So I take harm as being ye olde force lightning/choke. If this is the case, should people with lightsabers be able to use the reflect talent against it? Cinematically there is a precedent for it, so I'm just wondering in case it comes up...

Unleash is the intended force lightning power I believe, and in that same tree on the protection side, there's an upgrade allowing the user to reflect damage reduced to 0.

Unleash is the intended force lightning power I believe, and in that same tree on the protection side, there's an upgrade allowing the user to reflect damage reduced to 0.

It looks like Willis is talking about (whatchu talkin' bout?) the Reflect talent specifically, not the idea of "reflecting damage back to the attacker," which indeed the Protect talent can do (as can the Improved Reflect talent). The Reflect talent simply reduces the damage of a Ranged (Light), Ranged (Heavy), or Gunnery check.

Harm, as Holzy states, is not Force lightning and is not actually even a combat check.

Unleash (being the "Force lighting" power, especially at the later stages of the power tree) is treated as an attack where damage is concerned, but is not a Ranged (Light), Ranged (Heavy), or Gunnery check, and therefore it doesn't seem the Reflect talent is meant to work against it.

Since Unleash is such a high-level Force power, it makes sense that only someone with the Protect power would be able to properly defend against it. But I could see reasoning for allowing Reflect to work against it as well.

Personally, against Harm, the only option I let to protect from it are Resilence and Discipline.

Ah, my mistake. I see that unleash is more the lightning type attack now. Thanks for the clarification. However, it seems that you still can't use reflect against it.

At least in the Beta, it seems FFG made the conscious decision to not have Reflect be quite as broad as blaster deflection powers/feats/talents were in the prior Star Wars RPG, where said ability could be employed against any ranged attack.

I know with WotC, they based being able to deflect a discharge of Force Lightning off the quick scene in AotC where Obi-Wan uses his lightsaber to counter Dooku's one-handed use of Force Lightning before they engage in a proper duel, and with this being further backed up by Mace Windu using his lightsaber to block/parry Sidious' own volley of Force Lightning.

Of course, since FFG's stance on Force and Destiny is that the PCs are not Jedi, it stands to reason that they wouldn't be adept enough with the Force or the lightsaber to be able to do something like stopping Unleash with just the Reflect talent. Especially how easy it is to get Reflect for most of the LS Form specs anyway. Plus, Unleash as it's base doesn't have a huge damage value and has to deal with soak, so a starting PC with just a couple ranks of Reflect is probably going to be able to tank a decent amount of that damage if they could use Reflect against the power.

Then again, perhaps what Obi-Wan and Mace did was elect to make their respective opponent's use of Unleash be an opposed check, using their Lightsaber skill vs. the attacker's Discipline and justifying it with them both having several ranks of Reflect. Obi-Wan was probably rocking 4 ranks in Lightsaber with at least a 3 Intellect (he's the Soresu poster boy after all), giving Dooku a difficulty of 3 reds and a purple plus setback dice from Defensive Circle (since Unleash is treated as a ranged attack), making it very likely that Dooku failed the roll and thus did zero damage. In the case of Windu, he's probably got a 5 in whichever Characteristic that Juyo/Vaapad Technique would rely on as well as 5 ranks in Lightsaber, giving Sidious a difficulty of 5 reds to roll against, and rolled a Despair on top of failing the Discipline check that resulted in his face going all melty.