I know this will come up at some point, as one of my players is pretty keen on getting a silver lightsaber, which apparently is a sign of redemption or something. After thinking about it a bit, I think I like the option to be there anyway, and I want to come up with some kind of mechanical framework. I'm thinking there are three different circumstances under which someone would reattune a crystal:

1: Taken from an enemy and hoping to purify/corrupt the crystal while the owner is still alive. This is what one of my players has already asked about. I'm planning on making it work, but not how he's thinking. Should be the hardest, in my opinion, as the original owner is still tied to it.

2: The owner is already dead, either because you killed him, or you just found his saber. Attuning it to yourself would allow you to modify it at the lower difficulty.

3: It's your saber anyway, and you're doing a "reforge." I'm thinking that reattuning should wipe the crystal clean of mods. This would help folks who are attached to their first lightsaber, but who botched some early rolls. They need to spend some more credits and make some new rolls, but hopefully they've beefed up their stats since they blew it.

My first thought is that the base difficulty should be equal to the current difficulty to install a new mod. Maybe it would cost the same. So if you're reattuning your own, it won't be as hard.

If the owner is still alive, you upgrade the difficulty once per each point of his Force Rating (or maybe for every 2 points). So purifying the crystal of a Sith Lord is going to be real tough, and a Despair will carry some nasty consequences.

So that's my 12:45 am brainstorm. Whaddya think?

We actually get a description of one such situation in the Ahsoka novel. It's pretty badass.

Personal thought, but I'd say that if the PC uses the newly acquired kyber crystal to forge their own lightsaber (especially if you're using the GM Kit rules for making 'saber hilts), then upon completion of the process this re-attunes the crystal to the PC. Same could be true if you're using the Endless Vigil construction rules as well. If you're just using the corebook rules (which is simply "gather parts, plug together, done with no roll required"), then I might suggest having the PC make a Discipline check (probably Average, maybe Hard if the previous owner had completed over half the potential modifications) to re-attune the crystal to themselves.

I agree that it would indeed "wipe clean" any of the modifications that the previous owner had made; the PC is in effect doing a total system reset on the crystal to make it their crystal.

From what I gather, the Ahsoka novel has a brief bit where she "cleanses" a couple of kyber crystals taken from an Inquisitor's lightsaber, citing that the crystals were stolen and corrupted by the Inquisitor before she purified them and made those crystals hers.

If you're wanting to make a big deal out of this re-attunement, I would suggest requiring a Vergence to pull it off. That they have to go to a place of concentrated Force power, of the appropriate type (Light or Dark respectively), and then do some meditation there. Perhaps they have to overcome some kind of mental trial, "fighting" with the remnants of the crystals previous type. Perhaps, if it's a Dark Crystal (haha!), it will manifest in the Vergence as a living being, that is trying to maintain it's existence. It will try and tempt the Force user to give up on this attempt to change it, and the PC has to overcome the temptations, being whispered as a last attempt at survival from the krystal.

If they succeed, they can change the color to whatever the player wants.

Yeah, my Guardian player cited the Ahsoka novel, which I have not read, but I get the general idea. He's in pretty much the same situation, having taken a lightsaber from an acolyte of the Inquisition (which I've got another thread about here somewhere). I'm fine with the idea, but I sorta punted the question down the road for later.

I do like the Vergence idea. I'm not sure if I'll use it for the acolyte's crystal, as he's not especially powerful, but I'm sure I can throw in a semi-sentient Dark Crystal. And yes, the spirit guardian will totally be a Skeksis. Hell, I could probably make an entire Dark Crystal-themed adventure out of it. *Gasp!* Maybe Yoda is a Pod Person/Gelfling hybrid!

I approve of Dark Crystal-esque story plots. *thumbs up*

If you ever watched Farscape, I kind of imagined the "spirit" of the crystal being sort of like the implant persona of Scorpius that was in Chriton's head. When they were purging him later in the show, he got really insane and desperate, trying to convince/bribe/threaten John from destroying him.

Or, if you've read the Dresden Files, Lash is another good example of the idea I was going for. I know canonically these days, there aren't actual "dark side" spirits so to speak, and this stuff would just be manifestations of negative emotions, but not a real sentient entity. Personally, I don't like that, as it cuts out a lot of fun possibilities. But, you can always just have the stuff take on representations of the PC's darker urges. Perhaps the form of someone they betrayed/failed, who is asking them not to let them die again, or whatever.

Or make it an actual dark side spirit and go crazy whatever works.

I absolutely have Dark Side spirits still exist. Heck, I have them linger longer than light side spirits. The Light Side represents balance, and the proper flow of energy. The Dark Side is imbalance, and lingers like a wound. When a powerful Jedi dies, his spirit might remain for a few years, but he's supposed to flow back into the universe, and does so over time. A powerful Dark Side entity clings to existence desperately, and over time, any remaining shreds of humanity get washed away. What's left has most of his intelligence and memories, but is utterly evil, insane, and hungry to retain some sort of link to the physical world. Defeating such things means opening up the flow of energy, like an acupuncturist trying to flush scar tissue with blood and lymph.

So yeah, I have sentient Dark Side spirits, and they cling to objects and people like flies on tater salad.

just for reference the reason that Ahsoka's sabers ended up white was because she no longer felt part of the jedi, and the reason that the inquisitors were red is that the dark siders bend the crystals to their will. If you follow that part of the canon (source for that was the same novel) not that any of that matters for a particular RPG campaign.

Always favored the thought that crystal color was determined by the impurities within the crystal, or the chemicals it was exposed to. this concept that color is determined by the users connection to the frce is a new one.

1 hour ago, Aftermath13 said:

Always favored the thought that crystal color was determined by the impurities within the crystal, or the chemicals it was exposed to. this concept that color is determined by the users connection to the frce is a new one.

Yeah, I honestly don't know why they went that route, other than to make it easier for GM's to let them find whatever crystal they want,without having to come up with "Well all green crystals are made by *insert elaborate natural reason for the color scheme from the Legends material*, which means they can't show up on this planet we are on, as it doesn't have the right geology for it. I mean, you KNOW there is some player out there, who will argue with the GM, that the only place blue crystals can be formed, is on volcanic planets, and since this is a tropical planet, there's no way this blue crystal would be here. It would be yellow, because they clearly said blah blah blah, you get the idea.

I mean, that's the only reason I can think of? This way, doesn't matter the planetary conditions the GM cooks up, if there are crystals there, then they can be whatever color the player wants it to be at the end. Sort of making them more like Force mood rings, than chemical reactions when the crystals are formed.

Personally, I like the "it's got a specific color, and that's it" view, but honestly, as the GM, it's a fairly minor issue, and I can easily work around it. But it is a little strange to me.

I think the reason they went the new route with the crystal colours is to show why the jedi/sith treat the lightsaber as a "sacred" tool.

Having the colour in legends be based off the crystal made the colour and to some extend the lightsaber meaningless.

But basing the colour on an individuals outlook and path in life and the force makes ones lightsaber a reflection of ones self and a true extension of ones body.

Game wise, I could see someone with the Sense talent being able to make either Knowledge (Lore) or Vigilance checks plus force rating (for successes or advantage) to learn about someone who either has an active lightsaber or by studying a lightsaber you found/captured.

19 minutes ago, Leopardao said:

I think the reason they went the new route with the crystal colours is to show why the jedi/sith treat the lightsaber as a "sacred" tool.

Having the colour in legends be based off the crystal made the colour and to some extend the lightsaber meaningless.

Seeing how many people in regular human culture, make tools sacred, without any kind of color coding to them, I would disagree with this reason. I mean, ancestral blades is a staple of pretty much all Samurai stories, and it's just a forged blade of steel. I always looked at it as the crystal had a particular, personal resonance to the Jedi, regardless of the color.

I remember reading the book of Force Unleashed, and when Starkiller is fiddling with his saber, after he started to make his turn from the Dark Side, he comments about how the red crystal felt...wrong. Like it had a resonance of Force energy that just didn't jive with his mindset. He found another one that more accurately reflected his current mental state, and used that one.

In the end, this is a purely cosmetic issue though, literally. I personally prefer the imagery of a young Force user, entering a multi-colored cave, and walking through, almost in a dream state, while he let's the Force guide him to the "right" crystal for him. As opposed to a mono-chromatic cave of no color. Visually, I just find it more appealing, but in the end, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to restrict the player on what color it is. I usually ask them up front "what color crystal do you want?" And they tell me, and then I just incorporate that into the story. The "Crown Jewel" is now an azure blue gem, instead of an emerald green one. In the end, they still have to steal the crown to get it.

Hmm. I thought mods on a crystal would represent cutting to ever-increasing degrees of precision so that the desired qualities "shine through" (pun intended) more completely. But having it be the crystal "growing" with the wielder in the Force makes sense, as well, and represents things like the Exile's "unique" lightsaber crystal from KotoR 2.

So, after considering the possible ways it could play out, I have what I think could be an interesting way for the silver saber thing to play out. Naturally, I don't expect this to go according to plan, but maybe I'll get lucky.

So the red lightsaber that the guardian currently has belongs to an acolyte of the Inquisition. He's a bad guy, but hopefully can be a sympathetic bad guy, as he's been tortured and tormented for years. If the players can defeat him, he's going to beg to be killed (which I've gone over in another thread). I actually suspect that the guardian will try and take him in to redeem him. If it works to some degree, of course the acolyte will be killed battling his former master, we'll have a touching few parting words, and when his lightsaber is reignited, whaaaat, the blade is a gleaming silver...

Someone get some macaroni, because it's getting cheesy in here!

14 minutes ago, ErikModi said:

Hmm. I thought mods on a crystal would represent cutting to ever-increasing degrees of precision so that the desired qualities "shine through" (pun intended) more completely. But having it be the crystal "growing" with the wielder in the Force makes sense, as well, and represents things like the Exile's "unique" lightsaber crystal from KotoR 2.

Honestly either idea works just fine. The idea of literally refining the crystal, to make it a more effective focusing device makes sense, but so does the "getting in tune with your crystal man...like feel the flow of the Force through it man....hey, you want another hit off this pipe man?" And given it really is a mystical Force that is one with the cosmos, The Dude is totally right.

......ok, I think I have to make The Dude as a Force User now. Just chilling out, drinking White Correllians and toking on some herb. Hmm, which F&D career/spec would be best suited to that?

1 minute ago, The Grand Falloon said:

So, after considering the possible ways it could play out, I have what I think could be an interesting way for the silver saber thing to play out. Naturally, I don't expect this to go according to plan, but maybe I'll get lucky.

So the red lightsaber that the guardian currently has belongs to an acolyte of the Inquisition. He's a bad guy, but hopefully can be a sympathetic bad guy, as he's been tortured and tormented for years. If the players can defeat him, he's going to beg to be killed (which I've gone over in another thread). I actually suspect that the guardian will try and take him in to redeem him. If it works to some degree, of course the acolyte will be killed battling his former master, we'll have a touching few parting words, and when his lightsaber is reignited, whaaaat, the blade is a gleaming silver...

Someone get some macaroni, because it's getting cheesy in here!

I don't think that's cheezy at all, if you are going with the "color matches the wielder's soul" approach, it makes sense. Though depending on how much of a redemption you want to show of the acolyte, you might have the color change happen when he confronts his old master, a newly redeemed (or at least on the road), character. That might have more punch for the party, to see that their actions did have an effect. That all the times they fought him, all they saw was the blood red saber. But now, after coming into touch with his Light side, due to the actions of the party, the red is gone, and a new color is in it's place, they literally get to SEE the change they made in him, reflected in his blade.. To me, that seems more cinematically cool. It's your game of course, do what you want, but I thought I'd toss that out.

It's unlikely that I'll be able to keep things going long enough for a full redemption arc, and I would prefer to have that for a PC. I figure a few sessions of the "bad guy" trying to hold back his darker tendencies, and finally being able to let go of them in death is pretty close.

5 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Seeing how many people in regular human culture, make tools sacred, without any kind of color coding to them, I would disagree with this reason. I mean, ancestral blades is a staple of pretty much all Samurai stories, and it's just a forged blade of steel. I always looked at it as the crystal had a particular, personal resonance to the Jedi, regardless of the color.

Hmm, well we can see your point of view on the matter with that statement.

You are missing something very fundamental here. Sacred tools in human culture ARE sacred tools because either the one presenting them is trying to con others into believing its sacred OR because the individuals TRULY believe that the tool is sacred in some sort of mystical fashion.

Now from my point of view, in the star wars universe the force users not only have definitive proof of what they believe in, but also learn to feel the flow of there belief, the force, around them. Thus these force users are not going to be taken in by some fake or cheap knock off.

5 hours ago, Leopardao said:

Hmm, well we can see your point of view on the matter with that statement.

You are missing something very fundamental here. Sacred tools in human culture ARE sacred tools because either the one presenting them is trying to con others into believing its sacred OR because the individuals TRULY believe that the tool is sacred in some sort of mystical fashion.

Now from my point of view, in the star wars universe the force users not only have definitive proof of what they believe in, but also learn to feel the flow of there belief, the force, around them. Thus these force users are not going to be taken in by some fake or cheap knock off.

In no way was I saying that I was talking about cheap knockoffs in the SW verse, or anything about conmen. You were the one that implied the crystals having a preset color made the tool meaningless on a mystical level. Which is totally untrue, considering all of the very mystical material that was written before this change to the rules about color ever happened. What I'm saying is that people will invest mysticism and spiritual importance into any number of things. You don't have to have them react like a mood ring for them to be mystic. The fact that it's already blue, or green , or whatever, doesn't somehow diminish their mystic importance, and I'm frankly baffled why you think that way. Just look at the scene in the Genndy Tartakovsky Star Wars show, of the young Padawan building her first saber, with the already color defined gem, in the middle of a crystal cave filled with colored gems and tell me that doesn't have mystical weight and import to it. So what if the color is already decided? What does that have to do with anything?

Or look at the episode from Clone Wars with the young Padawans going to the caves of Illum and finding their crystals. It was far more of a spiritual journey than a physical one, and the crystals weren't just plucked from the walls, they were earned . Then there's the whole thing that a Jedi creates a lightsaber by imbuing that crystal with the Force, and (in the Legends continuity, at least) actually used the Force to build the lightsaber in such a way that it was impossibly efficient. All that adds up to an item that's already more than half mystical in nature.

I find it funny that a lot of people get the "mood saber" theory from Luke's lightsaber changing color between ESB and RotJ, when his RotJ lightsaber was made green specifically to point that it was a new lightsaber, not the one he'd used in the first two films (which, of course, he lost at the end of ESB).

1 hour ago, ErikModi said:

his RotJ lightsaber was made green specifically to point that it was a new lightsaber, not the one he'd used in the first two films

I thought the problem was the lightsaber's blue blade pretty much vanished against the blue desert sky, and that's why his second saber was colored green.

That too.

expanding on the mood saber concept, this would suggest that mace windu was leaning toward the dark side. his saber was purple. "primarily because the actor wanted it to be purple..." but purple is half way between blue and red. as vapaad was supposed to bring its user to the brink of using their anger, i supose this is not unreasonable. yet his position was cemented on the jedi high council. though he appeared to have no problem killing a "helpless" palpatine. thats over ten conflict alone. i know conflict is a idea for another thread. but you get the idea.

All I know is, in may games, unless more than half the players really complain, I'd stick to the old way; crystals have a color, as part of their nature, and aren't pseudo-aware, Force-sensitive; they just have the proper qualities for making the plasma beam work. It just seems wholly impossible, to me, with all the diversity of thought, form, and more, in the galaxy, that the only color most people can manage is blue, and then a small number green. I prefer that most of the crystals that are suitable come in those colors, while the Sith don't have to play Mum-Ra, dropping the Sword of Omens into a well of Ancient Evil (bleed/bend them), to make it work for them. The reason Luke's is green is because Kenobi figured out how to get the impurity out of the skill the Sith used (blue didn't show up against the African sky), or he found a spare, planning for he, or Luke, to one day need it, if he had trained the young boy, and Mace's was purple, where no one else's was, because the source of that crystal was one no one else had ever tapped; part of living, crystalline creature (a Hurrikan), who he saved, but it died, and lent him a piece of itself (Sam Jackson wanted a special saber because he's Sam Jackson, he likes purple, and George Lucas said "in the long list of impossible things people have demanded, to be in movies, this is cake!", and agreed). If Mara had a purple one, like Legends often illustrates, I like to imagine Palpy recovered it, and presented it to his Hand, to use clandestinely, in her missions, Leia had a red lightsaber, despite not having the crystal be fake, or bending it to her evil will, though she almost never used it, and the Imperial Knights are all the same color, silver, because they are also artificial. As for Anakin, he went through enough lightsabers (and limbs) in the Clone Wars that it would surprise me greatly, as he kept teetering more and more on the brink of emo...the Dark Side, that every new saber he kept making turned out to be blue, unless most of the crystals just came that way. Sorry, I went EU there, but I will; it's still relevant to me.

I get that there is new stuff, for some, their first stuff, and they want to embrace it; it's even cool, but not something I intend to use, unless forced. While I'm not so old, I guess I'm nerd-old, stuck in my ways, enough to not like this change. To each their own, though. If you do prefer the mysticism angle (even if NOT the D&D wizard angle Jedi once went to), use this, as it does add something, and sort of an option, for the player, to get the saber color they want, when they finally find that one rare crystal they'll never be able to replace. When I played SWTOR, I, too, wanted a purple crystal, purely for cosmetic reasons, and it was impossible; they were all Level 50, super-expensive crystals, despite ONLY being cosmetic. Even once I beat three stories, and had the money, it was nigh-impossible, and certainly not worth it.

Okay, sorry to do the old curmudgeon thing. Everybody please continue.

8 hours ago, venkelos said:

It just seems wholly impossible, to me, with all the diversity of thought, form, and more, in the galaxy, that the only color most people can manage is blue, and then a small number green.

Why do the Jedi only have two saber colors? Because their teachings have calcified to the point of dogma.

Why does Windu get another color? Because he's a hypocrite.

Boom, problem solved.