Inspired by a topic a little while ago. It started mostly as a joke, but the ideas came together and I thought I’d pull it all together. I apologize in advance for the fact that for the most part it was less than a day from concept to product, so please excuse any mistakes or the characteristics of the dilettante. Please let me know what you think!

Without further ado, I present the Swashbuckler Career (follow the specialization name links for the talent trees).

SWASHBUCKLER

Career Skills: Athletics, Charm, Cool, Deception, Knowledge (Underworld), Melee, Streetwise, Vigilance

ACROBAT

Career Bonus Skills: Athletics, Coordination, Discipline, Perception

The acrobat hails from a highly physical and precise background. Perhaps she was a performer for a circus, a gymnast, or simply an amateur free-runner. Regardless of her past, an acrobat is more in tune with her body’s balance and is quick and light on her feet, allowing her to move through and react quickly to her surroundings. An acrobat can cross difficult terrain as easily as another might walk on level ground, all while avoiding blaster fire with aplomb.

BRAWLER

Career Bonus Skills: Brawl, Resilience, Streetwise Vigilance

The brawler comes from a background of fights to the defeat rather than to the death, and thus focuses more on outlasting and incapacitating his foes rather than killing them. When the gamorreans start a fracas the brawler is the character who is able to hold his own toe-to-toe. As a veteran of many a cantina fight the brawler is a tough character inured to pain that would incapacitate others and isn’t afraid to fight dirty. In fact, the brawler will do anything and everything to come out on top. Accustomed to fighting without weapons or whatever happens to be at hand, the brawler is more capable than most with bare hands and improvised weapons.

RAKE

Career Bonus Skills: Coercion, Deception, Melee, Ranged (Light)

A bit rough around the edges, a Rake is as often as not the cause of the trouble she’s escaping. Fortunately, the rake has developed both the social and combative skill to do so. Found of a good repartee, the Rake is as likely to attack an opponent verbally as physically – it may be difficult to tell which is sharper, her wit or her sword. While skilled with and focused on archaic melee weapons in an age of blasters, the Rake recognizes the limitations of just taking a sword to a lightfight. The most skilled of Rakes have learned to fight with both sword and pistol, some even at the same time.

I like it! Why an entire career, though? Did you consider doing a single spec that would fall under Smuggler, or possibly Bounty Hunter? Specifically, I wonder if there's enough in the Acrobat tree to distinguish it from the right two columns of Performer, Brawler from Marauder, and Rake from Charmer.

I'd love to see a Swashbuckler spec done along the lines of Scoundrel, merging all three of these archetypes into one tree. You'd sacrifice depth, but you'd get more of a jack-of-all-buckles character.

Just food for thought. I love custom specs like this, and I wish more people would create and post them up. (I've got something of my own I plan to share shortly, so stay tuned.)

Truthfully, I think only the Brawler and Rake have any real value, and those could be more easily attached to existing careers, such as Hired Gun for Brawler and either Colonist or Smuggler for Rake.

Athlete really doesn't add anything to the game, and just reads more like a collection of cool talents than being a spec with any actual identity.

For Brawler, overall it looks okay, though text on Improved Stunning Blow needs to be corrected. Also, I might suggest swapping the placements of the Durable and Hard-Headed entries, since it's currently possible to get Improved Hard-Headed without ever buying a single rank of Hard-Headed. I do like that you specifically avoided Feral Strength.

For the Rake, this one I have a few problems with. Firstly, I'd suggest removing Supreme Scathing Tirade, as this spec has enough things going for it to begin with, not the lest of which is ranks of Parry (something you generally only find in the Lightsaber Form specs, particularly in having more than one instance on top of Improved Parry). I'd also suggest moving Improved Parry to the fifth row, as well as adding a second instance of Smooth Talker as just one isn't that great a benefit as well as second rank in Feint. Blaster & Blade I might simplify to simply provide an extra Advantage when attacking with a blaster & blade combo, with it's placement on the 5th row being a good idea, particularly as the Paired attachment from Fly Casual becomes wider spread as more folks get access to the book.

Fair points. It started as a specialization, but I got a bit excited about everything that I wanted to fit into it. I could see paring down a bit on existing talents in rake and adding a few to encompass the feel of a character leaping balconies and swinging on chandeliers. Supreme scathing tirade was one of the talents I was unsure of adding in the first place.

I think the brawler has its niche as a melee specialization that doesn't focus so much on killing, probably under the bounty hunter.

Yeah, you could probably do Brawler as either a BH or Hired Gun spec, and then place Rake as either Colonist (upper class duelist) or Smuggler (all-around knave).