I'm about to start a new game with a couple of friends and I'm looking at playing the muscle/mobile artillery of the group. I juggled between a couple different character concepts(Human Hired Gun, Twilek Bounty Hunter) before finally settling on making Jaressk Tarrassk, a mercenary/bounty hunter with a penchant for heavy weapons. I want him to essentially function as fire support type character, while also being able to take a hit as well. My initial thoughts are giving him heavy battle armor and a LRB(possibly getting an underslung grenade launcher eventually?) and have him move in and lay down heavy fire.

I want him to have that unique mercenary flair of custom gear, so I thought about picking up either the Gadgeteer or Outlaw Tech specialism, but I'm open to ideas. Anyone have any suggestions on how I should go about building this guy to give him the feel I'm looking for?

Gadgeteer is where you wanna be if you're more combat focused. Bounty Hunter has some good skills, and Gadgeteer tree has some good armor talents as well to make should more beefy.

Thanks for the quick reply, looks like Gadgeteer is the way to go, I'm still unsure which Hired Gun specialism I want to go with but I was thinking either Bodyguard or Mercenary Soldier? Another question I had that I haven't found a clear answer to. What all attachments can be applied to a Light Repeating Blaster?

Also, is there any way to fix a combat knife/vibroblade to a firearm that I've missed somewhere?

For the extra specializations, really whatever you see fitting your character best should be your first choice.

Each of the gear attachments has a sentence near the bottom of its text block that specifies what kind of weapon or armor it can be attached to. That should be clarity enough, but of course I'd suggest you check with your GM in any case.

There is currently no way RAW to attach a melee weapon to a ranged weapon, at least not in the EotE core rules. But I wouldn't have much of a problem just modifying the underslung grenade launcher rules for a bayonet. Again, talk with your GM. I've heard they can be reasoned with

Is it in any way possible to piggyback or expand the cargo hold of a Gthroc 720 or YT-1300 to be able to fit a Z-95 inside it, or attached to it in a way that allows the pilot to enter it on the fly? One of our characters wants to be able to run defence if we're ever under attack by hopping into the fighter and raising a little hell.

Combine Gadgeteer with Marauder ftw.

Would that work for a heavy weapons specialist type character? I thought Marauder was all about melee combat

Would that work for a heavy weapons specialist type character? I thought Marauder was all about melee combat

Take Marauder for +8 wounds +2 soak and when your precious gun jams or gets sundered you can fight in melee/brawl with the best of them.

Is it in any way possible to piggyback or expand the cargo hold of a Gthroc 720 or YT-1300 to be able to fit a Z-95 inside it, or attached to it in a way that allows the pilot to enter it on the fly? One of our characters wants to be able to run defence if we're ever under attack by hopping into the fighter and raising a little hell.

A docking clamp might do it for you; that is how starships piggyback on each other. But I'd decrease a ship's handling by a bit (maybe -1 or -2) to represent the added mass that a docked starfighter represents.

We decided to go with that idea of the docking clamp. I changed my original idea from Trandoshan to Human, he's a mercenary freelance soldier who also works as a bounty hunter occasionally. I'll probably post our whole crew sometime today, they're an interesting bunch to be sure.