/swg/ Best fighter edition

You are Sue-ing hardcore there my man.

First off, you're already a part of some super-secret hitherto unknown organisation, and are by nature genetically exceptional. Tone it back. Maybe they're simply ex-Imperial Special Forces?

You're a half-breed and related to the main character of the series? Firstly, I'm not even sure halfbreeds are a thing in SW. Secondly, being related to a major character (or having interacted with them in any way) is a major faux-pax.

Oldened Mandos? A mando doesn't become old and frail, they die gloriously while they still can!
Seriously though, being adopted by the super elite is just another layer of "I'm the best!". Maybe he just had a military history in his family, so his dad taught him how to shoot a rifle and his mother taught him how to swing a vibroblade?

Parents being killed by the Empire works fine, but not personally. Perhaps they were on a more Rebel-supporting location, and were collateral damage? It gives a reason to be pissed at the Empire and takes your parents out of the equation if you don't want them there.
They could also just have been killed by gangsters, again as collateral.

Becoming a bounty hunter to try and take down things from the inside works... fine, I guess. You don't need some big tragic backstory to want to hate them though, you can just disagree with the Empire politically and want to go all vigilante on criminals because nothing's getting done about it in your eyes.

Mando armour is exceptionally rare and lightsabers even rarer, don't bank on them. If you want to be a saber user, have that be a skill that develops over the course of the campaign as you discover that you're a force sensitive, or if you were raised Mando play up the conflict between your violent warrior culture heritage and the more peaceful, harmonic ways of the light side of the force.

Sorry I am not familiar with the term Mary Sueish. The Force Unleashed & Smallville were my inspirations for the original concept. He's come along way since. And I haven't played any RPGs other than video games. I just like the idea of role playing, not roll playing. Math bores me to tears!

In my narrative Vader secretly longed to replace the unborn child that he thought he killed along with Padmé. He of course would be the donor father, and out of a twisted since of romantic sentiment he selected a donor mother from the closest thing to Padmé that he could find, an "angel" from the Moons of Iego. If the resulting child had any special abilities resulting from it's hybrid heritage it would be an added bonus, and no doubt it would been the excuse he would have used to get the project started in the first place.

So Vader had the Kaminoans cook him up this science experiment under the guise of a secret weapons program, with the full intention of raising this child as a secret apprentice to help him destroy Palpatine and take his place. All was going as planned until, unfortunately for Vader, there was an accidental explosion on Kamino that disintegrated the child and the project data. So Vader angrily scrapped the project because it would have drawn too much attention from the Emperor if he would have tried to revitalize it.

But the child actually survived and he took advantage of the opportunity to escape by sneaking his way on to a a supply ship. For the next year he hopped from ship to ship just to make sure he wasn't being fallowed.

>The Force Unleashed & Smallville were my inspirations for the original concept.

It's alright, you're new to this whole thing, people should cut you some slack. I mean, it's Veeky Forums, they're not, but you know.

The definition of a Mary Sue is somebody who is overly special, overpowered, has no character flaws, and suffers no consequences even if they should fail. Everyone who likes them is good, and everyone who doesn't is evil. These aren't all necessarily prescriptive, but it's very much a "You know it when you see it" type thing.

The reason your character feels like a Mary Sue is because they are really, REALLY important. They're connected to all the most important people of the galaxy, they're exceptionally unique in their own way, and are subject to being the cream of the crop of the galaxy.
In other words, you're too special, and it shows.

Think about it this way: Ever played Fallout 3 or New Vegas? You became important in those games, even if you started not being very important at all. The build up to becoming something great is all part of what's called "The Hero's Journey", and it's a very key part of story telling. If you start off being super-duper important, you haven't gotten anywhere to go, and your narrative is severely limited.

As a general rule, you shouldn't make your characters very important to the setting. Have them start from being basically nothing and work their way up to being something. Give them personality flaws to overcome as the game goes on.

What are your character's personality flaws? Where do they fall short in their abilities, what can't they do?

Oh I see I don't want to be someone like that however who said anything about him being a Vader clone? He's just some weird looking creepy kid with white hair from Kamino who crash landed in a field somewhere on a Mandalorian planet. He just happens to have the voice of Matt Lanter speaking with a New Zealand accent. But he sounds absolutely nothing like Hayden Christensen of course, because Hayden's tone and enunciation make him sound too... well, to quote Obi-Wan, "He's more grognard now than man."

If anything I was suggesting that he might possibly maybe be Luke & Leia's half brother from an alien mother, and was secretly created in an artificial womb. But there's no way to prove that it's true! The truth is strictly need-to-know and you definitely do NOT need to know. Just ask Vader, he's the only one that would be able to verify, and he would say, "Fake news, totally untrue!" and then ask, "Who told you such crazy things?" and "What's their address?" Then after writing down your answers he'd promptly force-choke you and put you out the airlock. Lol

Would Lord Bolton be a good image to use for a Sith Lord?

Possibly, but not that image, it's blurry as shit.

You... you've missed the point there, user.
My point was that you're really super special, and should tone yourself down to being just a regular guy. No crash landing, no Kamino super-genetics, no Mando's. Well, maybe Mando's, but that's special enough on it's own without all the other stuff.

Those designs were intended to be similar to the design of the USS Vengeance from Star Trek: Into Darkness.

They were trying to appeal to JJ by ripping off another one of his movies.

Regardless, the red one is pretty cool. It looks like a Lucrehulk mixed with a Star Destroyer.

Does anyone have any good art of Mon Cal ships that aren't the typical MC80 murderpickles?

Sure.

Oh I didn't know that. I thought the point of RPGs was to roleplay super important people like your character in WoW or ToR. I just like Mando armor and aesthetics.

I love this one, reminds me to the Providence or the Recusant.

...

Best fighter coming through
Purple lasers
TIE fighter sounds
One-shots LAAT gunships

Nah, that's the realm of video games, because they're power fantasies by nature.
Nothing wrong with that, it's just a different genre for a reason. A TTRPG usually revolves around 3-6 nobodies who might, potentially, become somebodies over the course of the story.

Importance has to be earned. Even WoW and TOR PCs start out at the bottom of the totem pole killing varmints for pennies, barring DKs and DHs.

Ok I understand
Yeah you are right about that. So I will revise my background to be more normal. I still would like to be a Mando that learns that he is force sensitive.

The problem with that is if user wants to play more fluffy lists he still has to find players.

The dorsal hangars are a nice touch. Combined with the great shielding most Mon Cal craft have, you could pull a nasty Marg Sabal with that thing.

So end of last thread we talked about how important an ISD is. While they are pretty sizable and loss of any ship is "bad", there is usually a lot of ado about how many ISDs the Empire has, which is a lot. Even in canon, there are still multiple bigger "dreadnought" or fleet carrier type ships which we don't really see on screen because those are actually rare, valuable and saved for important duties. But even a laid-back comf posting of Scariff can spare a couple of ISDs to watch over it. Vader is callous enough with ISDs to get one of his personal Death Squadron wiped out by smashing into some asteroids.

To be fair, he was chasing after a ship that some of the highest priority targets in the entire rebellion flying on it.

Slightly off topic, but with all the mixed opinions on Legacy in how it's effected the Disney-canon, does anyone know of a meta or something of the older stories -- audio versions would be ideal, but I'll take whatever. Rogue/Wraith and Shadows were some of my favorites growing up and I'd just want to get them before they vanish. And yes I already hit up Half-Priced Books when I can.

Scarif wasn't a laid-back post, it was the empire's primary black site and the place they built the Death Star at. It's more surprising that there were only two ISDs guarding it.

>they built the Death Star at.
Did they? I thought it was just where they kept the plans, because it was the Empire's super-archive.

Scariff was just the imperial pentagon equivalent.

The death star's final construction was probably done in deep space and the initial construction was at geonosis

...

They did according to the visual guide

So in the fluff and many of the books and games, ISDs are more than a match for any Rebel capital 1-1 (in the pre-Impcivilwar era) and can take down small Rebel fleets on their own with relative ease. They've got the best crews, the best guns, good speed, spectacular armor, and powerful shields, offset only by the weakness of the exposed towers. In many cases when an ISD shows up it absolutely roflstomps any opposition so hard that Rule Britannia might as well be blaring across the void in its wake.

Why, then, in Nucanon especially, are they shown to be so fucking weak? Why this sudden change? In Rogue One they're the equivalent of wet toilet paper rolls (as is literally everything Imperial in that movie, aside from Vader) and in Rebels they get blown up on a casual basis. In that shitty Warfare Guide they get taken down by Nebulon-Bs.

Even going back into the EU, especially in Stackpole's stories, ISDs are often given a total pussification, though at least back then even a literal Mary Sue fighter squadron takes huge losses any time they bring one down, so it makes it a little less idiotic. There's also that one WEG game about 'Farstar' or something who no one remembers, but even back then was mocked hellishly for how blatant its main character was an insert of the author and how unrepentantly Sue'd some of its elements were, like a miniature Suncrusher monk ship.

Beyond all this though, the majority of other appearances of ISDs make them properly badass.

Still though, what is it with NU writers, and even a few EU writers, and equating pic related with laughable weakness and the strength equivalent of a rubber band gun?

>Larger than some Star Destroyers
>Called a "frigate"

Why?

Depending on whether you read "Star Destroyer" as "destroyer-class vessel of the stars" rather than "thing that destroys stars", the name kind of implies that, especially when there are also "Star Dreadnoughts" of appropriate scale.

I like ISD, Interdictors, the hangar ship from rebels and the tiny ships that can carry TIE's. What's a good list featuring these ships?

Alot of nu-EU authors being dedicated cheerleaders for the rebels and having next to no knowledge of star wars tech is a start

...

I blame video games where players are routinely expected to be able to solo these things

>Players
You mean the man, the myth the legend.

As fun and nostalgic as the RS games are they never should've been even remotely considered as canon. Arcade games have about as much place in fluff as the Holiday Special.

Well I was also thinking of tittles like the 2005 battlefront II where you play a nobody that still can win in those odds.

Look at the early career of Kyle Katarn for inspiration. People bitch about him being a Mary Sue, but those people conveniently forget he had progression, from just a regular stormtrooper cadet that got most of his squad killed on their first real mission to the lightsaber-toting, concussion rifle-firing bearded badass we know and love.

Well you can interpret every life you have (like every respawn) as a different clone/recruit of the 501st and the narrator isn't necessarily PC

Straight up, the stackpole books are because his primary source for everything is vidya where all capital ships are hilariously underarmed and made of tissue paper; if he was writing TIE Fighter novels, we'd all be annoyed at how easy he shows MC80s exploding the exact same way

>Rogues
>sues
>Every major space victory they win is pyrrhic
>Win through combined arms, good support network, and Isard being an intel specialist with no real space combat experience
I don’t think you know what “Mary sue” means. Massed torpedo strikes tend to be the answer to every warship-related problem in space WW2 anyway.

That's a good point. He went with the vidya = how it actually is idea, for better and for worse.

old EU was no different

>I still would like to be a Mando that learns that he is force sensitive.

Honestly that could be a good route for interesting conflict, given that Mandos are kind of at odds with the whole "Force" thing. It'd be like an Alabama kid finding out he's gay.

And yet they basically did end up doing that anyway by making the final design a super edgy copy of the original iconic design instead of something new.

>early career of Kyle Katarn

Be sure to wear his big, fluffy jacket, user.

EU didn't have near the level of rebel cheerleading and gross misunderstanding of how things work in Star Wars. Yes, it was definitely there, but there were at least good stories thrown in. Nothing in NU is redeemable at all imo.

progression alone doesn't make one immune from being a sue. Kyle, by nature of being a 90s FPS protagonist, is sue as fuck.

doesn't mean he's not great. he's still the fucking bruce willis/arnold of Star Wars.

maybe find a group willing to play for fluff and if your group mainly plays at a store, go during when there's not a lot of other x-wing players around, me and a group of people started doing and we've done stuff that would make most of the die hard tournament players pull their hair out such as
>3 way faction fight between empire, rebels, and scum with 3 people.
>having a time limit to planning phase
>custom terrain, (we basically set up the trench and had it so that the rebels had to hit a certain point with a torpedo with a crit to win and the empire had to defend it.)

you'll always run into that problem when you're comparing 4 years of stories vs. 40. hindsight always remembers the good shit and not the bad.

Kyle is overpowered, but I wouldn't call him a sue.
People in-universe can dislike Kyle, he wasn't important until he kicked enough ass to become important, he has character flaws.

He did earn his powers in a way by having to kill literally thousands of people to get there, it's just the player does the work for the character.

There is a difference from Sue and Overpowered user. Guts is overpowered, but not a sue, he has paid dear for being such a murder machine for example.

You have to take into consideration that you'll be playing with other folks as well, so you can't be more important than them. There is no singular "main protagonist" in an RPG session.

What are the empty spaces and the balls in the middle for?

In Armada? I'm a Rebel player so I'm not super proficient with Interdictors, but that sounds like a good start to a Boarding Teams Avenger list with Sloane and lots of TIEs.

>empty spaces
>balls in the middle
>space
>balls

I really think we need a milder term than "Mary Sue" for decently written characters who do things that should be beyond their means, that's something that's usually reserved for Coldsteel the Hedgehog, Honor Harrington type characters, and often author inserts. It's very much a "know it when you see it" deal, but it's about character traits, not their actions or their success within the plot.

If you can call a character a Mary Sue just based on being unrealistically successful in combat then every Star Wars protagonist is one. It's a science fantasy universe and the heroes are naturally going to be powerful people getting up to fantastic adventures. Kyle Katarn or Luke Skywalker or Rey are not Mary Sues.

So just from the core set and whats being released for legions, there isn't much to work with. Just a bunch of troopers versus troopers with the occasional speeder/walker.

So here's what I got for a list so far until more info comes out:

1,000 points
Vader with battle meditation, saber throw, force reflexes
5x storm troopers with extra man, dlt-19, targeting scopes, and impact grenades
3x 74-Z speeder bikes with comms jammers

Lots of bodies and bikes, endor-style. Just keep me away from teddy bears and I should be ok.

That's just from splitting 2 core sets and buying 1 of each imperial expansion. Not enough room to put in an AT-ST, but enough impact to deal with one anyways. I'd swap out 2 of the storm troopers and a bike squad with 2 snow troopers and veers if I had them, but they wont be out when everything else is out.

Also points is at 1,000 because 90% of my community plays warhammer and hates the idea of 800 point lists.

I'd lay part the blame on the tendency of new Star Wars material to avoid mining the deep, deep veins of non-ISD Imperial vessels left over from Legends, while simultaneously being afraid to make new things.

Rebels is unfortunately the prime suspect in this; due to a limited budget, they reuse an awful lot of assets, so they make heavy use of the ISD models when other warships would be appropriate.

I'd love to see writers throw Dreadnaughts, Carracks, Strike Cruisers, and VSDs around in appropriate situations, rather than just flinging more ISDs around, but they are using what people recognise.

Micro death star lasers

>Rey.
Rey is one because she hasn't earned anything, not in training or growing up, or reaching for it, or heck, what's her deal to be adventuring? Luke at least wanted to be a big hero since the first second.

Rey is considered a Mary Sue in TFA because she had no real character flaws (or much of a character in general), was ridiculously capable with no given explanation (in the movie, the books expand on it), and never failed at anything she did.
Luke had to have Obi-Wan step in and save his ass in the cantina, for example. Luke has throw-away lines about his skills, and Kyle is a trained military guy. People call Rey a Mary Sue because she has so little actual character to define her all that's left are her abilities, which are substantial, and presented without explanation, even marginally slim ones.

Luke gets away with it because he has a memorable character. Kyle gets away with it because he's a player-surrogate. Rey doesn't have anything going for her to let people overlook some of those Sue tendencies.

Characters like Rey in the NU or just about every main character in Darkstryder are mary sues though. Like they hit you in the face and over the head and in the balls with the fact that it's the author writing themselves into the story, either for personal wish fulfillment (Darkstryder) or to push an agenda (Rey).

>they won't be out when everything else is out

It sounded like they were being released along with everything else. Leia and the Fleet Troopers are going to be further down the road

The problem is the prevalent "David and Goliath" theme in Star Wars media. Even in the OT, ISDs were claimed by the characters to be extremely dangerous, even though they never really accomplished anything on-screen.

Yes, the Falcon has to flee instead of engaging them, but the Falcon is designed to get away. It would even flee from an IPV-1 or a wing of TIE fighters.

Yes, Ackbar says they won't survive a melee against the Star Destroyers for long, but the fleet only sits around shooting the occasional starfighter without directly engaging the Rebel capital ships.

This discrepancy makes it hard to ascertain the true power of an ISD. Its stats are absolutely insane, especially the amount of weaponry carried. Yet it takes the military genius of Thrawn to make efficient use of them at all. The more Star Wars media comes out, the more ISDs are defeated or at least outrun by the good guys, thus they seem more and more useless over time.
Starship classification in Star Wars is all over the place. According to the Anaxes War College system, the Mk II should be classified as a heavy cruiser, same range of ships as the Dreadnaught, the Vindicator, the Acclamator etc. "Star Destroyer" is often used to mean "wedge-shaped ship (used by the bad guys)" whereas the good guys only use corvettes, frigates, and cruisers.

Can established characters be Mary Sues? Like, can you turn a pre-existing official character into a Sue?

For example, people take the piss out of Essential Guide to Warfare guy because he's one sentence away from talking about how General Dodonna has a massive dick and gets all the girls and graduated top of his class at Mon Mothma Fleet High School and hates his dad. And that's just one example of NU turning old characters into author inserts. Happened in the EU too, ESPECIALLY to Luke, who became the Twilight "hearthrob" of the 80s and 90s for bad writers.

Yet, is this actual Mary Sueing, or is it just ruining an established character and/or awful writing?

Was EU Luke a Mary Sue or just written bad by bad writers?

I was under the assumption that the 8 packs released were atrt, rebel troopers, storm troopers, atst, speeder bikes, snow speeder, dice, and movement templates.

With veers, Leia, snow troopers, and fleet troopers in wave 1

You're overthinking this, man.
Of course the previously established characters are gonna be portraied a different manner in other media. Most of the time, they're not gonna be portraied as well as in the work in which they first appeared. I have yet to see an EU/NEU story that retroactively ruins a character or marysueifies them though.
One could argue that Luke as he appeared in TLJ was a completely different character than he was in the OT. But that only makes TLJ a bad movie (or at least one with a fundamentally different tone) and doesn't tamper with OT Luke and the OT films in general in any way.

I'd like to hear more about the Jan Dodonna being shilled by Curtis Saxton (?) though.

...

>either for personal wish fulfillment (Darkstryder)
Who are you talking about here? I'm not necessarily disagreeing, I just don't remember it too well

Jason Fry wrote EGtW, IIRC.

Speaking of Dodonna, what's the best way to depict him? I'm running a starfighter-focused campagin set a little after ANH, and I think it'd make sense for him to show up at least once, what with him being in charge of Starfighter Command and all.

>People call Rey a Mary Sue because she has so little actual character to define her all that's left are her abilities, which are substantial, and presented without explanation, even marginally slim ones.
Most of her abilities (apart from the force ones) are explained and demonstrated by her living her life as a scavenger for years.

Rey is not pushing an agenda. I know every female character is part of an agenda these days, but she's about as beige a protagonist as it gets.

Swathes of the EG are devoted to talking about how Dodonna is a perfect strategist and has never made any mistakes and is basically the single greatest military mind in galactic history. Needless to say, it's a pretty bad book, even by Newcanon standards.

Being a scavenger allows you to understand wookiee, badass pilot, expert lightsaber combatant, skilled mechanic, and Olympic swimmer?

Darkstryder had one female author and I'm pretty sure that Kaiya, one of the lead NPCs, is an insert of her.

Basically your generic supersrs nononsense stronk independent woman who doesn't take shit and treats the others badly but still gets their respect and admiraiton, coupled with a generic tragic backstory where the Empire kills her husband for literally no reason so she goes on a revenge quest and wants to murder all Imperials, but is still written as a good guy.

Darkstryder in general is definitely one of the lowest points of WEG splats.

>This is what Luke could have been like in TLJ
>Wise, powerful and enlightened but stays in the background in order to facilitate others personal discovering.

ISDs dont shiv. I would say the best media the ISDs have would be Any Empire at War mods or star wars mods for other space RTSs

Its kinda like their representation in RPGs. When the pendulum swings away from movie/kidshow plot and into realistic portals of hardware for gameplay purposes is where you can expect people to start taking its Reactor and armament stats seriously

Forgot to mention the story itself has a villain that is literally a reskinned Trioculus. Good as WEG was, it wasn't immune to shittiness.

I can buy some things. Rey's a good mechanic, decent with a staff, and I'll even take her being able to fly straight (if I remember the thing about her spending most of her free-time in a flight sim).
What I can't buy are the force powers (which are pretty sodding substantial) and her being skilled with a lightsaber specifically.

I did like that Snoke lambasts Kylo for it in TLJ though, characters in-universe acknowledging something like being crazy that is actually one of those things that sells me on it.
Of course then she gets into the Praetorian fight which, while awesome, shows her being a talented saber user with 0 days of training.

If Rey wasn't a force sensitive and used a staff the whole trilogy and, y'know, ever lost a fight at any point, I'd have absolutely no problems with her; but she isn't, she can fling around a saber and use the force like she's been doing it for years, and keep pace with Kylo Ren who HAS been doing it for years.

>Anything resembling Trioculus
>Shitty
Are you dissing /ourguy/?

O-of course not! Please do not misunderstand me or think I'm insulting our savior.

>Wise, powerful and enlightened but stays in the background in order to facilitate others personal discovering.
>sat on an island while his friends die

wouldn't have made sense after TFA

I think the Anaxes War College guys 'did their best' but classification always fails to be universal. The Venator is a Star Destroyer, with the firepower of a frigate, with the carrier capabilities almost rivaling an Executor.

What mod?

I was reading it as they were releasing as two of the 8 launch expansions, but I was also assuming the tools and dice aren't being counted as "expansions".

Tbh I like that the SW ship classifications are as fucked up as real world classifications.

Interesting that you bring that up. According to the old canon, Venators carry 420 starfighters plus shuttles, LAATs and ground forces. The Executor carries 144 starfighters. Oldcanon stats are bullshit most of the time and nucanon stats are bullshit all the time.

The AWCS only classifies for length, which is pretty stupid. A classification according to role would make much more sense and tie in well with blockade runners, frigates, cruisers and destroyers already being carried in the names of several ships. Most ships can also serve in two or more different roles, which would account for inconsistencies.
For example, MC80s and ISDs are both destroyers and cruisers because they are good at both.

I want to make a Jedi gunslinger
Whats the best Jedi class/subclass to match with gunslinger

I'm gonna be clear, I'm far from the biggest fan of the sequel movies but I think people reach a little bit on this.

>Luke at least wanted to be a big hero since the first second.
I mean we literally see Rey playing imagination with her leftover OT era junk while she's alone and she gushes over Han Solo for the same reason, I think it's fair to say the same is true for her.

>Rey is considered a Mary Sue in TFA because she had no real character flaws (or much of a character in general)
I'd say she gets as much as Luke did. She's pretty much an inverted Luke, in that he was a whiny farm kid who wanted to go be a space hero, while she was a potential space hero who wasn't willing to grow up and leave. Where impatience is Luke's big flaw, Rey's is "muh parents." It's just that nobody considered that as such when The Force Awakens came out because everyone's "daughter of Luke and Mon Mothma" type fan theories made it seem like that would play out to be another nail in the "Mary Sue" coffin.

>was ridiculously capable with no given explanation
I think most of her abilities are pretty well established in the movie. I mean, apart from the Force, her only skills are "high technical aptitude" and "can defend herself with a stick", which are both reasonable given what we see of her life. And she even establishes that she had specific experience with the Millennium Falcon.

She moves a little too fast with the Force, but I think that's more down to fan ideas of how the Force should work rather than how it's shown to. Luke had never heard of a Jedi before and a day later "Hey bro try using the Force on this one" was all the prompting he needed to destroy the Death Star. And that's without touching on Anakin Skywalker bad comic relief-ing his way to destroying an entire army when he was 9.

>and never failed at anything she did.
She literally gets captured at the half-way mark because she runs off like a bitch as a result of aforementioned character flaws.