On 2/13/2017 at 7:09 AM, SladeWeston said:

From the book Catalyst, which is essentially the Prequel to Rogue one, it makes Kyber crystals keep more like the thing that generates the energy rather than the thing focusing that energy. Maybe making energy isn't the right word. More like Kybers created some kind of positive feedback loop generating more energy than was put into them. Actually storing that energy and turning that energy into a weapon was I completely different mechanism that had nothing to do with the crystals. I'm not sure if this conflicts with previous Legends canon, but since Catalyst is an official Disney controlled book, it is what's official now.

This is consistent with the unfinished episodes of Clone Wars they put up online as just previz edits. In one story chain Anakin and Obi go to Utapau and chase down these dudes that have a speeder sized kyber crystal they are trying to sell to the CIS. When the crystal is hit with a blaster the bolt is boosted and refracted shooting super powered bolts in all directions.

So the death star "running on kyber crystals" is probably just a kludge/misinterpretation/certain point of view discussing how they are a key part of getting the energy needed for such a huge battle station that can just to light speed and blow up planets.

Back on topic, existing attachments that boost blaster damage probably accomplish the same thing as a kyber crystal mount for a fraction of the cost....

My first reaction (and no it's not a 'fun' reaction) but still. Here goes;

They DO have weapons that "shoot lightsaber like bolts." They're called "Blasters" and come in quite a nice variety with neat options. Some will even let you stun somebody into submission.

In my opinion, the Kyber crystal takes a basic blaster discharge and morphs it into the fixed blade that we're all familiar with.

And yeah, the power cells are swap-able and need charging often depending on how much you use the sabre.

If it were me, that's how I'd answer it. Yeah, not fun or glamorous, but it keeps me from having nightmares from questions like this.

Another thing to think about, is how lightsabers function. It uses an energy source of some sort, that is then focused, to generate a relatively short blade that is unbreakable and can cut through just about anything.

It’s basically a big plasma torch.

The crystals primarily focus and amplify the energy that is produced by the power cells.

The next question is how do they contain the energy in a limited range? The general consensus there is that they use an intense magnetic field to bottle up the energy.

The only thing that I believe is not generally known is how lightsaber blades are unable to cut or pass through the blade of another lightsaber.

Now, let’s look at what happens when you take current sharp blades and turn them into projectiles.

Take a razor or a scalpel, and rig up a way to fire that at someone. Unless you can find a way to make that razor or scalpel cut along a surface, it’s probably not going to do a great deal of damage. It will pass through, maybe cut a few things along the way, but odds are that nothing vital will be hit. But then it will do the same to the thing standing behind the thing you aimed at, and the thing after that, etc….

A stab or thrust with a lightsaber blade is not a particularly threatening attack, unless it is very carefully aimed. Lightsaber blades are much more effective with slashes, as the blade can be drawn a relatively long distance through a lot of material that would be greatly harmed by the length of the cut.

So, your guy wants to do a blaster with a Kyber crystal. Okay. That won’t increase the damage done by the blaster bolts, but will give it the Breach 1 capability. And will increase the risk of overpenetration, and the potential collateral damage that will result from overpenetration. And it will be more likely to run out of ammo and/or overheat.

Is that a trade you’d want to make, if you were the person who would be using the weapon?

Maybe there’s a reason why these things don’t generally exist?

35 minutes ago, bradknowles said:

A stab or thrust with a lightsaber blade is not a particularly threatening attack, unless it is very carefully aimed. Lightsaber blades are much more effective with slashes, as the blade can be drawn a relatively long distance through a lot of material that would be greatly harmed by the length of the cut.

As a fencer I wanted at first to object to this, but actually the deadliness of thrusts with rapiers and other thrust weapons comes to a good deal from internal bleeding and lightsabers seem to cauterize wounds and prevent that. Those thrust weapons are a lot more deadly than they get credit for and especially a lot more deadly the cutting weapons of their time.

Yeah, I think its important to add that as GM the idea of a Kyber Gun terrifies the hell out of me, its just that I know my players too, they will ask about this once they twig onto it. When they do I want to have whatever I decided fully fleshed out and the repercussions of it thought through. So all these posts are quite helpful, the debate about what is clear and its issues is illuminating. One thing that I am coming to is that, yes it is possible, you can create a gun that does Breach with it! It will only do 1+successes damage but it will have Breach...

Brad Knowles mentioned something that reminded me of a salient fact.

If you were to take a "sharpened" item (knife, razor blade, etc) and try to use it as a projectile, they won't actually do much damage. Not nearly as much damage as a lead ball, because they don't have sufficient density to transfer the kinetic energy.

You're also VERY liable to miss because once the flat catches any connection with air, (which happens once they leave the barrel) they'll be redirected and twirl off target. Think of (or research) Blunderbusses. They were devastating, but only and very close range. You'd do more damage with a good shotgun shooting lead spheres, and get farther with the Shotgun.

I don't like the "magnetic bottle" theory to the reason why light sabers don't shoot out further. I can't explain it (yet) but I've always been leery of that theory. Sure, it's how we think we might contain that type of energy, but that's not the kind of thing that I think a magnetic bottle would logically contain.

The concept of the lightsaber being some sort of "blow torch" fits my preconceived notions better. The blade is that long because the blaster energy just goes that far because that's how far it can go when the kyber crystal is energized.

So, based on these couple of factors, I'd also recommend things like the Inaccurate -2 quality and engaged range maximum. I like the damage of 1, and maybe even a crit of 5 or 6. Limited ammo would be appropriate too. Maybe 12 shots? And lets not forget to tack on the Cumbersome 3 quality for this bulky beast either.

And for perks, autofire. Maybe.

And require that the players use the skill Ranged(Heavy) to operate this beast.

It might have limited usefulness in some applications, but would also nicely explain why no one in their right mind would walk around and use one of these things, especially when the Kyber crystals are both restricted, rare, and costly.

"Hokey and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster on your side, kid."

And as an aside, I understand "why/how" lightsabers don't just pass through things. Simply put is that is a quality of the energy that they emit. Now to blow your brains, lasers do have "mass." Not a lot, but they do convey and transmit mass. Which is why they burn! Blasters and lightsabers are 'similar' but their apparent mass is much "denser" than laser light. So it's a 'natural' attribute of the blaster bolt/lightsaber blade.

<shrug> And yeah, it's a nice 'theory,' but I also don't worry to much about how a highly fictional component might actually work IRL (kinda cause it won't). To look at if from another perspective; we really don't understand how gravity or magnetism work, but we observe and utilize those principles with them based on our observations.

@Mark Caliber Nice idea, but we have a canon TCW episode which shows enormous ranges for blaster bolts hitting a kyber crystal and getting amplified by it. Hand weapons are in that case enough to heavily damage Grievous ship, tank shots are enough to blow up the whole ship and blast doors or even deck floors or ceilings are not enough to stop blaster fire from hand weapons when enhanced by a larger kyber crystal.

Oh and photons and thus lasers don't have mass. That is basically the defining thing about photons, they are massless. However they have energy. And we have a pretty good idea how gravity or electromagnetic force work.Theoretical and particle physics had a good run in the last 100 years, heck even the last 25 years had been brilliant and the general relativity was published in 1915.

The cartoons also show Reflect being an adequate defense against vehicular weapons, which the game shows as being a foolish endeavor. It is safe to assume that these rules are not meant to accurately reflect (pun unintended) the animated media.

I know the pseudoscience of star wars is dangerous ground to tread, but here goes.

Okay, so we have a general idea of how a blaster works. A power source excites "blaster gas" into plasma. That plasma is compressed and focused before being ejected as a "bolt".

We also have a general idea of how lightsabers work. A small power source sends energy to a primary crystal. The crystal then amplifies that energy exponentially before it is channelled through focusing crystal. That energy is focused into a beam which is channeled through an emitter which projects a blade. Since unlike a blaster a lightsaber doesn't have blaster gas, we must assume that the plasma generated is the result of superheating the air. So I assume the idea is that some sort of magnetic field snaps into place moments before the blade ignites which in turn contains the plasma, keeping it from dispersing.

So here is where my knowledge of the whole thing starts to break down. Clearly most lightsabers are shown to consist of two crystals, a primary crystal and a focusing crystal. FFG treats the whole thing as one single crystal but they never go into detail about the other. I assume then that the primary crystal is the main crystal that is being replaced or modded and the focusing crystals are just lenses and not special. I'm going to go with that being the correct answer although Canon and Legends seem to contradict a bit on this point.

Okay, so let's disregard the focusing crystal and look at the primary crystal. What does it do? Again there is some contradictory information but the jist seems to be, take a small amount of energy and turn it into a large amount of energy. Additionally, some books suggest that it's involved with turning energy into plasma. Although I couldn't find any description of where this plasma came from. Likely this is because of Lucas's weak grasp of physics, particularly in the early film, and him confusing energy with matter. Regardless, I think it's fair to say that the closest thing a blaster has to that role is the Xciter. So let's look to see what Xciter attachments do in SWRPG.

There are two examples of Xciters in the game currently. One reduces crit and mods for peirce and one gives autofire. It's also worth noting that both have significant setbacks in the form of inaccurate and the risk of exploding. If we read the Enhanced Xciter, which I feel corresponds to the what Kyber could do, we get the sense that making an Xciter more powerful isn't the issue, it's about doing that in a safe manner.

Quote

"Outlaw Techs have Long known how to modify the gas conversion enabler in a blaster to yield a more highly energetic and correspondingly more destructive payload. Such modified XCiter modules are highly unstable, however, and are sometimes disparaged as being just as dangerous to the wielder and anyone else nearby as to the enemy."

- pg 54 Special Modifications

As I mentioned in a previous post, containing Kyber crystals energy output has always been the issue with their usefulness as weapons. See my previous post about the Catalyst novel.

This makes sense in the real world too. When you want to make a more powerful gun, you can't just double the gunpower and expect the gun not to explode on you. Things have to be reinforced, redesigned and changed to account for the more powerful energy output. We can assume the same would be true with a Kyber crystal powered Xciter. Certainly, it would make sense that given the same amount of energy, an Kyber crystal could do a much better job in exciting the plasma, but could the blaster contain it? I would argue that no, all things being equal with the rest of the blaster, all a kyber crystal would do is "double your gunpowder" and you'd end up blowing your hand off. On the flipside, we can assume that the Kyber crystal would be extremely energy efficient, perhaps allowing the blaster to achieve the same effect only with a significantly smaller powerpack.

So let's bring it all together. As a Attachment, I think there are two ways you could go. You could either make it similar to the Enhanced Xciter, where you make the shots more powerful but run the risk of exploding the blaster. Or make it reduce encumbrance by 1 and give it "Can Ignore "Out of ammo" effects" to represent stripping down the power packs and efficiency gains. As a stand alone blaster, I think the field is wide open. I think perhaps I would reskin the Verpine weapons as Kyber powered energy weapons, removing the knockdown trait and adding the ignores "Out of Ammo" one. Other than that, the cost and power level seems about right. They even all come with a good amount of Pierce which I think someone is going to want in a Kyber fueled Blaster.

Kyber Xciter - 3000 (R), 2 HP,

Decrease critical rating by 1 to a minimum of 1. Grants Pierce 2

GM may spend TT to cause the blaster to explode destroying it and inflicting an automatic Critical Injury on the wielder.

Mod: x2 Pierce (1) mods

Kyber Efficiency Xciter - 1500 (R), 1 HP

Decrease Cumbersome Quality by 1

Can Ignore "Out of ammo" effects

Kyber Rifle - 30,000 (R), Ranged Heavy

dmg 12, crit 3, Range Extreme, Pierce 4, Can Ignore "Out of ammo" effects

Something like that anyway.

The way a Lightsaber works has actually been gone over in multiple sources which were part of the original canon. Specifically, The energy is released from the power cell, through a series of focusing crystals. It then extends out through a positively charged continuous energy lens, out to a certain predetermined distance and then arcs circumventially back upon itself to a negatively charged flux aperture set in the disk surrounding the lens where it then travels through a superconductor back into the power cell. This is mentioned in numerous sources dating back to the WEG games, such as the Tales of the Jedi Companion , up through more recent works including the Scholastic book, Star Wars Lightsabers: a Guide to Weapons of the Force.

6 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

The way a Lightsaber works has actually been gone over in multiple sources which were part of the original canon. Specifically, The energy is released from the power cell, through a series of focusing crystals. It then extends out through a positively charged continuous energy lens, out to a certain predetermined distance and then arcs circumventially back upon itself to a negatively charged flux aperture set in the disk surrounding the lens where it then travels through a superconductor back into the power cell. This is mentioned in numerous sources dating back to the WEG games, such as the Tales of the Jedi Companion , up through more recent works including the Scholastic book, Star Wars Lightsabers: a Guide to Weapons of the Force.

The first couple of times I read this, I saw “Flux Capacitor”, and was wondering what George was smoking.

ROFLMAO!!!!!