One of my players and I both feel that neither improved reflect or improved Parry come up often enough. We have been playing house rules with it requiring 2 threat or one despair to activate both of these talents instead of the raw rules of 3 threat or one despair.

One of my other players said combos like dodge, side step, or defensive stance help increase chances to pull it off enough and someone just needs to take those.

Was wondering what others thought about this in their games.

One of my other house rule ideas was to have it cost 1 threat or 1 despair and that the adversary talent increases the required threats by number of adversary ranks. This would allow for more improved reflects or Parry against minions, a little more often to rivals, and keep nemesis as raw or worse if I have adversary 3 or greater enemies.

I run an a F&D game where all players have sabers and opportunity for at least one of the two improved talents. If I was running game with non Saber PCs I might question balance issues, but if all are Saber wielding and have chance wondering what others thought.

Spend 30 points on Sense. Dodge, and side step. Armor with defense.

Yeah, the Improved Parry and Improved Reflect talents are pretty much built around the PC being able to upgrade the attacker's combat check in various ways, so that there's increased chances of the attacker rolling a Despair.

For Improved Parry, specs that offer Defensive Training combined with armor that provides defense can help, as those setback dice can occasionally generate enough Threat that you get to bonk the other guy. While Niman Disciple doesn't have Improved Parry, it does have two ranks of Defensive Training. Now, given that Improved Parry is found (thus far) in specs that are focused around using a lightsaber, a free hit with a Breach 1 weapon can be a big deal; I've got two PCs in different games that have Improved Parry and highly-modded lightsabers that do a lot of damage, so them not being able to trigger Improved Parry on every other attack is a good thing as otherwise the fights would be over incredibly quickly.

As Daeglan said, the Sense power is the primary means to upgrade the attack difficulty no matter what spec you're using.

Ataru Striker offers two ranks of Dodge, which combined with the Sense power upgrades means the chances of your opponent rolling a Despair or generating sufficient threat increase dramatically; it will burn through your strain in a hurry, and Ataru Striker doesn't have any good way to quickly recover strain in the midst of combat.

Soresu Defender can be an amazing tank with Defensive Circle, as I've seen that generate scads of defense that all but ensures the attacker is going to have enough threat to trigger a counterattack no matter what type of weapon they are using. It's also got Defensive Stance, which is good for Improved Parry.

Shien Expert's gotten better, since it originally didn't have Side Step and thus no built-in way to up the chances of a Despair.

Makashi Duelist really relies on that Feint talent to upgrade an opponent's check, but that's hit or miss as the talent requires you to miss; had a PC in one short campaign during the Beta that never got to use the talent because he kept hitting his opponents, thus depriving him of his best defensive option.

If you don't mind a reduction in damage output, the Lorrdian gemstone can offer a +2 bonus to melee and ranged defense once it's fully modified, which combined with armor that provides defense can give you a 3 in both melee and ranged defense, which much like Soresu Defender is good for increasing the chances of getting those 3 Threat.

But if you make it too easy to trigger Improved Parry and especially Improved Reflect, then you're going to make those characters a heck of a lot more powerful than the rest of the group, as their damage output will skyrocket due to getting what amounts to multiple attacks each round. At most I'd suggest dropping the amount of Threat required to trigger those talents down to 2, but even that's going to give the LS Form PCs a notable boost in combat efficiency. Prior Star Wars RPGs already had a host of problems with the Jedi crowd pretty much outshining everyone else, and FFG has thus far done a pretty good job of keeping things in check.

But ultimately, the Improved Parry and Reflect talents are fine as is. Remember that a combat round in this system is not a mere handful of seconds like it is in most other RPGs, but can be upwards of a minute. So while only a few actual combat rolls are being made, in a narrative vein there's probably a whole bunch of attacks being made and a slew of blaster bolts flying back and forth. And even in the prequels where Jedi were at their most powerful, we don't see them reflecting every single blaster bolt fired at them back into the attacker, and in the cases where we see more than one shot, the targets in question qualify as minions and are in a group, and as such are more prone to being dropped in droves in terms of game mechanics.