[@Headless]

I like your take on the whole thing, and having discussion is a good way to explore whether or not ideas like these should be allowed. Creativity is a wonderful thing and I'd like to take a creative concept under my wing myself, so I'm in full support for people experimenting and wanting to try certain things. Gunswords and blastsabres have a lot of things in common, which is why I'd like to bring up this little quote from wikipedia:

[quote]Pistol swords were not widely used and became uncommon relatively quickly, due to their expense and because instead of getting two weapons in one, one got a heavy pistol and a heavy, off-balance sword, as shown by the poor performance of the Elgin pistol.[/quote]
I only found this out due to the Clone Wars series, but contrary to how fast and flashy they swing their blades around, lightsabers are pretty darn heavy. Not only those, but blasters, too. And naturally, when you combine them both, you get something which is inaccurate, expensive, heavy, and lacking in firepower. Prototypes can definitely be made, sure, but how many people would actively consider using them when there are better alternatives? Star Wars has wrist-mounted blasters which would more or less serve the same purpose, and it can more easily be argued to have one in-character. They're lighter, shoot further, are less expensive to make, and are more accurate, plus you can use them while wielding a lightsaber. If we're basing this off of history, which Star Wars likes to borrow from, I'd argue that blastsabers wouldn't be a popular choice because of all the info we can infer from reality and canon.

While the idea sounds cool, it's hard to justify IC based on these merits. Again, I like the idea, but I can't think of a solid reason as to why a character wouldn't seek any other alternative [i]before[/i] inventing a prototype blastsaber. Unless that person is someone who likes tinkering with lightsabers and stuff, which would be interesting, which I think the GMs could get behind. A lot of stuff in Star Wars is done for the sake of looking cool, so it's not like there couldn't be a way to make a prototype for one character to use which solves most of these problems (save expenses), it just needs to be done in a way that makes sense imo.

Aaaaaand Ell already posted most of this. Bleh.