Star Wars Zero Company: the best starting class for Hawks

Make Hawks your Medic

Zero Company does not require a Medic. Missions are winnable without one, nothing is gated behind having a healer, and if you want to run four damage dealers the game will let you. What a Medic does is make the campaign a good deal easier — I put a few hours in with one in the squad and the difference is not subtle. Injuries stack towards a permanent death, each one costs you accuracy while it sits there, and the class that manages that problem lowers the difficulty of everything downstream of it.

A word on who Hawks is, because it is the reason this decision matters more than anyone else’s. Hawks is the main character of Star Wars Zero Company: a former captain in the Grand Army of the Republic who commanded the 100th Clone Company under Jedi General Pong Krell, and who was dismissed after taking the fall for a defeat against the Separatists at Antine. Everything else is yours — species, gender, first name, face, voice and class are all chosen at the start. The rest of the story, and the company he builds out of it, is on our Star Wars Zero Company hub.

The second half of the argument is the part nobody outside is making. Not one of the operators who joins your company is a Medic — Kabb is a Scoundrel, Trick a Soldier, Jae Mordant an Assault, Cly Kullervo a Mandalorian Warrior, Luco Bronc a Sharpshooter and Tel-Rea Vokoss the game’s only Jedi. So the Medic is either somebody you build, or it is Hawks. And Hawks is the one operator who deploys on everything.

There is a real trade here and this page is not going to hide it: the Medic is the one class that does not stack with Hawks’ own talent. If that bothers you more than the slot does, skip to Scoundrel, which is the best answer to the opposite question. And either way the decision is refundable — PC Gamer’s launch guide puts the first respec at Cycle 3.

The squad-slot argument: the main character is never optional

Four operators go on a mission. On every story mission Hawks is one of them — he cannot be benched there, and if he goes down the mission fails and restarts. Only the optional skirmishes can be run without him. That leaves three slots on every fight that moves the campaign forward, and those three slots are your entire strategic budget.

Now put a Medic in one of them. Because no story companion carries the class, that Medic is a custom recruit — and because the class earns its place in almost any fight, that recruit ends up going out on almost every mission. Nothing forces you to bring them. You will bring them anyway, and by the tenth mission you have not spent a slot on a Medic so much as quietly spent a third of your flexible squad on one.

That is the whole case, and it is a squad-composition argument rather than a damage one. It is also the one I acted on. Hawks spent my opening cycles as a Sharpshooter with a recruit medic standing next to him, and what pushed me to switch was not the arithmetic — it was that I wanted more of the authored characters in the squad, and the medic kept occupying a chair one of them should have been sitting in. Moving the role onto Hawks handed that chair back. A few missions later, the squad I deploy is the one I actually want to deploy.

What I cannot tell you yet is how it holds up deep in the campaign, on the harder difficulties, with permadeath left on. That is a report for when the run is finished. But the part this section is actually about — whether the slot is worth the talent synergy you give up — I have now answered on my own save rather than on paper.

What the Medic actually does

The class is built around three jobs, and only the first is the obvious one.

First Responder is the one that earns the pick. Every class can rally a downed operator; only the Medic brings them back to full. In a campaign where the third injury is permanent and every injury sitting on an operator costs them ten per cent of their chance to hit, the difference between a partial rally and a full one is the difference between a bad mission and a lost character.

Morale Boost is the other reason. The immunity to the injury accuracy penalty means a squad that is already carrying damage keeps shooting straight, which is exactly the situation in which campaigns come apart. One caveat on the numbers: Bit Reactor changed how Morale works between the March preview and release — earlier coverage describes it as a chance-to-hit bonus that broke when you took damage, and that is not what shipped. Any guide still quoting the preview version is quoting a build that no longer exists.

What you give up: Fearless Leader wants assists

Hawks carries a fixed talent, Fearless Leader, and it survives every respec. While he is on the field, the whole squad gets more assist damage and, from rank II onwards, more defense.

An assist is a free attack: one operator creates an opening, another takes a shot they did not pay an action point for, and the hit feeds the shared Advantage pool on the way through. Fearless Leader makes all of those hit harder, for everyone, all campaign. A Medic Hawks still supplies that buff to the three people next to him — the talent does not care what class he is wearing. What he stops doing is creating the openings himself.

So the trade is legible. Medic keeps the buff and spends the slot well. Scoundrel keeps the buff and doubles down on it. Neither is a mistake, and one correction worth carrying either way: an earlier EA description credited Fearless Leader with a chance-to-hit bonus as well. No rank in the shipped ability data has one.

Hawks also has a second trick that sits outside the talent entirely: he can spend Advantage to refresh one action point for a squadmate, once per turn. It survives a respec too, it is easy to forget for the first few missions, and it is the thing that turns a wasted turn into a kill.

Scoundrel is the alternative, and it is a good one

If you would rather have Hawks generate the openings than patch up the people who take them, Scoundrel is the answer and it is the one PC Gamer named first. Identify Weakness costs one action point and applies Vulnerable, the game’s guaranteed-critical status. Easy Mark, the ultimate, marks a target and triggers an assist for 7 Advantage, dropping to 5 at rank III. The passives finish the loop: Never Play Fair adds assist damage on top of Fearless Leader on the same mechanic, and Scoundrel’s Instinct ignores up to 4 points of enemy defense.

The objection to Scoundrel on Hawks is that Kabb Uppercut, one of the first companions you get, is already one. PC Gamer answers that directly: doubling up is not the problem it looks like, because Hawks buffs assist damage for everyone regardless, so two assist engines feed one buff. True enough — but notice that this is the same slot conversation from the other end. Two Scoundrels and a Medic recruit is three of your four slots decided before the mission briefing.

Gunslinger, Scout, and where the launch guides landed

Two guides went up on release day and they do not agree, which is worth spelling out rather than papering over. GamesRadar ranked Hawks’ options Medic, then Gunslinger, then Scout, on a roster-gap argument — nobody who joins carries those three. PC Gamer named Scoundrel first and specifically advised against Medic and Scout early, on the grounds that healing is overkill when the opening encounters are not seriously trying to kill you and Scout farms a resource you are not yet short of.

Both are right about their own timeframe. PC Gamer is describing the first few missions; GamesRadar is describing a campaign. My experience sits with GamesRadar, for a reason PC Gamer’s framing cannot see: the early game being easy is exactly why you should spend it building the operator you will need later, not the one you need now. And Cycle 3 exists precisely so that being wrong about this is cheap.

Gunslinger is the strongest of the rest and the one that fits the character Bit Reactor wrote: Quick Draw is a one-point sidearm shot that refunds the point on a kill at top rank, Keen Eye adds ranged crit, Onslaught adds damage for each attack already made this turn, and Open Fire hits two targets for 9 Advantage, 7 once ranked. One quirk before you commit — Gunslinger is the only specialization whose entire ability set caps at rank V. Every other standard class runs to VI.

Scout is the one I would leave alone on Hawks. It is an Advantage engine, and its ultimate consumes the whole pool — which collides directly with the action-point refresh Hawks wants to be spending Advantage on every turn.

The weapon class decides how his turn feels

Weapons are a separate slot from specialization and any weapon works with any class, so a Medic with a longarm is a legal build. What changes is the shape of the turn — and Hawks has unusual competition for his action points, because he also wants to be spending Advantage on the refresh.

On a Medic Hawks the pistol is the pick, and for a specific reason: Combat Stim and a medpac both want action points, and the pistol is the only weapon that lets you spend whatever is left on shooting without a penalty tier. The repeater is the one to avoid outright — a final action that eats the whole pool is a turn in which he can heal nobody. If you go Scoundrel or Gunslinger the pistol is still right; only a Sharpshooter Hawks really wants the longarm.

Changing his class later costs you almost nothing

This is what should take the pressure off the character creation screen. Hawks and any operator you hire can be respecced; the change happens between missions, in the Den, and it is four steps.

The respec refunds the Focus Points you spent on class abilities. It does not touch the points you put into Fearless Leader, and it does not touch the talent itself. Focus Points come mostly from bonds between operators who deploy together, and since Hawks deploys on everything, his bonds build faster than anyone’s — which is one more reason to give him the role you never want to be without.

So: start him as a Medic, keep three slots free, and if the first campaign cycles tell you the squad needs an assist engine more than a field hospital, Cycle 3 is right there and it hands the investment back.

Star Wars Zero Company Hawks FAQ