Hi All,

I just picked up Force and Destiny (FnD) recently and I had a great opportunity today to finally sit down and familiarize myself with the new material. (I have EotE and AoR so I'm feeling pretty good about my non force Star Wars RPG knowledge).

Good read so far.

And then I got to the Equipment section and started noticing new stuff and new toys. (Sweet)!

And then I noticed that lightsabers aren't listed among the melee weapons (as they are in the other two books).

No problem, turn the page and there's a list of six light sabers! Cool! No wait? What does that damage say? Six?

That can't be right . . .

So I checked the other two source books (EotE & AoR) and sure enough, their stats match each other exactly.

And the Lightsaber stats really were Nerfed in FnD. BADLY Nerfed!

The damage in FnD is reduced and so are the additional qualities.

So a couple of quick questions.

1) Am I really the first person to notice this? (I did a search of this forum and this topic hasn't come up yet).

2) How are the FnD groups fairing, using lightsabers that aren't much more effective than a blaster, but can't be used beyond the engaged range?

3) Is anyone else tempted to wave their hand horizontally in front of them and chant "These aren't the lightsabers you're looking for . . " ?

Any rate, in the long run I don't see this being a huge issue. I know that our group is primarily relying on EotE for all of our primary stats, but I am curious as to how this happened. Any thoughts?

Training sabers are meant to be a stand in.

Actual lightsabers start out lower in raw stats, but they have more room for modablity. If a Ilum lightsaber is modified all the way up then it will have exactly the same stats as a edge of the empire/age of rebellion. Just those lightsabers start out fully modifed as a benchmark for if a player/npc was using such a weapon.

The EotE/AoR saber is meant to be a fully tricked out weapon with no room to grow. It's kind of the baseline for a Jedi Knight's weapon. You can get those stats on a F&D lightsaber with the right mods and attachments - the character will start with something weaker and build to that as part of their journey. The best part about the F&D sabers is that if you wanted to use a different crystal and go down a different path of attachments, you could instead wind up with a very powerful, yet very different, saber.

Primarily it's to allow scaling without insanity ensuing. But there's more than that.

FaD characters expect to get a Lightsaber fairly early in their career, and there could be multiple in a single group. There are also many new talents that enhance the Lightsaber and require one to even use. Plus there are the modification options, the hilts themselves can have other attachments, and the crystals vary widely.

The EotE/AoR one is for extremely lucky and rare characters to use, generally without any skill training or talents that function around it. Also if you look closely at the Ilum crystal it's fully modified form is exactly the same as the EotE/AoR Lightsaber. So it's not so much that they nerfed the Saber, they just scaled back its starting stats so it can evolve with the character

As others have noted, the Lightsabers as listed in EotE and AoR are more like end-game weapons, akin to a +5 Holy Avenger for a D&D Paladin, where the FaD basic lightsaber is more akin to a +1 longsword that a PC might gain around by 3rd level.

One of the concerns with the EotE/AoR lightsabers is that they were incredibly dangerous, especially if the group allowed the purchase of an actual Lightsaber skill (something that everyone who attempted house rule careers/specs for Jedi did). And as Parry didn't exist, fights with lightsabers were seen as being akin to rocket-tag in that the first person to hit pretty much won the battle.

Since FaD PCs were expected to get access to lightsabers a whole lot sooner (possibly as soon as completing their first adventure), the stats had to be scaled down to something a lot more reasonable, but while also having the potential to grow and be customized according to the player's desires and the character's abilities. Yes, you can get an Ilum crystal modded to match the stats of an EotE/AoR lightsaber, and still have a couple hard points left over for further customization, potentially making an FaD lightsaber even more potent, especially as more sourcebooks get released.

For instance, I've got a PC with a partially-modded Ilum crystal (+2 damage, -1 crit, +1 vicious) who's also installed a superior hilt customization (thank you Contribution Rank Rewards!) and custom grip (from Special Modifications), giving him a Damage 9, Crit 1, Accurate 1, Breach 1, Vicious 1 lightsaber that generates 1 automatic advantage and removes one setback from all combat checks. In comparison to the EotE/AoR lightsaber stats, I'm only losing out on a point of damage (not a big deal when using Breach weapons) and a point of Vicious, and those last two things are things I could eventually snag once I manage to get my Force Rating past a 1 (minor drawback of starting as a Shii-Cho Knight). I'd call that a very fair trade-off for not having a lightsaber that starts off super-awesome in terms of stats, as well as adding a sense of accomplishment that I was able to build my PC's lightsaber up to its current status instead of having it handed to him as a suped-up beatstick.

All things considered F&D lightsabre's are the better ones since you can customize them. EotE and AoR lack customization and so you can't trick your weapon out to fit your playstyle or character concept. As more and more lightsabre opitions become avialble the less and less awesome the EotE and AoR sabres look by comparision.

Oh, and your definitely not the first to start this topic of conversation, the search is just terrible on this forum platform.

How is a weapon with 1 Breach not "much more effective than a blaster"?

cause math is hard

Okay, everyone.

Thank you for the clarification.

Today was day one of skimming the rules and I clearly did not find sufficient interest to get into the weapon mods for light sabers. A correction I must make rather soon.

Part of the problem is that I've read most of EotE & AoR, and I think I know most of this stuff pretty well. That means skipping a lot of stuff that I think I already know.

And yeah, reducing a target's armor by 1 isn't "hard math." It's actually rather "elementary."

And yeah, reducing a target's armor by 1 isn't "hard math." It's actually rather "elementary."

Note that Breach 1 = Pierce 10.

Another point to remember is that what kind of balanced the lightsabers in EotE and AoR was that the PC could only make untrained combat checks, using either Brawn or Agility, leaving them with a base pool of straight greens. And even if the GM did house rule in a Lightsaber skill, it was a non-career skill, making it an expensive prospect for a weapon that's going to draw a lot of negative attention from people attacking you, especially the Empire.

With FaD, not only do we now have a proper Lightsaber skill, but there's talents that can allow you to use a characteristic other than Brawn, be it Agility or Cunning or Presence, giving not only the chance for proficiency dice (and thus better odds of success as well as potential for Triumphs) but the option to use a characteristic the PC is strong in. Plus the defensive talents like Parry and Reflect that will keep your 'saber monkey alive longer in combat once they ignite the beatstick and start drawing attention.

Personal opinion here, but from brief chats with some of the FFG writers at GenCon when the FaD Beta came out, I kind of got the impression that they were aware that the EotE/AoR lightsabers were a little too potent, and thus set the FaD lightsabers at a somewhat lower point in terms of combat effectiveness. Don't get me wrong, a Breach 1 weapon is still very potent, since that pretty much ignores the soak value of the majority of what PCs will square off against, so a basic lightsaber against a minion group with a result of 1 success and 2 advantage is going to equal 2 dead minions, where that same result with a blaster pistol will only get one injured minion while using a blaster carbine/rifle might get you one dead minion.

The FaD Beginner Box adventure puts it on clear display that even just a basic lightsaber in the hands of a starting PC is an incredibly powerful weapon, with a number of folks that ran the adventure with the offered pre-gens found the BBEG tended to go down with alarming speed since he had zero means to defend himself against lightsaber attacks.

Okay, everyone.

Thank you for the clarification.

Today was day one of skimming the rules and I clearly did not find sufficient interest to get into the weapon mods for light sabers. A correction I must make rather soon.

Part of the problem is that I've read most of EotE & AoR, and I think I know most of this stuff pretty well. That means skipping a lot of stuff that I think I already know.

And yeah, reducing a target's armor by 1 isn't "hard math." It's actually rather "elementary."

It isnt reducing a targets armor by 1 , it is pretty much ignoring their armor altogether for most targets. Breach weapons are very effective. A blaster can do maybe minimum 1 or 2 dmg on most bbeg that have a reasonable brawn(3 or 4) and 2 soak armor, whereas a saber with 6 dmg and breach is doing minimum 7 plus dmg, even against targets with 4 or 5 more soak, hardly a similar comparison. Breach is giving them sometimes an effective dmg of up to 17 (against a target with 10 soak)

Okay, everyone.

Thank you for the clarification.

Today was day one of skimming the rules and I clearly did not find sufficient interest to get into the weapon mods for light sabers. A correction I must make rather soon.

Part of the problem is that I've read most of EotE & AoR, and I think I know most of this stuff pretty well. That means skipping a lot of stuff that I think I already know.

And yeah, reducing a target's armor by 1 isn't "hard math." It's actually rather "elementary."

Except it isn't one. Breach 1 reduces the target's soak by TEN.

Allen

Mark Caliber is correct in post #10: Armor 1 is equivalent to Soak 10. (Armor is typically used on vehicles as a soak analog).

The confusion can come because characters can wear armor, which usually provides the mechanical attribute of soak. But then "armor" is also, itself, the name of the mechanical attribute that vehicles use in place of soak.

All around, I appreciate the clarifications.

And I'm enjoying my studied read of FnD. There's a lot more crunchy bits than I originally expected.

I'm really glad I asked this seemingly silly question because you all are getting me up to speed very quickly. And since I'm the party rules subject matter expert (SME) I can't afford to stay ignorant.

Again, thanks everyone!

There's a lightsaber in Nexus of Power that ignores cortosis, your argument is invalid.

Just don't get confused about pierce as a result. If you had Pierce 10, this doesn't give you breach 1. So you couldn't go round destroying armored tanks because of a massive pierce rating pierce has no effect at all on armor.

Eg pierce 4 and you do 17 DMG won't get you 1 DMG on something with armor (you would need to do 20 DMG against an armor 1 vehicle to do 1 DMG to it)

There's a lightsaber in Nexus of Power that ignores cortosis, your argument is invalid.

It's also a one-of-a-kind relic tucked away in a location that most PCs aren't likely to visit (especially with the world being under solid Imperial control), and the circumstances behind it's creation pretty much being lost to history.

There's a lightsaber in Nexus of Power that ignores cortosis, your argument is invalid.

It's also a one-of-a-kind relic tucked away in a location that most PCs aren't likely to visit (especially with the world being under solid Imperial control), and the circumstances behind it's creation pretty much being lost to history.

Sounds like a typical hero weapon to me!