Any old school fan of Star Wars Galaxy would tell you that the Beast Master was where it was at! The thing most lacking in the FFG system are those rancor handlers and Nexu tamers etc. We have rules for this in brief from survival and we even have some specs that edge on this with the pathfinder and beast rider, but we need a beast master spec built into one of the careers, or, as a career on its own.

Try Ace > Beast Rider, Seeker > Hermit, Hunter, Pathfinder, or Explorer > Big Game Hunter. All are very good with animals. You basically just need high Survival, a few flavoured talents and you're good to go.

I made a Shistavanen Big Game Hunter who focuses on capturing and taming animals. Awesome character. Plus, they start with heaps of ranks in Survival from Career, Specialisation and Race.

Hunter is the talent tthat really exemplifies Beast Handling, the talent name is terrible for not explaining that. It adds a boost per rank to any check to interact with animals.

Beast Wrangler on the other hand only applies to handling beasts, so not healing them or killing them.

So if you combine any of these three: Beast Rider from Stay on Target, Hunter from FaD, or Survivalist from EotE you end up adding 4 boost to most checks controlling animals. Add a decent Cunning and Survival and your good to go

@masterstrider

Just remember unless house rules are in effect, you cannot start with more than 2 ranks in a skill unless expressly exempted.

That's regardless of where they come from.

@TheShard

Yeah, I know. Two ranks max at character creation.

I spoke to the GM before hand and said, I can technically get up to 3 ranks in Survival (1 from the race and 2 from BGH) and he was cool with it. I made it clear I was really keen to play a survivalist and he was down with it.

I know you can use the current system by patching together some disparate elements but that's not the same as a dedicated and purpose built career. This will never feel truly like Star Wars until you are able to tame Nexu and harness Rancors etc.

Also, said Book could be packaged with a bestiary expanding the existing creature pool substantially and creating a need for further "monster manuals" down the road.

10 hours ago, Khazadune said:

I know you can use the current system by patching together some disparate elements but that's not the same as a dedicated and purpose built career. This will never feel truly like Star Wars until you are able to tame Nexu and harness Rancors etc.

Doubt it will ever happen, simply because the options we presented here are perfectly workable already to tame nexu and harness rancors. You can always try to homebrew your own specialization, of course.

A bestiary is a possibility for down the road, I suppose, but dedicated books of species, monsters, starships, etc. is not a model this RPG line has really embraced. But who knows for the next few years?

Era books will be full of stat blocks just like the region books we have had so far.