Not to mention Vader's ridiculous Fear rating (3 Difficulty upgrades). Do you even have the courage to face him?

Plus, I love melee combat being dangerous. Swinging sharp things IS dangerous, after all.

In the Beta it was a maneuver to disengage melee, they seem to have removed that. I may house-rule that back in, but I am about to run my first session since beta tomorrow so I will test it out without that.

It is totally still a maneuver to disengage from a melee combat with things that are actively trying to kill you/would do something mean to you if you showed them your back. It isn't a maneuver to disengage with a friend or a computer terminal though.

It is totally still a maneuver to disengage from a melee combat with things that are actively trying to kill you/would do something mean to you if you showed them your back. It isn't a maneuver to disengage with a friend or a computer terminal though.

Yes, but the disengage maneuver now moves you to short, which in beta took an extra maneuver.

It is totally still a maneuver to disengage from a melee combat with things that are actively trying to kill you/would do something mean to you if you showed them your back. It isn't a maneuver to disengage with a friend or a computer terminal though.

Yes, but the disengage maneuver now moves you to short, which in beta took an extra maneuver.

No this hasn't changed. It was the same in beta. It was just clarified a little more in the CR. In the beta it just talked about the maneuver to Engage or Disengage. Once at short range you can Engage as a maneuver as you can not Engage unless at short range. And if you are engaged it was a maneuver to Disengage back to short range, because if you are not engaged at short range, then you are just at short range and can not Disengage to any other range. Honestly if you want to make disengaging cost more, then make it cost two maneuvers if you think this is too easy. This way a character must usually spend two maeuvers in one turn, costing them strain, to get away from someone trying to hack and slash them.

Also don't forget that Lightsabers in EOTE use the Lightsaber skill, NOT Melee, which depending on your GM may or may not be an option. They also do not add Brawn into their damage. it is a fixed 10.

And never forget Cortossis. I get the idea that MANY of the "sith" style villians we will see in the Jedi game will have at least some of this stuff.

This was the rough idea I came up with to model one on one lightsaber fights.

- At the start of the duel all weapon damage is reduced to 1 and the critical hit property may not be activated.

So without actually play testing this I think it should work out that to foes score minor damaging hits while building up to the big take down. Players and GM's can creatively describe the escalating or descending weapon dmg as a climactic give and take, a literal struggle for momentum and advantage in the duel.

While I have not "experienced" Melee combat, or played in a session which its happened, I have read up on it however.

Melee seems to be kinda weak compared to ranged, where even a melee specialist only take out a 1-2 minions a turn at start. Opposed to Ranged (Heavy) can muster the similar 1-2 ratio via Auto-fire, without having to using Maneuvers to engage, and worry about movement penalizing terrain. Seems like the best want to do, is get your melee to deal strain, spend advantage symbols to do free un-soakable strain damage on Minions and Rivals (since it's all one HP pool).

Brawl seems to be even worse, low damage/customization (Imagine supposed to be all about status effects), and mostly made viable from the Doctor's "Pressure Point" talent (so awesome it be). I've made a rough character, calculating how much XP it would require to make a character capitalizing on Pressure Point. Where it'd be 260xp, or 18 sessions assuming the 15xp average, where would have 270 total, or 10xp left over (The result? Dealing 15 strain that bypasses all Soak, though totally could play a Droid one that has to wait next session for the talent, relying on brass 6 wounds & whatever Knowledge skills till then).

Most I've seen calculated, for late game melee specialist, would be around 17-20 damage or so.

Calculations: +7 brawl (5 base, +1 dedication, +1 Cybernetic as they break the cap by 1), +3 weapon itself (Force Pike, Vibro-Ax), +5 skill from Deadly Accuracy Talent, +2 Wookie Rage. Of course could get +1 superior, +1 per ranked talents, and Destiny point talents where add X characteristic to the damage roll.

As been said, Melee specialists need a high soak, which I've so far seen to be 10-13.

Calculations: +7 brawl (5 base, +1 dedication, +1 Cybernetic as they break the cap by 1), +2 Heavy Battle Armor, +1 superior attachment, +1 cybernetics, +2 Durable Talent x2.

Attacking Vader with a lightsaber:

Adversary 4. Sense power 2 defense upgrades. Heavy Battle armor. Defensive maneuvering probably all of the time, since his stance is one that is very Shien in appearance. Heavy defence, heavier hits. Use a Destiny point basically all day every day because he's goddamn Darth Vader. We will also assume that, since the Forsaken Jedi can magically get Defensive and Deflecting on his lightsaber as a trained Jedi F&D will have an ability that restores those abilities, giving him Defensive 2.

Difficulty to attack him is RRRRPbbbb.

Italicized for emphasis

I read that part as a "razz" sound. "Difficulty to attack Vader is <razz>." Which, incedentally, is kind of how I explained it to my players. "I am extremely unlikely to ever throw you guys against Vader, but if it happens, I'm probably just going to ceremonially bury your sheets, because his skills are 42 points in 'Screw you, I'm Darth Frickin Vader.'" I believe those were my exact words.

You just gave me the mental image of a party on a derelict ship where the unseen "strike and fade" predator-stalker, horror holo style, is (whether or not the players know it) Vader.

Vader: The Edge of the Empire GM's trump card against players (Force users moreso than the rest and Jedi most of all, but...).

Don't forget that certain bad guys have the Antagonist talent which upgrades the difficulty to hit them by an amount equal to their talent ranks. An extreme example of this would be the Black Sun Vigo on page 406 of the core book. He has Adversary 3 which means that the difficulty to hit him in Melee would be 1 Difficulty and 2 Challenge.

Obivously is not relevant when you are facing someone without Adversary (Minions or Pc's) but for the main fight it will make things a little more challenging.

E

The Emperors Hands NPC at the back has this. That is probably why they are probably the most fear generating entitites in the galaxy... if anyone knew they existed.

Take all the +10 crit talents with a vibro axe and one shot everything.

There's also lots of ways to up your survivability:

- Our Wookiee has a high soak value, and normally takes stuff down before it can hurt him to much (just not this time...)

- I'm playing a human bounty hunter (assassin spec). I've spent my accumulated XP on getting both Dodge talents, so for 2 strain I can upgrade the difficulty of any incoming attack by 2. This is nearly always worth it, but I don't want to get mobbed. so I let the Wookiee go in first.

- Our Rodian Thief stays out of melee combat and snipes. This is relatively easy to do when there is an angry Wookiee in the room drawing all the fire.

I think that lightsabers are another issue entirely, and agree that defensive talents are they way to go. Basically, it's all fun and games - and then someone loses a hand.

Just remember those tactics won't work all the time......cue evil GM laugh.......mwuhahha

Hmm... I wonder who put that carpet over the pit in the middle of the room. RWAAAWR!

In my experience so far, melee and hand-to-hand combat seems to be vastly inferior to ranged combat. I've been playing a Wookie Technician loosely focused on Brawling and I've been seeing rather underwhelming results. I even homebrewed some special Brawl weapons with help from my GM (basically, power gauntlets) that are loosely the equivalent to vibro-swords and still haven't seen much improvement in combat situations. Being a CQC oriented character puts my Tech into situations where I'm often the only one charging in, which leads to me being simply a too easy target for other ranged groups to lay into. Admittedly I've focused more on the intellect skills than my fighting skills so maybe I'm just suffering from trying to hard to be a jack-of-all trades, but it really seems to me that the only way melee is good is if you really try to specialize in it. Even then, if you put the same or even arguably less effort into specializing in ranged combat you end up dishing out far more damage with more combat effects to boot, mostly because melee damage only really becomes comparable to ranged when you reach five or six Brawn. The only thing melee is superior at is dealing absurd one-shot criticals, which is actually surprisingly easy to do with a properly modded vibro-axe and a few specific talents here and there.

EDIT: Oh, another thing: If you really want to get into absurd damage, melee and brawl have nothing that even comes close to how ridiculously strong Auto-Fire is considering it's only two advantage to activate the quality (which can be done multiple times!) Dual-wielding only provides a possible one extra attack for the same or generally harder dice pool as auto-firing does, as the difficulty for auto-firing can be reduced to two purples at short range and dual-wielders will never have less than three purples.

We've found that characters not heavily devoted to melee find it much easier to stick to blasters for doing real combats (as opposed to simple roughhousing with fists). This seems very fitting for the setting. OTOH, a character specialized in mauling people in hand to hand (a high-Brawn Marauder) is very deadly even with just a simple (and concealable) vibroknife.

In my experience so far, melee and hand-to-hand combat seems to be vastly inferior to ranged combat. I've been playing a Wookie Technician loosely focused on Brawling and I've been seeing rather underwhelming results. I even homebrewed some special Brawl weapons with help from my GM (basically, power gauntlets) that are loosely the equivalent to vibro-swords and still haven't seen much improvement in combat situations. Being a CQC oriented character puts my Tech into situations where I'm often the only one charging in, which leads to me being simply a too easy target for other ranged groups to lay into. Admittedly I've focused more on the intellect skills than my fighting skills so maybe I'm just suffering from trying to hard to be a jack-of-all trades, but it really seems to me that the only way melee is good is if you really try to specialize in it. Even then, if you put the same or even arguably less effort into specializing in ranged combat you end up dishing out far more damage with more combat effects to boot, mostly because melee damage only really becomes comparable to ranged when you reach five or six Brawn. The only thing melee is superior at is dealing absurd one-shot criticals, which is actually surprisingly easy to do with a properly modded vibro-axe and a few specific talents here and there.

EDIT: Oh, another thing: If you really want to get into absurd damage, melee and brawl have nothing that even comes close to how ridiculously strong Auto-Fire is considering it's only two advantage to activate the quality (which can be done multiple times!) Dual-wielding only provides a possible one extra attack for the same or generally harder dice pool as auto-firing does, as the difficulty for auto-firing can be reduced to two purples at short range and dual-wielders will never have less than three purples.

What's your damage currently at? IIRC your fists are just like Vibro-swords but you can used weighted head on them which can add 2 damage and your brawn is the same as mine.

My totally pimped out lightning shotty is only 11 damage (9 base, 1 superior, 1 juryrig) without my deadly accuracy (4 ranks in ranged heavy). My bone stock Vibro-axe is 10 damage (4 brawn, 3 axe, 2 feral strength, 1 jury rig).

Seems pretty comparable damage wise. The Vibro-axe is also capable of one shotting everything. Which I think is totally broken.

Auto-Fire is a different story. It's probably the best thing going in terms of damage. You should use your pimped out Bow-caster at medium/short range and trigger auto-fire until you can sink more xp into your Brawl skill and Brawn.

I mean, the old saying "Never bring a knife to a gun fight" means a lot here. Melee weapons are common as backups in the Star Wars universe, for when blasters wouldn't suffice or run out of energy, but most combat is going to be with guns, since they are just typically stronger and more effective in most situations.

That being said, swords hurt.

What's your damage currently at? IIRC your fists are just like Vibro-swords but you can used weighted head on them which can add 2 damage and your brawn is the same as mine.

My totally pimped out lightning shotty is only 11 damage (9 base, 1 superior, 1 juryrig) without my deadly accuracy (4 ranks in ranged heavy). My bone stock Vibro-axe is 10 damage (4 brawn, 3 axe, 2 feral strength, 1 jury rig).

Seems pretty comparable damage wise. The Vibro-axe is also capable of one shotting everything. Which I think is totally broken.

Auto-Fire is a different story. It's probably the best thing going in terms of damage. You should use your pimped out Bow-caster at medium/short range and trigger auto-fire until you can sink more xp into your Brawl skill and Brawn.

Going just by base values, a Blaster Rifle starts at base 9 damage and a Vibro-ax only reaches 9 base (if you count the 2 pierce as damage) when you have 4 Brawn, which is a pretty above average characteristic rating. Feral Strength is the same kind talent thing Deadly Accuracy is, so I dunno if it makes sense to add that to calculations when comparing base damages. Also, that kinda proves that melee damage only really becomes comparable to ranged when you specialize in it like by going down the Marauder tree, whereas any Joe Schmo can pick up a Blaster Rifle and dish out respectable damage. And of course, this comparison doesn't even account for the fact that there are considerably stronger ranged weapons than the average Blaster Rifle, while there isn't anything besides a lightsaber that can do more damage than a Vibro-ax in melee! Honestly though, my biggest problem with melee damage is how vulernable it leaves you. Running up to beat some guy's head in makes it pretty easy for any of his buddies that are with him to get a shot at you from a pretty close distance (generally short or medium), and you need a seriously hefty soak value just to stand up to even the most average of Blaster Rifle shots.

That's quite fitting, as HappyDaze and Endrik Tenebris alluded to... the reason that blasters are the norm, you just voiced it with your Joe Schmo example, range and damage not dependent on Brawn!

As for the Auto-fire property... keep in mind that every weapon with Auto-fire by default (not including a modified bowcaster) is the equivalent of a being-portable machine gun or a fixed-emplacement weapon, and in practice they each take up most of if not all of a character's Encumbrance. While the Cumbersome property can be lowered by a sling or a weapon harness, there's no Encumbrance-reducing attachment for weapons; you can only raise the character's encumbrance threshold or jury-rig the weapon (meaning Gadgeteer or Outlaw Tech).

As far as how powerful lightsabers are in this game though... think of them as:

Damage: heavy blaster rifle/disruptor/bowcaster/ionization blaster (droid/cyborg-only) damage

Crit: lowest/easiest-to-Crit in the game, only matched by a vibro-weapon with a mono-molecular edge or a Jury-Rigged heavy repeating blaster, disruptor, flame projector, missile tube, or (somehow) a thermal detonator
Encumbrance: a blaster pistol
Special: one of only two weapons (including the vibro-ax) that can Sunder, has a Vicious property that among ranged weapons is only shared with disruptors, heavy repeating blasters and thermal detonators, and its Breach 1 -- only shared with missile tubes and thermal detonators -- is the equivalent of Pierce 10.

By the way, a Critical Injury and minions question: If a vibroknife with mono-molecular edge (Crit 1) is used for a net-successful attack roll with an Advantage, does the "instant incapacitate due to Critical Injury" (or rather the Critical Injury) only apply if the damage-due-to-successes-and-Brawn added up to 6 to exceed the soak 5, or does the "Minions go down straight away on Critical Injuries/critical hits" irrespective of the damage? Also, does the Advantage count towards that damage if used to activate the crit, or can it only be used for one or the other? If it can only be used for one or the other (in which case it's used on the crit) then what takes precedence here, the damage-which-may-not-exceed-soak-as-a-result or the Critical Injury?

That's quite fitting, as HappyDaze and Endrik Tenebris alluded to... the reason that blasters are the norm, you just voiced it with your Joe Schmo example, range and damage not dependent on Brawn!

As for the Auto-fire property... keep in mind that every weapon with Auto-fire by default (not including a modified bowcaster) is the equivalent of a being-portable machine gun or a fixed-emplacement weapon, and in practice they each take up most of if not all of a character's Encumbrance. While the Cumbersome property can be lowered by a sling or a weapon harness, there's no Encumbrance-reducing attachment for weapons; you can only raise the character's encumbrance threshold or jury-rig the weapon (meaning Gadgeteer or Outlaw Tech).

As far as how powerful lightsabers are in this game though... think of them as:

Damage: heavy blaster rifle/disruptor/bowcaster/ionization blaster (droid/cyborg-only) damage

Crit: lowest/easiest-to-Crit in the game, only matched by a vibro-weapon with a mono-molecular edge or a Jury-Rigged heavy repeating blaster, disruptor, flame projector, missile tube, or (somehow) a thermal detonator

Encumbrance: a blaster pistol

Special: one of only two weapons (including the vibro-ax) that can Sunder, has a Vicious property that among ranged weapons is only shared with disruptors, heavy repeating blasters and thermal detonators, and its Breach 1 -- only shared with missile tubes and thermal detonators -- is the equivalent of Pierce 10.

By the way, a Critical Injury and minions question: If a vibroknife with mono-molecular edge (Crit 1) is used for a net-successful attack roll with an Advantage, does the "instant incapacitate due to Critical Injury" (or rather the Critical Injury) only apply if the damage-due-to-successes-and-Brawn added up to 6 to exceed the soak 5, or does the "Minions go down straight away on Critical Injuries/critical hits" irrespective of the damage? Also, does the Advantage count towards that damage if used to activate the crit, or can it only be used for one or the other? If it can only be used for one or the other (in which case it's used on the crit) then what takes precedence here, the damage-which-may-not-exceed-soak-as-a-result or the Critical Injury?

Yep. Guns aren't somehow *innately* more lethal, they're just a good equalizer, since they don't rely on physical strength to get the job done. (At least once you've reached the threshold where you're strong enough to properly manipulate the thing.)

And, onto the vibroknife more specifically, that thing would be an absolute *terror* to a minion group, regardless of the Brawn of the person wielding it. I believe it just takes a hit with sufficient advantage to trigger a Critical Injury, not any actual damage. This can, narratively, be explained as a hit which produces the effect without otherwise significantly incapacitating the target.

A Critical Injury translates to a downed minion, regardless of the damage dealt by the attack.

If the Critical Injury bit overrides or takes precedence over both damage and soak -- that is, you essentially only need a successful combat check (net success) with an Advantage to crit -- then a force pike or a vibroweapon with a mono-molecular edge (Crit 1) and the Superior Weapon Customization "attachment"* may be even more lethal to a Minion group than a lightsaber, since a lightsaber's lack of hard points prevents it from being customized under RAW like they can be, while its advantages** are basically wasted on Minions. Heck, due to the abstraction of all melee being within Engaged range, even the additional reach of a sword-type weapon or a polearm isn't reflected in these rules, unlike polearm rules in d20 Saga.

I'm mildly surprised to see the lack of Defensive and Deflection on the lightsaber in Table 5-6: Melee Weapons, due to the Forsaken Jedi's lightsaber having Defensive 1 and Deflection 2 -- after all, these are weapon qualities, and I don't see any Talents or other abilities that add these qualities onto a weapon that doesn't already have them, since they're not among Jury Rigged's possibilities*** -- but then again I'll joke that the way "lightsaber melee defense" works in EotE is "roll four Advantages on the combat check and then just spend them all to sunder the opponent's weapon."

* +1 base damage and a Superior weapon automatically generates Advantage on all checks related to its use.

** Highest damage for a melee weapon that isn't Jury Rigged, ignores 10 points of soak/1 point of Armor, +20 to Critical Injury roll results, and ability to spend Advantages to damage and destroy a target-wielded/carried item).

*** I checked the Emperor's Hand stat block, since that's the book's other Force-sensitive among the Adversaries, and the Emperor's Hand's weapons had no special qualities that weren't already found on Table 5-5: Ranged Weapons.

Cortosis weave armor/weapon > current lightsaber.

The assassin in my game only uses fists, and yet due to her talents, the amount of skillpoints/characteristics she has, is often able to take out entire groups of minions, due to the number of Triumphs and Advantages she's able to roll per turn. When you're rolling 4 Proficiency dice per turn, not including boost dice, you tend to be able to do a fair bit of damage.

Cortosis weave armor/weapon > current lightsaber.

For Rivals and Nemeses anyway -- as I noted above, all that (both the lightsaber's special qualities and the immunities to those qualities from the Cortosis quality) is somewhat mooted for Minions because of the Minions-are-dropped-on-crits rule.