Making Your Pilot
Your pilot is the person inside the machine, and they are the character whose whole career you are going to play. Start them at License Level 0 — an inexperienced rookie with a full GMS licence and a great deal to prove.
Six steps.
1. Choose a background
Your background is the life before this one: Mechanic, Soldier, Spaceborn, Noble, Criminal, Priest, Scientist, twenty in all. It does not decide who you are now. Your pilot may have rejected it entirely and still be shaped by it.
Outside combat you or the GM can invoke it for 1 ACCURACY or 1 DIFFICULTY on a check where it plausibly applies. A former colonist negotiating with colonists; a station-born pilot moving in zero-g. If the table disagrees, the other players decide.
2. Choose four triggers at +2
Triggers are short phrases naming things you are good at: Apply Fists to Faces, Read a Situation, Get Somewhere Quickly, Hack or Fix.
- They apply to skill checks only. Never attacks, never saves.
- One per roll. They do not stack.
- They cover what the person can do. Anything the machine does uses a mech skill.
You can write your own with the GM's agreement. Custom triggers may be narrower than the standard list — Kill in Cold Blood — but never broader.
3. Spend two points on mech skills
Four skills, 0 to 6 each, and they feed your mech sheet directly:
| Skill | What it buys your mech |
|---|---|
| HULL | +2 HP per point, +1 REPAIR CAP per two |
| AGILITY | +1 EVASION per point, +1 SPEED per two |
| SYSTEMS | +1 TECH ATTACK and E-DEFENSE per point, +1 SP per two |
| ENGINEERING | +1 HEAT CAP per point, +1 limited charge per two |
At LL0 you have two points: one skill at +2, or two at +1.
4. Take three rank I talents
Talents are what you are good at in a machine. Twenty-nine of them, each with three ranks, and you take three at rank I to start.
Read the one-line summary on each rather than all eighty-seven rank descriptions. @Missing file is for rifles and patience; Brawler is for people who throw the weapon away; Hacker wins fights without firing.
You will add a rank every level, and you can always reallocate a whole talent when you level.
5. Write your combat statistics
Every pilot on foot: SIZE 1/2, 6 + GRIT hit points, 10 EVASION, 10 E-DEFENSE, 4 SPEED. A hardsuit adds HP and replaces the other three.
6. Choose gear
Before each mission: one hardsuit, up to two pilot weapons, up to three pieces of gear. You can change it between missions.
Then keep going
Every mission you complete raises your License Level by one — win or lose. LL is not skill in the abstract. It is reputation, access, contacts and clout: the accumulated fact of having been in the room when something happened.
At LL12 your callsign opens doors.