So after some limited play testing, I am having a hard time getting any sort of reliability out of this talent. Now, I understand that due to balancing concerns, a player should not be allowed to be nearly invincible when they have a lightsaber in their hand, but I would like to get a little more out of this iconic ability, especially when the Shien Expert Specialization is so heavily focused on it.

So my question to you is how do you all is what combination of force powers/other talents/house rules have you guys implemented to make Reflect worth the experience?

The first control upgrade for Sense seems like an easy way to generate some more failure/threat pips, and I was thinking that maybe perhaps a force user would be allowed to take the "take cover" maneuver while they have their lightsaber out, though that comes a little too close to the Defensive Circle Talent for the Soresu Defender (though I don't really see why someone couldn't do both).

Thoughts?

The entire left branch of the Sense power helps. Armored clothing, Jedi Temple Armor or the Lorridan crystal depending on your source book availability and modding ability also doesn't hurt. I will say, though, that even with just the three ranks in the Shien tree and Supreme Reflect, even though I wasn't the party's main combatant, I took frankly absurd amounts of damage in certain combats and didn't cross my wound threshold (my effective soak against blaster fire was 9). Sure, activating the effect of Improved was rare, but I still felt really powerful.

If I were building a Shien Expert, I would try to have decent Brawn and sturdy armor. You should be able to get your Soak to 5 pretty easily, and with 3 ranks of Reflect, that means you can completely negate any blaster fire that inflicts 10 damage or less. Blaster rifles will probably still hurt, but most pistols will have a tough time. If you negate it completely, that means it can't inflict a Crit. Pretty handy, I'd say.

But what you really want is to slap that blaster fire right back at the shooter, right? It's pretty tough to do that with just a couple of purple dice. You want that Side Step talent, to be sure. You might also want to try to get a Lorrdian gemstone for your lightsaber, and grab a couple mods to get your ranged defense to 2. The Sense tree is excellent, and if it fits your character concept, the Shadow has 2 ranks of Dodge. Assuming you use all of those at once, and someone is shooting at you from medium range, they're looking at 3 red, 1 purple, and 2 black dice for difficulty. Daaaang.

Now, that's going to be pretty expensive, both in XP and Strain expenditure. But shooting at you is going to become a really bad idea.

See, I've found Reflect in and of itself to be pretty useful, with my PCs in different campaigns having used it to turn attacks that would have nearly crippled my character into far less painful blows. With two ranks of Reflect and a soak value of 4, that allows you to dial down the damage from a blaster rifle quite a bit, enough so that while it's painful you're not in as much jeopardy of getting dropped from a couple of shots; most starting PCs will only be able to withstand one hit from a blaster rifle before they run the risk of being pushed over their wound threshold, while certain combat-orientated builds might bump that up to withstanding two blaster rifle hits before dropping.

The thing that players need to bear in mind is that they are not the classically trained Jedi Knights of the prequel era, and that Reflect is never going to fully stop all damage. This is in keeping with the game's general design philosophy that combat is dangerous, and generally shouldn't last more than five rounds at most, with average combat length seeming to be about three rounds from all that I've seen and heard. It's been discussed at length that combat favors the attacker, and that avoiding being hit entirely is a nigh-impossible task. If anything, you're probably better off boosting up your wound threshold so that you can absorb more damage.

That being said, defensive talents like Side Step and Dodge can certainly help, as can the Sense power's Control Upgrade to upgrade the difficulty of incoming attacks, but they're not as much of a sure thing at stopping damage as Reflect is. Though on the upside, using those means that the attacker is rolling at least one red die, which means better odds of a Despair and the chance to use Improved Reflect if you've got it. And since your attacker's not likely to have the Reflect talent, that means you can hit them a lot harder than they hit you. So while that 11 points of damage from a stormtrooper minion group would still leave a mark (Reflect 2 and Soak 4 means you took 3 damage), using Improved Reflect means you can drop one of those troopers, making them less effective the next time they get to act. And if you can get to them with your lightsaber before they get to act again, odds are good they'll be even less effective when it comes their next chance to attack, since a basic lightsaber with 3 ranks in Lightsaber and a 3 in the associated characteristic means you've got a solid chance of taking out two of them (one from damage, one from a crit)

Another great option beyond what was already listed is the left side Control upgrade in the Misdirect force power. It'll take 55 xp to get to, so it isn't cheap.

But the upside of it is that you can commit Force die and for each Force die committed you add a threat to all combat checks targeting you.

Now Sense, Sidestep, and Dodge, are excellent because a number of upgrades can increase the difficulty of attacks against you but Misdirect has a slight edge in being a guaranteed Threat. Commit two Force Dice and that is two auto Threat on any attack against you. 1 natural Threat on a ranged attack hitting a target is more likely than 3.

Baleful Gaze is nice also with high coercion and the tree it comes in has a nice talent that allows you to reap in the destiny points (precision strike , a low crit weapon, say like a lightsaber, and selecting the easy level crit that allows you to flip destiny points, so use your strikes to cause a crit , get the DP to use in defense then upgrade your oppoents check 4 or 5 times for good measure, only thing is you need to be in medium range or less, if you are engaged you can always overbalance them to stop them shooting at you in the first place.