There's always the weird fact that armed lightsaber duelists seem able to parry every darting blade that comes their way, but they still get punched/elbowed/kicked no matter how good their defenses are supposed to be.

2 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

There's always the weird fact that armed lightsaber duelists seem able to parry every darting blade that comes their way, but they still get punched/elbowed/kicked no matter how good their defenses are supposed to be.

I always saw that as them having so much training and focus on defending lethal blows by sensing them through the Force that they've developed a blind spot towards such 'low-power' attacks.

9 minutes ago, Subhntr said:

I always saw that as them having so much training and focus on defending lethal blows by sensing them through the Force that they've developed a blind spot towards such 'low-power' attacks.

Or you can defend 1. Do you defend against the lightsaber or the punch?

8 minutes ago, Subhntr said:

I always saw that as them having so much training and focus on defending lethal blows by sensing them through the Force that they've developed a blind spot towards such 'low-power' attacks.

The Jedi have proven many times that they often miss what's right in front of their faces.

Really though, it's just a movie trick. It goes well beyond Jedi. In many action movies, characters are always getting hit with fists and feet but knives never touch them (unless it's a superficial cut) because we mentally can't work with the idea that a character can get stabbed several times and make it to the next scene (despite what D&D hit points might suggest).

1 minute ago, HappyDaze said:

The Jedi have proven many times that they often miss what's right in front of their faces.

Really though, it's just a movie trick. It goes well beyond Jedi. In many action movies, characters are always getting hit with fists and feet but knives never touch them (unless it's a superficial cut) because we mentally can't work with the idea that a character can get stabbed several times and make it to the next scene (despite what D&D hit points might suggest).

That would be because you cant. Knife fights result in one going to the hospital and the other going to the morgue

2 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

That would be because you cant. Knife fights result in one going to the hospital and the other going to the morgue

I'm quite aware, both professionally and personally.

27 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

That would be because you cant. Knife fights result in one going to the hospital and the other going to the morgue

Of course, in this game, there's very little difference between allowing an unarmed attack through your defenses compared to allowing the blade of a combat knife to connect. Sure, the differences get bigger as the weapons do (and, as this topic mentions, Melee is usually more effective than Brawl), but if that punch can land, it defies belief that a punch with sap gloves is suddenly unable to do so, so the rules don't let either get through. When doing lightsaber duels, you can always have Parry (Improved) let you get that kick in... but I've only ever seen it used with the lightsaber or melee weapon doing the Parry because they tend to be so much more effective.

6 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

There's always the weird fact that armed lightsaber duelists seem able to parry every darting blade that comes their way, but they still get punched/elbowed/kicked no matter how good their defenses are supposed to be.

I don't think this is the explanation, but...a possibility? After all, the reason it happens this way is because it's a movie...

Maybe they don't defend against those because they can't without causing great harm. The Jedi are supposed to be peaceful. A good portion of their forms and lightsaber training revolves around defense. Stopping damage to themselves, protecting others, and disabling the enemy. If they block a laser bolt, no one dies. If they deflect another saber, or cut a melee weapon in half, no one dies. If they try deflecting that fist, elbow, knee, foot with a lightsaber...well, people are going to lose limbs (not that it seems to bother Obi much). By allowing themselves to take those blows, they are trying to preserve lives, even those of their opponents.

Again, it's a movie, so it looks good. But it's a possible head canon argument.

4 hours ago, Subhntr said:

I always saw that as them having so much training and focus on defending lethal blows by sensing them through the Force that they've developed a blind spot towards such 'low-power' attacks.

As per Nick Gilliard (the swordmaster and lead fight coordinator from the prequels), a lightsaber fight is like playing chess at 100 miles per hour and almost every move is checkmate.

So to build on that analogy, in playing chess there are times you have to let lesser pieces be taken in order to advance towards the goal of winning the match. A recent literary/cinematic example from pop culture is the Wizard's Chess match towards the end of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone* in which Ron allows himself (as a knight) to be taken so that Harry is free to put the king in checkmate and win the game, allowing Harry and Hermione to proceed.

Thus, things like backhands, elbows, and various other unarmed strikes are things that the Force using participants in a lightsaber fight aren't focusing on, as they're not inherently lethal in comparison to the laser sword that treats most anything as warm butter to it's white-hot knife. A quick jab to the face or a knee to the shin generally isn't going to be as dangerous to one's continued well-being as getting run through or slashed apart with a lightsaber.

On 6/6/2019 at 2:07 PM, HappyDaze said:

There's always the weird fact that armed lightsaber duelists seem able to parry every darting blade that comes their way, but they still get punched/elbowed/kicked no matter how good their defenses are supposed to be.

I've always felt that was covered by narrative flair in his game, if you have two lightsaber welders fighting there is nothing to say that the damage caused came exclusively from a single lightsaber hit, so of the damage over that round from a lightsaber skill check could well have been caused by the elbow to the face. Similarly rolling threat on your own check could be strain DMG caused by a similar strike. As always it all falls down to how the player or GM narrates it, that's one of the things that drew me to this system. Example staff fighter fights but lands a roundhouse kick, doesn't always mean they were dual wielding brawl and melee, many melee styles incorporated brawling and grappling strikes in their techniques, why should Star Wars be any different.

2 hours ago, syrath said:

I've always felt that was covered by narrative flair in his game, if you have two lightsaber welders fighting there is nothing to say that the damage caused came exclusively from a single lightsaber hit, so of the damage over that round from a lightsaber skill check could well have been caused by the elbow to the face. Similarly rolling threat on your own check could be strain DMG caused by a similar strike. As always it all falls down to how the player or GM narrates it, that's one of the things that drew me to this system. Example staff fighter fights but lands a roundhouse kick, doesn't always mean they were dual wielding brawl and melee, many melee styles incorporated brawling and grappling strikes in their techniques, why should Star Wars be any different.

especially if you "parried" most of the damage. I would call what is left punches and kicks

2 hours ago, syrath said:

I've always felt that was covered by narrative flair in his game, if you have two lightsaber welders fighting there is nothing to say that the damage caused came exclusively from a single lightsaber hit, so of the damage over that round from a lightsaber skill check could well have been caused by the elbow to the face. Similarly rolling threat on your own check could be strain DMG caused by a similar strike. As always it all falls down to how the player or GM narrates it, that's one of the things that drew me to this system. Example staff fighter fights but lands a roundhouse kick, doesn't always mean they were dual wielding brawl and melee, many melee styles incorporated brawling and grappling strikes in their techniques, why should Star Wars be any different.

In a way, this has always been an issue with Star Wars RPGs, though with the WEG games it didn't crop up as much there as in the on-screen duels there was really only one instance of an unarmed strike being made (Luke kicking Vader down the flight of steps in RotJ). We saw a bit more brawling during 'saber fights in the prequels, such as Qui-Gon backhanding Maul off a ledge in TPM as well as Obi-Wan and Anakin resorting to fisticuffs more than once during their duel in RotS.

Under the various WotC d20 systems, it was generally assumed that if you succeeded on your attack roll with a lightsaber but got a paltry damage result (typically in the single digits) that you instead conked the opponent with your fist/foot/elbow/knee/head/tail instead of the lightsaber.

Given how dangerous lightsabers are in this system thanks to the Breach quality, that's not something that's generally going to come up as getting hit with a lightsaber is going to hurt . Although it could be handled that if the attacker spends some of their advantage to inflict a setback die on their opponent, the narrative would be that you bonked the opponent with your fist/foot/elbow/knee/head/tail while slicing away at them with your lightsaber, and that the blow briefly dazed them while doing superficial damage. Or if the defender uses Parry to stop all but a point or two of damage, that little bit of damage could also be narratively described as the attacker whacking their foe with their fist/foot/elbow/knee/head/tail even as the main lightsaber assault was blocked and/or evaded.

35 minutes ago, Daeglan said:

especially if you "parried" most of the damage. I would call what is left punches and kicks

Well, if you do that then you can just count the 3 Strain from using parry as the punch that gets through. 😉

On 6/6/2019 at 6:07 AM, HappyDaze said:

There's always the weird fact that armed lightsaber duelists seem able to parry every darting blade that comes their way, but they still get punched/elbowed/kicked no matter how good their defenses are supposed to be.

I’ve always wondered how to simulate that in the game. What about the fight in clone wars where Kenobi keeps kicking Savage Opress in the same knee?

6 hours ago, Eoen said:

I’ve always wondered how to simulate that in the game. What about the fight in clone wars where Kenobi keeps kicking Savage Opress in the same knee?

That's a crit.

10 hours ago, Daeglan said:

especially if you "parried" most of the damage. I would call what is left punches and kicks

This Video has a great example of this around the 3:20 mark. In the fight, you focus so much on the Dangers of the lightsaber/Blaster shots you can leave yourself open to Brawl attacks

As others have pointed out the Brawl rules are actually well suited to represent cinematic fights, just as ranged works for ranged encounters, and melee for melee. They don't always seem to work well together in every encounter, mechanically their fine, but you really need to narrate them well to keep them feeling cinematic. If you're the only Brawl PC in a gun fight you're going to have to be really creative with your narration and how you spend your Advantages to get the most out of the scene and worry less about judging your effectiveness by how many enemies you drop.

One thing I've done as a GM that really helps, especially if you have more Brawl and Melee based PC's, is to remove the Stun Quality from Blasters (I allow it as a Mod if a Player really wants it). By removing the easy option of just Stunning with the same weapon you kill with, Brawl becomes more important if you want a non-lethal outcome.
I'm old school and I never liked that WEG and some of the early books added a Stun setting to all blasters, it was a plot necessity in Star Wars to capture Leia but it should never have been added to all weapons IMO. I understand why, so that PCs would have the option to not kill all the time, but I never liked it because it changes the dangerousness of pulling a gun out. I'm of the opinion that when Han, Luke, Leia and well, anyone pulled a blaster they meant to kill and that gave those scenes tension. Pulling a blaster should change the dynamic of any scene... but I digress. So anyway now my players have to either bring a dedicated Stun weapon, or devote a Hard Point on their weapon, use other Skills (Charm, Coercion, Negotiation etc.), or beat them into submission (Brawl). It's a seemingly minor thing but it really does add something to our games and it makes being able to Brawl well way more important.