Lightsaber Base Damage

[atgxtg]

Yeah. Technically all weapons are "energy" weapons. Bullets and shrapnel are kinetic energy. In fact explosions and lasers are also forms of kinetic energy.

But the way it works in real life is that flak vests and armor are extremely effective against grenades. Real world grenades tend to have fairly little explosive force, and inflict most of their damage by throwing out metal fragments. Few people are killed by the blast, its the shrapnel that does most of the damage. If a GM wanted to he could roll a hit location for a frag grenade attack.

Now we don't know if grenades in star wars are fragmentation grenades or not, but Stormtroopers, decked out in a hard shell full body armor, would be ideally protected against frag grenades/ That's something that could be used to devastating effect in battle against opponents that lack the armor. But then, we have to wonder why they Empire didn't beat the Ewoks.

If, on the other hand, the grenades in Star Wars do their damage by explosive force rather than by fragmentation, the damage would affect a wider area, and partial armor would be less effective.