A favored archetype of long-time Star Wars gamers, the tech specialist is a character that focuses on modifying and enhanced fantastic technology to fit his or her needs. Tech specialists range from brilliant engineers to prodigious outlaw techs, though all share a love for the guns, gear, and gadgets found in the galaxy far, far away.
This web enhancement includes a few rules (cut from the Saga Edition core rulebook for space) that allow heroes to take on the role of the tech specialist. Additionally, you will find sample heroic characters — a Zabrak engineer and a Mon Calamari outlaw tech — that illustrate two ways to build tech-oriented characters for your own campaign. Of course, these are just two examples, and a hero who wants to tinker with machines and electronics has a number of options available across many different classes.
Additionally, these rules will be featured in an upcoming sourcebook for reference at the gaming table, and will be expanded upon with more talents and rules to further enhance your game.
| Character Creation and Improvement | ||
|---|---|---|
| Heroic Classes | Scoundrel | The Outlaw Tech: Fast Repairs, Hot Wire, Quick Fix, Personalized Modifications |
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Encrypted Transmission |
The Outlaw Tech Talent Tree The Outlaw Tech talent tree fills some niches left by the existing Mechanics rules and options for repairing broken pieces of technology. Here’s a behind-the-screen look at the design decisions that went into creating these talents. Fast Repairs is designed to make jury-rigging more appealing to tech-oriented characters. As it stands now, jury-rigging an object or vehicle moves it up the condition track but does not provide temporary hit points. If your ship is at 0 hit points and you jury-rig it, it’s still disabled from hit point loss. This new talent alleviates that problem, while still making jury-rigging useful for ships pushed down the condition track by other means (such as ion damage). Quick Fix builds on Fast Repairs and gives a techie character a way to restore some hit points to a vehicle that’s still in the fight, but brings with it the threat of becoming disabled at the end of the encounter. This new talent also gives ship engineers something else to do in combat, especially in desperate situations, and it can bring a vehicle back up to full fighting form very quickly. Hot Wire is similar to the other skill-substitution talents and makes sense for a techie who may not be the best slicer around. Personalized Modifications is designed to give a scoundrel another means of activating some of his other talents. For example, many of the scoundrel’s talents from the Misfortune talent tree rely on a successful attack roll to activate. Combined with the Tech Specialist feat below, this new talent gets the scoundrel a small boost to attacks that can compensate for the difference between low base attack progression and Defense progression, even at high levels. The scoundrel might still need to work closely with his friends against tougher foes, but this talent is designed to capture the feel of tweaking your own weapon while still synergizing with many of the Misfortune talents. | |
| New Feat | Tech Specialist | |
| Encyclopedia Galactica | ||
| Allies and Opponents | ||