Well, real life as in an around the table RPG, yes.

Guardian:Warden without a doubt in my mind, it has perhaps the most synergy amongst its talents from any spec that Ive seen and you can stay within it for a while.

You have to look beyond the individual talents.

Example look at overbalance , the martial artist has this. To trigger this requires threat or despair. The Martal Artist has coordination dodge as its major defensive talent to avoid hits , this adds failure and is a great talent. The enforcer doesnt get overbalance but its only defense is defensive stance and Fearsome (cover that in a moment). The aggressor has terrify, which adds a setback to attacks against you, which works beautifully with prey on the weak, some nice synergy there , but it does work more on offense.

Now look at the defense on the warden

Your prime talent for avoiding getting hit is baleful gaze, which upgrades your opponents check , which means red dice, which means more chance of threat or despair, meaning a better chance of triggering overbalance. Its cost is a destiny point though so expensive for a defensive talent, when the rest cost strain.

Another defensive talent is Fearsome, trigger this and your opponent has a setback for the encounter, giving a better chance for triggering overbalance if the attacker is engaged with you, they dont even have to be attacking you. The enforcer and aggresor get 3 ranks instead of your 2 and the aggresor's are cheaper. Cross specing is interesting as either of these options give you access to 5 ranks, meaning a 5 purple difficulty check. Using a threat on the fear roll means that each failure is also 1/strain damage, which is the other thing the warden excels at.

Moving onto Grapple and No Escape (defensive I hear you say) , well Grapple means that oppoents need two maneuvers to disengage, so for a minion, they have to lose an action to do so, for a rival they can pay 2 strain (wounds for them) or downgrade their action. If anyone shoots at you you can use baleful gaze to further upgrade the check even more (for 6 upgrades with max coercion) giving at least 3 reds and if they roll a despair they hit someone who is grappled and not you, doing your work for you.

No Escape is similar , but this works differently and combined with grapple can mean someone might not get away from you if they are a minion , 2 strain and a lost action or 4 strain for a rival or nemesis. to disengage when combined with grapple. The beauty of No Escape is that you can trigger it with any fear check made by an opponent in short range, this could be another warden, aggressor or enforcer, it dossnt have to be you, it also keys of a coercion check made by you, which because it doesnt target means thst you can roll 1 success and 4 advantage , target a minion or whoever and have any 2 targets in short range lose their free maneuver , doesnt have to be the target strained. This works also with Scathing Tirade.

Scathing Tirade -ties in with causing strain damage and No Escape giving you AOE strain damage and free maneuver removal. Note that even with 5 yellow on your coercion check this isnt as powerful as it looks as getting 2 advantage on the 2 purple check isnt as easy as it sounds , with 5 yellow you should hit it most times but occasionally you woukd hit multiple targets with no escape (or more strain damage)

Intimidating ties into no escape as well when making more standard Coercion checks.

If you buy into the enhance brawl power you can use it to improve your bare hand brawl damage and cause disorient for setback, knockdown for more movement shenanigans, and since enhance lets you choose advantage or success , you can tailor the result for the situation.

the Influence power is also an in road to strain damage.

Finally we have Precision Strike, which you may not think synergises with any other talent, but does allow you to 1/ take out rivals or minions non lethally regardless of the weapon used , and also allows you to pay 1 strain for an easy crit result, so if you need it or you simply didnt like the result you rolled you can ask for the result that lets you flip a destiny point , giving you one to use for your baleful gaze. which feeds your overbalance talent or lets you redivert shots to engaged opponents. taking you full circle.

Each on its own isnt a massive boost , except baleful gaze with a high coercion skill rank, but when you bring it all under one spec the talent synergise so well.

Enforcer has a similar deal with Streetwise (and to a lesser degree coercion) , allowing you to make knowledge rolls , or applying it as raw damage on a brawl check, Loom is arguably better than bad cop, bad cop gives your ally more chance of success, Loom gives them more chance of increased info if they make the check.

Aggressor has an easier job disorienting , and can stagger with a triumph so works a bit more proactively does more damage as a result but needs to actually hit his opponent and has cheaper access to fearsome

Finally Martial Artist works a different way, it concentrates on causing crits and making it easier to get crits but requires you to throw in with coordination, which means you may have 5 ranks in coordination and 5 ranks in coercion. Pulling your Xp into 2 directions for the skills, and also meaning you then either make baleful gaze a waste to use coordination dodge or you make coordination dodge a waste by usimg baleful gaze , given infinite xp its nice to have the choice of both, but the martial artist should prioritise coordination as it can also be used to the damage (having the same benefit the enforcer gets for 2 strain instead of DP and a different skill. They also have access to one of the best melee defensive skills -parry, and unarmed parry is excellent, and worthwhile any of the above to dip in and get iron body 2, parry 2, and unarmed parry. If you plan to do this plan early because dipping into MA for a warden can save you 10 xp on grapple and 5 xp on precision strike, meaning it would ultimately be cheaper than cross specing a career class ( although personally I woukd initially avoid the coordination talents, but horses for courses)

GM Dave in the order 66 podcast pointed out that the warden has a lot of psychological warfare and it does, it might not have many talents that stand out like hawkbat swoop or saber swarm, but taken as a whole the talents synergise more than any other spec I can think of. Just dont expect to stay light side , fear is your weapon.

Edit I missed also in the MA tree you also get mind over matter which synergises well with any of the 3 specs as all should have a reasonable willpower but esp the warden. In fact I'd say the warden should prioritise Willpower over brawl, as they can actually manage quite well without ever having to throw a punch freeing up actions of something like Influence basic power to cause direct strain damage.

44 minutes ago, TheShard said:

Is this for a pbp or real life?

I hope it's not for real life. I don't think he'd fair very well as a grizzled Confederate with a massive machine gun IRL. He'd be taken down by an anti-terrorist squad pretty quick.

Hahaha

16 hours ago, Desslok said:

(spoiler - never saw Firefly beyond one episode 10 years ago. It didn't do much for me)

You should at least check out the movie, Serenity. Firefly was a bit tame, Serenity distills down all the best of it without the hokum. Based on your tastes, I'd say there's a 99% chance you'll fully enjoy Serenity.

OK - I'm of the opinion that you should do a few things, STAT.

• Pick a soldier spec from AOR. Just a dip, but you're the one who picked "ex-soldier"
• Add Enforcer
• Add FSE
• have fun with developing his ex-military past... look at the duty stuff, but then go with obligation.
• Binge watch Firefly. Like right now. The fact that you've never seen it... let's just say that I'm almost jealous of the experience you have coming (and give yourself a few episodes to form an opinion). Your love of westerns will see you through. I swear it by my pretty floral bonnet.

I haven't seen firefly either... I'm really going to have take your advice sometime!

33 minutes ago, TheShard said:

I haven't seen firefly either... I'm really going to have take your advice sometime!

Back in the day when it was in production, I saw one episode and hated it. Years later friends convinced me to give it another chance and I loved it.

Firefly - oh yeah!!!

It didn't help that, when they first aired it, they aired it out of order.