I'm running a narrative campaign and in the campaign there are a few select NPC ships which would have new pilots or new pilot abilities. My goal is to have them be different, interesting and fun but not overly powerful. So what ability would you create and which ship would it be on?

My first idea was, "opponents may not use their unique pilot abilities against this ship".

Really it depends on who these NPCs are. Abilities should be flavorful and have something to do with the personality in question.

Can you give us some examples from which to work, or would you prefer to generate NPCs based on abilities?

-Once per combat phase if you have at least one face down damage card assigned to your ship, you may flip that card face up to increase your attack value by one

-If you are overlapping an obstacle increase your agility value by 2

-If you have a red target lock icon assigned to a ship, you may perform a free Boost action or Barrel Roll action immediately after that ship performs a Boost or Barrel Roll action.

-You may use the 2 straight template when executing a barrel roll.

-No enemy within range 1 can take the same action as you.

-Once per turn, before revealing your maneuver dial, you may pay 1 shield to rotate this ship 180 degrees.

-After attacking with a secondary weapon or placing a bomb token, receive one evade token or perform a free boost

Ideally need to know who they are and what they're flying.

There have been a few threads where people made up pilots for fun, you could mine those. Here's one: Pilot building game

Ideally need to know who they are and what they're flying.

That's your choice. I'd rather have the ability and the ship and mold the story around it. It's easier for me.

Really it depends on who these NPCs are. Abilities should be flavorful and have something to do with the personality in question.

Can you give us some examples from which to work, or would you prefer to generate NPCs based on abilities?

I'd rather generate the NPC based on the ability. The ship, faction and ability are your choice.

Ideally need to know who they are and what they're flying.

That's your choice. I'd rather have the ability and the ship and mold the story around it. It's easier for me.

Then pick three ships and I'll give you three pilots.

Firespray yt1300 Hwk

Do you want more publicly available stuff, or military grade, or mixed? As in, are TIEs and such available?

We could also use some mid level bosses and high level bosses. Preferably on imperial ships.

Firespray is highly lacking good pilots anyway. Decimators. Interceptors. Phantoms. Defender aces.

Maybe some tie advanced. But we do have lots of good pilots now for that.

Think about what you would fear to have to fight. (Of course don't just make them simply overpowered. )

Fluff or backstory short descriptions are totally welcome. Also add if I have your permission to use that pilot within my campaign story. . Which you guys will get to see. I've got an awesome idea.

Feel free to use anything here:

Commander Gyr

TIE Defender

PS 9

When you resolve an attack with a secondary weapon, you may immediately make an attack with your primary weapon.

Captain Leighton

VT-49

PS 5

During the End Phase, for every Focus or Evade token you remove, you may regenerate one Shield point.

Cassius Trell

Firespray

PS 6

When you resolve an attack from one of your firing arcs, you may immediately make a primary weapon attack from your other firing arc.

Fr'gn D'hn

Scyk

PS 2

When you perform an attack with a secondary weapon, you may increase the attack value by one.

Feel free to use anything here:

Commander Gyr

TIE Defender

PS 9

When you resolve an attack with a secondary weapon, you may immediately make an attack with your primary weapon.

Captain Leighton

VT-49

PS 5

During the End Phase, for every Focus or Evade token you remove, you may regenerate one Shield point.

Cassius Trell

Firespray

PS 6

When you resolve an attack from one of your firing arcs, you may immediately make a primary weapon attack from your other firing arc.

Fr'gn D'hn

Scyk

PS 2

When you perform an attack with a secondary weapon, you may increase the attack value by one.

He said NOT over powered, you probably missed that part.

He said NOT over powered, you probably missed that part.

He didn't give any point costs. Of his suggestions, the Firespray is the most interesting as you want to dodge both of its arcs to minimise the damage it can do.

Firespray yt1300 Hwk

Firespray, HWK-290 and YT-1300. Man, you know how to pick the hard ships.

Firespray I'll hold off on for the moment. The idea for that one is a ship that launches bombs forward, but it messes with the bomb mechanic so much I'm having trouble wording it elegantly.

YT-1300 (assuming ORS type) again is a hard one. However, could make an interesting pilot by ripping off FickleGreenDice's turret idea. Have a pilot that increases its attack value by one (which being on the ORS is a significant buff) but has to aim its firing arc forward, left, right or back when it activates.

As for the HWK, could have a hacker droid on that one. "At the start of the activation phase, you may choose one ship at Range 1-3 with an ion token. You may have that ship receive one stress token to take control of it until the end of the round." This effectively takes over that ship's attack with plenty of forewarning. Because the ship's still ionised you can't fly it off the board and the stress token prevents you (usually) from taking actions with it.

As for the boss ships, I'm assuming by this that you want taking them down to have some particular strategic depth.

First off is a potential "boss fighter", a prototype that's not going to go down easily to focused fire.

TIE defender Mark II

3/3/4/4

Focus, Target Lock, Barrel Roll, Slam

Same dial and upgrades.

Base cost of 37 points. (The cost of Hull and Shield Upgrade. Slam it gets for free to compensate for the TIE defender's priceyness). The pilot abilties are likely to be fairly expensive on top of this.

The increased health is present with the assumption that the TIE defender is a lone boss ship. If you plan on flying several of them together then you'd probably want to drop them to normal TIE defender health stats.

The TIE defender M2 is tougher and comes with two technological advances over the original: a SLAM drive and prototype shielding technology. This technology is used differently by each of the test pilots and manifests itself as a unique pilot ability.

TIE defender M2a, "Lancer"

"If you do not perform an attack during your perform attack step, you may immediately recover one shield."

Here, the prototype shield draws power from the weapons systems to recharge. As a result the pilot is encouraged to When cornered and damaged, they can forward 4 and then SLAM into what's effectively a koiogran 9, or SLAM 3 speed maneuvers for a clumsier but less easily blocked disengage. Fighting this pilot requires anticipating the SLAM moves, blocking that 4 when possible and spreading your arcs out so they can't escape and recharge.

TIE defender M2b, "Tortoise"

"At the beginning of the combat phase you may assign a token to one edge of your ship's base. When defending against attacks targeting that half of your base you may add one evade result to your roll."

This model drives the shields to their maximum. However, this shield draws so much power that it can only be used directionally, and therefore the strategy for fighting this TIE defender is to flank it.

TIE defender M2c, "Parasite"

"Once per round, when you are hit by an attack you may choose one friendly ship at Range 1-3 with a shield value greater than zero. Deal one critical damage to that ship and recover one shield."

This variant leeches shields from its allies (destructively if their shielding is down), and therefore is usually backed up by other shielded ships. It pairs well with Lancer. The trick to killing Parasite is to kill its friends first.

TIE defender M2d, "Guardian"

"At the beginning of the combat phase, assign one shield token to another ship within Range 1-2 that has no shield tokens."

A quite literal TIE defender. This one works better in a boss team than as a lone boss.

TIE defender M2e, "Hydra"

"After defending against an attack, you may execute a boost or barrel roll."

Not, I'll note, a boost or barrel roll action. This one I think is the most tactically interesting to face, as whenever you shoot it moves, but not far. Attacks need to be planned carefully and ships strategically placed lest it slip out of the grasp of your trap.

You could also potentially use the transmitter bases from Cutting the Cord to buff up any boss ship, and destroying them provides the means to weaken it. Cutting the Cord is actually a pretty good model for a starfighter boss battle.

Any of these you particularly like I'll make into cards.

Scum:

Syrk/Z-95

During the Combat Phase, you cannot recieve damage from any attack unless you were the defender.

Y-Wing:

When you recieve an ion token, regain one shield.

StarViper:

During the end phase if you have no more than one stress token, you may spend a stress token to perform a free Boost action.

Firespray:

For each enemy ship you are touching, you may change a [focus] to a [hit] or [evade] result.

Imperials:

TIE Fighter:

When defending, you may reduce your agility value by one to re-roll up to two enemy attack dice.

TIE Advanced:

In the End Phase, you may spend a shield token to perform a free Barrel Roll action.

TIE Interceptor:

When you are attacking a ship with at least one damage card assigned to it, you may re-roll one defense die of the defender for each damage card.

TIE Bomber:

After you discard a [torpedo] or [missile] card you may perform a free evade action.

Lambda:

At the beginning of the Combat Phase you may spend your Blue Target Lock token to decrease the primary weapoh value of the targeted ship by 1 (to a minimum of 0).

TIE Phantom:

When Cloaked you may Barrel Roll or Boost as if it was a maneuver.

TIE Defender:

When you perform a [cannon] attack, roll two sets of dice. Before any dice are modified you must chose one set to use and discard the others.

hey, guys, im reading your stuffs, slowly. its so cool!

I talked to charlesanakin about this: This is my opinion:

Pilot abilities are exremely hard to assess correctly theoretically. Even veteran game players or game makers can get them very wrong on first glance.

If you have the time and a willing cannon fodder buddy, please try your own inventions out, including their pilot costs. Then you can put under each ship a parenthesis analysis of the ship in its revised state.

Its very obvious here that we have people screaming one thing is under powered versus overpowered. And that has to do with cost too. (so, i do invite you guys to add cost.) Please if you don't mind, keep your costs house-rule competitive: What they should cost for overpriced ships: Ex. The generic tie defenders lose a lot of utlity from their dial and BR because of PS and thus are due for a 3 point reduction based on jousting value %, play experience, and some math-math. The named defenders gain much more from their dial and thus the reduction is smaller. Also vessery's ability is actually over 100% statline efficient. (However, his cost could concievably come down a point because of how much you have to pay to actually build for vessery himself.) Rexler -1 or -2 points.

Thus a PS1 Tie Defender with no abilities should cost about 27.

I'm still working out this incredible experience for you all. its almost ready but not yet.. If you're excited let me know.

My current musing on house-rule point reductions. Simple as possible. No other "fixes" so far. Simple as possible.

Optional: Cost exceptions:

Pre-wave3.5/Rebel Aces missiles, torpedoes and bombs (ordnance) cost 1 pt less.

This includes all 4 pt or more upgrades AND Ion Torpedoes. Excludes Proximity Mine, but focus results automatically change to hits. All restocked for free every mission. (This allows for them to be cost effective within building phase for the squad points.)

Seismic charges are 2 for 3pts.

Imperial:

Generic Tie Defenders cost 3pts less. Named -1pt.

Named Imperial Firespray pilots cost 1 less.

Rebel:

Generic E-Wings cost 3pts less. Named -1pt.

Generic YT-1300 and YT2400 cost 2 less.

All Xwings cost 1pt less except Biggs.

Scum:

Heavy Syck title costs 1pt less.

All Starvipers -1 pt.

We play with anywhere from 75 to 120 points very often and sometimes even 60pts.

When You Spend a target lock to use an Attack Target Lock weapon all friendly ships within range 3 of you that have not attacked yet may perform an attack with the Attack Target Lock on the defender but they are not required to have(or spend) a target lock on the defender to perform this attack, they may not attack again this round

Or something along those lines written in a much clearer wording, basically following some of the X-wing books where they ships share targeting info for launching torpedoes, and this would be devastating in Epic against huge ships (like it is in the books) and it requires the ordnance tax to prevent it from being to overpowered (in my opinion) for lower point cost games.

I would also like a "tractor beam" ability for Tie Defender pilots, after you excecute a manuever that places you within range one of an nondebris field obstacle (I don't think debris clouds would have sufficient mass to tractor in this manner) you may perform a 1 bank or a 1 turn maneuver in the direction of the obstacle if doing so would not cause you to overlap the obstacle or another ship (This is like Corran Horn's trick from Isard's Revenge)