Okay, for awhile now I've been Building Characters under a new Philosophy. Specifically in regards to combat characters. Rather than either Min/maxing damage output, or tanking i try to think of my characters in one of a few combat camps. Minion sweeping, Rival/New take-down, Booster, support. Out of these I've been having a lot of fun playing and testing Minion sweeping Characters.
A minion sweeping Character is good at removing minions, but becomes less capable when dealing with larger, more more chunky NPCs.
After getting Fly Casual and playing around I've found that the Gunslinger is just GREAT at this roll.
Let me explain why his talents allow him to take on this role, and why that can be a great thing for your gaming experience.
On the far right hand side of your talent tree you have almost immediate access to improved Quick Draw. This is great, not only for being a parties first fighter, as you don't have any disadvantage when surprised, but it also can be used to grab Grenades, a great tool for maximizing damage to minion groups, especially at early character levels.
Continuing down you can increase this advantage With Srry About the Mess (makes crit-ing easier) and rapid reaction(take a strain to add a sucess to initative).
On the middle right you get two more earlier round bonuses in another rapid reaction and Quick Strike(add boost agaisnt NPC who've not acted.) The left center column gives you another Quick Strike. In the lower portion (two bottom rows) Things get more fun Gunsblazing ( take 2 strain, no added difficult for two weapon fighting with Rg(L)), Natural Marksman (Re-roll rg(L) once per session) and Spit fire (extra attack hits a different target)
These talents are cool at first glance, but when combined with a certain load, they are chilling as a minion Sweeper.
If you run this tree with two paired H-7s with Bantha'a Eye Laser Sights you get two advantages just for succeeding, can spend one adv to activate the other gun and gain two more adv (barring an initial roll filled with disadvantages). When you add the Talents this gets crazy, after that you can spend one to crit on a single target, (lowered crit against a target that hasn't acted), spend two to crit on another (as you can hit additional target). With a really simple role of one success you end up getting two killed minions on crits, and possiblly anther kill from damage ( possibly two, if you target two different minion groups with your split attacks). on a better role you can throw around some boost to boot, or get strain back. Chances are you can get this combo off at the start of a combat if you use R. Reaction, to go first and take advantage of you quick strikes.
Using a Minion Sweeper Character lets you take a roll of excellence in combat, without feeling like you've become yet another meat-head character. Let the marauder of auto-fire guy do his thing against the big-bads and other minions. You can have fun with your character in that setting, and also take advantage of the couple of utility/social skills the class presents outside of it, letting you play decently in a wider field of the game.
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