I’ve been having some fun looking at various Star Wars builds over the last week and while I was thinking about odd species/career combinations I remembered about Awraq Nudo, a character concept that I had played around with at the release of Dangerous Covenants two years back.
Awraq Nudo
Species: Ualaq Aqualish
Career: Spy
Specialization: Infiltrator
Duty: Intelligence (-5 magnitude/+1,000 credits)
Motivation: Redemption
Characteristics
Brawn 3
Agility 3
Intellect 2
Cunning 3
Willpower 2
Presence 2
Skills: Brawl 1, Cool 1, Deception 1, Melee 1, Perception 1, Skulduggery 1, Stealth 1, Streetwise 1
Talents: Defensive Stance, Frenzied Attack
Abilities: Aquatic (able to breathe under water), Multiple Eyes (may remove one setback die imposed by dark conditions, but add one setback die to Perception checks in brightly lit environments)
Wound Threshold: 14
Strain Threshold: 10
Soak Value: 4
Melee/Ranged Defense: 0|0
Equipment: 2 vamblades with serrated edges (Brawl; Damage 4; Critical 3; Range [Engaged]; Accurate 1, Defensive 1, Sunder, Vicious 2), heavy clothing, hand-held comlink, 2 stimpacks, camouflage paint, 4 doses standard strength anesthetic, 83 credits
Design Notes: I was very struck by the Aqualish in Dangerous Covenants. It was the first time that we had seen multiple variants of a single species, and I firmly believe that FFG hit a home run in how they handled their development and implementation in this book. Instead of having three different species like we might have had in previous editions of Star Wars roleplaying, we have one species with three different ways to build it. The various sub-species don’t change the base characteristics or anything, but instead give them a different choice of skills to place a free rank in at creation as well as a small ability that further characterizes them.
Their ability spread is very interesting, and I immediately started to look at an “outside of the box” build for an Ualaq after reading it, and found it in the Infiltrator specialization for the Spy career in Age of Rebellion. It is a specialization that specializes in getting where they aren’t supposed to be, but also couples it with some skill in melee combat, enhancing that option greatly through several picks on their talent tree. The Aqualish start off with a higher than average Brawn, and by spending only 80 of their 90 starting XP, you can bump up their Agility and Cunning to 3 and their Intellect 2. There will be characters at the table that are going to focus in one certain thing this build is capable of and dance circles around him, but the name of this guy is diversity in the field. He may not be able to do any one thing really, really well, but he can do a lot of different things. The vamblades are just cool brawling weapons that give him some great boosts to his brawling attacks. The serrated edges are just the cherry on top. They already have a lower Critical Injury rating than normal brawling attacks, so adding Vicious is just gravy. I’m of the mind that putting one on each weapon should give it a Vicious 2 rating, but check with your GM on that one before you go jumping into combat.
As far as advancement is concerned, if you’re looking to make him deal out more damage in melee combat, you’d be hard pressed to ignore the Marauder or Commando specializations. Both provide massive boosts to an already impressive melee combat potential. I would go with Commando over Marauder for the reasons of adding Brawl to your list of career skills and some utility in boosting Athletics and Resilience rolls. You’re going to want to eke out every boost die you can with this build to make up for some skills that are a little bit behind the curve as you advance. Infiltrator gives you some neat tricks as you advance deeper into the tree. Clever Solution isn’t of much use to you since your Cunning is on par or lower than your other characteristics, but Master of Shadows and Natural Rogue are great for your slightly lower than average Skulduggery pools or real difficult Stealth checks. And Natural Brawler is a no brainer. Scout can give you some decent combat bonuses like Quick Strike and Disorient and boost your Stealth skill with Stalker, but it’s not worth more than a quick dip as far as I’m concerned.
Ben Erickson
