In the Dark Horse Comics Dark Empire storyline, doesn't Luke reflect an AT-AT shot?

I'd call that more the purview of Protect.

Plus, Dark Empire went over the top on what the Force could do, with Palps coming back from the dead via moving his spirit into clone bodies and creating massive hyperspace storms.

Hi again

we're about to start a "mini demo campaign", and Jedi is a soresu defender, so this problem arise

we agreed to test the rules as written, and then after this run eventually argue about house ruling them

it seems like Defensive Circle is the real "deflect all blaster" ability, thus increasing defense after a successful intellect roll and so far "deflecting" every blaster at him (and eventually even people he's protecting)

still, don't like the "reducing damage" mechanics of parry/reflect... it looks a lot "odd" a damage reduction for something that is supposed to be just deflected away... but at the moment we are using RAW.

Don't forget that Reflect happens on top of Soak. So with a reasonable soak value of 3 or 4 and only a couple ranks of Reflect under your belt, you are completely nullifying the damage from a blaster pistol. More Soak (such as from Force talents or powers) and/or more ranks in Deflect (furthering your Jedi training) will see the character ignoring the damage from heavier weapons. The mechanic is actually quite sound.

The idea of Ranged Defense is a decent one, but one can see how dice pools would get quickly out of hand with all that stacking of Setbacks.

The one thing that this mechanic doesn't do well is deflect fire from small vehicles, like Luke vs. the speeder bike on Endor. There have been some suggestions as to how to houserule it, but I would take such situations as they come and rule them on the spot. My two credits.

The gun Luke deflected on Endor was a light repeating blaster. As that is what is on a speeder bike. And this mechanic does that just fine.

Some other example of Jedi/Sith reflecting/deflecting Vehicle weapons was in Star Wars Rebel.

In "Relic of The Old Republic" both Kanan and Ezra are seen deflecting a Tie fighter cannons.

In "Always Two There Are" the brother deflects the Phantoms cannons.

I have some points and questions.

For those wondering up to what scale blaster you can reflect, the F&D book, page 150, Reflect and Reflect (Improved) cites "Ranged Light, Heavy as well as Gunnery which is a vehicle mounted weapon. As for reasonable scale, up to whatever you can mount on a freighter that isn't considered capital ship class weaponry. So an X-wing, Tie, or even the Falcon could be deflected (assuming a single shot). Turbo lasers, etc., not so much as the is larger that the thickness of the blade.

My question is: According to the Talents, it seems only the Reflect (Improved) is capable of reflecting blaster fire to a target. HOWEVER, it seems dependent on the shooter rolling either a Despair or 3 threats as opposed to skill on behalf of the lightsaber weilder. I don't mind this talent is limited to 2 career specializations as most jedi are seen just deflecting shots away from themselves or those they are protecting (ie, Jedi Generals leading squads of Clone troopers) but I would like to think there should be other factors involved other than just how horrible a shot the opponent is. Previous license holders usually base the dc on the final to-hit number the opponent rolled, so even if a target rolled very well, as long as the Jedi rolls BETTER, then he or she got it.

Not to mention the mechanic seems reverse to canon. Notice the Jedi don't swing at every grapefruit bolt coming their way. They either stand still against misses, micro-dodge most shots and only reflect/deflect shots that actually WOULD have hit someone in a vital area.So again, instead of watching every opponent's roll like a hawk and hoping they crap out on a roll with threats or despair, you should be actively rolling against hits that count.

Any points to other talents that can help this along we might have missed or some house rules that seem to work?

Thanks!

Hi again

we're about to start a "mini demo campaign", and Jedi is a soresu defender, so this problem arise

we agreed to test the rules as written, and then after this run eventually argue about house ruling them

it seems like Defensive Circle is the real "deflect all blaster" ability, thus increasing defense after a successful intellect roll and so far "deflecting" every blaster at him (and eventually even people he's protecting)

still, don't like the "reducing damage" mechanics of parry/reflect... it looks a lot "odd" a damage reduction for something that is supposed to be just deflected away... but at the moment we are using RAW.

Again, it's not just one shot being deflected. Yes it's one roll, one action, but narratively, they are fending off a volley of blaster bolts from a squad of stormtroopers. Many of those shots are just going to miss, because you know, they're main characters, and shots miss to make it look intense. Some will be deflected directly by the heroes, and some will hit. Just look at any of the prequels or the Clone Wars, the best examples of a Jedi fending off tons of blaster shots at once. How many do you see simply fly past the heroes? Dozens of them. They only actually reflect/deflect probably 10% of the shots fired at them. That 10% represents the few bolts that were actually fired at them with reasonable accuracy, and are the rolls that "hit". They choose to reflect them, the 3 shots that are actually on target. They get 2 of them, but the 3rd slips through their defenses, and gives them a burn, or serious wound, depending on how much damage was unmitigated. They keep rolling, because they are Jedi, but they're now sporting a wound. This is pretty easy to replicate with these rules.

See, I don't think a Jedi should be able to deflect an endless barrage of blaster bolts, and it should really only work on small-arms fire. I know it's "canon" and all, but I consider almost everything in the prequels to be ridiculous, and I don't really use it. Certainly not a couple of guys effortlessly mowing through dozens and dozens of battle droids. Oh, and you want to swat a TIE fighter's laser back at it? Sorry, buddy, but even a "hit" probably just means the blast landed somewhere near you and exploded. Yes, you're way over your wound threshold and unconscious, but you've only taken one critical hit. Be happy.

I want to point out here that blasters even from ships usually do not explode, they simply have tons of penetration power, but they discharge their energy very controlled. No near blast, it just might overwhelm the ability of the lightsaber to reflect. Which ironically is exactly how the rules handle this when you try to deflect 80 points of damage from my heavy twin-laser cannons.

In my RL game, I play a Soresu/Shien with 6 ranks in Reflect, Improved Reflect and Supreme Reflect. Does that mean that I can take Turbolaser shots and turn them back at a Destroyer? At the cost of 1 strain if I didn't attack last turn?

Your character would likely be vaporized by a turbolaser, and here's why:

The Turbolaser does 10 damage on the planetary scale, which is 100 damage on the personal scale, with Breach 2 (so it ignores 20 points of Armor/Soak). (FaD p.230)

6 ranks in Reflect allows you to ignore 8 damage (2 for initial purchase of Reflect + 1 for each rank of Reflect taken). This is already 4 less damage than you need to nullify the Breach effect of a direct hit that does no additional damage. You need armor that will let you block another 92 damage. (This is where the math gets tricky - if your Soak is 20 or less, the most a straight 100-damage hit will do to you with Reflect in this case is 92; Reflect is not Soak and therefore is not negated by the Breach quality.) (FaD p.150)

Improved Reflect allows you to send damage back after the hit is resolved which means your character would need something that provides them with 112 points of Soak to prevent all incoming damage - and that still only applies if the attack generated a despair or 3 threat on their hit. (FaD p.150) If the defending Soresu/Shien cannot make up that difference, then they are extremely likely to be incapacitated before the reflecting happens. (FaD p.211) In addition, the GM may apply +50 to the critical injury roll. (FaD p.230)

I'd argue that anything capable of giving you 112 Soak is likely to prevent you from actually using your lightsaber to defend against that attack. That said, a turbolaser is not typically accurate enough to pinpoint a target that's not much smaller than 2 meters without assistance from a Force-wielding individual.

As a further comment, because the dice are meant to act as narrative tools, it is perfectly reasonable to simply describe damage being done to an opponent as a reflected blaster bolt, or something similar for deflection if the damage was absorbed by Soak or simply failed to hit. You have a lot of freedom to describe things as you like without necessarily "breaking the rules."

My question is: According to the Talents, it seems only the Reflect (Improved) is capable of reflecting blaster fire to a target. HOWEVER, it seems dependent on the shooter rolling either a Despair or 3 threats as opposed to skill on behalf of the lightsaber weilder. I don't mind this talent is limited to 2 career specializations as most jedi are seen just deflecting shots away from themselves or those they are protecting (ie, Jedi Generals leading squads of Clone troopers) but I would like to think there should be other factors involved other than just how horrible a shot the opponent is. Previous license holders usually base the dc on the final to-hit number the opponent rolled, so even if a target rolled very well, as long as the Jedi rolls BETTER, then he or she got it.

The important thing to remember about this is that the action isn't always taken by the character whose owner rolled the dice. A despair means that while attempting to accomplish something, it goes horribly wrong. For a stormtrooper, you trying to shoot a Jedi and having the shot reflected to hit you in the face is just that kind of horrible failure. I do see the value of your point, although the issue with using triumph and advantage to reflect bolts is that puts the action on the defending character, which isn't quite where things happen. The shooter initiates the attack, the attack fails in such a way that the shooter is hurt. The Jedi cannot deflect shots that aren't fired.

EDIT: I did some math wrong, and wrote some things that weren't terribly clear. I have updated this with page references as well as what I am sure is better math.

Oh and here a reference from vehicle weapons not causing explosions. They are ton of penetration power, but are very, very focused. So I don't see a problem to theory with deflecting them if you can deal with the extremely high damage. (Rebels is with this btw imho totally over the top, no idea how many ranks of deflect Jarrus has, looks like all of them ;-)

We did at first though as well that Planetary scale weapon should create huge explosions and such, but that is what the blast quality is for. No blast, no giant explosions, except when a character survives a direkt hit, which means

that the hit can not have been so direct. Hail to abstraction. (edit: And I am not being sarcastic, I like the narrative interpretations of the roles)

Starts at 58s. take note on the hits, they go straight through shields and armor, discharge their energy to the body of the droids, but no explosions or anything.

Oh and here a reference from vehicle weapons not causing explosions. They are ton of penetration power, but are very, very focused. So I don't see a problem to theory with deflecting them if you can deal with the extremely high damage. (Rebels is with this btw imho totally over the top, no idea how many ranks of deflect Jarrus has, looks like all of them ;-)

We did at first though as well that Planetary scale weapon should create huge explosions and such, but that is what the blast quality is for. No blast, no giant explosions, except when a character survives a direkt hit, which means that the hid can not have been so direct. Hail to abstraction.

https://youtu.be/MomPi52KpxIß

Take not on the hits, they go straight to shields and armor, discharge their energy to the body of the droids, but no explosions or anything.

The explosive effects could simply be the flash heating of the material by the plasma bolt. Assuming that's actually what blasters shoot, the amount of heat they would impart to their target could theoretically vaporize most materials they encounter, causing the "explosion" effect. Of course that then begs the question "So why doesn't everyone shot by one blow up into gibblets?" Which is an excellent question. And I answer it with "They can make explosions if you want to for fun flare and flavor, but they mechanically don't have a Blast effect unless the weapon specifies it in the description."

If you want to describe the blaster bolt that missed one of your PC's as "It hits the panel over your head, exploding into a shower of sparks and metal shards! You cover your face to avoid injury, suffer 1 setback die on your next attack." and then follow it up with "The blaster bolt hits you in the arm, the injury burns and scores your flesh, but you are relatively unharmed, and are able to continue the fight, take 3 wound." I'm totally fine with it. If you have players who want to nitpick "Well wait a minute, why doesn't it blow up whenever it hits anything?" You should politely smile at them, and bop them on the back of the head for being nitpickers.

It's not just the raw power but the diameter and volume of the bolt. If I had to guess those ship blasters are 20mm plus and likely 5 or more times the mass, where as a hand blaster is half that diameter (all the base firearms used are modern 9mm).

So unlike a personal scale Blaster bolt which we see in the films applying almost no kinetic energy on a lightsabre a bolt five times more massive certainly will and, since it's not solid, will likely also splash around the blade making the block almost ineffective. The RAW essentially does this by multiplying the damage by 10 but not increasing the amount blocked. As for reflecting, well, if the bolt splashes around the blade it's going to be like reflecting an exploding water balloon with a baseball bat...