Pilots with Push It are legendary for wringing impossible performance out of their machines—getting more distance from every burst of thrust, every screaming engine cycle, every desperate turn through Rift-torn skies. Guild mechs call them redline artists; raiders just call them the ones you never catch.
Commission courier squadrons recruit Push It pilots for critical runs where minutes mean trade routes saved or colonies starved. Outer Sphere raiders prize them for smash-and-grab raids that depend on outrunning response craft by a handful of vehicle-lengths. On undercity racing circuits, Push It is the feat that turns a close race into a track record—the difference between “photo finish” and “they never had a chance.”
Every successful Piloting check is a choice: accept the stock performance, or lean into the hum of stressed engines, the rising whine of capacitors, the telemetry screaming that you’re out of spec—and push the vehicle anyway.
Push It Feat 7
Source Player Core pg. 225
Prerequisites: Master in Piloting
Whenever you succeed at a Piloting check, the vehicle you're piloting gains a +10-foot circumstance bonus to all its Speeds until the end of your turn. If you critically succeed, this bonus increases to +15 feet.
Non-Combat Applications
Critical Deliveries: Couriers and med-evac crews use Push It to shave precious minutes off long-distance travel, multiplying their effective overland speed across a shift of successful piloting checks.
Evacuation Operations: During colony evacuations or guild withdrawals, a Push It pilot can move overloaded skimmers or transports just a bit farther each round, making marginal escapes from collapsing infrastructure or onrushing storms.
Rift and Hazard Transit: Navigating debris fields, storm cells, or Rift anomalies often requires constant piloting checks; with Push It, each success also boosts Speed, letting teams clear danger faster without extra fuel or time.
Smuggling and Shadow Runs: Black market couriers in cramped station tunnels or atmospheric trenches use Push It to outrun patrol craft that technically have the same top speed—on paper.
Societal Impact
Push It has quietly shifted the calculus of logistics, pursuit, and risk across the galaxy.
Guild Metrics and Insurance: Commission Core insurance underwriters flag Push It-certified pilots as “high-yield, high-risk.” Their runs are faster and more profitable, but vehicle maintenance costs and catastrophic failures go up when machines live at the redline.
Economies of Speed: On trade routes where competition is time-sensitive, carriers employing Push It pilots can advertise shorter delivery windows. This exerts pressure on rivals to either accept slower contracts or recruit similarly aggressive talent.
Policing and Pursuit Doctrine: Law enforcement and guild security forces have been forced to adapt pursuit protocols, recognizing that some suspects can consistently outrun standard vehicles without obvious modifications—simply by driving better.
Culture and Myth: Stories of legendary Push It pilots—who outran Rift storms, jumped evacuation convoys just ahead of annihilation, or dragged crippled craft past their rated range—feed into a mythos of pilots as half-technician, half-daredevil.
The feat doesn’t just make individual runs faster; it changes expectations of what “on time” and “too late” mean in a galaxy already stretched thin.
Adventure Hooks
Redline Couriers: A guild or black-market broker hires the PCs specifically because one pilot has Push It; they must deliver experimental Rift-stabilizing cargo before a Metronome window closes, with travel time calibrated assuming the feat’s bonus.
Redline or Ruin: A settlement’s only viable evacuation route crosses a Rift storm front. A Push It-capable PC must pilot repeated shuttle runs, squeezing every extra 10 feet of Speed from each takeoff and landing cycle to get everyone out in time.
Race of Records: An undercity syndicate sponsors a high-stakes race where only pilots with Push It qualify. The prize includes a rare vehicle mod; rival teams might sabotage checks, forcing the PCs to balance safe piloting against the need to keep succeeding (and thus staying fast).
Guild Overspeed Audit: A vehicle manufacturer or guild oversight office suspects someone is using Push It to void warranty limits and cause high-profile failures. They hire the PCs to prove (or disprove) sabotage, test runs, or cover-ups built around the feat’s quiet Speed bonuses.
Push It distills Starfall’s survival ethos into a single mechanic—if you have the skill, you can get more from the same machine and the same second, at the price of living on the knife-edge of what your vehicle can bear.
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