And another question. One of my players will sooner or later get a quest to craft a lightsaber. But how do the crystals work? For example the Ilum crystal has requires 2 hardpoints on the lightsaber hilt. Ok. It has base modifiers the lightsaber will get. Also ok. But what about the modification options? it says 2 Item Quality mods, 4 damage +1 mods, 1 decrease crit rating mod. How many of them can I choose?

Check the rules for modifying attachments in the equipment chapter. It works the same way.

So If I install the Ilum crystal I can choose between "2 item quality mods", "4 damage mods" or "1 decrease crit mod"?

Or from the beginning, I have a lightsaber hilt, which has base damage 6 and 5 hardpoints. I install an Ilum crystal into it, taking 2 hard points. Now I can modify that crystal to have either 2 item quality, 4 damage or 1 decrease crit? Or can I choose to take all of them (assumed I succeed in all the checks)?

Okay, no. Check pages 192 (Modding Attachments, Installing Mods) and 195-196 (particularly the Lightsaber Crystal Attachments box) for instructions on how to install crystal/lightsaber attachments.

If you have a lightsaber with a damage profile, it already has an Ilum crystal that takes up 2 HP (p. 176, under the lightsaber weapon descriptions), and installing a second would be redundant.

I read that, and that's what confuses me. A hilt with no base damage has 5 hardpoints. A saber with 6 base damage already has a crystal, but still has 5 hardpoints. but on the crystal there are listed: 2 item quality mods, 4 damage mods, 1 decrease crit mod. But how do I profit from that?

"Some of the modification options have a number listed before them, which indicates that the option can be installed multiple times."

If I have to install the crystal multiple times, that makes no sense, because I can just install 1 crystal. Or is it a mod FOR the crystal? In that case: How many of the mods can I install on that crystal?

Lightsaber crystals are attachments. Installing an attachment takes no check (just spending some time), and hilt (or weapon or armor) gains whatever effect is described in the "Base Modifiers" section of the attachment. The modification options, if listed, are further benefits a character can gain from the attachment; you make a hard Mechanics check and spend 100 credits to add 1 mod (difficulty and cost increases each time; see p. 192, "Installing Mods" subheading). For example, you can increase damage of an Ilum crystal 4 times, increase Vicious two times, and reduce the critical rating once, all by modifying the crystal.

If you read the description of the lightsabers, it says "this lightsaber is a basic lightsaber hilt containing an unmodded Ilum lightsaber crystal. This crystal occupies two of the weapon's hard points." (Emphasis mine.) Confusingly, Table 5-7 on p. 177 lists the full HP of the hilts, whereas they should have 2 less hard points than listed in Table 5-8 (so the basic lightsaber should have 3 HP instead of 5, the double-saber should have 2, etc.).

Ah, that makes sense now. So if it has the base damage of 6, it has an unmodded crystal, should have 3 hardpoints left, and I can mod all of the options into it. Thanks

53 minutes ago, MasterZelgadis said:

Ah, that makes sense now. So if it has the base damage of 6, it has an unmodded crystal, should have 3 hardpoints left, and I can mod all of the options into it. Thanks

Realize that attachments use hardpoints.

Modifications to attachments do not use hardpoints, only a check to install them (and certain degrees of failure may lock out your ability to try the test later).

It is possible (although difficult) to install all modifications on an attachment. The only limit is that an attachment can only support those listed modifications, and if I recall, its despairs that "lock out" a modification slot on an attachment (and to get a despair, the GM would have to upgrade the difficulty of the check by using a destiny point, as normally the difficulty just increases).

14 hours ago, Kommissar said:

Modifications to attachments do not use hardpoints, only a check to install them (and certain degrees of failure may lock out your ability to try the test later).

It is possible (although difficult) to install all modifications on an attachment. The only limit is that an attachment can only support those listed modifications, and if I recall, its despairs that "lock out" a modification slot on an attachment (and to get a despair, the GM would have to upgrade the difficulty of the check by using a destiny point, as normally the difficulty just increases).

If you fail the check once you can not make the check again and that Modification Option is no longer available. Despairs will render the entire Attachment useless and break it.

Quote

If he succeeds he successfully installs the mod on his gear and the item now benefits from the bonus provided by the mod.
If he fails, however, the mod is not installed, and he may not attempt to install that mod again.
If he failed and his check generated at least one Despair the attachment is also rendered useless by his tinkering.

- EotE CRB Pg. 187

That and if the weapon breaks, all the associated mods also break if my understanding is correct. My group has had 10K worth of guns shatter to a really successful roll.

Now, crystals don't break but it is my understanding that transferring to a new hilt would require attuning over. A rare occurrence as lightsabers are sunder resistant, but a double T can still do it.

Hmm, it is a little odd that despair means some damage but double triumph means destroyed. I'd be tempted to rule that double triumph is just "Major repair needed", ie item is unusable and costs 100% of base cost minus 10% per advantage on repair roll, and cannot clearly be repaired in combat.

A double trumph means that the blade is destroyed which is not uncommon in the movies; in maul's case the DM spent a Destiny point to have half of the weapon destroyed rather then the whole one. Annikin's lightsaber was destroyed in the factory, and Luke lost his over an edge along with his arm. I am honestly surprised that the crystal isn't also destroyed, though understandably given the rarity these crystals crop up it would be rather unpopular. The presence of a lightsaber does not make the Jedi.

Just having to reconstruct or completely rebuild their lightsabers from the ground up makes sense. Sometimes a broken hilt is a broken hilt, it's the crystal that is of true importance and it makes sense that the force senstive would have to attune it again.

So, as I tend to do, I'll provide you with the RAW as well as my feelings on it and my personal houserules.

As everyone above has said, the "Base Modifiers" section describes what stats the crystal itself gives the hilt once installed. One slightly confusing thing that the books do is that installing attachments, like crystals, does not decrease the number of Hard Points the weapon has; instead, it's like Wound and Strain Thresholds - you count up from 0 the number of hard points that are currently occupied. So a basic hilt with an Ilum Crystal, a Superior Hilt, and a Dual-Phase Modification installed still has 5 Hard Points, they're just all occupied (0 free Hard Points is another way to look at it).

Installing an attachment requires no check, and has no stated amount of time needed, although I would say it can't be done in combat. Once the attachment is installed, you can attempt to modify it to add additional effects or increase its stats, adding the benefits from the listed Modification Options. Each modification requires a check to install. This check costs 100 credits to attempt and begins as a Hard (DDD) Mechanics check. For each currently installed modification, the cost increases by 100 credits and the Difficulty increases by one. So, to fully modify an Ilum Crystal would take seven checks and (assuming they are all successful) 2,800 credits. Keep in mind, four of those checks would be Impossible Difficulty, requiring a Destiny Point be spent to even attempt them, and most GMs would upgrade the resulting Formidable Difficulty once for each Difficulty Die above 5.

The results of this are as others have stated: If you succeed, the modification is installed; if you fail, not only is the modification not installed, you lose it forever. If you get a Despair, the GM can choose to destroy the entire attachment (meaning you lose your crystal and need a new one).

Now, there are rules in the Force & Destiny Game Master's Kit that give some hope to the would-be Jedi: if the crystal is one that you have a personal connection with, you can use Knowledge (Lore) instead of Mechanics for your roll, you can add your Force Rating to the attempt (adding [S.] or [A] per Force Point), and the Difficulty decreases by (I believe) 2, allowing it to start as Easy. Makes it easier to get your first couple of modifications, and lowers the chances of destroying your crystal.

But I don't like those rules, so here is how I do it in my games.

I use the rules from the F&D GMK pretty much as given, allow Lore to be used, adding FR to your check and reducing the Difficulty by 2. However, I have altered the rules for adding subsequent modifications and the results of a failure/Despair.

Instead of increasing the Difficulty for each successive modification, I upgrade the Difficulty. This makes it more difficult and naturally introduces the possibility of Despair without making the entire exercise near impossible by the end. Additionally, a failure does not prevent you from trying to install that mod again at a later time, it just means you wasted some of your time and money with the attempt. A result of [TTT] or [D], however, means that the modification is indeed lost. If that result is gotten on a successful check, some other mod that is yet to be installed is lost (you got the one you wanted, but your tinkering accidentally made it impossible to get some other modification later). Only on a [DD] is the entire attachment destroyed.

Hope that helps!

1 hour ago, Absol197 said:

Now, there are rules in the Force & Destiny Game Master's Kit that give some hope to the would-be Jedi: if the crystal is one that you have a personal connection with, you can use Knowledge (Lore) instead of Mechanics for your roll, you can add your Force Rating to the attempt (adding [S.] or [A] per Force Point), and the Difficulty decreases by (I believe) 2, allowing it to start as Easy. Makes it easier to get your first couple of modifications, and lowers the chances of destroying your crystal.

The lowering the Difficulty by 2 is also in the core rulebook as well; top of page 196.

Also; I can't find it, but isn't there a general rule that allows you to substitute a weapon skill for Mechanics if you're working on a weapon of that type? Maybe that's only for repairs and not modding.

The section on Weapon Maintenance (EotE p. 158-159) allows weapon-wielding skills to be used to repair a weapon (along with allowing Computers to repair weapons like laser turrets or missile launchers that involve electronics). Nowhere that I know of allows you to use the weapon skills for mods, though.

6 hours ago, coyote6 said:

Nowhere that I know of allows you to use the weapon skills for mods, though.

That's what I thought; thank you for the clarification.