Has anyone tried reworking the the Cracked and Corrupted crystals into modifiers/templates for existing crystals?

I'm not completely happy with the way it works now, with corrupted and cracked crystals being completely separate types of crystals, and would prefer it if they were something you applied to an existing crystal, making it possible to have a cracked sapith gem or a corrupted krayt dragon pearl. I'd figure it'd add some interesting variety as well as simplify what would happen if a crystal became corrupted/redeemed/cracked (or even possibly healed?) during play. It'd also open up for corrupted, cracked crystals, if you want to go down that rabbit hole. Anyone feel like helping me brainstorm this?

Corrupted crystals
I figure the "signature ability" for corrupted crystals, adding a dark side pip, is pretty flavorful and quite powerful. I've been considering adding some limiters, like only being available for checks actively using the lightsaber (like Draw Closer, Hawkbat Swoop etc) but would limit the ability too much and thus only work with specialized builds, so I've decided against it for now. Still it kind of bugs me that it becomes a bit to useful as sort of a "magician's wand" for someone relying on force powers rather than a weapon. With such a powerful ability in place for any crystal that becomes corrupted, I feel that, mechanics-wise, it would need some kind of drawback applicable to pretty much any other type of crystal. Reducing Damage by one or increasing Crit by one are universally applicable and straightforward, but it feels somewhat counter-intuitive that a crystal corrupted by the dark side should be less dangerous (although an increased Crit rating could be interpreted as a loss of precision, and partially offsett by adding a rank of Vicious). Adding a rank of Inaccurate could also work (thematically it'd represent having to actively control the subjugated crystal or something).

One possible solution to the "force wizard wand"-issue could be that a corrupted crystal grants a free darkside pip that can be spent as an success or advantage on any combat check.

Cracked crystals
We have two examples of cracked crystals in the books, the cracked crystal in Disciples of Harmony and the cracked jedha crystal in Knights of Fate. They have a few things, thematically at least, in common:

• They are very "cutty". The cracked crystal has a breach and a potentially Crit 2 and Vicious 3, and the Jedha crystal potentially Crit 2 and Vicious 4. I see this as representing them cutting deep.
• They have fairly significant drawbacks; the cracked crystal may break on a despair and the Jedha crystal is inherently inaccurate 2, moddable down to 1. Also, neither of them can reach crit 1, which one could interpret as them being harder to control and less precise.

So a rough first draft could be something like:

Corrupted lightsaber crystal
A lightsaber crystal that has become corrupted by the dark side for any reason, such as being a attuned by a dark side force user, gains the following base modifiers:

• When a character wielding this lightsaber makes a Force power check, add a Dark Side point to the check.
• Add Inaccurate +1

or perhaps:

• When a character makes a combat check with this lightsaber, add a Dark Side point to the check. This point can be spent as a success or an advantage.
• Increase critical rating by 1.
• Add Vicious +1

If the crystal is reclaimed the lightsaber loses these modifiers and reverts to its previous stats.

Cracked lightsaber crystal
A lightsaber crystal that has been cracked and become unstable gains the following base modifiers:

• Add Breach +1 (possibly to maximum of Breach 2 unless you want cracked Sapith gems with Breach 3)
• Add Inaccurate +1
• Add Vicious +1
• If a combat check made with this lightsaber results in a Despair, the GM may cause the crystal to shatter, after which the lightsaber loses all it's qualities and abilities, and it reverts to its previous base damage and critical rating.

If the crystal is ever healed or repaired, the lightsaber loses these modifiers and reverts to its previous stats.

Opinions? Ideas? Praise? Scorn? Cake?

Breach 2 would be very nasty maybe Breach .5 or is that too messy?

22 minutes ago, MrTInce said:

Breach 2 would be very nasty maybe Breach .5 or is that too messy?

Not sure how you would even calculate .5 in this system when it comes to Breach. I would perhaps make it where the only way the Breach 1 applies at all, is if you roll enough Advantage (3 would probably be fitting for a flawed/cracked crystal) to trigger it. Otherwise, the crystal just isn't focused enough to actually Breach as a normal saber would.

2 hours ago, MrTInce said:

Breach 2 would be very nasty maybe Breach .5 or is that too messy?

Breach 2 isn't that bad. Personal scale targets only rarely have a soak of 10+ so most of the time it doesn't matter. It mostly comes into play dealing with vehicles; while you still won't deal much hull trauma it does allow you to crit vehicles of vehicles with armor of up to 3 (4 if you've you reliably can get to 20+ damage per hit).

1 hour ago, KungFuFerret said:

Not sure how you would even calculate .5 in this system when it comes to Breach. I would perhaps make it where the only way the Breach 1 applies at all, is if you roll enough Advantage (3 would probably be fitting for a flawed/cracked crystal) to trigger it. Otherwise, the crystal just isn't focused enough to actually Breach as a normal saber would.

Pierce 5? No reason Breach and Pierce wouldn't stack.

In one of the Order 66 podcasts (The one for Disciples of Harmony ), the Devs mentioned that you could indeed apply the Corrupted Crystal to a crystal other than an Ilum crystal. While it's corrupted, you just use the rules in Disciples of Harmony , but once it's purified, it regains the stats of whatever the original crystal was, be it Ilum, Mephite, Krayt Dragon pearl, Dantari, etc. I'd say about the only crystal that couldn't be Corrupted is a Solari crystal.

1 minute ago, Tramp Graphics said:

In one of the Order 66 podcasts (The one for Disciples of Harmony ), the Devs mentioned that you could indeed apply the Corrupted Crystal to a crystal other than an Ilum crystal. While it's corrupted, you just use the rules in Disciples of Harmony , but once it's purified, it regains the stats of whatever the original crystal was, be it Ilum, Mephite, Krayt Dragon pearl, Dantari, etc. I'd say about the only crystal that couldn't be Corrupted is a Solari crystal.

All corrupted crystals being the same isn't very interesting and kinda of misses the point of having different types of crystals.

As for the solari crystal, it gets depowered if it's user slips even slightly towards the dark side. It's a semantic argument whether this means that it's easily corrupted or uncorruptable.

On 3/21/2019 at 10:11 AM, penpenpen said:

Cracked lightsaber crystal
A lightsaber crystal that has been cracked and become unstable gains the following base modifiers:

• Add Breach +1 (possibly to maximum of Breach 2 unless you want cracked Sapith gems with Breach 3)
• Add Inaccurate +1
• Add Vicious +1
• If a combat check made with this lightsaber results in a Despair, the GM may cause the crystal to shatter, after which the lightsaber loses all it's qualities and abilities, and it reverts to its previous base damage and critical rating. 

If the crystal is ever healed or repaired, the lightsaber loses these modifiers and reverts to its previous stats.

Opinions? Ideas? Praise? Scorn? Cake?

Shouldn't this make the lightsaber ineffective as in no Crystal?

48 minutes ago, Varlie said:

Shouldn't this make the lightsaber ineffective as in no Crystal?

I just copied FFGs wording. It refers to the damage and crit of the hilt itself. It's a slightly odd way to put it, I know.

Myself personally, I would treat the Cracked and Corrupted as overriding whatever the crystal's traits were previously; a Sapith Gem that is cracked simply becomes a Cracked Crystal and uses those specific traits, not some combination of the two. Elsewise, you open the door to some significant min-maxing.

That being said, since neither of these (cracked or corrupted) are generally seen to be good things to have happen to the kyber crystal, if you are going to the route of having corrupted/cracked versions of the other crystals, my suggestion would be to have those traits impart mostly drawbacks with little to no perks.

On the Cracked crystal as a template, it simply includes a mod option to add a rank of the Vicious quality, but also applies the whole rule of shattering into uselessness on a Despair result, and that's it. The trade-off might be that the rarity of the crystal type is reduced by one, as finding imperfect/flawed kyber crystals is likely easier to accomplish than the standard unflawed versions.

For a Corrupted crystal, I wouldn't make this a template at all, since at least under how it's explained in the current canon the dark sider is directly altering the crystal through infusing it with the dark side, in turn making the crystal a very different object than what it started out as.