Editing Lightsaber (section)

== Influences on the rest of /tg/ culture ==
The lightsaber is, as previously said, a very iconic weapon that has had considerable influence on weapons throughout sci-fi and fantasy. Though we cannot compile all of them, here are a few likely ones.

* [[Power Weapon#Power Sword|Power Sword]]: Games Workshop could't stand to miss out on the opportunity to add their own version of a lightsaber, which they very much did with a power sword. It's similar, in that it has a dispersion field that turns on around the blade, but differs in that it only can reliably penetrate certain armors or materials, unlike the lightsaber. On the same point, Lightsabers appear to be rather limited, whereas power weapons can be attached to more and differing vehicles, like titans or warships. As to whether a Lightsaber or Power Weapon would win, it falls down to the weapon or the wielders. The power field can theoretically blow away the plasma blade by molecular destabilization but it depends on the users.
* [[Force Weapons#Force Sword|Force Sword]]: A weapon very much like a Lightsaber, but also distinct. It is a weapon that is enhanced if the user is psychic, but can still function as a sword or beatstick (albeit an excellent one as they need to be built extremely well, in the RPGs it counts as a Best Quality Monomolecular edge weapon if not used by psykers) in a pinch. Force weapons in DoW are pulled back to the User when dropped, which is very reminiscent of Jedi and Lightsabers in general. IT is possible to place power fields on force weapons but this is very expensive.
* [[Melta#Fusion Blades|Fusion Blade]]: GW couldn't resist the opportunity to rip Star Wars off though. Enter the Fusion Blades, which are the [[T'au|weeb]] melta swords. They spurt out energy that has the power to take out tanks. To be fair, the Jedi never had Crisis suits or made their lightsabers the size of a man, but still. We all know what they are.
* [[Eragon]]: A dumb fantasy rip off of both Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings, the main character is allowed to carry a Blue flame sword. It's dumb and it should feel dumb.
* Control Freak from Teen Titans: Not the cancer one, but the good one. The man is literally a walking fa/tg/guy, and wields a quad bladed lightsaber as a weapon. Also dresses like a Jedi.
* Kiba: An obscure anime that basically is a Grimdark version of Pokémon where the monster trainers also fight each other with energy swords instead of standing around giving their monster orders.
* Sun Blade: A magic item from Dungeons and Dragons that is a sword hilt that generates a blade of energy that does radiant damage.
* Beam melee weapons: From the long running franchise Mobile Suit Gundam. In-universe, the first Mobile Suit (the name used in the series for the giant robots) armed with a beam melee weapon is the titular Gundam RX-78. It carried two beam sabers in its backpack, which also served to recharge them when not in use. It could also be armed with a beam javelin (a long rod that emitted a larger, spiked beam and was suited for throwing). In-universe this was a game-changer: other MS were armed with heat weapons (i.e. melee weapons with super-heated edges for better cutting through armour) which could be pretty bulky with an exposed power source. Beam weapons were lightweight, compact when inactive and they could cut through just about any type of armour around. Mass-producing beam weapons (and mobile suits to wield them) was one of the major turning points of the war in the original series but the vast majority of the time the original anime shows them used pretty much exclusively for destroying battleships, with only a single beam duel that's cut in the movie version. Later series got really crazy, with beam scimitars, beam daggers, beam whips, beam fans...yeah, shit goes crazy over at [[/m/]].
** It should be mentioned that different Gundam timelines have different behaving beam weapons due to different physics. In Universal Century, they're Minovski Particles contained in an I-field in a plasma-like way. Heat weapons are effectively a predecessor or more primitive version up to and including the ability to clash. Minovksi Particles and I-fields don't exist in many other timelines therefore they substitute with whatever generic charged particles or plot pixie dust the setting has. This includes many instances where one timeline has beam sabers clash each other, another has them unable to clash, etc.

[[Category: Star Wars]][[Category: Weapons]]