Pilot (Driver)

THE PILOT
There was a time, way back when, that pilots were dime-a-dozen. Back when it was 'safe'. Send the galaxy to hell and back, though, and the ones that survived either gave it up or got real good real quick.

And those are the ones the galaxy wants. The kind that can navigate a raging storm of Gravitas in a rustbucket, and come back to tell the tale.

STATS:
• Cool=0 Hard-1 Hot+1 Sharp+2 Weird=0
• Cool+1 Hard=0 Hot=0 Sharp+2 Weird-1
• Cool=0 Hard+1 Hot=0 Sharp+2 Weird-1
• Cool+1 Hard-2 Hot=0 Sharp+2 Weird+1

MOVES:
you get this
A no shit pilot: when behind the controls... (etc.)
and pick one:
Good in the Clinch
Weather Eye
Daredevil
My other craft is a warmachine: you get an additional craft. Give it an assault package (3-harm close/far) or bomber payload (3-harm area loud) and +1 armor.

GEAR
You get:
• 1 handy weapon
• oddments worth 200 credits
• fashion suitable to your look (you detail)

• Handy weapons (choose 1):
• Hand blaster (2-harm close cooldown loud energy)
• 9mm (2-harm close loud kinetic)
• big knife (2-harm hand kinetic)
• spreader (3-harm close cooldown messy energy)
• naval sword (3-harm hand kinetic)
• heavy blaster (3-harm close cooldown loud energy)

SHIP
Choose one of these profiles:
Power+2 looks+1 1-armor weakness+1
Weapons (optional): Medium lasers (2-harm loud energy close fighter)
or missiles (2-harm loud kinetic far fighter)

Power+2 looks+2 0-armor weakness+1
Weapons (optional): Medium lasers (2-harm loud energy close fighter) or missiles (2-harm loud kinetic far fighter)

Power+1 looks+2 1-armor weakness+1
Weapons (optional): Light lasers (1-harm loud energy close fighter)

Power+2 looks+1 2-armor weakness+2
Weapons (optional): Medium lasers (2-harm loud energy close fighter) or missiles (2-harm loud kinetic far fighter)

Choose its type:
Planetside
Spacefaring

Choose its frame:
Spacefaring: One-man fighter, two-man fighter, shuttle, freighter, frigate, yacht, dropship, scout ship
Planetside: Speeder, walker, tank, car, truck

Choose its strength or strengths:
Fast, rugged, aggressive, tight, huge, long-range(ship), all-terrain(land), responsive, uncomplaining, capacious, workhorse, easily repaired. Choose as many as its power.

Choose its look or looks:
Sleek, vintage, pristine, powerful, luxe, flashy, muscular, quirky, pretty, vicious, shiny, garish, handcrafted. Choose as many as its looks.

Choose its weakness or weaknesses:
Slow, fragile, sloppy, lazy, cramped, picky, guzzler, unreliable, loud, jumpy. Choose as many as its weakness.

Hx, the special move, and the improvement list remain unchanged.

Okay. So I'm focusing on what we've changed from the vanilla. First, the flavor of the class has changed slightly, since when you put things into the space age with FTL travel being common, you get a lot more vehicles than usual.

The stat arrays are included, as we performed a minor change to it, in the third set: increased hot from -1 to 0, since as we played, we found the driver's stat arrays lacking. This set is what my group uses, but if you're comfortable with the old set, feel free to keep to that one.

In terms of the moves, No Shit Driver becomes No Shit Pilot, and the wording was changed to indicate the wider array of crafts that can be piloted. As for My other car is a tank, well, that gets changed up rather significantly in what it can provide, becoming My other craft is a warmachine. More on this later.

For the gear, note that Barter gets replaced with Credits: the Galactic Empire's currency remains valid by dint of having been in place for centuries, though if more centuries were to pass after its collapse, they might get replaced with something else. If you liked the old barter system, feel free to go back to it: credits just make more sense for the fiction, here. We've currently got a straight conversion of 1-barter = 100 credits, and this applies to everything.

Also, note the gear change up. We included energy weapons, which currently don't have clear rules to distinguish them from Kinetic. Right now, it's purely fictional; that may change later.

Now for the Crafts: You'll note, first of all, that they have the option to be armed at the start. This is combined player and MC's choice, but keep in mind that in the depths of space, you can't exactly fire your handgun out the window. Vehicle mounted weaponry can also come in the form of a turret, which can be operated by someone who is not the Pilot.

Also note that these are weapon packages. Again, between Player and MC, you detail exactly where the weapons are placed and whether there's a turret AND pilot-operated weapon system, or just one or the other. The Fighter tag is something we came up with to differentiate between vehicle mounted weapons and personal weapons, which will be explored more once I get the weapons related topic up.

As for the frames, there's planetside and spacefaring: in general, all spacefaring craft are also capable of atmospheric flight, while planetside craft don't fly.

Really, the long and the short of it is, Driver to Pilot means the class got a major power boost. Thoughts, questions, complaints?

Examples of Pilot ships seen so far in games we've run:

The Sunrunner
power+2; looks+1; 1-armor; weakness+1
Weapons: Medium lasers (2-harm close loud energy fighter)
Frame: Modified Long-hauler Bulk Freighter
Strengths: long-range and huge
Looks: quirky
Weakness: unreliable

Description: The Sunrunner is essentially an enormous rectangular box, with a ship-spanning mural of the Yggdrasill painted on its hull (quirky). Due to the Huge attribute, it was ruled that it had a forward laser battery, under the control of the pilot, and two turrets on the port and starboard sides of the hull, which require individual gunners to operate.

Largely, the dual-turret option was included to allow the Privateer (Operator) and Marine (Gunlugger), who were the other participants in the game, the option of being useful in space combat. One of the flaws of the game, perhaps, but there are ways around it for the inventive MC/player.

An example of a craft acquired through Warmachine:
The Void Hawk
The Void Hawk
power+2; looks+1; 3-armor; weakness+2
Weapons: Assault Package:
Top-mounted turret: (3-harm close/far energy fighter) heavily armored ball-turret with a huge coverage arc
Nose-mounted Gaussian Sequencer: (3-harm close/far reload-optional kinetic fighter capship-optional) six fighter grade gauss rifle barrels arranged in a hexagon, covers a wide arc in the forward direction. Each barrel fires sequentially, eliminating reload times, though the sequence can be altered. If all 6 barrels are fired at once, its a capship grade weapon, but needs a reload time.
Frame: two-man superiority gunship
Strengths: Fast and Responsive
Look: powerful
Weaknesses: cramped and short-range

fighter grade and capital ship grade weaponry mucks about with how much harm is done against what type of armor: general rule is that fighter grade weaponry does full harm against fighter grade armor, +1 harm against personal armor, and -1 harm against capital ship armor. This'll be treated with more attention once we get the weapon mechanics thread up.


The Sunrunner is essentially a mobile base for the group; the long-range tag means that it can make almost any journey you want it to, eliminating the danger of running out of fuel in the midst of space. Fictionally, its drive is essentially a self-sustaining energy source, possibly a fusion engine. We haven't concerned ourselves too much with those details.

Worth noting that, due to amazing seize and under fire rolls, the Sunrunner disabled a frigate (a vessel actually designed for combat), and killed four fighters, in the same battle.

The Void Hawk belongs to the same pilot as the Sunrunner, and fits into that pilot's hangar. So long as it sticks with the Sunrunner, the short-range (i.e. guzzler) doesn't matter that much. Fast, on a ship like this, means speeds more like Mach 5 and up: you ramp things up when you go flight capable.


In general, all space-capable vessels are VTOL capable, though you can always fiction them differently, if you wish.