Welcome to the first of my Holiday Specials for winter 2021. They are a mixed bag of goodies. Today I start with one of my favorite fandoms, in RPG or any other format, Star Wars.
While researching my final Signature Ability (SA), for Force Wizard, Peerless Interception, I saw Unmatched Teamwork (UT) for the Clone Soldier in the same sourcebook, Collapse of the Republic. It had gone mostly unnoticed by me when I read the book previously. But in this Era, the Clones and the Jedi are inextricably bound together. This bond won’t be broken until Order 66, and in some cases, as we’ve seen in Star Wars Rebels and other sources, the bonds survived O66 or could be mended. So I think it’s fitting to follow up the Force Wizard with this SA.
Like the Kaminoans’ view of the clones – a view shared by many Republic leaders, Jedi, and citizens – UT is a very simple and utilitarian SA, built for one purpose. In this case, promoting teamwork by buffing, if you will, the Assist maneuver mechanic. To review Assist:
“…Performing the assist maneuver allows an engaged ally to add Boost to his next check. Several characters can use the assist maneuver to add more bonus Boost to the engaged ally’s next check. All awarded bonus dice must be used on the assisted character’s next turn…” Age of Rebellion CRB (p. 214)
The base UT changes Assist from a maneuver to an incidental. It costs the usual 2 Destiny Points (DP) and is a once/session incidental activation by the PC. This allows the PC to assist an ally once/round as an incidental. So your Clone Soldier can do whatever they need to do that round (drag a tagalong Senator out of the line of fine, toss a grenade into a cluster of clueless battle droids, etc.) and still help out a squadmate or other ally who takes a later Initiative slot. The duration is generous, lasting until the end of the encounter.
One thing neither the text nor the tree clarifies is the range for the base UT. I recommend engaged. First it’s a common base SA range and, second, common sense. There are very few things you can help someone do from a distance. I suppose a PC strapped into the back passenger acceleration couch could assist an Astrogation check by yelling a reminder about BoSS updates to the pilot? Even if you, as GM, decide that’s reasonable, I wouldn’t allow more than Short range for an assist, UT or no UT, in many circumstances.
So onto the upgrades, most of which alter the assist mechanic’s benefit. You can enter the tree on either the mid-left or the far right of the 10XP/top tier. Mid-left is the first of three Increase Effect (IE) iterations. Instead of a Boost die, the helper adds 1 Success to the check result. The far-right entry is one of two Increase Range upgrades, for +1 band. The mid-left Upgrade on this tier is a single Remove Setback, which has the standard effect of removing 1 Setback from the dice pool, in addition to other UT effects.
The far-left 10XP upgrade is the second IE, linked to the first. This one subs out the standard Boost die for a +1 Success and +1 Advantage combo. The final IE is the far-left 15XP one, and linked below the second. Number 3 adds an automatic Triumph in place of the Boost die, giving your ally a better chance of rolling the relatively elusive double Triumph. There is a very important bit of Fine Print text to be aware of in the IE upgrade series. These effects don’t stack. The text blurb for each IE states (bolding mine), “[PC] may choose to add automatic ___ to that ally’s next check instead of Boost.” So your assisting Clone Soldier PC can add whichever they think will be most helpful. But you won’t be adding a +2 Success/+1 Advantage/+1 Triumph combo to the dice pool. (Sorry/not sorry, munchkins.)
Rounding out the 15XP/bottom tier, left to right, are Destiny, Increase Range (II), and Camaraderie. Destiny and Increase Range have the usual effects, decreasing activation cost to 1 DP and increasing range by +1 band respectively. (This makes the maximum range Medium, if you follow my recommendation of Base Range is Engaged.)
The final upgrade is the unique Camaraderie, which gives the assisting Clone Soldier the nice but somewhat situational benefit of healing two Strain. And it’s a not-uncommon situation, given the number of ways to take Strain and the limited, compared to Wounds, ways to heal it.
As noted in the AoR text above, more than one character can assist, subject to common sense and the GM. I don’t see any reason to change this when UT comes into play. If one PC with UT is assisting along with a second ally who lacks the SA, then the assisted character should gain the benefit of both the standard and SA-affected assists, in my opinion. So a Clone Soldier with UT and the first IE upgrade, who has already taken their turn, can jump in to assist an Engineer PC who is also being assisted by a Republic Senator. The Engineer’s pool will then add 1 Boost die plus a single Success.
I hope you found this Holiday Special useful and that you and yours have a lovely holiday season. Also, if you like this non-Force-user SA, let me know. I will be happy to do more like it.
Linda Whitson
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