... besides my party's needs, of course.

I started as a Juyo Berserker, and will be moving into Armorer soon, as we need a mechanic and I went to get into crafting stuff for myself and the party.

I feel like my character will be hard to kill between his ranks in Parry, Armor Master, and brawn rank (5 now, investing into Enhance shortly.)

So what should I consider next? I'm something of the group's pilot, so Starfighter Ace seems appealing, but Sentry does too.

2 hours ago, StriderZessei said:

... besides my party's needs, of course.

I started as a Juyo Berserker, and will be moving into Armorer soon, as we need a mechanic and I went to get into crafting stuff for myself and the party.

I feel like my character will be hard to kill between his ranks in Parry, Armor Master, and brawn rank (5 now, investing into Enhance shortly.)

So what should I consider next? I'm something of the group's pilot, so Starfighter Ace seems appealing, but Sentry does too.

Are you limiting yourself to only Force and Destiny specializations?

6 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Are you limiting yourself to only Force and Destiny specializations?

Not necessarily, but increasing my FR is always appealing.

I'm usually a fan of diversity in capabilities for most of my characters, so branching out into something else would probably be the best bet. If you are going into a 3rd spec, that is along the same lines as the previous 2, you might run into a problem of diminishing returns on your talent investments.

I'd ask yourself the following question

1. Is there a particular thing you WANT to do, that you enjoy, that you currently aren't really built to do well? (You mentioned being the pilot, if you actually LIKE doing the piloting stuff, and piloting scenes come up frequently, that might be a good way to go). Or maybe you like the cyberpunk, hacking genre of stuff, so you go into Slicing as a side project. Obviously as you mentioned above, this is disregarding filling a gap in the party, this is focusing on what YOU want for your character's development. I would basically just see what other concept you like playing, and branch into that.

Aside from that, there really isn't any other angle to consider, aside from the already mentioned "party needs".

6 minutes ago, KungFuFerret said:

I'm usually a fan of diversity in capabilities for most of my characters, so branching out into something else would probably be the best bet. If you are going into a 3rd spec, that is along the same lines as the previous 2, you might run into a problem of diminishing returns on your talent investments.

I'd ask yourself the following question

1. Is there a particular thing you WANT to do, that you enjoy, that you currently aren't really built to do well? (You mentioned being the pilot, if you actually LIKE doing the piloting stuff, and piloting scenes come up frequently, that might be a good way to go). Or maybe you like the cyberpunk, hacking genre of stuff, so you go into Slicing as a side project. Obviously as you mentioned above, this is disregarding filling a gap in the party, this is focusing on what YOU want for your character's development. I would basically just see what other concept you like playing, and branch into that.

Aside from that, there really isn't any other angle to consider, aside from the already mentioned "party needs".

You make good points. To be totally honest, I just want to be a really good fighter, but everyone in the party is taking at least one combat spec. I'm bouncing between player and GM, and as GM I've been suggesting each player take one combat spec, a utility spec, and a social spec.

I was also curious if there might be some FnD specs that have obvious synergies with my first two picks that I might just be totally oblivious to.

So I guess now it comes down to picking one of the three that have been standing out in my mind: Sentry, Niman, or Starfighter Ace.

1 minute ago, StriderZessei said:

You make good points. To be totally honest, I just want to be a really good fighter, but everyone in the party is taking at least one combat spec.

I was also curious if there might be some FnD specs that have obvious synergies with my first two picks that I might just be totally oblivious to.

So I guess now it comes down to picking one of the three that have been standing out in my mind: Sentry, Niman, or Starfighter Ace.

Well is there a particular type of fighter you want to be? Sure everyone took a combat class, but are they all standard range blaster types? Did one of them specialize to sniper for example? What about a tank? Do you want to be the fighter that stands at the end of the bridge, saber in hand as the horde approaches, and tell them they shall not pass, and prove it as an immovable object? Do you want to be a twirling dervish of glowstick death? There are several flavors of "good fighter" that you can take. If that is your priority, and you don't feel like you have finished your growth in that regard, then find other trees that give you further ranks in the talents you use regularly. Or find one that shores up a weakness in your combat style, offensive or defensive depending on your situation.

If you are comfortable with your current combat capabilities, and don't really feel like you are lacking in that regard, then I would probably suggest picking up a different angle of growth, if only to give you something else fun to do when it's not a combat scenario.

Magus (Unlimited Power)

You can augment your Crafting capabilities, you get some nice combat tricks and you get a little bit of healing. I think it's a nice well rounded spec that will help you without much of a hindrance and you get another FR boost.

2 hours ago, KungFuFerret said:

Well is there a particular type of fighter you want to be? Sure everyone took a combat class, but are they all standard range blaster types? Did one of them specialize to sniper for example? What about a tank? Do you want to be the fighter that stands at the end of the bridge, saber in hand as the horde approaches, and tell them they shall not pass, and prove it as an immovable object? Do you want to be a twirling dervish of glowstick death? There are several flavors of "good fighter" that you can take. If that is your priority, and you don't feel like you have finished your growth in that regard, then find other trees that give you further ranks in the talents you use regularly. Or find one that shores up a weakness in your combat style, offensive or defensive depending on your situation.

If you are comfortable with your current combat capabilities, and don't really feel like you are lacking in that regard, then I would probably suggest picking up a different angle of growth, if only to give you something else fun to do when it's not a combat scenario.

Well, we have a medic soldier, a bounty hunter assassin, and a smuggler who is probably going to pick up the gunslinger spec soon. The only other melee fighter is a Steel Hand Adept who wil probably pick up healing talents after he finishes his first spec.

I've always considered my character more of a samurai, peerless in single combat, with a double-bladed saber. Colossus is tempting, I must admit, and Soresu was appealing before I realized it has no FR boost.

I think I'm just being wishy-washy.

EDIT: thinking it over, I think I'll just have to wait and see. If my character is having trouble surviving after taking Armorer, I'll go Colossus with Endure. Otherwise, I'll take Sentry with Move.

My GM allowed me to make Piloting [Space] a career skill after I went undefeated at my last two X-wing Miniatures tournaments, so I think Ace isn't too important.

1 hour ago, StriderZessei said:

Colossus   is temptin     g   

Just gonna throw it out there that being a "Brick", i.e. making your strategy to get hit a lot and just Soak the damage, is for suckers. It's too easy to do/get damaged in this system.

If you want to Tank, you're best off focusing on trying to avoid taking damage completely, i.e. focusing on Upgrading your attackers Difficulty, and accumulating Defense die. Having a healthy Soak (Brawn+Soak+Party/Reflect) is certainly necessary to have as a back up, but IMO (and experience) is a waste of resources to make it your primary plan.

6 minutes ago, emsquared said:

Just gonna throw it out there that being a "Brick", i.e. making your strategy to get hit a lot and just Soak the damage, is for suckers. It's too easy to do/get damaged in this system.

If you want to Tank, you're best off focusing on trying to avoid taking damage completely, i.e. focusing on Upgrading your attackers Difficulty, and accumulating Defense die. Having a healthy Soak (Brawn+Soak+Party/Reflect) is certainly necessary to have as a back up, but IMO (and experience) is a waste of resources to make it your primary plan.

So things like Armor Master, Dodge, etc?

1 hour ago, emsquared said:

Just gonna throw it out there that being a "Brick", i.e. making your strategy to get hit a lot and just Soak the damage, is for suckers. It's too easy to do/get damaged in this system.

If you want to Tank, you're best off focusing on trying to avoid taking damage completely, i.e. focusing on Upgrading your attackers Difficulty, and accumulating Defense die. Having a healthy Soak (Brawn+Soak+Party/Reflect) is certainly necessary to have as a back up, but IMO (and experience) is a waste of resources to make it your primary plan.

I disagree. If you can get your Soak high enough and back it with Cortosis, then it is much more reliable and less effort intensive than the dice pool adders & modifiers that try to keep you from being hit. If you add in Parry & Reflect, you can do a great job of keeping any non-Planetary Scale weaponry from hurting you. Of course, if Planetary Scale weaponry is being used, it's like having a nuke fight and the game will completely break anyway.

14 hours ago, StriderZessei said:

... besides my party's needs, of course.

I started as a Juyo Berserker, and will be moving into Armorer soon, as we need a mechanic and I went to get into crafting stuff for myself and the party.

I feel like my character will be hard to kill between his ranks in Parry, Armor Master, and brawn rank (5 now, investing into Enhance shortly.)

So what should I consider next? I'm something of the group's pilot, so Starfighter Ace seems appealing, but Sentry does too.

Another good piloting spec in F&D is the Racer spec from Endless Vigil, particularly since it includes Full Throttle , Improved Full Throttle , and Supreme Full Throttle , which, combined allows you to boost your ship's top speed by two (One for Full Throttle , plus and additional one for Supreme Full Throttle ).

24 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I disagree. If you can get your Soak high enough and back it with Cortosis, then it is much more reliable and less effort intensive than the dice pool adders & modifiers that try to keep you from being hit.

Don't get me wrong, if you're Tanking (ie creating a Brawn-based combat PC) it's pretty easy - and worth it - to invest in (or pluck off the corpses if Mandalorians) the type of "low hanging fruit" that will get you an "adequate" (~11-15?) Soak.

5-6 Brawn+3 Soak (modded) armor (yes, Cortosis)+Parry3/Reflect3+maybe another misc. Talent or two (Enduring, Armor Master, another rank or two in Parry and/or Reflect, whatever) and/or Implant Armor.

Beyond that range, and you're wasting your time (XP).

Why?

At that (what I would call basic, for a Tank) level of Soak, you're either on the cusp of or already fully engaged in the arms race/rocket-tag with your GM. ie Likely no one else in the party is particularly close to your level of damage absorption (due to your high Brawn), and so the GM is planning a "counter" to you for any meaningful battle. And it's a very simple matter for a GM to engage in an arms race. You cannot win that race as a player, especially in this system. Your GM can always tack on more damage to a given attack, via weapon type, weapon mods, Talents for Nemeses, etc. And GMs are not at all hesitant to just throw higher numbers, IME. That's what you're doing, that's what they will do.

There's many tools to get around high Soak. High damage, bypassing your Soak via Strain/Still Damage attacks. Not to mention all they have to do is sneak one point thru and you're getting critted, which is where things tend to go at high XP anyway.anywa

This is the arms race, and your gonna lose.

Also, it's a very simple matter for a GM to not allow you to have your tricked out armor in any given area (without attracting lots of the wrong kind of attention).

Contrast a Defense build, and you see GMs can't take your Talents away, they can't easily take away your Force Sense (pretty much only a very special type of Force Using nemesis), it's much easier to get your Lightsaber anywhere (which is likely where your Defense will come from for this type of build), and generally I've found GMs are much more hesitant to throw ridiculous pools at you (more so than they would for a Brick anyway) than they are ridiculous weapons.

With a Defense build, when an attack does get through, you often have Despair, and/or bunches of Threats, to play with (which holds a lot of power), and/or the damage is likely quite eroded AND you still have your previously mentioned, underlying healthy level of Soak.

Granted, I've only seen the two approaches side-by-side for extended periods of play twice. But both times the Defense build was markedly the more resilient if the two (in fact one of those Defense builds I've never seen put unconscious).

1 hour ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Another good piloting spec in F&D is the Racer spec from Endless Vigil, particularly since it includes Full Throttle , Improved Full Throttle , and Supreme Full Throttle , which, combined allows you to boost your ship's top speed by two (One for Full Throttle , plus and additional one for Supreme Full Throttle ).

The Full Throttle family interacts rather poorly with the rules though. Once you activate it (Action or Maneuver depending on how far you've gotten in Full Throttle), you still need to spend the Maneuver(s) to accelerate to actually get up to the new top Speed, then you need to spend the Maneuver(s) on Fly to actually make use of that Speed. I'm not saying it's useless, but the rules are not really kind to it.

15 minutes ago, emsquared said:

Don't get me wrong, if you're Tanking (ie creating a Brawn-based combat PC) it's pretty easy - and worth it - to invest in (or pluck off the corpses if Mandalorians) the type of "low hanging fruit" that will get you an "adequate" (~11-15?) Soak.

5-6 Brawn+3 Soak (modded) armor (yes, Cortosis)+Parry3/Reflect3+maybe another misc. Talent or two (Enduring, Armor Master, another rank or two in Parry and/or Reflect, whatever) and/or Implant Armor.

Beyond that range, and you're wasting your time (XP).

Why?

At that (what I would call basic, for a Tank) level of Soak, you're either on the cusp of or already fully engaged in the arms race/rocket-tag with your GM. ie Likely no one else in the party is particularly close to your level of damage absorption (due to your high Brawn), and so the GM is planning a "counter" to you for any meaningful battle. And it's a very simple matter for a GM to engage in an arms race. You cannot win that race as a player, especially in this system. Your GM can always tack on more damage to a given attack, via weapon type, weapon mods, Talents for Nemeses, etc. And GMs are not at all hesitant to just throw higher numbers, IME. That's what you're doing, that's what they will do.

There's many tools to get around high Soak. High damage, bypassing your Soak via Strain/Still Damage attacks. Not to mention all they have to do is sneak one point thru and you're getting critted, which is where things tend to go at high XP anyway.anywa

This is the arms race, and your gonna lose.

Also, it's a very simple matter for a GM to not allow you to have your tricked out armor in any given area (without attracting lots of the wrong kind of attention).

Contrast a Defense build, and you see GMs can't take your Talents away, they can't easily take away your Force Sense (pretty much only a very special type of Force Using nemesis), it's much easier to get your Lightsaber anywhere (which is likely where your Defense will come from for this type of build), and generally I've found GMs are much more hesitant to throw ridiculous pools at you (more so than they would for a Brick anyway) than they are ridiculous weapons.

With a Defense build, when an attack does get through, you often have Despair, and/or bunches of Threats, to play with (which holds a lot of power), and/or the damage is likely quite eroded AND you still have your previously mentioned, underlying healthy level of Soak.

Granted, I've only seen the two approaches side-by-side for extended periods of play twice. But both times the Defense build was markedly the more resilient if the two (in fact one of those Defense builds I've never seen put unconscious).

I have seen both done, but neither to the exclusion of the other. The guy loaded up on Soak also had some defensive measures, and the guy heavy on defensive measures also had a fairly solid Soak. Early game (< 500 XP), the advantage seemed to go with the Soak monster.

Just now, HappyDaze said:

The Full Throttle family interacts rather poorly with the rules though. Once you activate it (Action or Maneuver depending on how far you've gotten in Full Throttle), you still need to spend the Maneuver(s) to accelerate to actually get up to the new top Speed, then you need to spend the Maneuver(s) on Fly to actually make use of that Speed. I'm not saying it's useless, but the rules are not really kind to it.

Very true, unfortunately. It should actually boost the vehicle to that new top speed immediately, IMO. However, if you have a high enough Cunning, and the right size ship, that's not a real obstacle. However, if you only have a Cunning of 2, and a Sil 5 ship, then it's a bit trickier.

8 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Very true, unfortunately. It should actually boost the vehicle to that new top speed immediately, IMO. However, if you have a high enough Cunning, and the right size ship, that's not a real obstacle. However, if you only have a Cunning of 2, and a Sil 5 ship, then it's a bit trickier.

I've mostly seen it used on a Sil 4 ship by a pilot with Cunning 3. Character had FT and FT(I). The talent was occasionally useful, but not as shiny as it looked on the page.

6 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I've mostly seen it used on a Sil 4 ship by a pilot with Cunning 3. Character had FT and FT(I). The talent was occasionally useful, but not as shiny as it looked on the page.

My character has all three, but only a Cunning of 2 and a Sil 5 ship. The trick then is to try to maintain the ability by rerolling every two rounds. However, there are other great and useful talents in the spec as well, such as Shortcut (and its Improved version), Skilled Jockey , Better Luck Next Time , Superhuman Reflexes , and Intuitive Evasion .

You might want to look at the Agressor in Warrior if you want to be a more controlling tank. You can force npcs to make fear checks against you adding setbacks to their rolls or staggering them. You can use the Terrify talent to immobilise opponents keeping them away from weaker party members. You get increased damage on opponents you Terrify. Theres Force and Dedication points. Theres also the Against All Odds talent that saves you from death once. As well as some talents to help with the Coercion face skill. The downside is Terrify is a conflict talent but its only 1 point per session, easy to counteract.

51 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I have seen both done, but neither to the exclusion of the other.

Yea, and Colossus is all in one bucket...

47 minutes ago, emsquared said:

Yea, and Colossus is all in one bucket...

Colossus can still learn Sense and get Defense from gear.

1 hour ago, SithArissa said:

You might want to look at the Agressor in Warrior if you want to be a more controlling tank. You can force npcs to make fear checks against you adding setbacks to their rolls or staggering them. You can use the Terrify talent to immobilise opponents keeping them away from weaker party members. You get increased damage on opponents you Terrify. Theres Force and Dedication points. Theres also the Against All Odds talent that saves you from death once. As well as some talents to help with the Coercion face skill. The downside is Terrify is a conflict talent but its only 1 point per session, easy to counteract.

Those are cool options, but my presence is only 2, lol.

1 minute ago, HappyDaze said:

Colossus can still learn Sense and get Defense from gear.

It has no Reflect, it has none of the Upgrading Talents. Coming from Juyo and Armorer, you've given the build absolutely no diversity w/ Colossus.

It's a GM's dream target and party laughing stock as Minion Groups or any given Ranged Nemesis at all tears it to pieces, round after round (that's 2 rounds, at which point it's dead cuz it's so easy to hand out damage).

2 minutes ago, StriderZessei said:

Those are cool options, but my presence is only 2, lol.

Coercion and Terrify use Willpower. And you get a talent to upgrade Coercion for strain.

43 minutes ago, emsquared said:

It has no Reflect, it has none of the Upgrading Talents. Coming from Juyo and Armorer, you've given the build absolutely no diversity w/ Colossus.

It's a GM's dream target and party laughing stock as Minion Groups or any given Ranged Nemesis at all tears it to pieces, round after round (that's 2 rounds, at which point it's dead cuz it's so easy to hand out damage).

If you believe that, then you discount every non-Force-using character that lacks those talents along with non-saber FaD specs too. In such a case, I consider your opinions foolishly shortsighted as I've seen such characters do just fine.