The epiphany that occured to me is that the Scout is more like a super-tour guide than anything else, able to fly, drive, eat the local fare, and look around but not able to engage or defend (except with stealth), or know what she's looking at like the more specialized classes around her.

Contemplating the Scout class of explorers, which my character is, the Scout seems more useful for rounding out combat focused careers but as a primary career seems utterly inhibited from anything but perception when it comes to walking and urban environments. The one survival skill check I'd get in a city is to decide what to order on a menu. My most saving grace thus far is that by having generalized my character with 3s in most traits, I am able to pretty much play to my equipment to enable my character and can naturally serve as information gatherer for the group. With another career to allow rounding out the deficiencies in scout one could better afford the weapon/knowledge/stealth skills that are not emphasized (as with any other career). I was playing to the narrative of my character and went with Force Sensitivity, which significantly helps with the Sense ability, essentially making my character a super-sensor and greatly easing our ability to find the details our GM could give us in order to help the mission as well as discover shortcuts to our destinations.

The Unmatched Mobility expansion seems to offer something of a saving grace, essentially allowing her to maneuver as far as she wants given the usual size of our areas thus far, and with Force Sensitivity the expansion skills essentially make her unkillable while moving during its activation. If it wasn't 10 BBY and I could use a lightsaber, she'd pretty much be a mobility based marauder (GM says no lightsabers or expansion skills yet) or the most mobile run-and-gun person in the group, able to fire and perform multiple maneuvers or get in, make her cuts and get out.

What I'm curious about is whether or not anyone else here plays Scout as a primary career and how, especially if someone else here is using Scout/Force Sensitive Exile.

Until Enter the Unknown I'd pretty much written Explorer off. Its not so much that the Specs are bad, just... bland. A little of this, a little of that. Not what I needed for my style of character gen (find out what the group needs, build a character to mechanically fill that niche, think about the personality of the person who'd be drawn to that role).

To clarify, this game system takes place immediately after the battle of Yavin. Sounds like your GM may be confused on that one. It's in the BB and the CB.

Also, keep in mind that out of six careers, there are only two that are combat-based, and only one of those is a true "tank."

Don't feel limited by careers and specs. Remember that you have access to and can improve every skill on the list. An explorer with 2 Agility but 4 ranks in Ranged Light has the same chance for success as a hired gun/merc with 4 Agil and only 2 ranks in the same skill.

After the d20 system, WoW and 4E, I think we are all in a headspace where we look at our PCs only as combat assets, and limit them to the skills, etc. that are easily min/maxed. And I don't mean min/maxed in the traditional sense. I mean minimum effort, maximum gain. So as soon as you (and I use the general "you") see that a skill rank will cost 5 more XP, you right it off as blocked out. If you are looking for a noncombat role to fill, be the face or be "Murdock," the mad genius.

I feel like you may have painted a box around your PC that only exists in your mind. This is not a flaming troll attack. I am trying to offer a perspective that will hopefully give you some inspiration as to how to progress.

Good luck, and have fun!

My character's pretty much a bothan spy, but a low-level agent trained in forward reconnaisance. What I don't understand is why the Scout profession doesn't have a specialization in at the very least Ranged Light or Stealth, electing rather to grant passive bonuses to combat done before enemies act, forcing me to be effective by either sneaking up on my enemy or shooting first. There's fewer active things that I can do as a scout than as a thief or survivalist, but it was the closest profession that made sense for my character's story since Spy wouldn't be an option until Age of Rebellion.

Got ya. Our Bothan Politico just made the jump to Thief to make himself a better spy. Sounds like you're going more reconnaissance (he just wants to safecrack and steal blueprints). Looking over the Scout tree, it sounds like you've hit the nail on the head - I see more of a wilderness guide than "forward observer".

To clarify, this game system takes place immediately after the battle of Yavin. Sounds like your GM may be confused on that one. It's in the BB and the CB.

Also, keep in mind that out of six careers, there are only two that are combat-based, and only one of those is a true "tank."

Don't feel limited by careers and specs. Remember that you have access to and can improve every skill on the list. An explorer with 2 Agility but 4 ranks in Ranged Light has the same chance for success as a hired gun/merc with 4 Agil and only 2 ranks in the same skill.

After the d20 system, WoW and 4E, I think we are all in a headspace where we look at our PCs only as combat assets, and limit them to the skills, etc. that are easily min/maxed. And I don't mean min/maxed in the traditional sense. I mean minimum effort, maximum gain. So as soon as you (and I use the general "you") see that a skill rank will cost 5 more XP, you right it off as blocked out. If you are looking for a noncombat role to fill, be the face or be "Murdock," the mad genius.

I feel like you may have painted a box around your PC that only exists in your mind. This is not a flaming troll attack. I am trying to offer a perspective that will hopefully give you some inspiration as to how to progress.

Good luck, and have fun!

^ This. Scouts are exactly what the description and name are, they are very good at moving stealthily, scouting the area with their massive Perception abilities and leaving, without being seen. They can literally cover up their trail, or set various traps with their bonus to survival. Scouts aren't direct combatants, but if a player works well with a fair GM, they can create hell before a battle starts. If you have grenades, ask if you can make a trap using a Survival check. You could also plan ambushes with your awesome perception abilities and boost to perception checks to allies. You can also easily be the get-away guy with the bonuses to chases.

Not only that, but you're one of the best career specializes to domesticate animals with your various knowledge skills. You can domesticate an animal with your survival (thus creating a PC controlled NPC) and use Xenology to find out it's strengths and gain a boost dice to it's attacks. You can also use your knowledge abilities to locate animals in the outer rim specifically to domesticate. And use those animals as a mount, or combatant or both...

Not only that, but if you do want to be proficient in combat, you can train it with skills as well; just because something isn't a career skill, doesn't mean that you can spend some time training it up. So, you could realistically have a Domesticated NPC creature and yourself setup and brutal Ambush and if things go bad, jump on your beast and run away. Picture this: you've got a minion group of stormtroopers chasing what they think is a lone Bothan, but all of a sudden an Nexu jumps out o the bushes and mercs one, now those stormtroopers need to make a fear check and while their distracted, you teammates can start unloading firepower on the non-engaged enemies. While you use Let's Ride' on your Nexu and move around range bands with ease, only to send it back into the fray.

The other thing is, if you do go into the Force Sensitive Tree, Force power like move or empathy work well with the classes Survival (for domesticating beasts) and fleeing.

In any case, if you feel your class is underused, you should speak with your GM about it. It's not fun if you're a Slicer, Mechanic, Trader, Politico, Scholar or Thief and all you see is combat...

I'll reiterate what other people have said, spend xp on skills that aren't your class skills. They help you flesh out your character and make him the way you like and want them to be. 1 of the players that we play with is a doctor and he wasn't happy with him, there wasn't a whole lot of need for his skills. So, he started to try and kill his character off to make a new one. We managed to loot a heavy blaster rifle that no one needed or wanted, so he took it. Eventually got points in the skill for it and now our bounty hunter and hired gun have been replaced by a crazy shock-trooper doctor.

To clarify, this game system takes place immediately after the battle of Yavin. Sounds like your GM may be confused on that one. It's in the BB and the CB.

The setting takes place in 0 ABY but the system can be used literally whenever. You might want to check with your GM about what year or time period he's running in.

Scouts are exactly what the description and name are, they are very good at moving stealthily,

Actually... they're not, lacking the Stealth skill as they do.

And that's the whole problem with the Explorer career, they don't really do what you expect them to do and the skills and talents don't line up at all.

I had a thread about it, where I decided the Explorer had just learned a bunch of random things from 'a hobo living under a bridge'. That's how it felt to me. I mean, a scout who can't remain unseen is pretty lousy at scouting.

'Enter the Unknown' does mitigate this to some degree. To be honest, the Big Game Hunter career actually feels more like a 'scout' than the Scout specialisation... If I was building a character like Sasha from the Beginner Game, I'd spec her as a BGH rather than a Scout, because regardless of the name, it better supports her concept.

Same with some of the others. The skills and talents for 'Fringer' don't actually really support what most people's concept of a tough frontier type would be. They should have just called the career 'Co-pilot' or something, which would have been more accurate for the abilities it has.

Maelora - Just because you don't receive, 'Stealth' or Combat skills as Career Skills doesn't necessarily mean that you can be successful with Stealth or Combat as a Scout; with a decent Agility Characteristic and Skill Training you can be decent at being stealthy or dealing damage.

The scout is a solid medium between the non-combatant Thief class (which gains Stalkerx1 and Master of Shadows, with Stealth as a Career skill and non-combat skills/talents) and the combat Assassin class (which gains Stalkerx3, Master of Shadows, Quick Strike, light on non-combat career skills/talents). Scout doesn't get Stealth or Combat Career skills, but they have Talents for both, as well as non-combatant talents.

Speaking of not really being able to do anything, you get Stalker x2, which give 2 boost dice to Stealth rolls - so while you don't gain the chance of rolling a Triumph, you effectively add two more dice to whatever your base pool is. You also gain Heightened Awareness which boosts your groups Perception and Vigilance checks, persistently... And if you fail a Perception of Vigilance Check you can re-roll if using Natural Hunter. In addition to this, Perception and Cool are career skills. So while stealth isn't a career skill, you gain two boost dice to your stealth rolls and you're proficient at Perception and Cool, which are the skills for spotting enemies and ambushing them. If you, or you group is spotted, you also gain a boost die to Vigilance...

Now, here's where the Scout shines in combat: Scouts get Quick Strikex2, which gives a 2 boost dice to making an attack against combatants who haven't acted.That means if one person on your team rolls the best Cool/Vigilance check over all NPCs, and you take PC Slot 1, you can Quick Strike AND add two maneuvers for aim and you get 4 boost dice on an attack against an enemy that hasn't acted yet which is absolutely absurd. The only other Specialization that can do that is Scoundrel, which can also manipulate initiative at the cost of strain and can do slightly more damage/deal critical hits with the use of Soft Spot (Note that you can add in doing Crits by simply buying a ranked in a combat skill); the Scout manipulates initiative for free AND is better a Stealth and Movement..

Not only that, but scouts get Disorient x2 (which a Scoundrel does not naturally), so you get the disorient quality on any weapon, which is quite feasible to happen often with 4 boost dice and 1-6 Ability dice (yes, that's an 5-10 dice pool) and one-two difficulty dice, you could easily whack the biggest baddy who hasn't acted yet, deal a nice little punch and disorient the target for two rounds. There's a **** good chance you'll roll 4 advantage with that massive dice pool; it's like a Rogue simultaneously backstabbing then Sapping his opponent, except he can do it at range with a blaster rifle. The added beauty of the Scout in combat is they get Gritx2 and Rapid Recoveryx2. So, Aiming Twice, or moving and Aiming isn't as much of a drawback as it is with other Career Specializations because of gaining +3 Strain Recovery per Advantage, rather than just +1; Scouts are literally Strain using machines.

The above reason is why you don't see Combat Skills as Career skills for the Scout; think about how game breaking it would be if you could tack on a melee/brawl/ranged Proficiency Dice on a 5-10 Dice Pool for only 5 XP. I mean, if you really want non-career skills, just buy them - there's nothing in the RAW that says you can't.

In addition to all this, you get Survival as a career Skill, which allows for the Domestication of animals. You don't get the Hunter skills that a Survivalist gains, giving them boost dice when interacting with animals, but you do get Familiar Suns which can tell you what/where you can find various beasts, as well as getting a Talent to mount a beast you've domesticated as an Incidental with Let's Ride. Not to mention, one of two of the CRB Specializations to get shortcut.

I don't see why the Scout gets bashed so often because it doesn't get combat or stealth career skills; the Career Specialization, with it's talent's are pretty potent for what you can get on a single talent Specialization tree. You could see the Scout as a secondary class, but you could also see the Assassin, Thief or Survivalist as a Secondary Class to the Scout.

I'm not saying you can't make it work... and yes, you can buy non-career skills and multi-class if you have XP to burn.

But the Explorer has a poor set of career skills (three Knowledge skills really hurts it) and the Scout makes this worse by lacking the skills that you'd realistically need it to have. Is Medicine really more core to the concept of a 'scout' than Stealth?

It feels better in AOR because it synergises better with Infiltrator for the Spy career. Our BGH/Archaelogist dips into it a bit because some of the talents are good, if you have the skills from another class.

So it just strikes me as a multi-class option rather than a proper specialisation in its own right. And 'Fringer' is even worse.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not suggesting that every class needs to be combat-focused, quite the opposite. But a career should at least do the things you would expect it to do. Without EtU, Explorer is a weird grab-bag of mismatched abilities.

Some of the careers, like Ace, Hired Gun, Bounty Hunter and Technician, seem very focused on what they do as you rise in power. Others, like Smuggler, seem to offer a range of complimentary abilities. Others, like Explorer and Commander, are all over the flipping place.

I'm not saying you can't make it work... and yes, you can buy non-career skills and multi-class if you have XP to burn.

But the Explorer has a poor set of career skills (three Knowledge skills really hurts it) and the Scout makes this worse by lacking the skills that you'd realistically need it to have. Is Medicine really more core to the concept of a 'scout' than Stealth?

It feels better in AOR because it synergises better with Infiltrator for the Spy career. Our BGH/Archaelogist dips into it a bit because some of the talents are good, if you have the skills from another class.

So it just strikes me as a multi-class option rather than a proper specialisation in its own right. And 'Fringer' is even worse.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not suggesting that every class needs to be combat-focused, quite the opposite. But a career should at least do the things you would expect it to do. Without EtU, Explorer is a weird grab-bag of mismatched abilities.

Some of the careers, like Ace, Hired Gun, Bounty Hunter and Technician, seem very focused on what they do as you rise in power. Others, like Smuggler, seem to offer a range of complimentary abilities. Others, like Explorer and Commander, are all over the flipping place.

I think I like Fringer and I like access to the survival skill. Trader has potential but probably something i would run on the side for fun. It's like a ranger but can't fight or hide or track or have a pet.

Going into Trader is my plan for my Smuggler down the line. Lots of synergy there.

Yeah plus trader is like this class that feels different and asks to be rolled outside the normal box we tend to create.

About the scout, it seems that Maelora equates "scout" with "thief/rogue," which may be a bit more narrow a focus than the designers had when creating the Scout specialization.

Not all scouts have to be good at sneaking about, as a large part of being a scout is investigating a new area and being able to deal with the hazards that might crop up. One might consider Mick Dundee of the Crocodile Dundee movies to have taken the Scout specialization, being a fella that's quite adept at surviving in the Australian outback.

I think a part of Explorer that doesn't sit well with some folks is that it was designed as being akin to the Fringer class from the OCR/RCR Star Wars d20 system, which itself was a "jack of all trades" type of class, one that could be used to fill a number of different niches but never truly being a master of them. The other careers have a pretty definitive focus to them, both in EotE and in Age of Rebellion. Explorer simply doesn't have that, or at least not to the same extent; in a way, it's focus is almost the fact that it lacks a clear focus.

About the scout, it seems that Maelora equates "scout" with "thief/rogue," which may be a bit more narrow a focus than the designers had when creating the Scout specialization.

Not all scouts have to be good at sneaking about, as a large part of being a scout is investigating a new area and being able to deal with the hazards that might crop up. One might consider Mick Dundee of the Crocodile Dundee movies to have taken the Scout specialization, being a fella that's quite adept at surviving in the Australian outback.

I think a part of Explorer that doesn't sit well with some folks is that it was designed as being akin to the Fringer class from the OCR/RCR Star Wars d20 system, which itself was a "jack of all trades" type of class, one that could be used to fill a number of different niches but never truly being a master of them. The other careers have a pretty definitive focus to them, both in EotE and in Age of Rebellion. Explorer simply doesn't have that, or at least not to the same extent; in a way, it's focus is almost the fact that it lacks a clear focus.

It depends really, but the issue is that scout sits at a strange spot, where it is equipped to observe, but can't observe quietly. Being able to observe is not so useful if one is attacked by savage beasts/ humanoids, since such encounters typically end up with one or another. It kind of comes down to being rather restrictive in execution, since not every scout wants to grapple with a space slug while observing it in its natural habitat.

Going into Trader is my plan for my Smuggler down the line. Lots of synergy there.

That is what I did with my smuggler. If it's legal or illegal, I know someone who will buy or sell it. They work great together for me. Plus I have something sorta legal to hide my illegal activities behind.

But the Explorer has a poor set of career skills (three Knowledge skills really hurts it) and the Scout makes this worse by lacking the skills that you'd realistically need it to have. Is Medicine really more core to the concept of a 'scout' than Stealth?

Unless you want a character who actually knows stuff. Knowledge skills are often underrated (and some GMs reinforce this, sure), but a Scout's a good specialization for when your group winds up on a new planet, rolls a good Knowledge (Outer Rim) check, and says "oh, I've been here before, let's not land at this spaceport because I know another one where we can get _____." Knowledge skills can drive the plot in a completely different direction sometimes, and a lot of players prefer that type of narrative influence to a +1 to damage or whatever.

As for whether or not Medicine makes sense, a Scout is going off, often alone, into unfamiliar territory with unknown hazards. If they want to get out alive, they'd better know how to patch themselves up when something unexpected happens. Or, upon seeing a dead body, be able to analyze how they died and perhaps avoid the same fate.

Personally, the Explorer is one of my favorite Careers in the core book. You could be a jack-of-all-trades (and this works a lot better than in, say, D&D), but you also have a lot of options to focus on within the Career. My last character was a Fringer/Scout, and my biggest strength was probably Strain management. Which gives you more leeway to do just about anything. Aside from that, I was a solid Pilot and a great Astrogator, and once I grabbed Dodge I could at least hold my own in combat (yep, I bought some ranks in Ranged Light even though they weren't career skills. Cheaper than buying a third spec that offered them).

Oh, and I was the de-facto face since everybody else was hopeless at that. Though I mostly managed that by bumping up Negotiation, Cool, and Deception, and just getting consistently lucky with Charm and Leadership succeeding almost all the time with just 2 green dice.

Honestly, most of the rest of the group were more highly specialized, and it often seemed like I was the go-to player to do just about anything except fix stuff or hack stuff (which the mechanic/slicer took care of), kill stuff (which was the assassin droid's job), or punch stuff/use the force (the Marauder/FS Exile had that covered). The droid especially said that his next character would be more like my Fringer because a jack of all trades in this system can actually be successful at a wide variety of tasks, whereas he was pretty awful at anything that couldn't be solved with a gun (and we'd usually go 2-3 sessions without any combat).

I was going to quote Selito AND alien270 here with a couple of broad statements about the Explorer Tree. The first is that it's not exactly simply a group of Specializations that are poorly thought out or just tied together with no real thought process. What they are, is a Hybrid class, akin to a Druid in a d20 system, or a something like a Sentinel from a game like Mass Effect. You've got a support focused trees in Colonist and Technician and realistically two combat focused trees in Hired Gun and Bounty Hunter. Smuggler and Explorer are both trees filled with Hybrid classes that can mix is up, and provide a little bit of both, albeit in different ways. The Smuggler Career leans more toward combat, while the Explorer Career leans more toward support.

In any case, I want to make mention that if combat and stealth proficiency dice are so absolutely necessary, buying them out of career skill is cheaper than multi-classing, and with that, you get the excellent dice pool size of the Explorer career as well as training proficiency. Hell, with a Scout, you can choose a Human and get a free rank in a combat skill (or two) and grab stealth as well. Then you've fixed some of your problem with craving proficiency dice.

The Explorer tree is a hybrid-tree that allows a PC to provide support abilities, but not be total slouches in Combat as well. You're not going to be the best shot, be the best face, or support guy, without training or multi-specializing, but this is true with the Smuggler tree as well; you can't be the best Pilot with dipping into Fringer and you can't be the best Astrogator without dipping into Pilot, you can't be the best face without dipping into Politico, you can't be the Best Gunslinger without Mercenary Solider, you can't be the best ya-da-ya-da. Smuggler is really no more of a 'defined' Career, as Explorer (Minus Pilot and Explorer gets Trader which is pretty straight forward). I think that Smuggler is less scrutinized due to having Career skills that support combat, while Explorer does not and I think passing judgement on the tree because it's a hybrid that focuses more on support than combat isn't giving it justice. And what the Explorer loses in combat efficiency, it gains in high strain thresholds, as well as the best strain regeneration in the game. I disagree with the lack of definitive focus on these careers and specializations; I'll go through each.

Fringer is primarily a co-pilot (as previously mentioned); it's not going to be able to Pilot as well as the Smuggler Pilot Career Specialization, but it's better at Astrogation with Master Starhopper AND the fact it gets Rapid Recovery x3 (+4 Strain Recovery per Advantage... What?!) If you've got a ship that's got room for a co-pilot and not just an Astrogator, you gain a PC that can strain ***** maneuvers and recover them with ease. Fringers are good at getting into and out of sticky situations in civilization - they are better at communicating with customs than a Pilot, they are better at Combat than a Pilot and they are excellent at getting away in a Chase, both on foot and in a vessel. Luke Skywalker is a solid example of a Fringer; he wasn't exactly on Han Solo's level as a Pilot, but he did okay with a little bit of training from the Rebel Alliance. Luke's ability to expend strain, while get a bonus from having minor training as a FSE, allowed him to hit a proton torpedo into the Death Star. Obviously, he dropped multi-classed out of the Explorer tree to a Jedi, but we can't quite do that yet. I bet his Rapid Recovery Talents helped him being a Jedi, however.

Scouts are great, well Scouts and Combatants as well. They get so many buffs to perception, it's ridiculous as well as boosts to Stealth. While Stealth isn't a career skill, a Scout isn't exactly stealthy. They are meant to get in and get out, similar to the Fringer, but in the wilds. Take a look at Scout Troopers on Endor in Return of the Jedi; they roll up on their speeder bikes, look around with their macro binoculars. They weren't sneaking around like a spec ops unit, but it's not like they were out in the open either. When they were spotted, they ran trying to make it back to warn the Imperials. Too bad they were up against Jedi... You didn't see these guys going about trying to kill Luke, Leia and Han with blasters, no they ran first. And when they did try to shoot the Rebels, they weren't as good as Stormtroopers. I see Scouts in Edge more like the Scout Troopers in Return of the Jedi or how scouts are in many RTS's (little stealth, if any and the fastest units in the game), more than I see them like some type of Ranger, or some sneaky special forces guy. Scouts are excellent runners and they get Cool as a career skill, with a persistent Vigilance/Perception boosting buff. I know it was mentioned by Selito that the Vigilance buff isn't exactly the greatest buff, but I disagree. The Scout get's cool as a career skill, which, with the scout's boost dice to stealth, makes the Scout and excellent ambusher. With that being said, if the scout is with the group, which would be considered close range, the group gets a bonus AGAINST ambushes. Scouts are also excellent at finding, domesticating and quickly riding animals; this can be used offensively or defensively. Speaking of chases, Scouts are the best class in the game at running away, or catching someone running (on foot or on planetary vehicle).

Traders are Faces, but aren't as smooth of a talker as a Politico; they make up for it with being able to find what they want, and get it. I don't have much experience with traders, but they seem excellent for making money.

As for rolling percentages and meta-gaming, I know it's difficult to prevent. Have the GM homebrew adventures and create new NPCs that aren't in the book (you can use the same stats, just rename the NPCs.. I do this to great effect in my game and it's really helped with negating player looking at NPC stats). Homebrews are typically great ways to really build adventures around player's skills; having maybe 3-5 objectives and let the players RP/use their strengths has been a rewarding experience and gives the support guys a little more love.

Really, I like the Explorer Career and its specialization trees. I don't think there's anything wrong with them. I do think they are more tailored to the 'support' end of the spectrum than 'combat', but they let you support while providing talents to aid in combat, when it comes... Outside of Trader that is... If you're looking for like a 'Ranger' type character (rugged dude that can deal damage), Survivalist is a better option, where Scout would be more like a 'Druid' if that makes sense... You'll lose damage potential, but make up for it with helping out your group.

Sorry for the long winded posts and I'm not trying to discredit opinions, I simply feel like Explorer is one of the most misunderstood careers and meta-gaming DOES hurt it more than almost any other (because godmoding omnipotence totally crushes support skills for a party).

Not trying to argue with you, but Scout is nothing like a D&D Druid. They have their own niche, with animal companions or shape-changing or whatever, and they have spells and healing. And take it from someone who has 30+ plays in Mass Effect with a Sentinel; Explorers are no great shakes as support either. As someone said, it's like playing a ranger without the pet, or fighting skills, or spells or anything beyond tracking.

The Scout gets good Survival, and that's about it. The problem with heavily loading it with Knowledge skills is that these are of limited use. I try to give them some use when GMing but generally, if a GM wants the players to know something, the GM will tell them whether they have a skill or not. And if the GM doesn't want you to know something, they won't tell you, skill or no.

Lacking any combat skills means you won't be doing much when combat invariably occurs, unless you multiclass or pay through the nose for non-class skills. Making things like Disorient less useful. No, combat isn't everything, and I tend to prefer support classes - my point is that the Explorer career doesn't do this well. The Colonist is the only other class that lacks ANY combat skills, and it has buffing and face abilities that make up for it and give the career a niche.

Sure Medicine is nice, but is it really more central to the concept of a 'Scout' than Stealth? It makes the Scout poor at actually scouting, which defeats the whole object. And I don't care about real-world definitions - in an RPG, a PC scouting is going to need to be unseen if he's to do his job.

With a very weak selection of career skills (I don't think we've ever had an Astrogation roll that's actually affected the story), the specialisations really need some focus to make the career useful, and while the EtU ones are pretty good, the Core specialisations for Explorer lack this. It's not that a 'jack of all trades' class wouldn't be useful - but Explorer doesn't even do this well. Aside from Survival, it has no niche to call its own the way that Doctor, Slicer, Politico, etc have. Without any combat skills or stealth or streetwise, it's a struggle to contribute meaningfully to many encounters. Yes, you could do as you suggest and have a helpful GM write adventures based around your areas of expertise, but that doesn't mean that the career is equal to the others, who can contribute to most situations EoE characters are going to find themselves in.

<shrug> I'm not trying to change your views, Moses. If Explorer works for you, then great. But for me, just saying 'only play adventures that cater to your narrow skillset, and oh, remember to multiclass!' doesn't make for a great role for me. A random grab-bag of skills that don't synergise with the talents, a complete lack of combat abilities, and no focus beyond Survival makes for a very narrow character in my opinion.

The concept of a scout or explorer is great one, but I like to see concepts backed up by the actual mechanics.

AoR kind of does this, Seiito. The Spy/Scout is superior to the Explorer/Scout, because the Spy career adds skills that are actually useful like Computers, Stealth, Skulduggery, Coordination and Deception, skills that will get used in most scenarios.

Add that to the Scout skills of Survival, Piloting: Planetary and Athletics, and the lack of combat ability doesn't seem too bad, because you actually have other ways to contribute.

Plus 'Recruit' is a cheap buy for a character like this who wants a few basic combat skills.

For whatever reason, I think of Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts more than military scouts when I read Maelora's grievances against the specialization. That makes me think of this:

Love it!

That little girl sure knows her demolitions!

The Scout gets good Survival, and that's about it. The problem with heavily loading it with Knowledge skills is that these are of limited use. I try to give them some use when GMing but generally, if a GM wants the players to know something, the GM will tell them whether they have a skill or not. And if the GM doesn't want you to know something, they won't tell you, skill or no...

...With a very weak selection of career skills (I don't think we've ever had an Astrogation roll that's actually affected the story)...

So any grievances you have with the Explorer should be much more severe against the Scholar, right?

While I didn't emphasize Knowledge skills with my Fringer, I did recognize that they were an easy niche to fill with the Explorer. The difference between Scholar and Explorer being the Explorer gets piloting, astrogation, the business-like social skills (Negotiation, Streetwise), more "physical" skills, and strain management whereas the Scholar gets advantages when dealing with institutes of learning, some flexible jack-of-all-trades abilities (Well Rounded, Intense Focus), and a wider array of social skills, as well as an obviously greater potential in the Knowledge skills.

Ultimately, if a GM is making a certain group of skills useless that's the GM's fault. I like to give Knowledge skills more player-driven narrative punch when I'm GMing, letting "know-it-all" PCs contribute to the narrative in ways that other PCs might not be able to manage without a Destiny Point.

Regarding Astrogation, again my experience differs from yours. Sure if the GM has a railroaded plan that requires the PCs to get to a certain place, an Astrogation check probably just muddies the waters and complicates things. But in a more open-ended, "where can we find stuff to smuggle and worlds to offload our cargo onto" outer rim sandbox, Astrogation is a huge deal. That was my Fringer's primary niche, and Astrogation was important about every other session or so (excluding the "knowledge" component of Astrogation checks, which I also made great use of).

Ultimately any niche is going to be undervalued if the GM doesn't allow it to shine. Heck, I'm playing a Pathfinder game right now, and my Bard with an emphasis in social skills and mind-affecting spells like Suggestion and Charm Person/Monster rarely gets to shine. Despite the fact that "face" is an established niche that most gamers find critical, it rarely comes into play.

In my soon to launch bounty hunting campaign, opposed Astrogation can be used to determine the destination of a ship jumping to hyperspace. It only tells you the next leg of the journey, but if you can beat them there, you can be ready to keep on following (or to ambush them).

In my soon to launch bounty hunting campaign, opposed Astrogation can be used to determine the destination of a ship jumping to hyperspace. It only tells you the next leg of the journey, but if you can beat them there, you can be ready to keep on following (or to ambush them).

Ah yes, we did something like this as well. It wasn't quite an opposed Astrogation check, but rather the GM allowed Astrogation checks for estimating the likely destination(s) of a ship that we could see jumping to hyperspace.