So in the Edge core rulebook it says when a PC obtains a lightsaber the GM may give them the lightsaber custom non career skill and u would start off untrained and basically just the brawn or agility rating. So i was wondering could u still put.experience in the lightsaber skill before u get into one of the careers in F&D? it would just be harder to do. Thoughts?

With F&D now available the waters are a tad muddy.

I'm of the opinion:

If you aren't going to allow F&D Specs to be bought the player may choose Brawn or Agility, they get no access to skill ranks, and the lightsaber they find in the garbage get from an old hermit uses EotE stats.

If you are allowing F&D Specs, it uses Brawn, they can buy ranks at any time appropriate, and the saber uses the F&D statblock.

Personally, either way I need a character to prove to me that they have thought this out. They aren't just out there swinging a stick, as a lightsaber has little mass and is very deadly.

You can pick up a blaster and figure out how to use it fairly fast... the dangerous end is pointed away from you. You can pick up a staff and learn some parts of it fairly fast... it will hurt, but it isn't going to lop off a limb. Can you master a staff just swinging it around? Not in my experience (we tried). I actually took a staff class for a short time and was amazed at what I had never thought of or how to learn to really use it.

The same applies here. You can swing it around, but it is very different than any other melee weapon they will have access to. It is very dangerous for them to practice with and really try out. I would stick with the thought process that someone or something needs to be able to teach them. Holocron, renegade jedi, whatever. If they could learn how to use a vibrosword from a master and build out training sabers, I would allow that to be an avenue as well.

I'm not totally nice to my players, but I can be swayed by a superior argument...

My lightsabers have a home brew trait called unusual balance. It upgrades combat checks using the lightsaber twice unless the weilder has a Force rating.

Unless there's a grandfather issue here, best to just go with the latest RAW per F&D -- Brawn only until and unless you have a talent that says otherwise.

Thoughts?

I'm not quite sure what your question is here, so my general thoughts are, in loose order of priority are:

1. Handle it however you feel appropriate for your campaign.
2. I would have always considered "Lightsaber" a cross-class skill.
3. If the the character had some investment, in FSEx, I probably would have relaxed #2 after the first 2 ranks.
4. If I couldn't come to a sufficient resolution with the player, I would just have them rebuild the entire character with the newly-released F&D rules
5. Power balance is more important to me than continuity, so I'd replace the EotE Lightsaber stats with the new stats.
6. We will never see FFG official ruling on this situation, and I don't think we ever should.

As for what attribute you use for the skill, I'm on the fence. On the one hand, I think assigning every skill to a single attribute is ridiculous (I think the attribute should be decided by the use of the skill, based on GM discretion), so if you think Agi was the right attribute before, it still is. On the other hand, F&D has talents for the explicit purpose of allowing the Lightsaber combat checks to be performed with other attributes at the players discretion, so not resetting the skill to Brawn undermines those talents.

FInal thoughts: Anything below #1 on that list isn't terribly important.

I agree. I go with Brawn as well and I let players take lightsaber as a non-career but I make them take longer to go up each rank as well in game time and roleplay the experience of them learning on their own without a master. Now if they had a master I would possibly consider using the extra non career points spent in the skill to go towards buying a lightsaber form if they were to do so.

I also house rule that if a player from EoE or AoR wants to become force sensitive without buying Exile or Force Emergent they can buy a F&D specialization for an extra ten points and get their Force rating one with the purchase.

Also have a generic lightsaber technique talent that replaces the form talents and let's players just choose the stat they use for the lightsaber and all talents in that form. Then they have to purchase multiple times if they take more forms and van choose same stat or different for that form.

Lightsaber is a skill just like the rest. It's not inherently harder to learn than other skills. By the rules, a Human or Klatooinian can start with a rank in Lightsaber from the species bonus, and Well Rounded can make it a career skill. All the specialness in the lightsaber is in the talents, not in the base skill.

Alright good thoughts. Thanks guys

Lightsaber is a skill just like the rest. It's not inherently harder to learn than other skills. By the rules, a Human or Klatooinian can start with a rank in Lightsaber from the species bonus, and Well Rounded can make it a career skill. All the specialness in the lightsaber is in the talents, not in the base skill.

I agree mechanically, but naratively it is so much more than any other skill in that first time you pick up a saber. I also treat piloting space the same way compared to planetary piloting

Lightsaber is a skill just like the rest. It's not inherently harder to learn than other skills. By the rules, a Human or Klatooinian can start with a rank in Lightsaber from the species bonus, and Well Rounded can make it a career skill. All the specialness in the lightsaber is in the talents, not in the base skill.

Harder or not is really just fluff, however mechanically (as your example shows) there are plenty of ways in the RAW to do this without hand-waveum. My rule of thumb is that if there is a way to do it in the RAW use it, even if it's a bit inconvenient.

I feel it's important to point out that there is a weapon that uses the Lightsaber skill that isn't a Lightsaber (The Ancient Sword). So there are actually a number of ways to easily explain a character (even a non force user) having the Lightsaber skill from the get-go.

In my game I have a GMPC who isn't Force Sensitive but was trained in Shii-Cho by someone who wanted her be able to defend herself against Jedi/Sith. She eventually caught some serious amnesia (it's a LONG story) but still has the "muscle memory" of what she used to know. Mechanically she started as a Marauder but also picked up Shii-Cho Knight and is basically just a skilled melee fighter/brawler who doesn't even know the depths of the things she knows. To a trained eye watching her fight however, they'd clearly see the tell-tale signs of someone proficient in Shii-Cho/Form I combat. I'm using this as a plot hook to start hinting at her (and one of the PCs) post-amnesia lives.

TLDR; Regular non-force using Joes/Jills can not only learn the Lightsaber skill, but pick up F&D specs without breaking the narrative. It just depends on the story you want to tell.