Friday, April 21, 2017

No Disintigrations

In the category of 'better late than never', I have finally gotten around to this one.

TLDR: decent book, but nothing special or overly unique. 7/10


NEW RACES
The Good: 2 new races, the Kalleran and the Clawdite.
The Bad: 1 duplicate race, the Devoronian. Depending on the gm, the usefulness and power level of the clawdites shape-shifting power could vary wildly.

NEW SPECIALIZATIONS
The Good: No duplicates. Martial Artist is cool, and Skip Tracer is versitile.
The Bad: Martial Artist may be a neat combat oriented specialization, but in a book about bounty hunters it feels odd. While it's not impossible to envision the specialization in this career, the specialization feels more like a disciplined monastic sort of martial artist, which makes it a hard fit for your 'classic' Bounty Hunter in my opinion. In the same boat as Martial Artist is the Operator Specialization. Operator is geared towards piloting and while I don't doubt that a great bounty hunter could fly and shoot well in his ship, i also think a good bounty hunter knows that the vacuum of space isn't usually the best place to collect your mark.

I think the piloting thing specifically is a great example of a general problem that FFG seems to have in building their careers and specializations. FFGs approach that each game (EotE, AoR, FaD) is an entirely separate entity means there is a lot of crossover and duplication of material already. To make matters worse, they seem to have the impression that any character should be able to do anything. As a result careers like Bounty Hunter get specializations like Operator. because "Boba Fett is the best bounty hunter and he flies the Slave 1 like a boss, why can't I? having to hire a pilot or have a crew is lame". except this is a group game and your buddy who is an ACE probably wants to be flying the damn ship. rookie bounty hunters probably can't do everything. oh, and if they wanted to, the game system already says that they can pay a little extra xp to have access to the Pilot or Gunner or Hotshot or Squadron Leader or Driver or Racer or .... ect Specialization trees. FFG could have included something WAY more specific to BOUNTY HUNTERS to help them be special and unique and fill their niche more appropriately instead of wasting space including half-duplicate null-benefit specializations like this. I would have much rather seen a Bounty Hunter Specialization title Disguise Artist dedicated to insinuating the character in the life of their target, or maybe one called Trapper, dedicated to non-physical and non-lethal take downs.


NEW SIGNATURE ABILITES
The Good: Both abilites are cool with a lot of potential.
The Bad: Alwasy Get My Mark is another GM frustrator. Few characters will have the encumbrance capacity to make full use of Unmatched Devistation (basically you get as many attacks as you have weapons, but weapon encumbrance adds up fast).

NEW ITEMS/WEAPONS/GEAR
The Good: Lots of new stuff. Micro rockets are cool and finally ... Mandalorian Armor!
The Bad: none.

NEW VEHICLES
The Good: I love the fact they are matching the roleplay content with the x-wing content. The real star of the ships in this book is the C-Roc Gozanti-Class light cruiser. why? because its the first Silhouette 5 ship that is affordably attainable and can actually be crewed by a standard 6 person party (other small capital ships have all been prohibitively expensive and/or require a ton of crew to be functional). It's basically the best target ship for when your party has outgrown thier YT-1300.
The Bad: Nope.


INVESTIGATIONS
The Good: nice chart to help people with the nitty-gritty of finding out that info.
The Bad: sometimes having these kinds of rules can pidgeonhole the players or the GM. (still think they are a nice tool to have around)

BOUNTY REWARDS
The Good: Great pay chart with modifiers.  Exploits are interesting and seem properly directed and well balanced.
The Bad: None.


I updated the Bounty Hunter Career Tree.
FIX: all known instances of Improved Reflect now correctly display Threat instead of Advantage cost to activate.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Deathseed

I have received a couple requests for this ship.

the Chir'Daki (Deathseed)

This is an ugly starfighter from the EU which you can read a little about here.
This ship is a great candidate for some kitbashing later. Whether or not I get around to making an actual model of this ship, in the mean time you can enjoy my interpretation of its stats.

Chir'Daki (Deathseed)