Short: Do the defensive bonuses stack
Long: as they are the same item I think they do stack (I’m biased as this is my character) but wanted the hive minds opinion
if they don’t stack then I won’t be going near that part of the tree any time soon, 20 exp is a bit of a waste
Ps why doesn’t the dualist tree have supreme parry!!!!
Unfortunately for you the long form of the talent in the Talents section is totally specific : "(this replaces any ranks in Defensive the weapon already has)"
Well that’s sucky
2 hours ago, Random Bystander said:Short: Do the defensive bonuses stack
Long: as they are the same item I think they do stack (I’m biased as this is my character) but wanted the hive minds opinion
if they don’t stack then I won’t be going near that part of the tree any time soon, 20 exp is a bit of a waste
Ps why doesn’t the dualist tree have supreme parry!!!!
Short Answer: per the last dev answer/ruling on the topic, no defensive bonuses do not stack. You simply take the best one offered.
Long: The Defensive Training talent flat out says that its effects completely override any existing Defensive effects from a weapon. So the bonus Defensive quality from the Lorrdian gemstone would be overridden, but you'd still get the Deflection quality, so it's not a total loss.
As for Supreme Parry, that falls more in line with Soresu in how Form III is all about turtling up and going all defensive, letting your enemy's attacks wash over you while waiting for that perfect moment to strike. Makashi isn't nearly as defensive, and the user of Form II is generally on the offensive (though not to the extent of Form V/Djem So).
Plus, there's the fact that Supreme Parry only takes effect if you're not made a combat check, and the bulk of Makashi Duelist's talents require a Lightsaber combat check in order to work, so they generally wouldn't get much of a chance to benefit from Supreme Parry. Conversely, Soresu Defender has talents that don't require combat checks, and play very well into the defensive element that Supreme Parry offers; add in Supreme Reflect (either from Shien Expert or Sentinel) and you've got a PC that can literally just turtle up, boosting up their defense with Defensive Circle and relying upon Improved Parry and Improved Reflect to damage enemies while reducing the bulk of the damage suffered by a substantial amount; Soresu + Shien offers 6 ranks of Parry and Reflect all told, which means stopping 8 points of damage on each attack, and at 1 strain per usage that means most PCs of that build are going to be a right royal pain the hindquarters to actually deal substantial harm to while each attack runs a substantial risk of invoking a counterattack courtesy of Improved Parry/Reflect.
1 hour ago, Darzil said:Unfortunately for you the long form of the talent in the Talents section is totally specific : "(this replaces any ranks in Defensive the weapon already has)"
Hang on a second - are we saying that even if the weapon has a better defensive rating it will drop to 1?
Strictly, yes, according to RAW.
In practice, hopefully your GM isn't a ****.
I would suggest going with the defense rules from the nw Genesys. Essentially there are two kinds of defensive "items" those that grant defense and those that add defense. Defense does however cap at 4 ( as Space combat already has it). I for my part would even go as far as to simply cap defense at 4 and ignore all other stacking rules... SWRPG is still far more complicated than it would need to be anyway.