The Path Less Traveled is a regular series in which I’ll be examining a single specialization from the Star Wars Edge of the Empire/Age of Rebellion/Force and Destiny lines of games. The purpose and hope is to take a look at a specialization that perhaps many players might overlook or ones that are somewhat new to the game lines. We will look at strengths and weaknesses, synergies with other species and specializations, roles in a party, how to incorporate them into a campaign, and perhaps some uses which are not always obvious at first glance.
This last month the highly awaited book Dawn of Rebellion was finally dropped by Fantasy Flight Games after extensive printing issues at its overseas printers… and boy was it worth the wait. In this GM’s personal opinion, it is the best setting sourcebook FFG has published to date. It is filled cover to cover with all types of goodness for your games. From locations, NPCs, vehicles, modular encounters, and new species, it’s just fantastic. But what’s also inside are six new universal specializations where you can add them to any PC in any game line you’re playing. They’re great! I hope more are to come. So, this is the first “The Path Less Traveled…” article to review one of these six specializations. Right now, it’s likely a less traveled path because the book just dropped, but I have a feeling we’ll start seeing these specializations pop up in our games. But for now, let’s take a look at once of my favorites in the book: the Retired Clone Trooper.
Overview
Clone troopers. We all know them. We love them. So what do they mean for your RPG Star Wars games? First, Retired Clone Troopers are soldiers. Depending on the moment you’re playing in the Star Wars timeline, the character might be old now. Or, perhaps they’re just moments past Order 66. Clone Troopers have accelerated aging, and get older quicker. Shortly after the war ended, the troopers were decommissioned and thrown away in favor of new recruits looking to be patriotic during the Galactic Empire’s New Order. A handful of these old veterans are scattered now across the galaxy. Perhaps they regret their choices and actions during the Jedi Purge. Perhaps they still are dying to fight alongside the Imperial Stormstroopers. Maybe they want payback against the Empire for throwing them out. Whatever their motivations for your character, the past of a Clone Trooper is a scarred, war-torn life.
Skills and Characteristics
The Retired Clone Trooper gets extra career skills for a secondary specialization. Because this isn’t a career specialization, it must be taken second at least. Usually a specialization has four new career skills, but because of the intense training programs by the cloning facilities on Kamino, the Retired Clone Trooper gets six with Discipline, Knowledge (Warfare), Ranged (Heavy), Ranged (Light), Resilience, and Vigilance. That’s a lot of new career skills. This could possibly be a little bit of a bonus because you’re limited to Human males only during character creation. Or, it’s simply accurate as the trooper would have been trained in nearly every military skill in the game.
So this means, when you’re creating your human character, and you start with all 2s across characteristics, you’re going to want to pump XP into Agility and Willpower. Now, as your career specialization will be your first, and you may have other characteristics you should focus on, you may have to consider Agility and Willpower secondarily.
Species
With every other specialization, what species you are does not matter. But for a Retired Clone Trooper, only human males can be this specialization. The reason is obvious with the word “clone” in the middle. So that limits things.
Talents
The talent tree for a Retired Clone Trooper is almost a grid, with no single or double path down the tree. You can proceed nearly from any column to any row and vice versa. So let’s look at what the Retired Clone Trooper gets access to as you build your grizzled soldier.
Two ranks of Grit and Toughened make the trooper able to keep up in a fight and do what needs to be done. Steady Aim on the top row is one of the best 5 XP talents around. It allows the character to not give up the boost die from aiming if he performs other maneuvers, only giving it up after the encounter ends. Imagine that, aim once, and you don’t have to aim again! Spare clip allows the trooper to not run out of ammo due to Despair being rolled. A couple ranks of Durable allow the trooper to reduce a Critical Injury by 10 per rank, and two ranks of Combat Veteran adds boost to Brawl and Discipline checks. Swift is great and lets a player ignore penalties for moving through bad terrain.
Then we get to Familiar Suns, a great talent. This is a once per session talent that lets you make a hard Knowledge (Outer Rim) or Knowledge (Core Worlds) check to reveal the current type of planetary environment and other useful information about a planet. This represents the “been there, done that” aspect of your veteran character. Stimpack Specialization is a bit unique here to a non-medic character, boosting how much Wound Threshold you get from using a stimpack. Persistent Targeting lets you add a boost die to all combat checks against a target that you’ve already hit for the remainder of the encounter. Powerful Blast increases Blast damage from explosives and explosive weapons by 1 per rank, and in this tree, you’ll find two ranks of it, making you formidable when you lob grenades.
Lastly we get to the bottom row where you find Dedication as always, and one rank of Enduring, increasing your Soak by 1 just because you’re tough. The two big talents at the bottom are Comrades in Arms and Improved Comrades in Arms. The base talent lets you, one time in an encounter, make a hard Discipline check. If you succeed, you plus one ally for every success rolled within medium range get +1 defense for the rest of the encounter. If you roll a lot of successes you can protect your entire team. The improved version lets you spend three Advantage or one Triumph to give you +1 Soak or give one affected ally +1 Soak.
All of these talents add up to a fantastic, all-around soldier!
Specialization Synergy and Character Concepts
So the obvious synergy here with a Retired Clone Trooper is with the Soldier career. Literally any of the 6 specializations can be combined with the Retired Clone Trooper to make a fantastic troop on the ground. Also, if you play by the book, having any Force and Destiny specializations is out, because Jango Fett was not Force Sensitive. Maybe you can allow a Force Sensitive Emergent as one spontaneously gets Force powers.
But the first synergy I want to discuss is with another Universal Specialization, the Recruit. Adding Athletics, Survival, and Vigilance to your career skills gets you up to nine more career skills! Yes, this would be your second or third specialization at this point but that is a lot! The Recruit also lets you pick more career skills in the talent tree, giving you even more the “jack of all trades” soldier. Adding Second Wind, Quick Draw, Jump Up, and other useful, general soldier-type talents will make your soldier able to do almost anything on the battlefield.
Any of the Bounty Hunter specializations would be fantastic… a retired trooper that goes into business for himself. Perhaps you could use whatever the trooper’s specialty was during the Clone Wars to help you choose your Bounty Hunter specialization. Any of the Hired Gun specializations would be phenomenal as well, using the trooper’s backstory as the decision for which specialization to run with.
But what I think would make another fantastic combo, is the Commander career. Imagine all that experience fighting along side the Jedi during the Clone Wars turning him into a fantastic commander in the new Rebellion. Two specializations of the Commander career stand out to me: Instructor and Strategist. Instructor turns your old, grizzled trooper into a drill sergeant. Strategist gives your old soldier to be amazing at running mass combat scenarios and taking charge on the battlefield, overseeing everything and leading all the troops. Either of those would be fantastic to play through with the right campaign.
So what about any of you? Did you get your copy of Dawn of Rebellion? Do you have some fantastic builds with a Retired Clone Trooper in mind?
Scott Alden
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