Starpilot

To you, the way the ship trembles right before you engage faster-than-light (FTL) speed communicates the stardrive's health. How the cockpit screens stutter expresses how much damage the ship has just suffered after that last enemy torpedo. And how much the deckplates buzz indicates how much more you can push your starship as you fly a looping, spinning trajectory past enemy starcraft.

When you're not conveying your allies between distant stars or outmaneuvering enemy fighters, you're reasonably competent in a hand-to-hand firefight. It seems like you've always got a little extra on your side—call it luck, audacity, or maybe just being too stubborn to know when to quit—potentially allowing you to defeat a larger force, or at least startle them long enough for you and your allies to get away.

Background Options

• You were born thousands of years ago but were frozen in a freak accident. Though you have a new life, you're always on the lookout for an explanation or even a way to visit the distant past.
• You hot-wired a crime lord's personal starship to escape their wrath a year ago.
• Aliens raised you after they found your parents' crashed starship. Why they crashed, where they came from, and other details are mostly lost, but sometimes your dreams reveal more.
• Your sibling was executed by the establishment six months ago, but you still don't know why.
• Your copilot and comrade left your employ a few weeks ago to start a family on a colony world.
• You were born a lordling of a moon destroyed in the interstellar war. Most of your people were incinerated, but you've made a life. Still, you keep an eye out for ways to make the perpetrators pay.
• Recently, you learned of a potential location for a "starship graveyard" from a passing traveler.
• You successfully delivered a cargo hold full of rare goods to a distant world last month.

Starpilot Abilities

You gain all of the following benefits:

• Able to take two more minor wounds and one more moderate wound
• Add +2 to Speed Pool
• Add +2 to Intellect Pool
• Add +1 Edge in Pool of your choice
• Freely use light and medium weapons
• Freely use light and medium armor
• Gain one weapon of your choice
• At tier 3 and tier 6, choose an ability from the Science Fiction Genre Abilities list

Audacious Blast (1 Speed): You attack with a blaster (or other genre-appropriate ranged weapon) in a way that has a greater risk of making an error but gains an additional benefit. Your GM intrusion range for this attack increases by 2 (from 1 on a d20 to 1-3 on a d20), but if you hit you can choose one of the following additional effects:

• Disarming Shot: The attack inflicts 1 less damage, but your foe drops something they are holding in one hand (such as a weapon or shield). To retrieve the object, the foe must use an action.
• Piercing Accuracy: The foe takes +2 damage.

Action.

Cypher Use: You can bear one additional cypher at a time. Enabler.

Redline Maneuver (1 Speed or Intellect): You attempt a risky maneuver piloting the starcraft, increasing the GM intrusion range by 2 on your task, and "redlining" the craft beyond its regular operating envelope.

If you succeed on a difficulty 2 (or potentially higher, depending on your GM's assessment of the situation) task, you can accomplish something normally ill-advised when flying a starcraft. For instance, you could fire its weapons as you put the entire ship into an accelerating spiral, possibly directly into the swarm of fighters as opposed to fleeing, hoping to shatter their coordination and maybe cause a couple of crashes in the process. You could try to graze a star's corona (or even chromosphere) to lose pursuing ships. You could jump the starcraft to FTL more quickly than is usually possible, or closer to a gravitational source than is normally thinkable. Or you could move much farther or faster through FTL than normally works out well for the craft. Action.

Starpilot Equipment Bundle

Choose the following equipment bundle to quickly outfit your character, or assemble your own starting equipment.

A medium blaster and a weapon energy pack (50 shots), appropriate clothing, an impact cloak, a smart device (glasses, badge, ring, and the like), a backpack, a breather, an environmental tent, a "sidekick sphere" (use auton stats), an everlight, two days of rations and water, a grooming and toiletry kit, and eyeshades. Your character also starts with currency equivalent to a moderately priced item.

Part of Space Opera