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Would you allow a co-pilot to use a pilot's weapon, as if he is the pilot?

Would you allow the Armor Mastery talent of the Imperial Knight as prerequisite for the Elite Trooper?

The first one, no. Unless there's a repeat station built for the pilot's weapons, those are slaved to his controls.

Personally...I wouldn't have a problem with it. Per RAW, no, you can't. But I can't think of a reason to say no, because it does fit, the Imperial Knights are an Elite order, so I would think they should qualify. But, that's me.

The easiest way of getting the armor proficiencies for the Imperial Knight, while not hurting your BAB progression, is to pick up a level of Soldier. When you do that, you could easily have picked up any of the talents that would have qualified you for the Elite Trooper.

But the Armor Mastery and the Improved Armored Defense talents are virtually identical.

I'm a nice GM so I would at least consider it.

No, because the co-pilot's role is called out: he uses his standard action to aid the pilot, advising him.


Hmm... An interesting conundrum that kinda makes my head hurt. The talent's text says plainly that it counts as Armored Defense and Improved Armored defense for the purposes of prerequisites. However, I'm not sure that this means they are treated as having those talents for the purposes of Prestige Class requirements. In terms of verbiage, "requirement" and "prerequisite" are basically the same thing. But I don't know if I'd call Armored Defense & IAD "prerequisites" for entry into the Elite Trooper PrC. I definitely think it's a situational call, and you as the GM should feel free to allow it or disallow it (if your player is just trying to power game, then don't allow it. But if he's just trying to be a good a Imperial Knight and has a great idea for class & talent selection, then yeah I wouldn't have a problem with it).

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No. But as a house rule (and depending on the vehicle or starship), I would allow the pilot and co-pilot to switch roles. This reflects real-life aircraft piloting, where the captain and first officer can switch between being the pilot or co-pilot.

I think I've been watching too much Mayday.

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Nah, I agree with you. The rules do state that only one character can be a pilot in a given turn, and they do say, "Most vehicles have only one position from where the vehicle can be piloted" (SECR 169); but I think "position" can be fairly loosely defined to either allow freely switching roles without moving or not, at the GM's discretion.
If it gets to be a balance issue or creates other problems with game mechanics, just have them each spend a move action to switch roles. But I don't think there's anything game-breaking about just letting one character be a pilot during one turn, and then letting another character be the pilot another turn, as long as they're both in the cockpit and have access to the console.
Also, in the rules, note the word "Most;" as in, "Not All." Maybe your vehicle has been modified to fully allow either "position" to act as the pilot. HOWEVER, note that "a vehicle can only have one pilot at one time," and that "you can only start filling a particular role if no other crewmember has filled that role since your last turn." Very important, and I would take great care not to fudge on those rules.

That said, there's nothing wrong with the character that acts as Copilot also acting as the Gunner (and using Gunner-controlled weapons). He just wouldn't be able to use his standard action for both the Aid Another and Attack with Vehicle Weapons actions in the same round. My thoughts are that a Khil would make an excellent Copilot/Gunner.

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Exactly. Look at Han and Chewie, or later Han and Leia in the cockpit of the Falcon as prime examples.

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Generally speaking, no. Since the co-pilot is not the pilot, they won't have access to the pilot-only operated weapons. The weapon would have to be able to be operated by pilot or a separate gunner in order for me to allow the co-pilot to have access to them. And they wouldn't get the attack bonus for being a pilot firing a pilot-operated weapon, since they don't meet either criteria.


Going strictly by RAW, no dice. Elite Trooper requires a talent from the Soldier's Armor Master talent tree (or the Commando tree) in order to qualify for that prestige class. And since the Imperial Knight's Armor Mastery doesn't fall under the Armor Mastery talent tree, it doesn't count as satisfying that pre-req, even if it does ape two of talents from that tree (Armored Defense and Improved Armored Defense). As a GM, I probably wouldn't allow it, as there are plenty of other perfectly viable talent choices that can be taken from Soldier with just a single level dip (and most IKs are bound to have at least one level of Soldier to help with the Armor Proficiency requirements).

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I agree. The pilot-operated weapons are operated by the *pilot*, not the co-pilot. That said, switching the pilot to co-pilot is a pretty straight forward process (assuming you've got 2 seats). The current pilot holds his actions until after the co-pilot. The co-pilot can now become the pilot because there has been no pilot action since his prior turn. Now the pilot can go make coffee, or hit the refresher, or do whatever else needs doing.

If the pilot-operated weapon can also be used by a gunner, then the co-pilot can use them, but won't get the +2 pilot bonus because he's *not* the pilot, so he's having to react to the motion of the ship, rather than being able to anticipate it because he's the one controlling it.



Now, see I'd go exactly the other way on this as RAW from reading the talent in question. It says it *counts as* Armored Defense, and Improved Armored Defense, both of which are talents from the requisite Armor Mastery tree.

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No. As others have mentioned he could possibly trade roles with the pilot and then gain acces to that weapon. Of course the co-pilot may also "switch" roles and act as a gunner for certain weapon systems.

I know I will allow consider allowing a pilot to control a "gunner" weapon while staying in the pilot possition. When this happen he will NOT get the normal +2 bonus for being a trained pilot because he is not firing an exclusively pilot controlled weapon.

Seeing how Armor Mastery is from the Armor Specialist talent tree and that's what you need to get into ET I don't see why not. Remember that Imperial Knight gets access to the Armor Specialist talent tree just like Jedi Knight and Sith Appprentice do. Oh, you mean the OTHER Armor Master talent from the Knight's Armor talent tree. I'm going with NO here for two reasons: the first is that it is NOT an Armor Specialist talent which fills a requirement to enter ET even if it can serve as a prereq for other talents; secondly, I remove that talent from may games (for many reasons) and replace it with one called Armored Knight which has Armored Defense as a prereq while combining IAD and Juggernaut. Imperial Knight Armor is medium armor so taking that means it won't slow them down instead of providing all they need for a great boost to REF right when it is most effective to take.