Added Career Specialization and Signature ability trees from Desperate Allies to the Diplomat pdf.
Desperate Allies stands out above most of the other career specialization books.
It stands out not because of added glitz or glam, nor because of any cheap trickery or fan service.
Desperate Allies stands out on the merit of its fantastic theming throughout all its various parts.
The three new races are neat. The Neomoidians are a great thematic choice considering the capacities that we have seen them in in the movies and shows like Clone Wars. people won't be as familiar with the other two choices the Caamasi and Gossam. The Gossam and Caamasi are still built and described pretty well so that I could easily see choosing one of them to play a social-type character. Special note: the Caamasi special power sounds totally cool and really fun.
The new talent tree options of: Advocate, Analyst and Propagandist do a really nice job of helping to round out the Diplomat career trees while still staying on point with the mostly social nature of being a Diplomat. The new trees add variety and spice to the Diplomat career without power creeping too much and while still staying on theme.
The two new Diplomat signature abilities are on point. that is to say, they stay thematic and are definitely interesting. That said, the signature abilities are where my only complaints with this book lay.
The first signature ability Diplomatic Solution i think makes it far too easy for one character to completely usurp the roles and abilities of potentially the entire rest of the group. I know at my game in a party of 6 at least 3 characters are more or less geared toward some aspect of combat. This means that those players are looking forward to fighting something so they can make use of and show off their skills. Those fighters will be, at minimum, disappointed if some other character is constantly robbing them of those opportunities.
weird analogy time = Good abilities should put the spotlight on your character NOT remove the other characters from the stage.
the second signature ability Unmatched Insight is really cool and definitely useful for a social based character.... buuuut.. i think it dips more than just a toe into what should be the realm of the Force. GMs and players need to be careful to make sure that characters aren't gaining preternatural knowledge from this power. Assuming you can't gain any preternatural knowledge from this power, I imagine this would be a VERY difficult power for the GM to deal with and potentially a disappointing power for the player to use.
Weapons, Armor and Gear all makes sense. No power creep, most stays on theme, some of it potentially useful.
some extra protocol droid options for purchasing or using as opposition.
Ship options make sense and have more cool "additional rules" (which is a format i like because of how it differentiates the ships).
there is a cool section in the back about setting up a rebel base and upgrading it. while this is slightly less thematic than the rest of the material, i could easily see working it so that your social characters (diplomats) are the people responsible for acquiring these sorts of things. plus, who doesn't love to have a cool base. not all of the base are belong to empire.
so yeah... this book was pretty good. all around happy with it. hope more of the books see this kind of quality.
