Character skills

Character skills are the ratings that describe what a character can do in Star Wars: Rebellion. The game data stores eight of them for every character: Diplomacy, Espionage, Ship Design, Troop Training, Facility Design, Combat, Leadership and Loyalty.

The four mission ratings

The Character Status window lists diplomacy, espionage, combat and leadership ratings. They show how likely the character is to succeed at various types of mission. The manual offers Leia Organa as a strong diplomat who suits a Diplomacy mission and Han Solo as better suited to leading an Espionage mission.

Ratings start at 0 and can reach 150 or more for very advanced characters. The manual gives Chewbacca as an example of a character with almost no chance in diplomacy, and says the highest ratings are given at the start of the game only to a few key characters.

Espionage and combat also govern some non-mission duties. A decoy's ability to divert attention depends on its espionage rating (see Decoys and detectors). For commanding characters, the espionage rating sets how strongly their units detect enemy missions and the combat rating sets how well those units capture or kill enemy mission members (see Command ranks).

Research skills

The three research areas are ship design, troop training and facility design. The Status window marks which of them, if any, the character has expertise in. Someone marked Yes for troop training could, for instance, be sent on a research mission in that area (see Research and development).

Loyalty

Loyalty is a character's allegiance rating; a low rating makes a betrayal more likely (see Traitors). The manual states that a character's loyalty cannot be examined directly (see Traitors).

Improving skills

Characters begin with set ratings, such as an espionage rating of 69. They can raise a rating by gaining experience in it. When a mission succeeds, the attributes it uses may increase for the character who caused the success. After a successful Espionage mission, for instance, that character's espionage rating rises, which helps the next such mission.

Just one character is credited as the cause of any given success. When a Special Forces unit is credited, no team member improves. Acting as a decoy likewise earns no improvement, even if the mission works.

Game data

Each record in MJCHARSD.json (Major characters) and MNCHARSD.json (Minor characters) has a base value and a variance value for each of the eight skills.