I've been thinking about which of the defensive talents in this system are the most effective in personal combat. I'm certainly not an old hand with the FFG SWRPG, so it's possible that all this is wrong, but I do have some theories.

Coordination Dodge from the Performer (and possibly Martial Artist) spec is rather awesome.

"When targeted by a Combat check flip a Destiny Point to add Failure equal to ranks in Coordination."

Sure you can't use it every round, but when you see the hurt coming it can be amazing. More than 4 success is a rare thing.

Baleful gaze :spend a Dp to upgrade check by ranks in coercion (so up to 5) - works on any combat check asblong as its within medium range, isnt going to protect you from snipers, has the added advantage of being in a specialization that has a talent that can consistently cycle destiny points back to light side

Enhance brawn commit force die to add to brawn. This is a better force protection, as it increases soak, melee and brawl dmg and your brawn , which can increase your dice pools all in one. Isnt limited by ranks and doesnt cost strain round to round

Heck, even Biggest Fan and Distracting Behaviour from Performer are great defensive talents

Then there's Fear the Shadows, nothing like making the enemy run away for saving your own bacon

I've been thinking about which of the defensive talents in this system are the most effective in personal combat. I'm certainly not an old hand with the FFG SWRPG, so it's possible that all this is wrong, but I do have some theories.

My tentative ranking, from best to worst:

#1: Talents that add to your defense score (Sixth Sense, Superior Reflexes, Defensive Training)

I see a couple of huge advantages to these talents. First, they are "always on," requiring no activation cost of any sort. This means they'll be there protecting you every single time you're attacked, preventing a huge amount of total damage over the course of a session. Second, they add dice to the pool rather than upgrading dice. It's a truism that adding dice has the most effect on success and advantages, and the main point of defense is to reduce your opponents success and advantages. That's what prevents you from taking damage and critical hits.

#2: Parry and Reflect

These have a steep activation cost, but they will also prevent a large amount of total damage over the course of the game. They can also prevent critical hits if the opponent hits with low enough damage.

#3: The Sense power's defensive upgrade

This doesn't add dice to the pool, but it does upgrade two dice rather than one. In particular, this means that against short-range fire you *will* add a purple die to your opponent's pool, and in melee you will add a purple die (in addition to upgrading two to reds) if you combine the power with a destiny point or one of the other difficulty-upgrading talents like Dodge. That said, this power isn't right for every character, because committing a Force die can be a very steep cost. Many Jedi use lightsaber forms like Niman, Makashi or Ataru, where you want to keep your Force dice available to add successes, advantages or critical hits when you attack. But if you don't fight with these forms, or you have lots of Force dice to spare, this is an excellent talent.

#4: Enhance power to increase Brawn

This uses up multiple Force dice, which is, again, not so great for many character builds. But you can get a huge amount of Soak out of it. Potentially very powerful.

#5: Dodge

Upgrading dice isn't as good as adding dice, and you'll go through strain really quickly using this talent, especially if you have multiple ranks. But if you have three or more ranks of it, or combine it with other ways of upgrading dice, it can have a pronounced effect.

#6: Side Step

This works against multiple attacks in a turn without spending extra strain, which is a small advantage over Dodge. But it requires a maneuver to activate it. There's a huge opportunity cost to spending a maneuver: maybe you could've run for cover, or taken a guarded stance instead.

#7: Defensive Stance

This is even a little worse than Side Step, just because you're a bit less likely to have multiple melee attacks coming in per turn than multiple ranged attacks.

#8: Improved Center of Being

Center of Being is very situational, but against opponents who want to get in critical hits, it can be quite useful, and one strain is a fairly low price to pay for it.

#9: Force Protection

Between using a Force die and also spending strain, this is an extremely costly talent. Enhancing Brawn is strictly better.

#10: Regular Center of Being

A maneuver, on the other hand, is a pretty high price to pay for Center of Being's effect IMO.

I'm probably forgetting some talents, but these are the ones I've thought about or seen in play. Thoughts?

thanks for this it was very helpful, I haven't looked at the details of defensive stance since the beginning of the game, I recalled correctly that you can only activate it on your turn but somehow I had never made the connection that using it cost your maneuver, and the high cost of having to spend the maneuver, And this is timely because I'm designing the first character that I will get to play as a PC and would have been going after defensive stance had you not told me about this. So thanks again. As the GM I've given NPCs a few ranks of Adversary and never worried about dodge, defensive stance, or side step.

Durable, Hard Headed/Improved, Heroic Fortitude, Heroic Resilience, Resolve, Second Wind, Stimpack Specialization, Unstoppable.

Talents that burn strain to upgrade enemy checks are like wounding yourself to maybe avoid being wounded.

Hard Headed is actually pretty useless unless you're hit with an effect that staggers you for 2+ turns.

Hard Headed is actually pretty useless unless you're hit with an effect that staggers you for 2+ turns.

If you're staggered you can't do any other Actions anyway, so you have nothing else you can do and everything to gain, so actually, it's pretty great.

And you can't get Improved without it.

Durable, Hard Headed/Improved, Heroic Fortitude, Heroic Resilience, Resolve, Second Wind, Stimpack Specialization, Unstoppable.

Talents that burn strain to upgrade enemy checks are like wounding yourself to maybe avoid being wounded.

Strain is recoverable on a much more regular basis. Take my own warden character with 4 willpower and 2 discipline , can get back about 4-8 strain per encounter, and while this is better than most this is without any extra strain recovery talents. Which is a **** sight more than the wounds I can recover in a day without med packs.

After the encounter, doesn't do you any good while it's going on.

Hard Headed is actually pretty useless unless you're hit with an effect that staggers you for 2+ turns.

If you're staggered you can't do any other Actions anyway, so you have nothing else you can do and everything to gain, so actually, it's pretty great.

And you can't get Improved without it.

But I will agree that the Improved version is pretty awesome.

Durable, Hard Headed/Improved, Heroic Fortitude, Heroic Resilience, Resolve, Second Wind, Stimpack Specialization, Unstoppable.

Talents that burn strain to upgrade enemy checks are like wounding yourself to maybe avoid being wounded.

I mostly agree, but if you're playing a Jedi with Improved Parry or Improved Reflect, upgrading enemy dice is more valuable because despairs equal damage to your enemies.

But that aside, yeah, 99% of the time I'd rather save my strain for Parry or Reflect than spend it on Dodge.

And I agree with you that Stimpack Specialization should be lumped in as a defensive talent. It's pretty amazing--you effectively gain 5 points of WT for every point of Stimpack Specialization.

After the encounter, doesn't do you any good while it's going on.

Edit a defensive parry master with improved parry and supreme parry you can do something with athletics / coordination every action (with enhance, so that you can add force points to advantage, so fail or pass you have a good chance of generating enough advantage to keep you maxed out on strain, meaning its only a matter of time before 3 threat or a despair show up.a bit cheesy and a bit boring but effective nonetheless.

The thing about Center of Being is that it's fairly niche; it's clearly meant to be used against opponents with lightsabers or other weapons that crit on a low Advantage count. Being able to raise your opponent's crit rating from 1 to 3 makes a pretty huge difference, especially with a weapon against which soak is all but irrelevant.

After the encounter, doesn't do you any good while it's going on.

While its going on advantage can also recover strain. Another thing you cannot do with wounds.

Edit a defensive parry master with improved parry and supreme parry you can do something with athletics / coordination every action (with enhance, so that you can add force points to advantage, so fail or pass you have a good chance of generating enough advantage to keep you maxed out on strain, meaning its only a matter of time before 3 threat or a despair show up.a bit cheesy and a bit boring but effective nonetheless.

Can you use advantage from non-combat skill checks to recover strain in combat?

From FAD p. 210: Just as they can be spent in a non-combat skill check,

After the encounter, doesn't do you any good while it's going on.

While its going on advantage can also recover strain. Another thing you cannot do with wounds.

Edit a defensive parry master with improved parry and supreme parry you can do something with athletics / coordination every action (with enhance, so that you can add force points to advantage, so fail or pass you have a good chance of generating enough advantage to keep you maxed out on strain, meaning its only a matter of time before 3 threat or a despair show up.a bit cheesy and a bit boring but effective nonetheless.

Can you use advantage from non-combat skill checks to recover strain in combat?

From FAD p. 210: Just as they can be spent in a non-combat skill check,

[Triumph] and [Advantage] can be spent in a combat check to gain

incidental beneficial effects. However, just as the rules governing encounters are somewhat more regimented

than the rules governing narrative gameplay. so

some of the options governing the spending of tJ and

@are more clearly defined.

So I would've thought the combat options for spending advantage and triumph only applied to combat checks...

So the question that you're hinting at is whether to define a "combat check" as only attacks made with one of the 6 combat skills, only attacks (which would include force powers, and explosions set with the mechanics skill among others), or any skill check made during a combat encounter.

I think it's fairly clear that the definition of "combat check" is "check made to attack." For example, supreme parry says you can only use it if you didn't make a combat check.

The only question in my mind is whether the wording here is imprecise and the header on the tables, "spending advantage in combat" means the rules apply to every check made in combat.

I think it's fairly clear that the definition of "combat check" is "check made to attack." For example, supreme parry says you can only use it if you didn't make a combat check.

The only question in my mind is whether the wording here is imprecise and the header on the tables, "spending advantage in combat" means the rules apply to every check made in combat.

"Spending advantage *in combat*" sounds like it applies to every check made *in combat*

Some discussion here: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/182770-combat-checks-vs-non-combat-checks/

Kind of inconclusive, though

Some discussion here: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/182770-combat-checks-vs-non-combat-checks/

Kind of inconclusive, though

Some discussion here: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/182770-combat-checks-vs-non-combat-checks/

Kind of inconclusive, though

It seems like there isn't consensus among players, I suppose someone could ask the devs AND I kind the answer to be it's up to the GM

Yeah, that would be a natural thing for them to say.

I'm torn... although the reflect-only character build syrath described sounds boring, I kind of like the idea of characters doing random gratuitous acrobatics to recover strain. Feels very Star Wars to me. Although I suppose that only goes for Jedi--it doesn't feel very Star Wars to have ranged combatants gratuitously jumping.

And I definitely don't like the idea of PCs just inserting random purposeless skill checks into combat as a way of farming advantages.

Some discussion here: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/182770-combat-checks-vs-non-combat-checks/

Kind of inconclusive, though

It seems like there isn't consensus among players, I suppose someone could ask the devs AND I kind the answer to be it's up to the GM

Yeah, that would be a natural thing for them to say.

I'm torn... although the reflect-only character build syrath described sounds boring, I kind of like the idea of characters doing random gratuitous acrobatics to recover strain. Feels very Star Wars to me. Although I suppose that only goes for Jedi--it doesn't feel very Star Wars to have ranged combatants gratuitously jumping.

And I definitely don't like the idea of PCs just inserting random purposeless skill checks into combat as a way of farming advantages.

If it's purposeless the GM always has the option of saying "you don't need to roll for that you automatically succeed but it costs your action"

I wasnt actually suggesting gratuitously using your action just to recover strain. (Although i can see why it would be read that way)I was actually meaning you use your activities in a non combative way to further your goals, force powers come under this as well , as long as you don't use a combat check. Ideally you want this check to be able to generate advantage that you can use to recover strain , but In doing so this allows you to supreme parry for 1 strain per attack. Giving you plenty of chances to counter. It is the endurance style allowing your opponent to wear out against you.

I like the overall list! Couple of notes:

1. Defense die are gravy for all the reason you mentioned, but they also have a solid 1/3 chance of not doing anything at all. They're not reliable the way purples and reds are.

2. Don't underestimate this technological terror you've constructed the advantages of upgrading vs. more purple die. It's true that another purple will decrease the odds of success more, but the chance for despairs to come up (or to be more likely) is a fantastic narrative opportunity for a GM. After all, failure might make you fail a roll or do 1 less damage...but succeed or fail, that Despair is gonna haunt you

3. Center of Being actually takes me back to that Ataru discussion we had. One thing an ataru user can do while Linking up a storm is crit like a madman at the same time. Since most lightsabers only need a single advantage to crit, you're looking at 4 advantage for a double hit, double crit, and 3 advantage for each additional hit+crit. Center of Being takes that to 6 initial advantage and 4 advantage per hit+crit, which is much more difficult. As you say, it's very situational, but you're glad to have it if it comes up!

Good points. Improved Center of Being might belong above Sidestep and Defensive Stance on the list. The only thing is, if you're rolling a decent number of yellow dice you'll be critting frequently anyway from Triumphs which CoB can't do anything to stop. (In fact, with a weapon with crit rating above 2, Triumphs are a much more reliable way to get critical hits.)