Are there consumer lightsabres?

[Sea Skimmer]

We saw sabers used to that effect in TPM didn't we? And Luke vs. the AT-AT in ESB.

Yeah, melting the doubled blast doors at the start of TPM is am fairly sure by far the highest energy example of a lightsaber in use. While the inner door didn't fail totally, Obi whan obiviously thought it would and that indicates that lightsbaers aren't just high wattage devices, they also contain truly high energy levels. At least compared to anything handheld in real life. Oxy-gasoline torches can cut through 12in thick steel in a single pass, but slow as balls and you'd need a couple man sized bottles to make that work on doors that huge. So not man portable in any useful sense.

Luke though broke some kind of mechanism to make the AT-AT door pop open, rather less impressive. Vader later cut some pipes too; though when Luke deflects stuff with his saber some of it doesn't take much damage.

I should clarify I meant the fandom is prone to ignoring the beach tool tool when they talk about Jedi in general, Lucas was hyperaware of it and I think was very much thinking in terms of 'tomb raiding' and all that fun stuff when he invented the lightsaber as a thing for his universe. Indiana Jones would have loved to have one if only for cutting vines and snakes in half!

Did we see that in ROTS?

Don't recall any, but I don't recall any time when it would have been useful either. Trees get cut apart with no apparent resistance in TFA though. But since the lightsabers seem to have some actual cutting effect besides just a melting effect its a lot less demanding then melting huge masses of metal.

I recall it being pointed out back in the early days of the forum concerning TPM breaching that even if the doors were made out of bullshit metal the radiating heat would be so intense Obi Wan must have been using the force to protect his facial hair from catching fire. Given that its now canon you can do stuff like catch a lightsaber bolt with the force this seems like a reasonable assumption. But a non jedi user would still only need fire resistant clothes and a face shield, which you would really want to use conventional cutting tools anyway.

Anakin was a fool BTW for not having better clothes. Seriously, your a Jedi in constant combat with burning weapons in the era of super tech and your shirt burns? We issue military stuff that can withstand a propane torch and not burn at all, and it's not a sweatbox either the way full on nomex suits are either.

IIRC it was in the novel that he used the force, later helped by Palpatine, to not die from the burns. I assume he was too weak from having his legs cut off to actually block the flame, or else that ability does not scale to the point of flame in contact with the body vs radiating black body heat.

[Shroom Man 777]

We could be more metal and assume Anakin's combustion touched upon the Force and the meta-karmas of what he did and what he became, and that affected his ability to redirect/block thermal energy with the Force not only directly (i.e. scumbag children-killer getting multi-amputated and weakened so his superpowers fluctuate and he immolates) but also metaphysically.

The Dark Side will keep you alive but you suffer in ways too. Like, Palpatine wasn't really harmed permanently from the face-melting lightning, when one would think such damage would super-traumatize the underlying facial tissues (and face tissue damage is really serious... like, bee-stings to the face man!) and while he might've used some form of healing immediately after... disfigurement and stigmata are par the course with their path.

*shrugs*

This is why they must chuck ten trillion orphans into the Death Star's bottomless crushing chambers.

THEOLOGICAL MATTERS MAN!

[MKSheppard]

Everyone basically knows that Khyber Crystals have some odd properties, and may be the only known way of focusing and handling energies of immense magnitude. (cough death star).

But nobody has ever actually gotten their serious hands on a sample large enough to do a full engineering spec sheet breakdown on properties before REVENGEANCE OF THE SITH; as the Jedi zealously guarded them. Probably because they realized what they mean to weapons technologies.

Once the JEDIS were all deaded, it was a free for all in imperial weapons labs to analyze the GRAEPHS on the Crystals.

[Ender]

well now ligthsabres are straight up magic, bond to your emotions and ability to use them is related to your emotional control, I'm guessing there are not consumer lightsabres out there

[Galvatron]

What about the fact that both Han and Finn were able to power on and use Anakin's lightsaber?

[eMeM]

Don't forget Sabine, Pre Vizsla and Cad Bane, all of which used lightsabers in training or in combat against Force users.

[Ender]

Don't forget Sabine, Pre Vizsla and Cad Bane, all of which used lightsabers in training or in combat against Force users.

The whole episode was about getting Sabine to magically bond with her special saber and channel her emotions and whatnot into the energy flow of it

[Ender]

What about the fact that both Han and Finn were able to power on and use Anakin's lightsaber?

apparently there is a big difference between "turn it on" and "properly use it", with the latter requiring special magic bonding to the crystal and your emotions going in to power of the blade and makes it lighter and do what you want it to.

That or Kanan is full of it

[eMeM]

Don't forget Sabine, Pre Vizsla and Cad Bane, all of which used lightsabers in training or in combat against Force users.

The whole episode was about getting Sabine to magically bond with her special saber and channel her emotions and whatnot into the energy flow of it

So? She's not a Force user, what would stop John Kowalsky from "bonding" with the lightsaber he bought on Space eBay?

Probably the same thing that stopped Cad Bane, Grievous or Pre Vizsla

[Lord Revan]

I dunno about Grevious or Cad Bane but the Darksaber was heirloom of clan Vizsla so we can't really if Pre Vizsla did or didn't bond with the saber as we don't know how he trained with it.

Or Kanan is using the saber as metaphor of Sabine's emotional burdens, aka the saber feels lighter since Sabine is accepting herself as its wielder and isn't unintentionally holding herself back. Note that it's Sabine who says the saber is feeling lighter not Kanan.

[Adam Reynolds]

What about the fact that both Han and Finn were able to power on and use Anakin's lightsaber?

apparently there is a big difference between "turn it on" and "properly use it", with the latter requiring special magic bonding to the crystal and your emotions going in to power of the blade and makes it lighter and do what you want it to.

That or Kanan is full of it

I presume that is mostly because he is a Jedi. I doubt Pre Vizla would have said the same things, even if he was fairly proficient with his own blade and thus likely connected to it in some sense. Though Ahsoka and Obi-Wan were able to get the better of him, they are both among the more talented Jedi.

The element about it being lighter might actually be true literally. Look at how they seem to have recoil when Greivous activates his lightsabers, even though Jedi never seem to have that problem.

[Elheru Aran]

Grievous (i before e except after c, thank you very much) was also given to dramatic gestures. I don't recall any such 'recoil' when he fights in Clone Wars.

I think Kanan is slightly full of it, but I see no reason why Jedi could not 'optimize' their connection with their weapon to some degree that non-Force users can't do.

[Civil War Man]

My personal belief is that there's nothing stopping one of the mundanes from being physically capable of building a lightsaber, assuming they have the necessary knowledge of their construction. If so, the reason why you don't see any consumer lightsabers is pretty mundane.

For starters, they are of fairly limited utility in the hands of a regular person, since they lack the Force abilities necessary to level the playing field between lightsaber and blaster. So there isn't really a need for the technology for non-Jedi outside of ceremonial purposes, use as a status symbol, or if someone developed some kind of Swiss Army Knife with little tiny lightsaber blades.

On top of that, pre-Order-66, the Jedi probably closely guarded the details of their construction, and came down like a ton of bricks on any muggle that managed to reverse-engineer the process. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were criminal penalties for it. The Jedi are basically magical space cops, so waving around a lightsaber would be considered tantamount to impersonating a law enforcement officer.

As for post-Order-66, Palpatine would have even more incentive to crack down on it. Considering how much knowledge was apparently lost in the time between ROTS and ANH, he wasn't satisfied with just killing the Jedi. He was trying to essentially erase them from history. In that case, you don't want lightsabers available to serve as a reminder that the Jedi Order was a thing once upon a time.

[Shroom Man 777]

Lightsaber prohibition would be like some feudal Japan samurai shit. Maybe in some darker era of the Old Republic, hardliner Jedi could even execute peasants and just leave a piece of paper or a piece of holo to explain why - death waivers!

I think as Kanan mentioned - the way lightsabers stick to each other because of their weirdo EM-fields or something, plus perhaps the thrumming of the blades that might have some slight physical vibration (in the original Star Wars drafts, weren't these oscillations actually significant, with the hilt being a rather hefty ultra-dense projection device + power source), might mean Force-attuned finesse might be required to really get the most out of the lightsaber. Like... deflecting blasters really fast and getting the "angles" right to deflect it back to the shooters. Wow. And those tricky saber-interlocking moments in duels. I guess muggles could do it with enough training, but at the speed the Jedi do it? And with their finesse... and over durations far exceeding any real sword or weapon duel (sure this is fiction but still)?

[Civil War Man]

Lightsaber prohibition would be like some feudal Japan samurai shit. Maybe in some darker era of the Old Republic, hardliner Jedi could even execute peasants and just leave a piece of paper or a piece of holo to explain why - death waivers!

We do see very little pushback against Obi-Wan's tendency to walk into bars and dismember people. No Holonet uploads of Jedi brutality against the Changeling minority. Not even so much as Yarael Poof being all, "You're a loose cannon, Kenobi!"

I think as Kanan mentioned - the way lightsabers stick to each other because of their weirdo EM-fields or something, plus perhaps the thrumming of the blades that might have some slight physical vibration (in the original Star Wars drafts, weren't these oscillations actually significant, with the hilt being a rather hefty ultra-dense projection device + power source), might mean Force-attuned finesse might be required to really get the most out of the lightsaber. Like... deflecting blasters really fast and getting the "angles" right to deflect it back to the shooters. Wow. And those tricky saber-interlocking moments in duels. I guess muggles could do it with enough training, but at the speed the Jedi do it? And with their finesse... and over durations far exceeding any real sword or weapon duel (sure this is fiction but still)?

I imagine muggles would never bother with training with it beyond some type of eccentric hobby. If you don't have the speed, agility, dexterity, and foresight of a Jedi, you pretty much lose to everyone except other muggles with melee weapons, and you might even lose then if they are stronger or have better training. Whereas with a blaster, you pretty much only auto-lose to Jedi unless you are a horrible shot.

I only thought up the idea of prohibitions against lightsaber ownership as a possible explanation why we don't see Jedi otakus running around Coruscant in robe cosplay and waving around lightsabers in the hope that Yoda-senpai will notice them.

[Shroom Man 777]

To be fair those places Obi-Wan dismembered people were the same places Han shot people and ugly-people were agitating fights...

[Elheru Aran]

I imagine muggles would never bother with training with it beyond some type of eccentric hobby. If you don't have the speed, agility, dexterity, and foresight of a Jedi, you pretty much lose to everyone except other muggles with melee weapons, and you might even lose then if they are stronger or have better training. Whereas with a blaster, you pretty much only auto-lose to Jedi unless you are a horrible shot.

Example from Legends EU: Baron Tagge, cousin of General Tagge from ANH, in the old Marvel Star Wars comics. Trained as a lightsaber duelist. Challenged Luke Skywalker and lost.

[The_Saint]

I think I agree with Civil War Man

As per Han in ANH: "Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster"


To me it equates nicely with swords in the modern day:

Anyone could make one, but unless you've had training it'll be crap.
You can buy them from local junk shops, but it'll likely be a cheap knock off pos suitable for nothing but selling on to some unsuspecting schmuck
Those who think they're hot shit usually have never touched one (other than the junk shop variety) and ascribe magical properties to them like cutting tanks in half with a wave of the hand.
Those who do know how to use them properly are usually much more circumspect with how they advertise that knowledge.
If you walk down the street with one slung from your belt then local law enforcement will likely want to have a chat about your intentions.



Back to ANH, Han walks in on Luke training with the remote and bats not one eyelid until Obi-Wan starts talking about the force leading to Han's derisive remark. To me this would indicate that Han knows of and possibly has encountered light sabres before but is fully in the belief that he can deal with any wielder with his blaster. Some of the comics suggest that lightsabres were probably common(ish) some millenia before ANH and if Jedi since are 'rare' and kept a monopoly on lightsabres then it would be similar to encountering quality katanas (or any sword but we'll go with the 'magical' one) today. Everyone knows they existed and were of great quality long ago, everyone knows some probably exist still today, everyone knows the one your uncle bob owns and cuts watermelons with on youtube is a pos from china and everyone knows that a 'fully trained samurai could cut through a tank with one swipe but if I encountered them in the street they'd lose badly to a 9mm pistol.


I'm not one for all the nu-canon v old canon (EU is life!!) but I think old canon sets it out nicely: Han, someone who should be relatively proficient in a wide variety of hand weapons, is quite dismissive of a lightsabre and to dig into the X Wing series, when Corran Horn starts carrying a lightsabre but before training carries it because he thinks it's cool but when he goes to use it in a fight suddenly realises he's wielding something that's potentially more dangerous to himself than his enemy and that 'rule of cool' is sometimes a shit idea then promptly stops carrying it until he gets some lessons.