17 hours ago, penpenpen said:

I think the edge vs. flat debate is mostly about having a stronger parry (edge) vs preserving your edge (flat). As you tend to hold a sword in a way that lets you exert the most force in the direction of the edge (for obvious reasons), blocking or parrying with the edge lets you put the most amount of force in your move. On the other hand, striking the edges of two blades together tends to ruin the edges of both. Not so with a lightsaber.

That's interesting. So the Darksaber doesn't actually have a crystal? As far as rules are concerned, that is?

You know, I was thinking earlier "There's no reason Jedi lightsaber training would take edge alignment into account, except maybe if they practice Sii-cho." but didn't really go further than that in my thinking other than a fleeting thought that perhaps such a saber could be used with Melee rather than Lightsaber (but then Sabine wouldn't need lightsaber lessons from Kanan). This is a great line of thought, and actually makes more sense than a reverse grip (which, as far as I know, has little to no merit in swordplay).

EDIT: For a grip attachment, maybe rules along the lines of "may add half ranks in Melee as (damage/advantages/cookies) to Lightsaber (Brawn) checks"? Or "May spend X advantage/triumph to add damage equal to (half?) ranks in Melee"?

Damnit, I wasn't supposed to tinker with rules for this one! It's a curse, I tell you! A curse!

Skipping fluff

The darksaber is a unique weapon and has the following profile: (Lightsaber; Damage 6; Critical 2; Range [Engaged]; Accurate 1, Breach 1, Defensive 1, Sunder). The crystal has all of its mods applied, and the hilt has no hard points. While the user openly displays the weapon, add automatic [1 Success, 1 Advantage] to social skill checks that character makes against Mandalorian characters.

Comment it looks to me like hp were used to add defensive and accurate to the hilt.

On ‎3‎/‎7‎/‎2018 at 2:38 PM, Tramp Graphics said:

The “flat blade” of the Darksaber was one of the two biggest problems I had with it ( the other being the black color). Since lightsabers blades are plasma, the entire surface is a cutting surface. As such, having a wide, flat blade is pointless and actually counterproductive. If it has been a real blade with a plasma edge, that would be another matter.

Fake Science and Unnecessary Tech Explanations Ahead:

Tramp you are a super lore expert, so I wanted to ask you. Lightsabers obviously cut through heat as one of the ways it cuts if not the only way, but I remember watching a show that reported that a lightsaber would have to be hotter than the sun to burn through stuff that fast and easy. Then their is the way the blade can be repelled by certain ores and by a magnetic field, which makes me think that the containment field itself must also be somehow able to take matter apart while also containing the heat of the plasma so that the user can hold the thing near his face and not look like the dudes at the end of Raiders.

So with your collated knowledge of all this stuff, what's the lightsaber blade made up of? Is the black blade kind of off to you because the plasma is a necessary ingredient?

8 hours ago, Archlyte said:

Fake Science and Unnecessary Tech Explanations Ahead:

Tramp you are a super lore expert, so I wanted to ask you. Lightsabers obviously cut through heat as one of the ways it cuts if not the only way, but I remember watching a show that reported that a lightsaber would have to be hotter than the sun to burn through stuff that fast and easy. Then their is the way the blade can be repelled by certain ores and by a magnetic field, which makes me think that the containment field itself must also be somehow able to take matter apart while also containing the heat of the plasma so that the user can hold the thing near his face and not look like the dudes at the end of Raiders.

So with your collated knowledge of all this stuff, what's the lightsaber blade made up of? Is the black blade kind of off to you because the plasma is a necessary ingredient?

Kyle Hill has made a number of videos on lightsabers from strict science perspective. (SPOILER ALERT: Scientifically, there quite a few things about them that don't really add up. Apparently Star Wars plays fast and loose with physics. I know, I'm as surprised as you are. )
There's a video that takes on just the topic you asked about, but again, from a scientific, rather than lore, perspective.

As far as the lore goes, not much detail has been given. Legends mentions plasma as well as describing it as "frozen blaster bolts" when referring to the earliest protosabers, but not much more detail than that. With the lore about Kyber crystals in the new canon, Star Wars is being so coy about the physics of it, it might as well shrug and call it "space magic".

Of course, it makes sense relating it it to blaster/"laser" technology (which has also been described as plasma-based). If nothing else, the most common lightsaber (red, blue and green) colors we've seen have also all been observed in blasters, laser cannon or turbolasers. The only snag would be that in Legends, blasters used Tibanna gas as ammunition while lightsabers only made mention of a "power cell". Luckily canon has removed any reference to tibanna gas regarding personal blasters, only offhandedly mentioning it being used in starship weaponry.

On 3/7/2018 at 6:31 AM, penpenpen said:

We all know, and possibly have strong feelings about, the darksaber and it's rather unique design, most notably (ok, perhaps second most notably) it's flat blade and emitter.

As I have a character that's about to construct a hilt (not her first one) I've been toying around with ideas for cool designs, and to me, the flat emitter/blade is pretty cool, and in a lot of cases less conspicuous if you want to disguise your hilt as something else (I do). On the other hand, I don't want the hilt to be too unique as that'd make me feel like too much like I'm making my character the specialest snowflake of them all. No judgment on anyone else, but I'm a little touchy on that subject when it comes to my own characters.

The thing is, as far I can find, there are no other examples of the flat blade/emitter in Canon nor Legends, and the darksaber is quite the unique, legendary weapon in every sense of the word. So I'm in a bit of a bind, as I don't want to feel like I'm copying a unique feature of a weapon my character has never heard of.

So, since this forum has been known to occasionally be visited by the odd Star Wars lore geek and people in general who put way much more thought into these things than what reasonably called for (I love you guys ), I ask you, denizens of the forum if there are any other examples of flat blades/emitters that you know of, and if you have any ideas why you would construct a lightsaber with this feature?

Could someone independently come up with the idea? If so, why? Is it an old design that has fallen out of favor due to it offering no real benefit to a round emitter, and perhaps some of drawback (slightly more difficult to construct/attune? Slightly harder to use due to edge alignment being a (perhaps minor) factor? I'm thinking if it had offered any real benefit, it would have caught on, so I'm leaning towards a pure stylistic choice that has some kind of drawback, but I'd love to hear peoples thoughts on this.

Just to be clear, not really looking for rules, but if you've come up with any, feel free to share.

One thing I noticed about that picture is that light escapes where the blade is sharp (on the edges), this suggests that the containment field is stronger where it's flat/black and weaker where it's sharp/highly curved/has as small radius of curvature/white halo. Given that more energy escapes the sharp white edge, it should cut/burn better than the black part. So getting accidentally touched with the black part should be less damaging than getting accidentally touched with a normal lightsaber, so maybe the darksaber is a hybrid of a regular lightsaber and something like a phase knife/sword, at least that's how I would run it if one of my players wanted to build one (using a vibro knife -> vibro rapier/blade to guesstimate the upgrade from a phase knife to phase sword and then hybridizing a regular lightsaber with a phase sword to get baseline stats for a dark saber. I would guess that THE darksaber has an illum crystal to help judge what effect hybridizing another crystal with a phase sword would have.

7 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

One thing I noticed about that picture is that light escapes where the blade is sharp (on the edges), this suggests that the containment field is stronger where it's flat/black and weaker where it's sharp/highly curve

Hmm. This picture gives a more edge-on view.

Light still escapes from the flats, but the halo does seem thinner. You might be on to something.

21 hours ago, EliasWindrider said:

Skipping fluff

The darksaber is a unique weapon and has the following profile: (Lightsaber; Damage 6; Critical 2; Range [Engaged]; Accurate 1, Breach 1, Defensive 1, Sunder). The crystal has all of its mods applied, and the hilt has no hard points. While the user openly displays the weapon, add automatic [1 Success, 1 Advantage] to social skill checks that character makes against Mandalorian characters.

Comment it looks to me like hp were used to add defensive and accurate to the hilt.

I really like that they focused it's bonuses on the fact that it's more of cultural heirloom than a über-powerful weapon! Overall, I find FFG's policy of giving a lot of items non-combat mechanical bonuses very appealing.

1 minute ago, penpenpen said:

Hmm. This picture gives a more edge-on view.

Light still escapes from the flats, but the halo does seem thinner. You might be on to something.

I really like that they focused it's bonuses on the fact that it's more of cultural heirloom than a über-powerful weapon! Overall, I find FFG's policy of giving a lot of items non-combat mechanical bonuses very appealing.

That could be a halo out the front and back that looks thinner because the picture is nearly blade on, the things that look like white "scratches" on the blade's leading edge also support the theory

On 3/9/2018 at 12:36 AM, Archlyte said:

Fake Science and Unnecessary Tech Explanations Ahead:

Tramp you are a super lore expert, so I wanted to ask you. Lightsabers obviously cut through heat as one of the ways it cuts if not the only way, but I remember watching a show that reported that a lightsaber would have to be hotter than the sun to burn through stuff that fast and easy. Then their is the way the blade can be repelled by certain ores and by a magnetic field, which makes me think that the containment field itself must also be somehow able to take matter apart while also containing the heat of the plasma so that the user can hold the thing near his face and not look like the dudes at the end of Raiders.

So with your collated knowledge of all this stuff, what's the lightsaber blade made up of? Is the black blade kind of off to you because the plasma is a necessary ingredient?

Canonically (both old and new), Lightsaber blades are essentially a plasma blade. The descriptions of how they work (as stated in the old Tales of the Jedi Companion and other sources) state that the power cell in the hilt released energy which was focused through a series of crystals, and then out through a positively charged continuous energy lense. It then extended out to a certain distance before arching back upon itself circumventially to a negatively charged flux appature set on the disk surrounding the lense. The energy was then fed through a superconductor back into the power cell resulting in little to no loss of energy except when cutting through something. The blade does not radiate heat, but do give off light. It only transfers heat through direct contact.

Here's what the (Legends) page for Lightsabers says on the matter (the Canon page is very sparse on the mechanics of how they work):

Quote

The typical lightsaber hilt consisted of a metal cylinder between twenty-four and thirty centimeters in length. ^[4] However, the size of individuals hilts varied drastically, as the weapon was tailored to the creator's specific needs and preferences. The hilt had a pommel cap at the bottom which sometimes held a backup power cell. The lightsaber mechanisms were contained within the hilt. High levels of energy generated by a high-output Diatium power cell was unleashed through a series of focusing lenses and energizers that converted the energy into plasma. ^[37] The plasma was projected through a set of lightsaber crystals that lent the blade its properties and allowed for the adjustment of blade length and power output. The ideal number of crystals was three, though only one was required. ^[4] A power insulator was installed on the hilt to protect the wielder from any energy discharges. ^[38] Activating the lightsaber usually required a button of some sort. ^[3] A blade power adjustment knob was sometimes installed to allow the wielder to vary the power of the blade. ^[39] A discharge energy cell could also be installed to increase a lightsaber's power output. ^[19]

Once focused by the crystals, the plasma was sent through a series of field energizers and modulation circuitry within the emitter matrix that further focused it, making it into a coherent beam of energy that was projected from the blade emitter . ^[40] The blade typically extended about a meter before being arced by the blade containment field back to a negatively charged fissure ringing the emitter, where it was channeled back to the power cell by a superconductor, completing the circuit. This containment field also caused the blades to make contact with other lightsabers blades without passing through like other forms of energy. This trait is seen when lightsaber wielders can block and parry other lightsaber blades.

The reason I have a problem with black blades is because lightsaber blades, while not light in and of themselves, do give off light . They glow . By its very nature, black is the absence of light. Therefore, you can't have something glow black. It's physically impossible . A "black light" is not black . It glows in the Ultra violet and, visibly in the violet specturm. IF anything, the Dark Saber should have had a violet blade, like a "black light".