.

Yeah I meant just Reflect. Improved requires the threat so that's out of the question if you made the roll. Anyway Donovan set me straight from the devfs themselves.

New question:

Since you can use Reflect more than once on a single check, can you do so more than once on the same hit? Like spend 6 strain to reduce one hit by 6. I was thinking you could but then I saw there's an adversary talent where Reflect costs no strain so that would be crazy. But there is nothing that says you can't use it more than once on the same combat check or more than once on the same hit.

NPCs are allowed to cheat like that, strainless reflect allows for Rival (and possibly minion) level saber guys like if you wanted to pull a jedi knight 2 (dark forces 3?)

Bare minimum if a 4 handed creature tried to use 4 weapons it would be bare min 1 difficulty upgraded 4 times(I think maybe 5) which is a very hard roll given the circumstances also if the jedi was smart he would have force sense running and Dodge talents to maybe make the roll unlikely to succeed.

I do however think the rules doesn't cover quad wielding.

Bare minimum if a 4 handed creature tried to use 4 weapons it would be bare min 1 difficulty upgraded 4 times(I think maybe 5) which is a very hard roll given the circumstances...

As a house rule, this is not so good. Upgrading difficulty is not the answer. Increasing might be. But even so, increasing (even upgrading) it 4 times is just yikes crazy unbalanced. It's not required for your damage-eleven-heavy-blaster-wielding-autofire mercenary, so why would you apply that kind of penalty to someone trying to use 4 piddly pistols?

I do however think the rules doesn't cover quad wielding.

The rules cover "quad wielding" just fine. The rules are thus: If you have a 4 hands, and 4 one-handed weapons, you can have a weapon in each hand.

Ta da.

However, if you're looking to use all of those weapons to shoot, then if you're using RAW you will either want to use the two-weapon fighting rules or simply just narrate the effect of using 4 blasters at once and just use your preferred weapon profile for the actual combat check.

Better yet: buy the BlasTech SE-14r Light Repeating Blaster from Dangerous Covenants for 1,000 credits, re-skin it to be 4 individual blasters, and call it good.

Bare minimum if a 4 handed creature tried to use 4 weapons it would be bare min 1 difficulty upgraded 4 times(I think maybe 5) which is a very hard roll given the circumstances...

As a house rule, this is not so good. Upgrading difficulty is not the answer. Increasing might be. But even so, increasing (even upgrading) it 4 times is just yikes crazy unbalanced. It's not required for your damage-eleven-heavy-blaster-wielding-autofire mercenary, so why would you apply that kind of penalty to someone trying to use 4 piddly pistols?

Cause 4 weapons being aimed at one target is significantly harder than two hands. It's just not fair to the target to be essentially being shot by a auto fire weapon which in retrospect the person firing probably has a higher damage output with a auto fire pistol than using quad wielding.

Since you can use Reflect more than once on a single check, can you do so more than once on the same hit? Like spend 6 strain to reduce one hit by 6. I was thinking you could but then I saw there's an adversary talent where Reflect costs no strain so that would be crazy. But there is nothing that says you can't use it more than once on the same combat check or more than once on the same hit.

I'd say the answer is no. The talents seem pretty clear that they activate once per hit, and I think I actually overhead someone in the FFG RPG room at GenCon try this stunt in one of the other FaD games, with the GM saying words to the effect of "nothing doing."

I'd say it falls within the general RPG rule of thumb: If it sounds incredibly cheesy and too good to be true, then it's probably against the rules. Kind of like how folks thought that buying Force Exile and Force Emergent would get you Force Rating 2 just from taking those two specs and overlooking they only offer "Force Rating 1 " as opposed to "Force Rating +1 ".

I'd say the answer is no. The talents seem pretty clear that they activate once per hit, and I think I actually overhead someone in the FFG RPG room at GenCon try this stunt in one of the other FaD games, with the GM saying words to the effect of "nothing doing."

Thanks. I'm not seeing how that's clear, but I really would like to. Is it in the rules somewhere?

If there is a general limitation on talents, which are a huge part of the game, that should definitely be explicit in the rules. Especially for Talents requiring such a high cost. Since Talents are so big the absence of a general limitation rule actually makes me think the opposite. It might be RAI but that would be just a guess.

There are actually a lot of instances in this game that could be cleared up like this. Can you use and stack the benefits of maneuvers more than once, activate weapon qualities more than once, talents more than once if you pay the price and the text does not say otherwise?

I think this falls into the realm of "the writers figured the folks reading this wouldn't be power-gaming cheese monkeys trying to exploit the rules for the sake of being power-gaming cheese monkeys."

I think the default assumption on all activated talents is that you can only trigger them once per turn, unless the talent specifically says otherwise. After all, one can't activate a single rank of the Dodge talent to upgrade an incoming attack more than once, since they can only trigger Dodge once per attack, with additional difficulty upgrades coming from having multiple ranks of Dodge.

I'm curious about this as well. Are there examples of a Talent that specifies either way that you can point too?

Edit: I'm asking here because I think it would benefit others reading this that are AFB.