In Ep 14 of season 3 Kanan is instructing Sabine in the use of the Darksaber and in doing so gives us some great fluff in how lightsaber combat works. I especially like the part where the sabers attract each other and how they actually have weight that is in proportion to how attuned the wielder is to their weapon. This information helps to understand why lightsaber combat is a different Skill than strait melee.

Yep, it also debunked an idea I had. The sabers do not repell one another by their magnetic fields, they attract one another.

Explains the "locking sabers" phenomenon...

Explains the "locking sabers" phenomenon...

Which, unfortunately, isn't a thing in the game mechanics...

Explains the "locking sabers" phenomenon...

Which, unfortunately, isn't a thing in the game mechanics...

What? Never rolled 3 Threat before?

Explains the "locking sabers" phenomenon...

Which, unfortunately, isn't a thing in the game mechanics...

What? Never rolled 3 Threat before?

It's an iconic thing, it would be cool to have a little shout-out in the rules rather than leaving it only to the uber-nerds to implement arbitrarily. And it's not necessarily a disadvantage, Kanan uses it against Sabine.

Explains the "locking sabers" phenomenon...

Which, unfortunately, isn't a thing in the game mechanics...

What? Never rolled 3 Threat before?

It's an iconic thing, it would be cool to have a little shout-out in the rules rather than leaving it only to the uber-nerds to implement arbitrarily. And it's not necessarily a disadvantage, Kanan uses it against Sabine.

You got 2 advantage on your Lighsaber combat check against that Inquisitor? Say that you used a saber-lock and the magnetic pull of the blades to literally drag the Inqy off-balance, either screwing up his attack rhythm (setback die on his next check) or created a gap in his defense you can exploit (gain a boost die on your next check).

Rolled 2 threat? Same deal, only in reverse, with the Inqy pulling you out of your guard stance, giving him a boost die on his upcoming attack, or that your next attack will be clumsy and off-balance as you recover.

The writers opted not to go the WotC 3.X route of trying to explain every single game element. Saber locks only got a brief mention in a sidebar in The Jedi Training Manual for WotC's Saga Edition line, and nothing at all in the OCR/RCR products. WEG had even less, with lightsaber usage treated no different than any other combat skill other than a Force power that severely ramped up a lightsaber's power or the chance for a wielder to injure themselves. So while it might be "iconic" it's also just an updated version of the classic "duelists' swords clash and lock together" that you see in a great many swashbuckler-style movies, which allows the hero and villain an exchange of words (brief or otherwise) over crossed blades, and yet I've rarely seen in an RPG where there exact rules on getting regular metal blades to cross; 7th Sea first edition is the only place that comes to mind, and that was a special skill to bind a foe's weapon in general, and depending on the swordsman school could be done with a blade, a cloak, or a roast ham.

Now it's possible that in the Warrior book (or maybe the Mystic since that has Makashi Duelist) that they'll take the opportunity to go more in-depth on lightsaber combat, but I don't think we're going to get super-detailed dueling rules, probably more advice on setting up such a duel and ways to keep it from being a straight-up slash-fest. The default chart of suggested uses for advantage and threat in combat already covers a lot of ground that would come up in dueling, provided the player and the GM are willing to engage in a little narrative creativity in what a particular spending of advantage or threat means.

On 23/1/2017 at 4:55 PM, FuriousGreg said:

In Ep 14 of season 3 Kanan is instructing Sabine in the use of the Darksaber and in doing so gives us some great fluff in how lightsaber combat works. I especially like the part where the sabers attract each other and how they actually have weight that is in proportion to how attuned the wielder is to their weapon. This information helps to understand why lightsaber combat is a different Skill than strait melee.

I loved this bit about how lightsaber combat works, but then the existence of the Ancient Sword is wrong, since it doesn't have a crystal you can attune to. It should be bumped back to a melee weapon.

And i think that the Warrior book is the best place to give more detailed rules for a duel, like Fly Casual gives rules for a Showdown.

There could be a crystal hidden inside the sword. Makes for an interesting plot hook, too. Notice the crystal & attune to it, get your sword shattered, recover the crystal, and upgrade to a lightsaber.

Aye and I imagine ancient swords themselves to be somewhat of an oddity, even to those experienced in Lightsaber combat. Like Chinese straight swords back to when the Jedi were literally monks on a forsaken rock or whatever it is they came from. My issue with those swords is that they are so weak that one would be actively handicapping themselves to wield one, which doesn't seem right to me in a system that discourages a direct level based system.

24 minutes ago, LordBritish said:

My issue with those swords is that they are so weak that one would be actively handicapping themselves to wield one, which doesn't seem right to me in a system that discourages a direct level based system.

Isn't that a bit like saying "why would anyone use a light blaster pistol when there are heavy ones?"

It's a matter of availability as much as it is about mechanical benefit.

As for Kanan's spiel while sparring with Sabine, I took his bit about the blade's weight as not so much being literal and really being more of a metaphor for the psychological weight of what is a very lethal weapon. That it was feeling "lighter" to Sabine was more a case of her beginning to accept the metaphorical weight of the weapon rather it physically feeling lighter in her hands.

So in that that vein, the Ancient Sword is still viable because it's designed to mimic the physical qualities of a lightsaber (majority of the weight at the hilt/pommel, blade having little to no mass), since we did see Sabine learning the basic forms using a wooden training stick, for which Kanan felt was a workable substitute for Sabine to get accustomed to how using a lightsaber-type weapon was different than standard weapons.

1 hour ago, Stan Fresh said:

Isn't that a bit like saying "why would anyone use a light blaster pistol when there are heavy ones?"

It's a matter of availability as much as it is about mechanical benefit.

Training Lightsabers are of lower rarity then ancient swords, so availability isn't it. It's also debatable whether training sabers would draw attention; I personally would say yes because lightsaber knowledge is outlawed. Theres a nichie for it, but compared to picking up a blaster or a vibro weapon, it's not a very appealing weapon despite it's apparent rarity.

Personally, training sabers seem silly to me. Have we ever seen stunning-only lightsabers on screen? To each their own, but I'd rather progress from sword to proper lightsaber than have a training saber at all.

30 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

Personally, training sabers seem silly to me. Have we ever seen stunning-only lightsabers on screen? To each their own, but I'd rather progress from sword to proper lightsaber than have a training saber at all.

We have, actually. According to both canon and Legends sources, the little Jedi younglings in Attack of the Clones are using training sabers.

4 hours ago, LordBritish said:

Aye and I imagine ancient swords themselves to be somewhat of an oddity, even to those experienced in Lightsaber combat. Like Chinese straight swords back to when the Jedi were literally monks on a forsaken rock or whatever it is they came from. My issue with those swords is that they are so weak that one would be actively handicapping themselves to wield one, which doesn't seem right to me in a system that discourages a direct level based system.

Why do you think the ancient sword is so weak? It seems to do the same damage as other one handed "normal" (ie not vibro) weapons, and has the defensive 1 quality which isn't too bad. You can use it to train the lightsaber skill and not attract attention. Sure the training saber is better because it can use Reflect, and deals a fixed strain damage, but it is also much more noticeable. For me the only disadvantage of the Ancient sword is that it doesn't have vicious1 like the corellian cutlass. But i guess that you mightconsider a corellian cutlass also a very weak weapon.

Although they never mention it in the RAW the Ancient Sword is very likely created in the same way, if not actual examples of, the same weapons as the Je'daii Force imbued blades used prior to the advent of the lightsabre. Sort of like finding an old Katana or using similar techniques to make one.
I'm not a big fan of them being just thrown in as a substitute for a lightsabre as they should really be more mysterious and special than an intermediary weapon for Force Users. I haven't used them in the game I run, or at least I haven't needed to yet, nor have I used training sabres. For the couple of Force Users I have playing I told them up front that they will either get to build a lightsabre or find one within a few sessions and they should concentrate of building other parts of their PC until then. They were fine with that but if one had insisted I would have allowed them to start with one. The thing to remember is that each game is about unique characters in a unique Star Wars Universe and not an MMO were you run into thousands of other folks with glow sticks.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Force-imbued_blade

1 hour ago, Lareg said:

Why do you think the ancient sword is so weak? It seems to do the same damage as other one handed "normal" (ie not vibro) weapons, and has the defensive 1 quality which isn't too bad. You can use it to train the lightsaber skill and not attract attention. Sure the training saber is better because it can use Reflect, and deals a fixed strain damage, but it is also much more noticeable. For me the only disadvantage of the Ancient sword is that it doesn't have vicious1 like the corellian cutlass. But i guess that you mightconsider a corellian cutlass also a very weak weapon.

Part of it might be that a number of the Lighsaber-centric specs don't require a high Brawn due to having a talent that lets you use a different characteristic when making a Lightsaber skill check, and for many of those careers having a high Brawn (above a 2) isn't really all that useful. So if you've got a Brawn of 2 and are using an ancient sword, you've only got a base damage of 4, which is pretty pathetic in terms of damage values, where as a vibrosword is better off due to having Pierce 2, meaning you'll be doing more damage.

I had a Guardian/Soresu Defender in the FaD game I'm running who started out with an ancient sword, and found it to be a pretty sub-par weapon compared to just using his blaster pistol. Kind of a moot point as the PC now has a proper lightsaber with a Lorrdian gemstone (he's pretty much the party tank at this point), but for a while the character drawing their ancient sword was more of a desperation tactic than anything else.

46 minutes ago, Lareg said:

Why do you think the ancient sword is so weak? It seems to do the same damage as other one handed "normal" (ie not vibro) weapons, and has the defensive 1 quality which isn't too bad. You can use it to train the lightsaber skill and not attract attention. Sure the training saber is better because it can use Reflect, and deals a fixed strain damage, but it is also much more noticeable. For me the only disadvantage of the Ancient sword is that it doesn't have vicious1 like the corellian cutlass. But i guess that you mightconsider a corellian cutlass also a very weak weapon.

I was comparing the weapon to vibro swords in addition to lightsabers, which is cheaper, deals 3 more damage (including the two pierce, very few beings have less then 2 soak) has a better crit rating and ultimately keys off the same stat (because to break soak with this sword, one has to have a respectable brawn anyway, when you have a respectable brawn one can use it as an attack stat without consequence.) which to be honest makes it at the bottom of it's class as far as weapon types are concerned. I personally don't think ancient swords were worth the printing space; one could have included the training stick instead and have it largely serve the same purpose. Put a hard point on it and it suddenly becomes a interesting stun stick.

Of course despite that I believe all weapons have a purpose; if nothing else they are something to give to the NPC's to represent culture, primitive species and the like to provide a world to interact and marval at. I'm just not sure if the sword is interesting when it's clearly flat out inferior compared every other comparable option. I honestly believe that the sword needed to do +3 damage to be worth using to represent that it's a really keen blade, but that force users picking this sword up could be really dangerous with it.

I have personally used an ancient sword to fill in for a shyarn for a Cerean Niman Disciple. It may not be the best weapon, but it can fit in any number of weapon concepts, allows the lightsaber specializations to have a starting level lethal weapon that uses the Lightsaber skill, and does work with the [Form] Technique talents.

Despite them being unrestricted, training lightsabers are still lightsabers, while an ancient sword just looks like a sword. In situations where it the character would be under scrutiny, you can lie about the sword easier than a training saber.

2 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

Personally, training sabers seem silly to me. Have we ever seen stunning-only lightsabers on screen? To each their own, but I'd rather progress from sword to proper lightsaber than have a training saber at all.

Both Kanan's saber and Ezra's original saber could be adjusted to a training mode doing stun damage. Sparring in the Ghost's cargo hold, they used this setting in an episode, with both the appearance and sound of the blades altered to indicate this.

42 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Both Kanan's saber and Ezra's original saber could be adjusted to a training mode doing stun damage. Sparring in the Ghost's cargo hold, they used this setting in an episode, with both the appearance and sound of the blades altered to indicate this.

You remember which episode that was?

47 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Both Kanan's saber and Ezra's original saber could be adjusted to a training mode doing stun damage. Sparring in the Ghost's cargo hold, they used this setting in an episode, with both the appearance and sound of the blades altered to indicate this.

I don't remember that, can you tell me which episode it was?

But in general you're right, i think there's a mod that lets you adjust the power of the sword somewhere in the books.

I wonder why Kanan didn't use it when sparring with Sabine, since he was worried for her safety.

Season 2, but I don't recall the episode title at the moment.

mhmm good catch, the blade seems thinner and the noise more muffled.