An ability I really want to see in the game eventually is something like this

"When attacking, count every <boom> as 2 <booms> they may still be cancelled by a single evade result."

That would bring a 2 attack ship up to very powerful levels while still being balanced.

I'd also love to see some sort of counter attack ability, but I do t think the health in this game is high enough to warrant it.

Check it out:https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/54/fe/54fe73e9-95ba-4034-b3eb-36ace58c3938/dengar.png

A counter-attack would be more along the lines of "when defending, deal one damage if you roll more <evade> than required to negate the attack.

OOOH! I like that...

You're right, might be over the top. Maybe a discard EPT?

I feel like that would be a sick way to make Fel's Wrath infinitely better. Give him that as his Pilot ability keep him having no EPT though...

"When defending, for Each Evade (squiggle) more than Hit (Boom) and Crit (Kaboom) combined Counter-Attack with that many Hit (Boom) Defender rolls Evade dice equal to its agility."

Prescient 1pt

"At the start of the combat phase, you may remove 1 Focus, Evade, or Blue Target Lock token from your ship. If a token was removed in this way, you may then perform a free Focus, Evade, or Target Lock action."

Obviously better on lower PS pilots. As long as they weren't denied an action during the Activation phase, they can change to the most beneficial action type for the current board state. Also, swapping a Focus for a Target Lock is frustrating to pilots like Carnor, Palob, etc.

Additionally, changing the wording to "At the start of the combat phase, you may spend..." introduces all sorts of interesting interactions but might go too far for its point cost in certain corner cases.

Born Leader

Increase the Pilot Skill of all other friendly ships by 1

Combat Tested

During the Combat phase when an effect would assign you 1 or more stress tokens, you do not receive any stress tokens.

Advanced Tactics

*Martyr

Rebel Only

When an enemy attack destroys this ship, all friendly ships in the play area MUST immediately acquire a target lock on the attacking ship. (Works regardless of range or whether a ship does not have the Target Lock action but does NOT work if you hit a rock or bomb or fly off the board or die from friendly fire caused effects like - assault missiles or deadman switch)

*Motivate Them

Imperial Only

At the start of the combat phase, you may discard this card to perform one attack against a friendly ship.

If you do so, you may not attack again this game round. If the attack hits, assign one stress token to all friendly ships and increase the attack value of all friendly ships by one for the rest of this game round.

This one may give you some ideas:

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/186308-x-wing-co-op-campaign-is-here/page-1

I've been playing it for a few weeks and it has a lot of resources that you might be able to adapt for your campaign.

*boom*

Thanks for the ideas so far, guys! I'm seeing a lot of stuff that I can use, or is giving me some new ideas.

I have looked through the forum history a bit for pilot ability suggestion threads to mine those for content also, but feel free to link that kind of thread here anyway. I probably missed a few when I was looking.

Keep them coming!

I was working on some custom bounty hunter ships but gave up when Scum & Villainy was announced, there's 8 or 9 pilot abilities you could use. I don't feel like re-typing them all so here the link to a post I made last year:

IG-88, Bossk, Dengar, Zuckuss (custom ships)

A lot of these could be useful as 'maverick' or 'fighter jockey' type abilities. (Those categories are for hotshot pilots that can benefit from stress and execute special maneuvers).

Combat Tested

During the Combat phase when an effect would assign you 1 or more stress tokens, you do not receive any stress tokens.

I really like this ability, and the idea of a veteran pilot having a stress-resistance mechanic. I could also see a pilot automatically discarding stress in the end phase, for example.

This one may give you some ideas:

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/186308-x-wing-co-op-campaign-is-here/page-1

I've been playing it for a few weeks and it has a lot of resources that you might be able to adapt for your campaign.

Aturi cluster is something I've been meaning to take a closer look at. There is a lot of really impressive stuff in there. The campaign I plan to run is going to be PvP, so it requires a lot of different mechanics and balance, but there are plenty of good ideas and valuable experience associated with that campaign that I plan to exploit while fine-tuning my own system.

If any of you are interested in what I'm actually planning on using all these pilot abilities for, the working document for the Campaign can be found here. It's still a rough draft at this point, but it should give you a basic idea of how these pilot abilities are going to work in the context of the campaign. Basically, Pilots can get certain kinds of abilities based on what kind of ship they're flying; ordnance carriers can access 'bomber' type abilities, for example. Abilities are further sub-divided into common-access tier-1 abilities (essentially what EPTs are in the regular game), and a second tier of abilities that can only be taken by one pilot (more like unique pilot abilities in the regular game).

Given that there is a fairly aggressive pilot death mechanic in the campaign, I will probably need a lot of tier-2 abilities or I run the risk of exhausting all of them (from pilots taking a tier-2 ability, and dying). That's why I really appreciate all the help in collecting pilot ability ideas.