IMHO, if you're starting a game at 0 earned XP and using the default campaign setting, you should gently discourage players from taking a lightsaber spec as their starting spec. While an important part of the system, these specs do not really facilitate the creation of deep or interesting PCs from the start.

While I agree that the lightsaber form specializations themselves don't lend much to the 'fluffy depth' of a staring PC, I think that the combination of the career and skill selection at character creation can suitably carry the load, i.e. I think a Jedi character can be made interesting based solely on career and skill choices.

Emphasis mine, and I agree. Perhaps my head is still too stuck in the beta book days -- the revealed fluff in the CRB and BBox starts PCs significantly farther down the road of becoming Jedi than my initial interpretation. I'll admit I'm biased towards seeing what characters where like before they became priests...

Most of the Makashi Duelist tree actually fits Grievous to a tee. Parry, Resist Disarm, Duelist's Training, Defensive Training, Feint, Improved Parry. He could get it all , just having to waste that 10XP on Makashi Technique. But really, 10 XP for access to all that melee awesomeness...

Not only is everything you just said true, but is exactly what one of the characters in the game I run has done. She isn't Force Sensitive, and in fact doesn't remember any of her training (her mind was wiped some time ago) but what she does have is a mysterious neocortex implant chalk full of Old Republic Era blueprints, schematic, algorithms and information that she has a hard time understanding (she picked Mechanics and Computers as her extra Human starting skills). What she doesn't know is that she was trained as a child to fight Force Users, and has simply been picking up bits of info from her brain without knowing the whole puzzle.

Buried in her brain and muscle memory are the basic forms and target areas of Form I and II Lightsaber combat. She just thought they were for standard sword fighting however, and has been using the Melee skill and vibro/cortosis swords to fight people. The 10 points of exp she "lost" to the Makashi talent are easily being made up for with he shear number of available ranks in Parry as well as Duelist Training (especially for a Hired Gun/Marauder like her)!

In response to the OP and Lightsaber colors, the following are all of the current colors currently seen in Star Wars canon (as far as I know):

• Red [sith - Darth Mauls's double bladed saber / Former Sith - Asajj Ventress's sabers ]
• Blue [Jedi - Anakin Skywalker's saber, Pong Krell's double bladed saber ]
• Green [Jedi - Ahsoka Tano's saber, Yoda's shoto saber, Pong Krell's double bladed saber ]
• Green-Yellow [Jedi - Ahsoka Tano's shoto saber ]
• Yellow [Jedi - Temple Security's Double Bladed saber / Former Sith Acolyte - Asajj Ventress's sabers ]
• Purple [Jedi - Mace Windu's saber ]
• Black [Death Watch / Shadow Collective / Jedi? - The Darksaber ]
• White [Jedi - Tera Sinube's Sabercane / Former Jedi - Ahsoka Tano's saber and shoto ]

IMHO, if you're starting a game at 0 earned XP and using the default campaign setting, you should gently discourage players from taking a lightsaber spec as their starting spec. While an important part of the system, these specs do not really facilitate the creation of deep or interesting PCs from the start.

While I agree that the lightsaber form specializations themselves don't lend much to the 'fluffy depth' of a staring PC, I think that the combination of the career and skill selection at character creation can suitably carry the load, i.e. I think a Jedi character can be made interesting based solely on career and skill choices.

Emphasis mine, and I agree. Perhaps my head is still too stuck in the beta book days -- the revealed fluff in the CRB and BBox starts PCs significantly farther down the road of becoming Jedi than my initial interpretation. I'll admit I'm biased towards seeing what characters where like before they became priests...

Yeah, I've built a number of starting-level pre-gens using the various LS Form specs, and while they may not be great at combat without a Lightsaber-type weapon (be it a training lightsaber or an ancient sword), they're still perfectly viable characters.

Niman Disciple can be a good scholar-type and decent social character thanks to Nobody's Fool to defend and Negotiation to keep talks from getting too aggressive. Discipline from both career and spec as a career skill does tend to push the character towards the route of being a Force wizard, though not as much as the Sage.

Soresu Defender's a little trickier, but a high Intellect makes the PC decent at a number of useful skills, even if only providing assistance to other PCs who may have ranks in assorted Knowledge skills but a lower Intellect. They're still good in a melee fight thanks to having all three close-combat skills as career skills; take a rank in Melee and you can use those Parry talents no sweat.

Makashi Duelist can pull double-duty as a face thanks to Charm and Cool being offered from both the career and the spec, with Coercion for additional option when sweet-talking isn't doing the trick.

Ataru Striker I think is actually one of the two best LS Form specs in terms of having a PC that's not reliant on a lightsaber for offense. While not a fan of the Seeker career at first, that it offers both Piloting skills and Ranged (Heavy) gives the PC some pretty nice options, plus having both Perception and Vigilance doesn't hurt matters.

Shien Expert lends itself to a sneaky-type based on available skills and half the first row talents. Deception, Stealth, and two ranks of Skulduggery and Street Smarts makes for a pretty solid thief that can fast-talk their way out of trouble if they happen to get caught. You might even say that Ezra Bridger of Rebels got his start as a Sentinel/Shien Expert based solely upon the skills offered skills, though likely taking Streetwise as one of his bonus non-career skill ranks.

Shii-Cho Knight is a beat-stick spec, but the fact that none of its early talents rely upon a lightsaber means that you can easily just use the Melee skill and a suitable weapon for must situations and do just fine. I've been playing a Shii-Cho Knight in a friend's AoR campaign, and it took a number of sessions before I finally broke out the character's lightsaber, getting by quite well with a couple ranks in Brawl and a set of brass knuckles.

So while those six might be the closest to being actual "Jedi" specs in terms of what the core rulebook offers (or at least offer the Lightsaber skill as a bonus career skill), they can be used for non-Jedi characters pretty easily in the early going. Granted, as you get deeper into the trees you start running into talents that require the Lightsaber skill to be useful, and frankly the Ancient Sword is a pretty sub-par weapon; I have a PC (Soresu Defender) in my FaD game that's using one for those times he needs to get into melee, and his damage output has been nothing to write home about. That will certainly change when his character is ready to build his own lightsaber, but the player also accepts that he willingly nerfed himself to a degree by going with the Ancient Sword over a training lightaber.

My play group has just started out a game that is mainly Edge of the Empire but I'm playing a Niman Disciple. My GM and I will work out how I build or acquire a lightsaber, but in the meantime I'm wielding an "Ancient Sword." The GM says it looks enough like a vibrosword that people won't freak out unless they examine it too closely. Since we are just starting I've taken grit and parry talents but have put off reflect until I get closer to a weapon that can reflect blaster bolts.

My play group has just started out a game that is mainly Edge of the Empire but I'm playing a Niman Disciple. My GM and I will work out how I build or acquire a lightsaber, but in the meantime I'm wielding an "Ancient Sword." The GM says it looks enough like a vibrosword that people won't freak out unless they examine it too closely. Since we are just starting I've taken grit and parry talents but have put off reflect until I get closer to a weapon that can reflect blaster bolts.

I don't think that anyone will 'freak out' if they examine your sword too closely unless they're also the sort to 'freak out' examining a vibrosword.

When you think about it, an 'ancient sword' is just that. It's a simple, comparatively primitive sword. No ultrasonic vibration to cut better, just a sharp slab of metal (or some other material). If anything, they ought to be *less* scared of an ancient sword than of a vibrosword, because it is low tech.

Yet on the other hand, Ezra, in Rebels, crafts his own lightsaber / blaster without assistance from anyone... and we have to assume that is canon, right? Of course, before this, he has seen a fully functioning lightsaber, so that might skew his world view just a bit...

We don't see him receive assistance from anyone. That doesn't mean Kanan didn't advise him or provide him with schematics or show him how his own light-saber was constructed. The evidence provided does not unequivocally prove or disprove either possibility. We are left with inference and assumption . As with all evidence, what we see on screen must be interpreted .

Our game is "knight level," set just 8 years after the Clone Wars, and stars three Jedi survivors: a 28 year old Jedi Knight (who was an active participant in the clone wars and became "full-fledged" just before Order 66), and two younglings-***-padawans. As a result, it made sense for the Jedi Knight to have her lightsaber at the outset. Early on, the trio went to tattooine to obtain krayt dragon pearls so the padawans could construct their lightsabers. I didn't want to put too much focus on lightsaber construction. That can be a cool story element, but its not obligatory, and not where our story is focused.