My question isn't how do you balance high end lightsabers in an encounter vs NPCs but rather how do you balance them with the rest of the non-lightsaber using PCs who also want their characters to excel in combat?

Whether the PCs are focused on blaster pistols or blaster rifles how does a GM empower all the combat focused characters and still introduce high end lightsabers?

Thanks!

Why would you need to. A lightaber is capable of massive close up damage, but you do need to get in close. Basic lightsabers do 6 dmg tricked out sabers have 10 dmg, Ranged heavy weapons have difficult doing this sort of damage (once you account for breach and pierce) they don't have to because their range is often their bonus, you dont get much in the way of talents that boost damage, upgrade checks, or add more dice for lightsabers. It is also not pvp here, while a character can have a reward of a lightsaber, they can also have vehicles , ships, property. it isn't a case of keeping up with the jones's as all players are not equal. Many of the career books have lots of ideas for more specific player rewards. Keeping the Peace (Guardian) has reputation as one of its reward, having mechanical effect on social checks. To me that beats a tricked out saber hands down.

Disrupters, heavy weapons, autofire weapons, crafted vibro weapon with vicious 5, crit rating 1, and solid defensive / deflection values, personal flight, long and extreme range. I think it is the other way around: How to keep lightsabers valid once everyone is running around with missiles tubes, disrupters, grenades and jury rigged autofire weapons, etc

Once you reach about 500xp or 25,000 credits per character for gear and equipment or personal vehicles for the pilots in the group, the offensive powers lightsabers fall off rapidly, meanwhile they become amazingly strong defensively as players start to add reflect ranks and gain strain and better dice pools to recover strain more easily. A few lightsaber builds like ataru striker remain offensive powerhouses, but they still not really outshine non-force users imho.

Good question. And Rebels will help me a bit.

Thematic encounters and personalized "episodes". I'll explain myself.

NOTE: Also I want to appoint, that unless is a high level Force User, there is a really big difference between lightsaber or not. Even in a hands of a non-FU it isn't at full potential with Reflect, it's a melee weapon, so without powers to move quickly you have to use lots of maneuvers and also have the social disavantatge that "everyone targets the guy with the light rod" or worst, call the Empire or the Inquisition. Even damage, even considering Breach, isn't so high too compared with a good E-11 blaster rifle.

Every combat scene can be conformed with certain "battle groups". As Sam told me long time ago, don't pack more than 2 or 3 minions at time, so, create a few encounters. For example:

There is a landing platform with 3 groups of 3 minions thugs each one and another one with a pair of melee droid guards, or even a lesser rival. Even you can put a lesser Rival on the other group. This way you can create a thematic fight and algo, the technician can slice to the terminal to charge the launching codes.

Those lightsaber wielders can join the fight but, generally if they are FU (at least a "mid level") can easily focus on bigger groups.

Hope it helped

Lightsabers are illegal and a license to use one is probably not happening. Every other weapon can be used in the right circumstances. Use this to bring the heat to the Lightsaber User.

To be honest, the GM doesn't really have to do a lot of work in that aspect.

For Star Wars RPGs in general, ranged combat is king. Using a lightsaber means having to spend maneuvers engaging with your intended target, maneuvers that PCs with ranged weapons can be using to grab cover or to Aim for an easy boost die. And if the target your party's 'saber-monkey wants to go after is at medium (or further) range, then that means you're either going to take even longer to get engaged if you're not willing to burn strain for extra maneuvers (strain you now don't have to fuel Reflect), or you'll need to start investing XP into Enhance for the Force leap effect.

Yes, that Breach 1 quality is mighty potent, but there's also the matter that unless the GM starts off a campaign at Knight level, it's up to the GM as to when (or even if) a character will get access to a kyber crystal, and even then the type of crystal is up to the GM; just because a new crystal type gets published in a supplement doesn't mean the GM is under any obligation to let your PC have access to it.

There's also in the in-setting reason of why swinging around a lighsaber during the Dark Times and Rebellion Eras is a bad idea, namely that it tends to draw a lot of unwanted and unwelcome Imperial intention. And in a fight, if the GM is running their adversaries with even a modicum of intelligence, the bad guys are probably going to single out the "Jedi" as their primary target, given the reputations that Jedi have for being such deadly threats in combat. And unless you've bought across multiple specs, most PCs are going to max out at about 3 ranks of Reflect, and with each use of the talent costing 3 strain, it doesn't take long for combined bad guy fire to start pushing the party Jedi dangerously close to their strain threshold.

One of the biggest things you should always do is make the Empire murder any witnesses to Jedi activity, and make sure the Jedi know that that's the price for revealing themselves, with a hefty amount of conflict for putting people in danger like that. In the Rebellion era lightsabers should be powerful, but they should be a weapon of last resort, or something you use in the hidden world of force users when nobody is watching. In a game set in other time periods where lightsabers are more common, well, so is cortosis.

I appreciate the responses.

To be clear - I'm not looking for ways to prevent my players from using high end lightsabers. I want to make sure they're not going to outshine the other PCs that also want to be combat effective if I give them high end lightsabers.

1 hour ago, Aetrion said:

One of the biggest things you should always do is make the Empire murder any witnesses to Jedi activity, and make sure the Jedi know that that's the price for revealing themselves, with a hefty amount of conflict for putting people in danger like that. In the Rebellion era lightsabers should be powerful, but they should be a weapon of last resort, or something you use in the hidden world of force users when nobody is watching. In a game set in other time periods where lightsabers are more common, well, so is cortosis.

Tell that Kanan, tell that the Inquisitors, tell that Maul, it does not seem at all that the empire cares about witnesses of lightsaber use. You are going here imho one giant leap too far and once your identity as force user is lifted, showing your lightsaber just means that the dogs of the inquisition will be faster on your trail, but that can be of little concern when you are not planning to stay much longer and running from the empire anyway.

But that's the thing, the balance comes from the PCs having to make a choice about using the Lightsaber. It's also what balances pistols with repeating blasters. Ask yourself and the players what are the legal and Conflict consequences of drawing your Saber here and now?

There are of course other more mundane methods to use;

Lots of Minions engaging the Lightsaber character will burn his manoeuvres disengaging.

Long range targets give the gun guys time to shoot.

Large ferocious beasts tend to hit hard in melee, the gunners can run and shoot but Little Miss Lightsaber has to risk their neck against a giant beast.

19 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Tell that Kanan, tell that the Inquisitors, tell that Maul, it does not seem at all that the empire cares about witnesses of lightsaber use. You are going here imho one giant leap too far and once your identity as force user is lifted, showing your lightsaber just means that the dogs of the inquisition will be faster on your trail, but that can be of little concern when you are not planning to stay much longer and running from the empire anyway.

I think that show sets an absolutely atrocious example of how Inquisitors and the Empire in general should act toward force sensitive people. I prefer to run games in a somewhat more mature setting where the fact that the Empire is trying to wipe out all knowledge of the Force means they DON'T employ lightsaber wielding force users in public themselves, and will take drastic measures to cover up such events.

To me Force and Destiny adventures in the rebellion era work a lot like Vampire: The Masquerade. The absolute worst thing that can happen is if the public finds out that magic is real, and not just because people who are far more powerful than you will try to kill you, but also because those people will murder everyone who saw it.

I mean it comes down to what kinds of stories you want to tell of course. You can run a swashbuckling Rebels kind of adventure where nothing you do has serious consequences, or you can run an adventure where the Empire just pulls a Joker and starts murdering people until you give yourself up if you have delusions of being a superhero. Personally I prefer the latter, because it makes for a lot more interesting games if the strongest weapons and powers in your arsenal aren't simply your defaults.

People already know the Force Exists.

People already know the Jedi exist.

Its not that long after the clone wars.

So there is no real reason to cover it up.

Star Wars is decidedly not on the level of V:TM 'maturity' - which I find a ridiculous idea anyway, since you can have swashbuckling adventures that are mature, and Star Wars is largely about swashbuckling adventures. Even Rogue One - which is probably the most 'grimdark' of the films, has the swashbuckling, light-hearted elements.

To each their own, though.

That is all fine on your table, but it is far away from canon, disney or otherwise. And it makes the empire mustache twirling evil, if the empire is having a great family massacre each time someone sees an lightsaber than their whole propaganda against the jedi is not working at all and they would create the opposite effect of the goal which is to make the jedi long lost and forgotten evil from the past. It not like the empire has the means to control all information flow, quite the opposite actually.

16 minutes ago, StarkJunior said:

Star Wars is decidedly not on the level of V:TM 'maturity' - which I find a ridiculous idea anyway...

Considering that V:TM is responsible for "Fish Malks" and petty backstabbing between PCs for no reason other than being a ****** to other players, I'm not sold on that game really being all that "mature" of an RPG.

1 hour ago, Decorus said:

People already know the Force Exists.

People already know the Jedi exist.

Its not that long after the clone wars.

So there is no real reason to cover it up.

That's simply not true. There was maybe one Jedi for every ten billion people in the Galaxy before the fall of the Jedi, so the vast majority of people only ever heard about force powers in holovids which were discredited as propaganda by the Empire in the 20 years after they took over, and any such material was outlawed as glorifying a dangerous cult that tried to enact a coup d'etat when their influence over the senate was threatened by a strong leader. People who actually remembered the Jedi and wouldn't disavow them were put on trial or simply disappeared after the Empire rose to power.

The vast majority of people in the galaxy think the Jedi were a crazy cult who spread propaganda about having mystical powers to get into the Senate's head. They were appointed generals of the clone army despite being utterly inexperienced as military leaders, resulting in a disastrous and indecisive war record while they were in charge, then tried to assassinate the high chancellor when their influence was slipping, were wiped out, and without their ruinous influence and incompetent leadership the war was won and the Galaxy was finally pacified.

The only recognized adherent to that religion is Vader, who switched sides and warned the Emperor of this plot. People don't generally believe that Vader has mystical powers either. In the conference room scene the only two people in the room who actually knew his "sorcerous ways" were the real deal were Tarkin and Yularen, both former captains in the clone wars, where they served with Jedi and saw them in action, but kept quiet about it when they joined the Empire.

There's a difference between actually believing it and simply not mentioning anything of it - sure, die-hard Imperial loyalists in the Core Worlds and nearby sectors might buy into it, but you don't entirely wipe away 1000 generations of the Jedi as the guardians of peace and justice in 20 years.

I mean, the new canon is showing as much in Rebels and such and I doubt the Rebellion would use "May the Force be with you" as one of their main sayings if it was otherwise.

4 minutes ago, Aetrion said:

That's simply not true. There was maybe one Jedi for every ten billion people in the Galaxy before the fall of the Jedi, so the vast majority of people only ever heard about force powers in holovids which were discredited as propaganda by the Empire in the 20 years after they took over, and any such material was outlawed as glorifying a dangerous cult that tried to enact a coup d'etat when their influence over the senate was threatened by a strong leader. People who actually remembered the Jedi and wouldn't disavow them were put on trial or simply disappeared after the Empire rose to power.

The vast majority of people in the galaxy think the Jedi were a crazy cult who spread propaganda about having mystical powers to get into the Senate's head. They were appointed generals of the clone army despite being utterly inexperienced as military leaders, resulting in a disastrous war record of never ending conflict, then tried to assassinate the high chancellor when their influence was slipping, were wiped out, and without their ruinous influence and incompetent leadership the war was won and the Galaxy was finally pacified.

The only recognized adherent to that religion is Vader, who switched sides and warned the Emperor of this plot. People don't generally believe that Vader has mystical powers either. In the conference room scene the only two people in the room who actually knew his "sorcerous ways" were the real deal were Tarkin and Yularen, both former captains in the clone wars, where they served with Jedi and saw them in action, but kept quiet about it when they joined the Empire.

There are literally trillions of people in the galaxy who were aware of the jedi and there powers even when unsure how much was fake and how much was real. And the thing with the imperial propaganda is that it only works so far. jedi are still known, glow sticks still recognized and mystic powers … well, I don't believe in magic either, but when I see force powers in action, I still would recognize them, even when would assume some trick.

Lastly and that is the biggest thing: The force is a well established religion, not limited to the jedi and practised by many cultures, force sensitives and non-sensitives alike. You don't need to actually doing any wonders to have people believe in special powers that is something in the nature of faith. So three out of those four points are correct, even when the empire still will try to cover them up. Covering them up by killing anyone who has seen a force user or a glow stick is not a good way to deal with such a problem as it adds credit to those witnesses. Discrediting them should work much better and having rumors dangerous criminals with extremely dangerous and brutal weapons works in favor of the imperial propaganda anyway.

The point isn't that punishing the people is a great way to keep knowledge of the Force suppressed, the point is that it's a great way to keep force users from revealing themselves. Even in Rebels one of the biggest concerns for the characters is that the Empire is going to punish the local population of any planet where they make a base, or show themselves, which to the Empire proved to be a more effective means of driving the Rebels off Lothal than trying to actually capture them.

The Empire massacres people or works them to death in labor camps all the time and gets away with it because their control over the flow of information in the Galaxy is pretty absolute. It's sort of the same as Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. Of course people were aware that people were disappearing and heard rumors that they were being killed or used for forced labor, but what do you do? It's hard to get actual evidence without putting your own life on the line, you can't complain about it to anyone, and you're afraid to even talk about it. Reality is, in a real autocratic state people are happy to go along with whatever you have to say to stay safe. Living in the Empire isn't supposed to be like the current political climate where people scream their head off about how evil this or that government is but nothing bad ever happens to them. It's supposed to be like living in one of the early 20th century dictatorships where anyone who spoke out against the government wound up dead or in prison, and the secret police would impress on absolutely everyone that they were expected to turn in anyone who says seditious things, just so that everyone would be afraid of their own friends and family turning them in.

So why wasn't Bespin Annihilated for the whole Luke vrs Vader fight or for Vader doing the whole Jedi stuff to Han.

Oh right Canon Imperials don't massacre people for it.

I'm aiming for a swashbuckling feel to the game. Not as consequence free as Rebels but in that vein. But given how dangerous combat is and the narrative tools of the game I don't think it will be too difficult.

I just don't want the Jedi with lightsabers to outshine the other PCs and think it would be fun to play with some of the "high end" game options (the others who care about combat are a Bodyguard/Vanguard and a Smuggler (eventual Gunslinger?)).

I feel like there's been plenty of consequence in Rebels. Their friends are constantly getting killed. They lost a ton of ships and are barely scraping by with the essentials for their rebel cells. They are evicted from where they've made their home. One of them has been blinded, another touched very closely with the dark side and it still has some form of hold on that character. One main character nearly died in a ship battle. I'm probably missing some of the consequences that happened but you get the idea.

Yeah I agree. I was thinking more of the first season. I think Rebels ramped up the consequences as the show got moving. The first season seemed light on consequences. Agent Kallus and Admiral Constantine have always been a bit inept.

I think they've hit a pretty sweet spot - there are consequences, sometimes severe, but it's still got a light heartedness, humor and swashbuckling feel.

And the Rebels have regularly run away which adds to the sense of danger and that the Empire is powerful. They don't stand and fight and kill everything (like can be common in RPGs)

1 hour ago, Jedi Ronin said:

Yeah I agree. I was thinking more of the first season. I think Rebels ramped up the consequences as the show got moving. The first season seemed light on consequences. Agent Kallus and Admiral Constantine have always been a bit inept.

I think they've hit a pretty sweet spot - there are consequences, sometimes severe, but it's still got a light heartedness, humor and swashbuckling feel.

And the Rebels have regularly run away which adds to the sense of danger and that the Empire is powerful. They don't stand and fight and kill everything (like can be common in RPGs)

Season 1 was A New Hope in regarding the themes so I agree it was light on the consequences.

Funny enough about that stand and fight mentality, I had a group barely deal with a combat against some assassins and they decided to leave after they at least defeated all the assassins. There was like 80% of the base they could still explore and they said nah we're good. The player who's obligation triggered this and last session (this session was a continuation) knew there was goodies they could raid. A PC even found an armory but only took what he needed in the moment.

They could have gotten rich. It was strange, there was no threat left. They booked it on out of there. I was like.... alright.