Now that the crafting rules from Keeping the Peace and Special Modifications have arrived, I took a look at the lightsaber construction rules in the Game Master's Kit, compared them, and thought of a few updates. I made myself a document, but I won't post it here because I copied the information from the kit. Instead, I'll list some of the things I thought would make for a good update:

• Practical Design: Spend 2 Advantage or a Triumph to make the hilt easier to repair, work on, and modify, adding 1 Boost to such checks. This would be selected once.
• Subtle Design: Spend 3 Advantage or a Triumph to make the hilt harder to identify when deactivated, adding 1 Setback to such checks. This would be selected once.
• Schematic: For 4 Advantage or a Triumph to make a schematic, reducing the difficulty of making lightsaber hilts of a template once. Selectable once.
• Integral Attachment Spend 2 Triumph to add +1 hard point free attachment that uses 1 hard point for no cost (essentially adding an attachment for 0 hard points). (Restricted to lightsaber attachments only, or open to applicable weapon attachments?)
• Lengthy Construction: 2 Threat or a Despair increases the construction time by 12 hours. I bumped this up from the RAW, which only cost 1 Threat.
• Wear and Tear: 3 Threat or a Despair damages the tools used to build the lightsaber one step.
• Faulty: 2 Despair makes the lightsaber faulty, meaning the the GM can spend Despair on combat checks to cause the lightsaber to overheat, suffering damage. Selectable once. (Restrict to a one time occurrence?)

Players can add their Force Rating to the checks to modify crystals. Would it be reasonable to allow players to do the same when building a lightsaber? I mean, it would make sense, especially seeing as the Jedi had to use the Force to make theirs, as seen in The Clone Wars.

I think its great, well done.

on the Add Force Rating question, the Artisan has a 25xp talent (intuitive Improvements) that lets them add their Force Rating to checks to craft or repair items, so i probably wouldn't let everyone do it for building their Lightsaber. But it could be a thing that changes depending on the campaign and group involved.

I'll have to review Intuitive Improvements... when I'm near the book and not tired.

Considering how unreliable the Force die is, I don't think it would be a big issue to allow them to apply it to the specific task of building a lightsaber. The benefit of Intuitive Improvements is that you can do it with anything, including modding hilt attachments, building armor, etc. That said, the check to craft a lightsaber is already only Average, so I suppose it depends on how easy you think it should be for an unskilled crafter to get some special effects. We see a lot of lightsabers that don't have any significant unique qualities, but we also see quite a few lightsabers that do have unique characteristics. Speaking of which, with the lightsaber that Ezra crafts in mind, what about a 4 advantage "inbuilt weapon" benefit that lets the Jedi incorporate a 1 encumbrance weapon into the hilt?

So looked over Intuitive Improvements. Seeing as it can be applied to any gear, adding Force die to one's own lightsaber hilt only doesn't tread on its use much, especially seeing as you need more pips to add hard points like Intuitive Improvements. The thing that would make it a viable addition is if you started monkeying with the crafting difficulties. The RAW only specifically discusses basic hilts, but allows for others at the GM's discretion. You can leave the basic and the shoto at average, but make the double, the pike and the guard shoto hard (so characters without ranks in Mechanics or Lore would struggle a bit). The Temple Guard pike I put down as daunting.

I'm thinking Ezra's lightsaber will be a future hilt type or attachment, so I'm not keen on adding it. Just trying to flesh out the rules with the new ones.

Donovan Morningfire has several new hilts on his site. They include Ezra's blaster hilt, Kanan's breakdown hilt, and Kylo Ren's crossguard lightsaber.

• Faulty: 2 Despair makes the lightsaber faulty, meaning the the GM can spend Despair on combat checks to cause the lightsaber to overheat, suffering damage. Selectable once. (Restrict to a one time occurrence?)

I generally like this a lot, but I have a nitpick with Faulty; mechanically it doesn't seem very bad or significant, especially for requiring two Despair. An item damaged once merely adds one setback to rolls using it until repaired for 25% of the item's base cost, which does not include the mods or attachments. Adding one black die until a character can spend 75 credits just doesn't feel very harsh, and when my players roll two Despair, I like them to feel the consequences.

For the positive, I particularly like Practical Design and Subtle Design, I think they're good ideas to include for specifically Lightsabers.

I suppose you could change it the faulty result to causing the lightsaber to short out and stop working until repaired.

Or lower the cost to cause damage, say 2 Threat. Gives the GM more control over the outcome

Players can add their Force Rating to the checks to modify crystals. Would it be reasonable to allow players to do the same when building a lightsaber? I mean, it would make sense, especially seeing as the Jedi had to use the Force to make theirs, as seen in The Clone Wars.

See, I disagree. "modifying the crystal" can mean a LOT of things, including but not limited to the use of the Force to properly align and place the crystal within the lightsaber. Sure we see Jedi use the Force to put the saber together, but to me, that's exactly what modifying the crystal is. We don't see the younglings in TCW messing with he mechanical parts of the hilt. Sure they use Move to put it together, but they aren't actually building the parts. Heck, in TCW they are given the parts as part of their training.

The mechanics of the hilt don't change because you used the Force to screw something in instead of a hydrospanner (you're just being a show off). The position, alignment and personal attunment of the Force sensitive crystal on the inside of it, however, is certainly influenced by the Force. It's a tricky thing, to be sure, as a lightsaber is a small device and obviously changing the hilt effects the crystal (and vice versa). However in my game, unless you've learned how to use the Force to modify mechanical objects at a technical level (The Artisan tree) you can only use the Force when dealing with Force sensitive objects like kyber crystals or holocrons.

The younglings had to rely on the Force to guide them in the construction in the lightsaber. This could easily reflect that.

A great idea! I will steal some of your work for my game now that my players have discovered how to build lightsaber hilts.

Templates-

Basic hilt Mechanics:Average HandsRequired:One otherwise as basic hilt

Short hilt Mechanics:Hard HandsRequired:One otherwise as shoto hilt

Guard hilt Mechanics:Hard HandsRequired:One Special:Defensive1,Unwieldy4,-1damage

Pike hilt Mechanics:Average HandsRequired:Two otherwise as pike hilt

Double-Bladed hilt Mechanics:Hard HandsRequired:Two otherwise as double-bladed hilt

1 Advantage or Triumph-

Practice Makes Perfect: As in brawl/melee crafting

Practical Design: As Blackbird888's idea above but limited to the builder

Stun Quality: As in brawl/melee crafting but cheaper here

2 Advantage or Triumph-

Lessons Learned: As in brawl/melee crafting

Defensive Quality: As in brawl/melee crafting

Deflection Quality: As in brawl/melee crafting but cheaper here

3 Advantage or Triumph-

Efficient Construction: As in brawl/melee crafting (rather than GM screen version)

Lightweight: As in brawl/melee crafting but more expensive (rather than GM screen version)

Special Embellishment: As in armor crafting

4 Advantage or Triumph-

Accurate: As in brawl/melee crafting

Duplicate: As in brawl/melee crafting

Schematic: As in brawl/melee crafting

2 Triumph-

Integral Attachment: As in brawl/melee crafting (rather than GM screen version)

1 Threat or Despair-

Exhausting Effort: As in brawl/melee crafting

Difficult to Repair: As in brawl/melee crafting but cheaper here

2 Threat or Despair-

Unwieldy Quality: The lightsaber gains the Unwieldy 1 quality (or increase its Unwieldy quality by 1)

Hard to modify: As in brawl/melee crafting

3 Threat or Despair-

Heavy: As in brawl/melee crafting but more expensive

Inaccurate Quality: As in brawl/melee crafting

4 Threat or Despair-

2 Despair-

Compromised: The lightsaber can be Sundered

I think subtle design should be represented by an attachment of some sort, but I could see the argument for an advantage result.

Increasing the difficulty of the short and guard hilts is to represent having to narrow the beam. The double bladed hilt difficulty represents having to deal with the larger crystal being split in two directions.

With this idea a guard shoto would take 4 advantage using the guard hilt template. A jedi temple guard pike would require 6 advantage using the double-bladed hilt template.