I'm sure this has probably been btought up once or twice, but I was wondering if anyone has found or created alternate uses for kyber crystals? I have three Force sensitive characters in my game, but only one has shown an interest in using a lightsaber later down the line. The others are content to act as a Gamd Findsman and a Force-enhanced pilot, respectively. The Gand may one day decide to take up a lightsaber, since his character was a former Jedi Padawan and all, but the pilot is almost certainly not using anything other than his ship and a pair of blaster pistols.

I'd still like to reward these players with kyber crystals when the time comes in my campaign, but I was thinking of letting them use the crystals for different things. For example, in the current canon, kyber crystals have been used to strengthen the weapons of the First Order and to power the Death Stars.

So, does anyone have an alternative or two for kyber crystals, or are lightsabers pretty much their only use in this game?

In my campaign, there's a Zabrak Jedi named Hudrok who got marooned on Tython and got most of his limbs eaten by Flesh Raiders, who also crushed his lightsaber. But he endured in their captivity for many years, and kept his damaged crystal until the PCs finally stumbled upon him and rescued him.

Hudrok seemed to be able to use the light emanating from his crystal to detect phenomena within the force. He let the PCs hold it and observed how the light behaved in order to ascertain whether they were force sensitives, and the crystal seemed to help him somehow when using healing or battle meditation, though it was undisclosed exactly how, and I never created a rule for it - it was just fluff.

Building on this however; what if there was a process, for example force alchemy or a force talent, that'd let you "store" force points in a crystal, so you could use it as a temporary "battery" to gain an extra force point or force dice when you need it the most? It could also simply be a "once per session" thing, a natural ability in the crystal unlocked as soon as the wielder has attuned themselves to it.

Also, Holocrons are made with some kind of Khyber krystals, I assume. Maybe they all have the ability to store information, or even the very -spirit- of an idea or the idea of a person, and that could be the origin of the holocrons' strange, interactive, almost sentient behavior. Maybe if someone close to the PCs die, or some dramatic event happen, that spirit or event somehow makes an imprint upon or gets stored within the crystal, enable one to later learn from it like were it a mini-holocron of sorts. You could also create all kinds of emotional quests based on this concept.

The following part might not be that useful, but maybe it could be inspiring none the less:

Another Jedi in my campaign is the master Ilum, a Shard, i.e, a sentient crystal, normally installed in a droid body in order to give her mobiliity and speech. A part of her is chipped of, and constitutes her lightsaber crystal! This "Orax crystal" has base damage 7, crit 2, and Accurate 1, and can be upgraded at least for Damage (2 times) and Vicious (2 times). It also, most significantly, confers the special ability "Bonded", which symbolises a very strong bond between Ilum and the lightsaber - it's part of her, after all. Bonded upgrades all her checks to hide or locate the lightsaber, even with the Seek force ability, a whooping three times.

45 minutes ago, Natsymir said:

Building on this however; what if there was a process, for example force alchemy or a force talent, that'd let you "store" force points in a crystal, so you could use it as a temporary "battery" to gain an extra force point or force dice when you need it the most? It could also simply be a "once per session" thing, a natural ability in the crystal unlocked as soon as the wielder has attuned themselves to it.

Thanks for this idea! It reminds me of a rare metal from Legends called Pyronium. To my recollection, this substance only appeared in the Coruscant Nights trilogy and their follow up novel, The Last Jedi. It's arguably the most rare material in Star Wars, and has some really interesting properties. It's constantly absorbing electromagnetic energy, which it stores in a "hyperspatial lattice." It also cycles through all the colors of the spectrum as it does so, going from black to red to orange, ect. Until it hits white, at which point it starts cycling through infrared. The energy it stores can come from a variety of sources, including simply being exposed to light.

Thanks to this detail, Pyronium is theoretically a source for limitless power. Interestingly enough, it can also interact with the Force much like how it interacts with electromagnetic energy. We never get to see the full extent of this, but there's a couple times in The Last Jedi where Jax Pavan experiments with it. In the first instance, he levitates it with the Force, and when he "lets go" of it with his Force grip, he's shocked to find it still levitates on its own, having taken the energy Jax put into it and maintaining that effort using the limitless power stored within its hyperspatial lattice. Later he uses the Force to create an illusion, which he channels through the Pyronium. When he drops his concentration, the Pyronium is able to maintain the illusion on its own without any additional effort on his part.

In game, I see this being related to some of the Control upgrades for Force powers that let a player commit Force dice. The player could treat the Pyronium as a Force dice to be committed for certain Force powers. It wouldn't work with Enhance and other internally focused Force powers, but it could be used to maintain illusions or other such outward Force powers that normally require the concentration of the user to maintain.

All that said, as much as I love the idea of Pyronium and would like to try and make it work in-game, I really, really don't see it being something I'll hand out to one of my players when they're below 200 XP. But that's all beside the point. The idea of a kyber crystal that lets you store a Force point in it isn't a bad idea. The crystal could be below average for stats in terms of actually being used in a lightsaber, but letting it store a single Force point in exchange would be a pretty cool way to make up for it. Definitely something for me to bring up with my players for them to consider.

I've used items that had crystals as a sort of "magic relic" type of loot for players.

One was a necklace worn by a jedi master that seemed to boost use of the light side of the Force. I just told the player it grants +1 success result when you only use Light side points.

I plan to introduce other unique items down the line that have simular bonuses and effects. Nothing too crazy, just fun stuff they would enjoy.

16 hours ago, Underachiever599 said:

So, does anyone have an alternative or two for kyber crystals, or are lightsabers pretty much their only use in this game?

Build a Death Star?

58 minutes ago, Desslok said:

Build a Death Star?

Use them for Star Destroyer turbolasers

Use them to clean your teeth!

I hear if you need a quick "fix" you can...well...

(hmm, perhaps I am letting my anticipation of Trainspotting 2 get to me...)