Hey All,

One of my players has a character with the Bodyguard Specialisation He asked me today: "What's with the barrage talent? It doesn't seem to fit to the theme of the Bodyguard".

He has a point. This may have been raised before, so sorry if it has. Any recommendations on how its supposed to be in order to be effective in combat when most encounters occur at medium range or less?

I always kinda view this as a Hired Gun talent. Flow over from other forms of training. Pretty much means that if a bodyguard is told, guard this dude, he can guard him really well and if need be give some amazingly affective covering fire. He's not Cyril'n it up with his suppressing fire. He's actually good at it and may pick a few punks off on the way out.

It just seemed to be more Sniper orientated rather than throwing yourself in the way to protect someone. Its also a very unusual tree with Barrage playing a unnecessary "gateway" talent to other talents in the tree.

I'm guess I'm wondering what their game plan was with this particular tree by forcing the Barrage Talent in. It almost seems out of place or not to theme.

It has been mentioned once or twice here a while back, but I still have no idea why it is there.

Presumably it's there in case you want to put a few blaster bolts in a threat while it's still a good distance away. It might not be super-specifically useful when bodyguarding someone, but it's not like you'll never get any mileage out of it either.

I guess for the player it will become an XP soak until it comes in handy...then it will become the best XP they ever spent

Yeah, this one comes up quite a bit. I think some people had house ruled different talents at those spots. I agree that it feels like a sniper talent, and I'm saddened that the Big Game Hunter and Sharshooter do not have that talent. As for the player, sell it to them that it's because Bodyguards need to be well rounded in everything they do, so they can do a touch extra damage at long range to represent this.

Shooting snipers i guess.

You have to tailor the encounter for its use. Long Range is supposed to be only a few dozen meters, so a shootout in a large landing bay, or during a chase sequence in speeders would involve that easily. It is an odd Talent choice for the spec though.

Yeah, the idea is no doubt something like:

Us Bodyguard and defensive talents to get you and the client to cover, then use Barrage/Brace to flush/suppress/kill the attacker.

Though I could also see those both being useful for situations where the client has been bagged and you're in a speeder chase to get him back and shooting from the sunroof....