Heavy

Of the 8 Career Skills, choose 4 to get a free rank. Of the 4 Specialization Skills, choose 2 to get a free rank.

Soldier Career Skills: Athletics, Brawl, Knowledge (Warfare), Medicine, Melee, Ranged (Light), Ranged (Heavy) and Survival

Heavy Specialization Skills: Gunnery, Perception, Ranged (Heavy) and Resilience

The Empire marches to war with massive machines of death, designed not only to crush their foes but also any hopes of victory they might represent. The Rebel Alliance, for its part, is short on such materiel. While its starfighters and capital ships are able to directly contend with those of the Empire, the Rebel Alliance must fight most of its ground battles with infantry, supported only by entrenchments and light airspeeders. Many of its operations rely entirely on infantry. To this end, it must have troopers whose expertise and equipment allow them to take down even the most heavily armored targets. Heavies are the Soldiers best suited to carrying and operating these crucial big guns.

Resilience gives a Heavy the capacity to march considerable distances carrying a heavy blaster or missile tube, while Perception lets a Heavy find the gaps in the armor of enemy vehicles and fortifica tions to target once the battle begins. Gunnery and Ranged (Heavy) have more obvious applications, and make the Heavy one of the best Soldier specializations for shredding enemy formations and vehicles from afar. A Heavy should ideally have a solid starting Brawn characteristic in addition to a high Agility characteristic, so that the character can effectively wield cumbersome weapons.

Heavies tend to prefer direct solutions to their problems. After all, enough ordnance can reduce most any challenge to a smoldering crater, regardless of what it was before. Still, Heavies who fight on the battlefields of the Galactic Civil War must often be cunning and knowledgeable, too. While a Heavy working as a mercenary among smugglers or pirates is often the largest combatant on the field, a Heavy on the front lines is no match for a behemoth like an Imperial AT-AT in a straight-up fight. Defeating a massive walker requires not only the firepower to pierce its armored hull, but also the knowledge of its blind spots and the cleverness to exploit them. A veteran Heavy has almost assuredly gotten good at engaging and even beating vehicles and other craft that most ground troops would dismiss as invincible. Heavies are also extremely effective against infantry, and a single Heavy with a large gun and a good position can easily turn the tide of a battle.

Within a group of Player Characters, a Heavy is likely to be one of the strongest, toughest, and most lethal at range. Given the specialization’s destructive abilities, a Heavy is usually more at home on the battlefield than out spreading the word of the Rebellion or at clandestine meetings to rally supporters. Still, a Heavy can be a real asset to any party on and off the battlefield. The ability to both see and enact direct solutions is useful in nearly any context, and the Heavy’s skills and talents support this theme only slightly less fervently than the specialization’s capacity for wreaking vast and terrible destruction with gigantic firearms.

Potential Backgrounds

  • Avengers: Heavies victimized by the Empire might include the mighty Eloms, who suffered institutionalized slavery at the hands of the Empire, now lending their strength to the rebel cause. The Empire also enslaved the Separatist Skakoans of Metalorn after the Clone Wars, and their armored bodysuits can potentially hold many types of heavy weaponry to avenge their fallen comrades. Others might simply be particularly strong individuals lucky enough to escape Imperial enslavement, imprisonment, or indentured servitude.
  • Idealistic Recruit: Some Heavies were laborers who spent their formative years tossing heavy bushels of crops or feedbags. They might have worked in a mine, breaking up rocks with heavy pickaxes, or some other intensely physical and repetitive activity. The work may have been monotonous, but it built thick, powerful muscles capable of handling the largest heavy weapons with ease.
  • Imperial Defector: Heavies might have operated an E-Web repeating blaster or a T-21 light repeater, or perhaps even been issued a PLX-series rocket launcher to take down enemy airspeeders and starships. A defecting Imperial Heavy might have once served in the Stormtrooper Corps, been a promising cadet on Carida, or joined the Imperial Army as a volunteer or conscript. Heavies often gain the trust of their new squads quickly, after a few heavy weapon barrages cover an ally’s retreat.
  • Mercenary: Heavies from the mercenary way of life are used to being priority targets and are cool under fire. They typically specialize in one heavy weapon they own privately, and lavish constant attention on it, often going so far as to name their weapon. The Alliance values mercenary Heavies, because they possess both advanced equipment and the specialized training to operate and maintain it.
  • Veteran of the Clone Wars: Heavies who fought in the Clone Wars were typically militia members of wealthy worlds that could afford to outfit their combatants with expensive heavy weaponry. However, it is rare to find Soldiers from this era still fit enough to lug around a heavy repeating blaster. As a result, most deploy on a mobile emplacement alongside younger Soldiers. The veterans can pass down their hard-won experience while relying on the younger warriors to carry the weapon between firing positions.