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I'm going to say NO when you ask to draw your lightsaber as a free action so you can then react with Deflect.  I'm saying no because free action can NOT interupt the actions of others which is exactly what you are doing.  In essence you are reacting twice to the same even which is also not something that can normally be done.

The Order of Opperations when it comes to free actions is going to be up to the GM but I strongly encourage him/her not to allow them to interrupt another's action unless the action being taken specifically allows it.  Among other things I will not allow a trained Acrobat to "Drop Prone" as a free action when that is being used as a Reaction to getting shot at.  To put it another way free actions should not be used as reactions; they may be related but they are not the same thing such that you can turn a free action into a reaction.
 

And I think those are perfectly viable interpretations of the rules.

I can certainly see that making sense.  Reactions are described as 'instantaneous', and could legitimately be intended to be the only things that are able to interrupt other actions, and that could be one of those 'reasonable limits' a GM puts on free actions.

I could see it going the other way too though, and free actions are described as taking 'almost no time'to do they can be done at any time even during other peoples turns, and multiple of them at that.  So I can see both.

Either way there is still an issue with order of precedence, even if you go with the restrictive interpretation (and I'm not surprised that's your take Steve given everything else I've read from you, and I can respect where you are coming from), but even then you could have mutiple reactions interrupting other reactions say one trigger and multiple characters reacting to it and a whole chain of events to resolve   I'd say you'd still eed to FILO those, otherwise it gets messy.

Granted letting free actions be freely chosen in between another persons attempt to take an action and the resolution of the action the similar to reactions would complicate things even further.

Oh, I apologize if I've said something wrong, I certainly meant no offense.  It's just I've been either lurking around here for a while, or posting more recently since I've been playing and getting in to thinking through thing I might do if/when I take over as GM, that I've been delving into the rules more and have been contemplating the exact way things either work or are supposed to work.  That's brought my across a large number of your posts as I sift through old threads on various topics, which do typically tend to argue for more restrictive interpretations of the rules, but your opinions are also typically fair and generally well thought out, and usually presented without getting into personal arguements as I've seen *some* other 'regular' posters.  So even when I've not necessarily agreed with your opinions, I tend to respect what you have to say.

Yeah, I'm still contemplating this one, though, I think you might be right.   I tend to like to think through most of the downstream consequences of things to think about the balance issues things could bring up.  And, I've said it before, but my own style tends to be more permissive by RAW, I don't tend to be bothered by combinations of things geting even very powerful if I'm GM because I just figure its on me to bring the challenge level up then.  I'm also very familiar with at least older Editions of MtG, I used to play extensively starting back in '93 starting with Arabian Nights, and was pretty much an addict up to '98 I think with the release of Exodus was the last major Xpack I collected.  And that was actually kind of what I was envisioning with the stack order, with things like Instants and Interrupts potentially being a valid model for free actions and reactions, which would lend toward your interpretation.

But the original thought was just going back to some of the video game versions of Jedi, through things like KotOR or TFU (which I'd be willing to bet at least on the 2nd you probably think is ridiculous.  The TFU video game admittedly was pretty crazy in terms of what they had the character doing).  But you do see Jedi with unignited lightsabers anticipate an incoming attack, light the saber, and deflect the shot before getting hit.

I was just trying to ponder through how that might functionally work in the RPG in Saga.

Though, in truth, if a character like this was built with that kind of weapon, the situation would probably rarely come up.  If he can draw and ignite the saber as a free action, he'd certainly be able to do so if not surprised before any shots called at him occured.  And if he was surprised then it wouldn't matter anyway because Deflect is explicit that you need to be aware of the attack and not flat footed.  So I'm a little hard pressed to think of a time it might even come up.  I guess perhaps a stand off situation where maybe the Jedi is trying to diplomatically resolves the conflict and doesn't want to draw his saber and incite a physical conflict, but he fails and then maybe the opponent cracks and fires at him anyway... or something to that effect.

Being able to draw your weapon as a free action is pretty awesome! That being said, I don't think you can use a free action as a reaction. What's special with reactions are that usually you have a limited number of reactions to choose from. If you let free actions accompany any reaction that may open up too many possibilities. Like dropping prone any time you are being shot at.

Page 144 of the Core Rule book says that the GM can put reasonable limits as to what constitutes a free action.  Since the GM is the final arbiter of what is and is not permissible in the game I wouldn't find it unreasonable to say that in some situations even things that are defined as free actions would not be allowed.  For example yelling for help is a free action but a GM would be right to say that the character can't do that while unconscious.  All that a free action means is that it doesn't take up a meaningful amount of time not that it is available to use at any time one sees fit.