@TheSapient the Luxum crystal idea rocks...

Sorry in advance if this is taken as stepping on toes but it sounds great. If asked I'll delete.

Deleted since thesapient posted the stats below.

So my take on this gem (pun intended) is that it would be similar to the kimber stone... however ion weapons seem to have higher base damage so perhaps it would have base damage of 10 to 12 and maybe only 1 or 2 increases to that.

Oh cool. Glad you liked it. For reference, here was the original idea (the crystal does Ion damage only, and is meant for fighting droids or causing strain to vehicles.).

Luxum Crystal

Rarity: 9 R
Price: 9,000
Hard Points Required: 1
Base Modifications:

• Changes Base Damage to 8 Mod
• Changes Base Critical Rating to 2 Mod
• 1 Grant Quality (Breach 1) Mod
• Quality (Vicious 1) Mod
• Ion Quality

Optional Modifications:

• 2 Quality (Vicious 1) Mod
• 2 Damage +1 Mods
• 1 Decreases Critical by 1 Mod

This was based on the description of Luxum crystals found here .

@JRRP suggested adding Sunder, to reflect ion damage to most weapons, exempting primitive weapons. I agree with that. @Donovan Morningfire had a different take on the Luxum stone, having it do normal damage, with Stun 3 that only affected Droids. I find this to be a fine approach as well.

(Thanks @Donovan Morningfire for pointing out a major omission!)

So for comparison a kimber stone is 6500cr r8. 2 hp

Base damage 9 +2 mods (stun damage only)

Crit --

1 concussive mod

2 disorient mods

{FFG: keeping the peace}

...

Now peraonally I can see the sense in the Luxum crystal being more expensive due to the ion damage.

As for living beings and ion damage... I seem to recall something about ion having some effect on people so would it count as stun damage? Or would it do concussive or disorient like the kimber stone? Do other ion weapons have a crit rating? Vicious?

To be fair, there's nothing on the Luxum crystal's write up that says it only does Ion damage, which typically would be indicated by having the Ion quality listed under the Base Modifications. So as written, it's Damage 8 that affects everyone, organics and droids and cyborgs equally. Plus, as written it's easier to get to full mods than the standard Ilum crystal, which again to me is a warning flag that it's too good for the price point; it either needs lower base stats, fewer mod options, an increased price tag, or some combination of the three. Plus, with some rare exceptions, crystals require 2 hard points to install, so the HP required should be bumped up by one.

The Ion quality is notable in that it only deals its damage to vehicles/starships as system strain, and to droids as just strain.

If the intent is that the crystal has the Ion quality and thus would deal zero damage to a purely organic opponent, then the base damage and price aren't as much of an issue, due to a lightsaber with this crystal being largely useless against most opponents the PC is likely to face off against.

6 minutes ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

To be fair, there's nothing on the Luxum crystal's write up that says it only does Ion damage,...

That is....embarrassing. I'm going to edit the write-up to fix that. Thanks!

Not to not pick but also the title... lumom vs luxum?

To have an option on damaging meat bags you could give it the Stun 3 or Stun 4 quality. If you hit a meat bag and have two Advantage then you do 3 or 4 Strain at least, even though you do zero Wounds.

Against a droid it would make it that much more deadly

Regarding the addition of a Stun quality, perhaps flag it to not that it only applies to living targets?

In EotE, there's an Ionization Blaster that cites "Stun Damage (droid only)" in the stat block, so it's not unheard of to have a weapon quality only affect a specified type of target.

By flagging a subsequent Stun quality (perhaps it's added as a modification, replacing either the two damage boosts or the crit value reduction?) as only affecting living targets, it makes the weapon more viable for general combat purposes while not making it more dangerous against droids. Cyborgs are kind of SOL, but considering the boosts they get from their tech, I'd call it an acceptable trade-off for them.

Tenloss IDX-9 Ion Stunner

T-7 Ion Disruptor

Ionization blaster

Felebreck Droid Disabler

Droid Disruptor

So personally I'd say that a t7 is most likely to be the closest to a lightsabers' stats and devastation potential.

Now let's look at what the books say about the weapons and ion damage... (already did the first entry)

Blast would be a really cool way to covey the emp effect that comes from the Saber, but:

Ion

Breach

Vicious

Stun x

Blast

is a lot of additional effects to have on a single weapon.

Perhaps having it as a pure Ion weapon would actually be ok, anyone can get a second Saber with a training emitter or an ancient sword for cheap, and this still works with Parry/Reflect.

19 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Blast would be a really cool way to covey the emp effect that comes from the Saber, but:

Ion

Breach

Vicious

Stun x

Blast

is a lot of additional effects to have on a single weapon.

Perhaps having it as a pure Ion weapon would actually be ok, anyone can get a second Saber with a training emitter or an ancient sword for cheap, and this still works with Parry/Reflect.

Blast would also effect the wielded unless I'm mistaken.

Only if the user of the weapon is a droid since it’s Ion Damage

So damage and crits for the 5 weapons are

6, 7, 10, 12, 12

3, -, 5, 3, 2

2 weapons apparently do strain damage to LB, 1 does little (2) strain to LB, and 2 seem to do nothing to LB.

So since this is a lightsaber high damage makes sense, effecting LB could make sense, breach does make sense... perhaps breach 2.

As for crit I'd say it should be rather high... 3 or 4 maybe?

Otherwise disorient and perhaps concussive.

6 hours ago, jayc007 said:

Not to not pick but also the title... lumom vs luxum?

Umm....yeah. I never claimed to be perfect, but that is pretty bad.

31 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Perhaps having it as a pure Ion weapon would actually be ok, anyone can get a second Saber with a training emitter or an ancient sword for cheap, and this still works with Parry/Reflect.

This is basically how I see it as well. Either as a second saber, a second crystal in a single saber, or as a thematic weapon for a particular character. It would not be hard to imagine one or two of these being found in a Clone War cache.

Here are some considerations I think are important:

Ion is strictly inferior to Stun, by RAW, as Stun does strain damage to all enemies, while Ion does damage just to droids. As such, the Luxum crystal has to be superior to the Kimeber Stone when it comes to droids. In addition, a Luxum crystal has to be superior to a similarly priced wound-causing crystals when fighting droids.

I think Breach makes the Luxum better than the Kimber Stone against droids. But is it better than other crystals against Droids? Let's use the Illum crystal as our baseline.

Quote

Ilum

Rarity: 10 R
Price: 9,000
Hard Points Required: 2
Base Modifications:

• Changes Base Damage to 6 Mod
• Changes Base Critical Rating to 2 Mod
• 1 Grant Quality (Breach 1) Mod
• Quality (Sunder) Mod

Optional Modifications:

• 2 Quality (Vicious 1) Mods
• 4 Damage +1 Mods
• 1 Decreases Critical by 1 Mod

The posted Luxum is the same cost, same crit rating, same Breach, but has 2 higher damage and Vicious 1. It does not have Sunder, but I believe it should. It also has 2 fewer Damage increase mods. Fully upgraded, it would be the same as the Ilum. While it would be hard to do all 7 upgrades on the Ilum, the only real advantage the Luxum has is that it targets Strain instead of Wounds, which is often lower and/or needed as a resource during a fight. As such, I think the Luxum should be increased in power a bit. Maybe Vicious 2 to start?

So reading the wikis on the luxum crystal it says 2 things of importance... it is more effective on droids... as in it still deals something to organics...

And it is formed out of minerals and the dark side energy contained in the waters of a lake on a specific planet thru intense meditaion.

Also it forms an opalescent white blade.

So since it requires the dark side of the force to make one it makes you wonder if that might have an effect.

Perhaps it deals regular damage plus ion damage... So say it does 8 damage with breach... maybe it also does 8 damage to droids... as in a LB takes 8 but a droid or vehicle takes 16? I realise that that would be broken... but not as much if it also gives 1 conflict per attack?

If you reduce the initial damage to 6, having it deal double damage to droids or beings with cybernetics would be very gross, but not game breaking. In that instance I would lower the number of damage mods to one (or none), but give it a few Vicious mods to make up for it. The dark side part is very interesting - I would possibly have it give a character conflict every time the saber was used to attack a living being.

The information on Wookieepedia is not terribly robust, but I personally wouldn't place too much importance on the connection to the dark side. Jedi would form crystals out of the minerals by Lake Nath through meditation. While the lake itself is strong with the dark side, there is no reason to think that Luxum crystals are.

I do agree that normal damage with some additional ion damage is most consistent with the description on Wookieepedia, but I would rather the crystal be as consistent with the rules and norms that already exist with in the game as possible. Ion is a passive quality of a weapon. Are there examples of passive qualities being added to regular wound damage? Stun comes in both active (pay advantage, to cause a specific amount of strain damage not affected by soak) and passive (all damage from the weapon is soakable strain damage). One approach for the Luxum crystal would be for it to have an active version of Ion that mirrors Stun. Something like 2 Advantage for Ion 6. Sadly, there is not much point in targeting wounds and strain with a lightsaber. Either one will put down an enemy in 1-3 hits.

In the end, I would lean towards the mechanics of the game, and try to model the damage to organics through the burn quality. Or make it like an Ilum crystal, but with a feature like "On a successful hit, may spend 2 advantage or a triumph to shut down a droid, as if affected by a restraining bolt. An average mechanics check is required to restart the droid".