Duel Wielding Lightsabers aka Jar'Kai

By Thenger, in Star Wars: Force and Destiny RPG

Okay first off I have been gone for a while and am looking at starting a new game with my friends. But I can't seem to find any information about the Jar'Kai form. I have all the Force & Destiny books. Am I missing something, did I miss a location where this form is talked about? I remember reading that the form would be coming out in a new book, but I just can't find anything. I know their are duel wielding pistols for the Gunslinger, but for a Jedi/Sith I can't find any info about it.

I did try the search function but I didn't see anything that jumped out.

Nope, you're not missing anything as Jar'Kai doesn't have any special mechanics beyond the existing rules for two-weapon fighting.

Any talk about Jar'Kai getting a dedicated specialization was just speculation on the part of forum posters.

@Donovan Morningfire is correct here. This is because Jar’Kai isn’t a formal lightsaber form to begin with, not in the way Soresu or Atraru are. Jar’Kai is simply wielding two lightsabers, regardless of specific form.

Is there a decent way to build a Jar'Kai? We are ending a three year D&D campaign soon and I need to start talking to the people and help them build there characters and I know one will want to do this.

4 hours ago, Thenger said:

Is there a decent way to build a Jar'Kai? We are ending a three year D&D campaign soon and I need to start talking to the people and help them build there characters and I know one will want to do this.

Jar'Kai can work with most styles, the only one where I'd recommend not trying it is Ataru. Ataru gets "Saber Swarm", which grants Linked to a wielded saber, so dual-wielding becomes pretty useless once your Force Rating reaches 2 or above.

For your player, recommend Shien and Shii-Cho. Shien has a lot of defensive options with its reflect and parry ranks, while Shii-Cho makes dual wielding as an answer to engaging more than 1 enemy very viable and powerful.

6 hours ago, Thenger said:

Is there a decent way to build a Jar'Kai? We are ending a three year D&D campaign soon and I need to start talking to the people and help them build there characters and I know one will want to do this.

Depends on what you're looking for.

If you're after ways to improve your dual-wielding so that you can get both weapons to hit, your best option is to have a shoto as your primary weapon, giving you the benefits of its Accuracy quality, and then to give both weapons the Paired weapon attachment from Fly Casual (500 credits, requires 1 hard point from each weapon which are set in the pair, and reduces the Advantage cost to trigger the second weapon by one). Alternatively, you could use regular lightsaber as the lead weapon and install a custom hilt (Special Modifications) which when modded gives the weapon a level of Accuracy while still leaving you spare hard points for other mods you might want to add in, such as Superior Hilt Customization for a free Advantage on all combat checks.

In terms of a build ideas, if you're looking to focus on melee fighting, Makashi Duelist and Shii-Cho Knight are both solid choices. With the most recent FAQ/errata, the Defensive Training talent becomes fairly useful as both weapons would gain the Defensive quality, thus granting you a +2 bonus to melee defense whilst wielding both weapons, which makes it more likely you'll be able to proc Improved Parry for extra damage. Niman Disciple's not a bad option, since you'd get two ranks of Defensive Training as well as ranks of Reflect and eventually a Force Rating boost, but it's not as flashy.

I wield two lightsabers on my character. If you can get away with carrying a double lightsaber I would do that instead. Depends on your time frame in the game and how well you are at disguising it if the empire is still around. A double lightsaber doesnt have the difficulty like duel wield does but you still can hit twice if you have the advantages. So its duel wield without all the drawbacks. I really dont understand why they made duel wielding so unatractive in this game when you have the ataru form that can do 3x plus the damage any duel wielder can do but without any drawbacks. There are allot of stuff in the FFG system that were not well thought out or much thought put into it and duel wield and linked quality were one of them.

Unless your character is like mine and you prefer to rp using duel lightsabers over min maxing.

Edited by Metalghost
14 hours ago, Metalghost said:

I wield two lightsabers on my character. If you can get away with carrying a double lightsaber I would do that instead. Depends on your time frame in the game and how well you are at disguising it if the empire is still around. A double lightsaber doesnt have the difficulty like duel wield does but you still can hit twice if you have the advantages. So its duel wield without all the drawbacks. I really dont understand why they made duel wielding so unatractive in this game when you have the ataru form that can do 3x plus the damage any duel wielder can do but without any drawbacks. There are allot of stuff in the FFG system that were not well thought out or much thought put into it and duel wield and linked quality were one of them.

Unless your character is like mine and you prefer to rp using duel lightsabers over min maxing.

IT's probably because dual-wielding really is very difficult. It's one of the hardest forms of melee combat since you have to coordinate different complex moves with each hand simultaneously. This takes a lot of skill. This is also one of the reasons most "dual-wielders" use one weapon for offense and the other for defense, rather than trying to attack with both.

11 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

IT's probably because dual-wielding really is very difficult. It's one of the hardest forms of melee combat since you have to coordinate different complex moves with each hand simultaneously. This takes a lot of skill. This is also one of the reasons most "dual-wielders" use one weapon for offense and the other for defense, rather than trying to attack with both.

True skill is when you can flow seemlessly from attack to defense with both weapons. which requires a lot of practice.

6 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

True skill is when you can flow seemlessly from attack to defense with both weapons. which requires a lot of practice.

That too.

I wish then they would have made a lightsaber specialization that was geared towards duel wielding then since it requires allot of skill.

I still hope for anjar kai specialization. Maybe in the KOTOR era book...one can hope

17 hours ago, Metalghost said:

I wish then they would have made a lightsaber specialization that was geared towards duel wielding then since it requires allot of skill.

It's not really necessary, since Jar'Kai techniques can be applied to all of the different lightsaber forms.

1 hour ago, Tramp Graphics said:

It's not really necessary, since Jar'Kai techniques can be applied to all of the different lightsaber forms.

I think most people are thinking of the things like the gunslinger has for dual wielding blasters.

4 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

It's not really necessary, since Jar'Kai techniques can be applied to all of the different lightsaber forms.

There are no Jar'Kai techniques in FFG thats why we would like a duel wield lightsaber specialization so we have some.