So I'm planning on starting a new campaign with some friends and was wondering how people chose heroes i have all the expansions so I'm just wondering do you have all the heroes to chose from? Or would it be better to have players chose new heroes when they get to hoth? can the same character play all the way through? Just wondering what has worked for you.

let people play what they want to play. I let new people know how certain characters play and what sort of role they USUALLY fill.

All characters can be used in any campaign, so don't worry if you don't use just core heros in the core campaign.

I typically follow these 3 rules (assuming 4 heroes):

-1 Support

-At least 1 melee & 1 ranged

-At least 1 single target dps & 1 multi target dps.

Single target: Mak, Jyn(counts as both), Diala, Biv, Saska, Loku, Davith, Onar (can be either melee ranged), Jarrod, Ko-Tun

Multi target: Fenn, Gaarkhan, Jyn, Diala (w/ Sarlacc), Verena(counts as both melee and ranged), Shyla, Vinto, Drokkatta

Support: Gideon, MHD, Murne,

Hybrid Support: Diala, Saska, KoTun

Pretty good guidelines from @Deadwolf. Food for thought, does anyone else see Diala as viable multi-target damage? Takes a while, but Way of the Sarlaac puts her as one of the biggest multi-target figures, in my opinion.

Also, totally agree about needing a support character, but it's kinda hard to pin down exactly what that means in IA. Typically, I'd say these fit the bill: Gideon, Saska, Loku, MHD, Murne, Ko-Tun. Basically, people who have abilities that can aid other allies.

29 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:

Pretty good guidelines from @Deadwolf. Food for thought, does anyone else see Diala as viable multi-target damage? Takes a while, but Way of the Sarlaac puts her as one of the biggest multi-target figures, in my opinion.

Also, totally agree about needing a support character, but it's kinda hard to pin down exactly what that means in IA. Typically, I'd say these fit the bill: Gideon, Saska, Loku, MHD, Murne, Ko-Tun. Basically, people who have abilities that can aid other allies.

Yes, Diala can for sure can do multi target dps if she gets Way of the Sarlacc. I forgot about that since it is not her most popular build.

As for support, I think there are 3 full support characters (Gideon, MHD, & Murne) & 3 hybrid Support characters (Diala, Saska, Ko-Tun). I think either can fit into the support slot, but having a hybrid as your support places extra strain on your credits due to having to equip them, but can work.

1 hour ago, TheDishRacktion said:

So I'm planning on starting a new campaign with some friends and was wondering how people chose heroes i have all the expansions so I'm just wondering do you have all the heroes to chose from? Or would it be better to have players chose new heroes when they get to hoth? can the same character play all the way through? Just wondering what has worked for you.

Although you CAN include all of the content in any campaign, I prefer to have new content available with each expansion played. In the groups that I run, I give the Rebel players choice from all previously played campaigns, plus the current campaign and then also throw in the small box expansion heroes (I'm not planning on playing through the small box expansions with most of my groups until we finish the big box campaigns). I think it's a bit boring to see the same heroes/Imperial class deck every campaign so I usually encourage trying heroes that the players haven't played before and also considering at least one of the heroes from the campaign that we're playing (e.g. Loku, Verena, MHD if we're playing RTH).

22 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:

Food for thought, does anyone else see Diala as viable multi-target damage? Takes a while, but Way of the Sarlaac puts her as one of the biggest multi-target figures, in my opinion.

Yes, she can become multi-target although the adjacency requirement of Way of the Sarlaac makes it a bit easier for the IP work around than some of the other multi-target heroes.

24 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:

Pretty good guidelines from @Deadwolf. Food for thought, does anyone else see Diala as viable multi-target damage? Takes a while, but Way of the Sarlaac puts her as one of the biggest multi-target figures, in my opinion.

YES! She was my first character, had Sarlaac and Force Pike with Extended Haft. The poor Imp player couldn't bunch up (we had Fenn) and just couldn't separate far enough. Diala often killed groups of Imperials with 8 health. That free pierce did alot.

4 minutes ago, juice man said:

YES! She was my first character, had Sarlaac and Force Pike with Extended Haft. The poor Imp player couldn't bunch up (we had Fenn) and just couldn't separate far enough. Diala often killed groups of Imperials with 8 health. That free pierce did alot.

Ouch! Yeah, that's the way to do it. WOTS can be absolutely brutal in the wrong hands.

Honestly you can pick from any of the heroes but I would suggest taking "most" from the core set for a first run through, change if you like for the next campaign.

The fact the core set has some of the strongest heroes makes it even better for first timers.

Follow Deadwolfs advice and you cannot go far wrong. All heroes can be viable but certainly not all combinations of heroes.

Be careful with Hero and weapon guides they tend not to take in to account equipment cost and usually you simply can not afford the gear needed to make all your heroes shine.

For this reason I give a bit extra weight to any hero who does not need so much in gear.

There are also some more advanced squad building tips, such as don't pair Jyn and Verena together because they don't like each other (technically because they both want the want the same specific items).

But those are not really worth factoring in when playing for the first time.

If I were to pick a squad.

Diala, Drokatta, Jyn, and either Gideon or Murne.

4 hours ago, TheDishRacktion said:

can the same character play all the way through? Just wondering what has worked for you.

I just wanted to address this question specifically (in case there was any misunderstanding):

While a character *can* be chosen for any campaign, they would still "reset" to their starting build with the next campaign (starter weapon and no skills). You do not get to keep a geared-up Fenn should a player decide to play him in the core campaign and want to take him again in the Hoth campaign.

I am glad this is an up to date discussion on heroes, as most of my search resulted in 2 year old discussions.

I am planning to run through bespin gambit with my friend this weekend. I don't want to run the same "best heroes" so we are starting with that mini-campaigns heroes Davian and murne. I am thinking fenn because I actually haven't used him before. Who would be the best 4th? I was think Vereena or Drokkata. Should I consider someone else?

I haven't used the "best heroes" in a long time. You dont need Diala or Gideon to win.

So long as you have a balanced group, exactly which heroes doesnt particularly matter (unless you are trying to use multiple "weaker" heroes).

On the core campaign my group use Davith, Diala, Fenn, Mak

We got problems, since we don't have a dedicated support character, but we won 50% of the missions and now only the finale remains

Btw I don't know what's the hate with Davith. I have managed to do 10 dmg (with average rolls) on an Elite Imperial Guard while activating from Stun,without falling leaf or fell swoop, just shrouded lightsaber and blindside. I mean come on, once you get the holocron and embody the force, he becomes am amazing single target dps

Diala's Force Adept, Force Throw, and Battle Meditation are some of the best support skills for their XP.

Force Adept alone will help you in the first missions when the dice consistency is the key.

Gideon's been thrown around a lot, but just know that he's definitely a "support" character if ever there was one.

He's good to have around, but I could see some players really disliking playing him, since one of his best uses is essentially giving his actions away to more powerful heroes. Some people can get around this by letting Gideon roll for those heroes' attacks, but I can't really blame those who aren't satisfied by that.

47 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:

Some people can get around this by letting Gideon roll for those heroes' attacks

This is a good house rule - we play this way so that the Gideon player gets to roll attack dice more than once in the last several missions.

38 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:

Gideon's been thrown around a lot, but just know that he's definitely a "support" character if ever there was one.

He's good to have around, but I could see some players really disliking playing him, since one of his best uses is essentially giving his actions away to more powerful heroes. Some people can get around this by letting Gideon roll for those heroes' attacks, but I can't really blame those who aren't satisfied by that.

Yeah, we had our Bespin finale last night and one of our players had dropped out two missions in. We were controlling the character (Shyla) by committee, but I had helped pick out the class cards so I had been doing the movement and rolling the dice. Before we started the Finale I realized our Gideon player had only rolled defense dice all campaign so I just handed him all of Shyla's stuff and told him he was playing two characters. She had the Electrostaff and Full Sweep so he seemed pretty satisfied that he was now wiping groups off the board quick.

Funny enough, Gideon picked up the Power Generator from a supply crate. Perfect time to get it since discarding a crate costs nothing but it had to fall on the guy with his starting weapon.

6 hours ago, Mister Egglemon said:

Btw I don't know what's the hate with Davith. I have managed to do 10 dmg (with average rolls) on an Elite Imperial Guard while activating from Stun,without falling leaf or fell swoop, just shrouded lightsaber and blindside. I mean come on, once you get the holocron and embody the force, he becomes am amazing single target dps

I don't think there's that much hate for him. His biggest draw back is that he goes from super fast to super slow when he gets wounded, and he's not terribly hard to wound. As for the holocron, it's not easy to get, my group won that barely one that mission, but we didn't have Davith. The lightsaber however... well I have seen Davith used in campaign yet (outside of PBF) let alone the lightsaber, but from it seems a little under rated when I ran some number through the calculator.

Davith's primary weakness is he loses a lot by wounding. But smart play can mitigate that alot. Start him in the back, dont lead with him and the amount of times he gets wounded early goes down a lot. Same thing with Onar.

Davith with Shrouded Lightsaber, hilt, guard, and the extra yellow die hits rediculously hard.

12 hours ago, Deadwolf said:

Davith's primary weakness is he loses a lot by wounding. But smart play can mitigate that alot. Start him in the back, dont lead with him and the amount of times he gets wounded early goes down a lot. Same thing with Onar.

Davith with Shrouded Lightsaber, hilt, guard, and the extra yellow die hits rediculously hard.

He also suffers from the fact that he's built around the hidden condition, and it's garbage and of his 3 and 4 XP cards only 1 is actually good with the other 3 being significantly weaker than most character's 3 pointers.

The shrouded lightsaber can be a way to save the party credits to spend on other characters, but considering a tier 2 Polearm for 650 will give reach and cleave, usually outperforming the shrouded, or the tier 3 electrostaff for 1k again with reach and cleave are both better choices.

Thing is, I really think that Davith should be used as a single target dps, not really caring about cleave.

Hidden as a defensive condition is underwhelming at best, but when you start hidden, with shrouded lightsaber, falling leaf, covert operative, high impact guard which is only 750 credits and 6 xp, you can move up to 8 spaces and casually one shot an Elite E-Web without really caring about dice rolls. Not many heroes can do that so early.

7 hours ago, Union said:

The shrouded lightsaber can be a way to save the party credits to spend on other characters, but considering a tier 2 Polearm for 650 will give reach and cleave, usually outperforming the shrouded, or the tier 3 electrostaff for 1k again with reach and cleave are both better choices.

1) With two red dice I don't see Cleave as a selling point on the polearm, though there are plenty of ways to pick up an extra surge but Davith is usually going to want to spend that surge to stay hidden.

2) The Shrouded Lightsaber with Falling Leaf and the HIG and while Hidden will deal more damage that the Electrostaff... once (twice with the holocron) per round and assuming you focus your surges on damage. Once Falling Leaf is exhausted you're correct.

Honestly though, I sort of feel like Davith is what Biv wishes he could be and then Shyla is just better than Davith.

2 hours ago, Uninvited Guest said:

Honestly though, I sort of feel like Davith is what Biv wishes he could be and then Shyla is just better than Davith.

Now I just have images in my mind of Biv sadly wishing he was a Jedi (assuming Davith technically qualifies as a "Jedi)

I used Polearm last mission and I didnt really like it as a cleave weapon. It relied too heavily on balanced hilt for the cleave. At least with the BD-1 you have a decent chance with the green die to get a natural surge.

I do think it is better as a single target weapon w/ focusing Beam/Vibrogenerator.

As for Davith, i used to advocate using other weapons instead, but I have found that Shouded Lightsaber has the best synergy with Falling Leaf and the 4xp that gives an extra attack for 2 surges.