Lightsaber

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"This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as random or as clumsy as a blaster; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age."

– Obi Wan Kenobi, A New Hope

Lightsabers are one of the most iconic weapons in Star Wars, if not in all of sci-fi, being energy swords used by the Jedi and the Sith. Your basic lightsaber is a cylinder about 20cm long which at the push of a button emits a "blade" of plasma about a meter long which can reflect blaster fire and cut through pretty much everything that's not another lightsaber blade with minimal resistance.

Basic fluff

Non force-users can use Lightsabers, but generally can't make the best of them. Of course, the same can be said about any untrained individual learning to use a certain weapon, but the gatekeeping isn't just about training. It's also about understanding how to use it and control the balance in minute ways without having to always switch your grip over such a small area.

Lightsaber Combat

Hilt Variants

• Crossguard: A lightsaber with a bit of cortosis or other lightsaber resistant material as a crossguard. Despite how obvious this is and the era of cortosis being obtainable matches the era where lightsaber fights were reasonably common, they are barely mentioned.
• Lightsaber Shoto: A smaller lightsaber for use as an off-hand weapon for dual-wielding Jedi, or as a main weapon for small-sized wielders.
  • Guard Shoto: Essentially a short lightsaber built into a tonfa hilt, allowing for unique techniques such as blocking or trapping.
  • Dual Phase: A lightsaber that can swap between short and long length.
• Curved Lightsaber: A hilt design preferred by duelists, allowing for greater finesse. It was based on the hilt of an actual fencing sword since Christopher Lee knew how to fence and holding a hilt like that was most natural for him.
• Great Lightsaber: The exact opposite of a shoto. Much larger hilts and longer blades designed for larger individuals, or those who prefer a more brute force style.
• Saberstaff: Two lightsabers stuck together. Best known for being used by Darth Maul, but was initially invented by the Old Sith Empire, long before the Rule of Two.
  • Lightsaber Pike: A double bladed variant with a much longer hilt, giving more reach.
  • Interlocking Lightsabers: Two lightsabers that can be combined at the base to make a saberstaff.
• Lightsaber Pike: A lightsaber with a long shaft as the hilt. Since this makes it harder to deflect bolts, much more unwieldy to carry casually, highly vulnerable to enemy lightsabers and doesn't really add any extra cutting power it's not very common. Confusingly shares a name with a different variant mentioned above.
• Lightwhips: Lightsabers with longer, flexible beams, making defense against them more difficult. In fluff this flexibility is often traded against a weaker beam strength. The story for its initial appearance was blatantly inspired by stories of Miyamoto Musashi beating Shishido Baiken and his kusarigama, with Luke figuring out the solution to "enemy wraps up your sword" is "have a second sword".

Variants from Disney

• Crossguard Lightsaber: aka the Kylo Ren. One big lightsaber acts as the main blade, two small ones go out perpendicular to the main one to act as a crossguard and vents for excess energy. Has enough of a gap it's utterly pointless as a crossguard. If one were to ask about energy consumption, these things would probably be the bottom of the list when it comes to energy efficiency.
• Inquisitorial Lightsaber: A double-bladed variant with a unique hilt design allowing it to spin on its axis.

Lightsaber Styles

Fighting with a lightsaber is more than simply swinging your laser sword and hoping to hit the enemy while blocking his attacks. Lightsaber combat is considered a true martial art that developed different styles and forms over the ages as eras moved on and needs changed. There are a number of canonical (and non canonical) lightsaber combat styles with their own pros and cons.

• Form I - Schii-Cho: When lightsabers were invented, the first style was based primarily on existing sword-fighting techniques. Schii-Cho was the basic lightsaber style learned by most beginners and is the gateway to lightsaber combat though few actually go on to master the style properly, which is unfortunate because Form I is a perfectly functional style in its own right. It is best suited for melee combat against multiple opponents, though pales horribly against ranged weapons.
• Form II - Makashi: If Form I is "sword fighting", then Form II is "fencing". It uses a more precise and elegant method of attack and defence versus the sweeping movements of Form I, though still operating on traditional "sword form" techniques. Makashi is a style best suited for lightsaber-to-lightsaber combat, though as with Form I it offers no defense against ranged weapons. Its name is Japanese for "to defeat".
• Form III - Soresu: Someone somewhere noted that the first two forms were useless against ranged weapons and moved to correct this, creating an all new style that catered to defense and was the first style to truly teach how to block blaster bolts. In melee combat it placed emphasis on small, efficient, movements and outlasting your opponent(s) and waiting for them to tire and/or make a mistake. Its inoffensive nature marked it as the ultimate expression of the Jedi philosophy but meant that inexperienced initiates were left without effective means of attack.
• Form IV - Ataru: Form IV and V were developed concurrently, as lightsaber masters looked at Form III and decided it was far too passive a combat form, as simply waiting for your enemy to tire out isn't really an effective means of fighting. "Ataru" therefore was developed as an "aggressive" form that placed emphasis on overwhelming attack; teaching its practitioners to strike relentlessly and acrobatically from multiple angles, requiring high agility and endurance on the part of its users. The main problem with Ataru is that it physically draining and is not suitable for long encounters. Its name is Japanese for "to hit".
• Form V - Shien: As with Ataru, the developers of Shien looked at Form III and said that being passive was a poor form of offense. But rather than overwhelming an opponent with relentless attack as with Form IV, the Shien style maintained its emphasis on defense but taught how to redirect an opponent's strikes, moving around the battlefield and creating their own opportunities for counterattack. It is considered to be one of the better styles for combat against ranged opponents and multiple attackers, but is less suited as a dueling style.　Its name is Japanese for "support"
  • Djem So: The more physically demanding variant of Form V, the style is still grounded in the same principles of controlling your opponent and creating opportunities for counter attack, but is more suited for fighting against a single opponent as it instructs the user to physically dominate the fight by battering their way through the guard of the opponent or opening the opponent's attacks into new opportunities to strike. As a true evolution of lightsaber-on-lightsaber combat; a Djem So practitioner with sufficient strength could overcome a skilled Makashi duelist. The specific failings of Djem So is that it is considered a very static lightsaber form.
• Form VI - Niman: The "Moderate" form that combined elements from all of the previous forms into a single hybrid style, allowing its practitioners to learn the basics of lightsaber combat in all areas but only require one source. Critics point out that this form is insufficiently demanding, provides no decisive edge in battle, and is ill-suited to both dueling and the open battlefield. However, Form VI does encourage the user to incorporate more Force techniques in combat, allowing the user to strike and guard telekinetically and control the fight intuitively, though this made ultimate mastery of the Niman style very difficult.
  • Jar'Kai: Technically the "Jar'Kai tactic" refers to fighting with two lightsabers at once, regardless of the chosen lightsaber form. However the "Jar'Kai Style" was a specific predecessor to the Niman style that existed before the actual invention of the lightsaber and was later incorporated into the Form VI curriculum. Therefore while Form VI is a style unto itself, those who wish to learn how to use two lightsabers often find that the principles of Niman lend themselves well to two-weapon combat.
• Form VII - Juyo: The "Ferocity" form, and is one of the most physically and emotionally demanding forms. It was designed specifically for lightsaber duels, being compared to the directness of Form V combined with the energy of Form IV, although the movements come across as chaotic and erratic, often appearing raw and unpolished, the goal was to be unpredictable and vicious, with a heavy emphasis on offense. Juyo was sometimes labelled a "Sith style", Form VII is particularly aggressive and opens the users mind up to the dark side of the force if they are not careful.
  • Vaapad: The Mace Windu variant of Juyo that was only perfected much later. Vaapad was exactly the same lightsaber style as Juyo with a different mindset; Vaapad requires the practitioner to exert a certain measure of control by channeling the emotion back into the fight rather than letting it overcome the user. Though this was difficult and required a constant stream of Force use to achieve, therefore it was actively discouraged by the Jedi council as being too risky to attempt.

In the Legends Continuity, there are a number of other styles and techniques used in lightsaber combat:

• In a unique case of gamers getting shit done, even one fanon technique made its way into the continuity. Trakata is a technique which takes advantage of the fact you can turn a lightsaber on and off very quickly, allowing for rapidly re-positioning the blade through an opponent's guard. This was first named as a distinct technique in the Saga Edition RPG, and since made its way into expanded universe materials.
• The Jedi Knight series of video games created the Fast, Medium and Strong lightsaber styles for those trained in the New Republic Era, ostensibly as a gameplay mechanic, since three styles are easier to animate than seven or more. But this was later explained in EU materials as a necessity due to Luke's informal training and the scarcity of written materials following Order 66, meaning that New Jedi Order had to practically invent brand new styles based on the limited information available to them and unrelated melee combat techniques.

Issues with Lightsabers

"Arc trooper: Are you Jedi as good with blasters as you are with lightsabers?"
"Obi-Wan: Better. We only use lightsabers to make fights more equitable."

– The Cestus Deception, a Star Wars novel

Specifically, weightless blades. Because light weighs pretty much as low a mass as you can get not counting your dick (oh snap!), the center of balance of the blade is likely somewhere near the end of the handle (going by that's where the battery is, and that they likely weigh more than the blade projector). The problem with this is that you are essentially wielding a lever which will, upon being hit, flop all over the place because your hands function as a hinge. This might be less the case when used in two hands but when used in one your sword will go all over the place when it is struck. There is some in-story stuff to justify this, mostly based around how the arc-waves that form the blade do have a kind of mass that balances it correctly, but this is mostly hand-waving the issues.

Another point is the double lightsaber. Based on a variety of unbladed pole-arms like the Gun or the Bo, it has a double-sized handle with the laser parts coming out from both ends. The problem with this style is that it gives the wielder only a limited surface to work with without burning or chopping their hands off. Maybe this can be discredited as training in the Force and all that jazz (plus Ray Park, the actor and stunt performer for Darth Maul, is REALLY good at what he does), but this would still involve swinging a large dangerous rave stick very close to your body, and a good number of these styles involve holding the weapon near the end to gain great striking power at the tip of the weapon like with a pole-arm. With a lightsaber this is not possible, though not needed since it can just cut through anything by touching a target and letting the plasma do all the work.

And the lightwhip and all other kinds of outlandish lightsabers can go right fuck themselves. And don't use the Force argument, if someone focuses on holding a plasma whip properly they will get shot because, super powerful or not, you still have to think. The "lightcrossguard" on the lightsaber of Kylo Ren certainly looked silly, but for one, they gave him an edge in close combat letting him use them to burn his opponent in a bind, and secondly, expanded material say they are vents required because his lightsaber is unstable. You'd think that his boss might fix that problem for him, but that would be using logic.

One of the biggest issues with lightsabers is shown in the side material of Star Wars itself. They block most energy blots well enough. Assassins who specialize in killing Jedi use slug throwers to bypass their ability to block blaster bolts. So when the users tries to deflect bullets, a Jedi instead has to deal with very hot goo coming at them at hypersonic speeds. This also doesn't cover that some energy weapons have large bore sizes. As attempting to block them would just cause an explosion that sets it's victim alight with plasma.

Countering Lightsabers

A lot is made about the lightsabers ability to cut through most known materials given enough time and exposure. They aren't god-tier weapons though, and there are several materials that are capable of not only resisting lightsabers, but blocking or redirecting them outright.

• Cortosis: the material often first thought of when people want to counter lightsabers. Cortosis in its refined form will immediately shut down a lightsaber that comes into contact with it. Whether this shorts out a lightsaber briefly or for a few minutes varies from source to source, but the property is imminently desirable nonetheless. The main problem is that mining and refining cortosis causes Cancer like some space asbestos, so it is hazardous to work with. Not only that, but pure cortosis is considered to be quite brittle and unsuitable for a lot of applications. Less-refined variants will not shut down a lightsaber, but they are impervious to lightsaber damage, making it still useful for blades and armor.
• Phrik: a material useful for its ability to disperse any form of energy, not just lightsaber blades, and was known to be highly durable and light. Phrik weapons are most notably used by the droid Magnaguards of the Clone Wars with their electrically arcing staff weapons.
• Beskar Iron: Used by the Mandalorians, most notably in their armor but also in their blades and starship hulls. Beskar iron is considered practically indestructable, not merely to lightsabers but practically everything. The main problems with Beskar is that the ore is only found on the planet Mandalore and its moon Concordia, and the techniques of working with it are secrets of Mando smiths, making it virtually impossible to find anywhere else.