I’m poking around with building a FitD hack, and Band of Blades does some really neat things. I’m curious about one particular design decision right now: why are Specialist Actions actions? Having a non-rolled Action feels a little wonky (though I saw they were rolled at one point, and playtesting evolved away from it), and in general, the Specialist Actions seem a little like BitD’s Special Armor abilities, which are governed by Special Abilities.
Was it to ensure that, for example, every Heavy has Anchor? Is it vestigial from when they were rolled Actions? Am I missing some key context?
Special Armor has a specific rule about what you can mark. You get one, and some abilities (like say a chosen ability) will let you mark it to armor a thing. You can’t (for example) mark it twice.
This (yes) guarantees that you’re seeing the thing that makes a specialist a specialist. It also lets you spend xp to raise its uses (something special abilities don’t really do). It gives you rubrics to have other people gain it. Also it fits a convenient format for a starting point for fortune rolls.
You COULD just write a new set of rules, or try to make a super large and complex ability on each sheet to accommodate it. But this was simple and fit the format of what we needed. We felt the convenience of the format outweighed the cost of the wonkyness ^_~
That makes a ton of sense-- glad I was on pretty much the same page.
I think I see what you mean about a rubric for other people gaining the skill, so it’s interesting my instinct was that it actually feels harder to me-- veteran advances are easy, and I’m so used to a static 12-action list…
One thing you point out that I hadn’t thought about is how it moves which XP track gets used to advance it!
Thanks so much for your quick and thorough explanation!