Fan Specialist: Sapper

This is my first crack at this, so any and all feedback appreciated

The Sapper is a specialist focused on dealing with physical obstacles and ensuring the unit remains mobile and safe.

Special action
Breach: Spend 1-1 to increase or reduce the scale of any rig or wreck action. This should typically result in the job being completed faster, or affecting a larger area.

Force Preservation: You are proficient in creating obstacles, fields of fire, and protective structures. If you spend some time and a Breach creating a static fighting position, and if the fighting position is properly defended, all foes attacking it count as 1 threat level lower.

EOD: You know how to safely dispose of dangerous substances. +1D to insight resistance. Spend Breach to grant special armour against exhaustion, explosions, traps, and corruption.

Surveyor: When you set someone up, they gain +1D and potency on their next action.

Engineer: Unused Breaches can be used to tick long term projects when returning from missions.

Split-second-timing: Flashbacks to create traps with munitions are always free. +1d when working with munitions in flashbacks.

Saboteur: When you push yourself Wrecking or Rigging, it can be done as subtly and quietly as you like.

Assault Pioneer: You have trained with and been issued a dangerous Old Empire heavy weapon, like a naptha projector, a trench mortar, or a reusable rocket launcher. It consumes Munitions like ammo. Under ideal circumstances, it might make you Threat 3.

Gear
Light
Fine rigging kit or Fine wrecking kit
Fine Entrenching Tool
Munitions x2
Flare Gun

Medium
Fine Armour
Munitions x1
Fine rigging kit or Fine wrecking kit

Heavy
Fine Heavy Armour
Fine Munitions x2

Munitions: Munitions are spendable resources that cause dramatic, explosive effects. Using different kinds of munitions requires ticking off different numbers of boxes.

Smoke Pot -1
Mine -1
Grenade 1
Incendiary 1

Breaching charge 2
Demo charge 2

Rocket - 3
Petard - 4

Smoke Pot: A device that emits thick, opaque smoke. Can be coloured.
Mine: Anti-personnel mine. Can be triggered with a pressure plate or tripwire
Grenade: Small thrown explosive
Incendiary: Small alchemical firestarter. Very hot and impossible to extinguish.
Breaching Charge: Alchemical charge designed to blow a person sized hole in doors, thin walls, or cut through other obstacles…
Demo Charge: Alchemical charge designed to cut through structural supports and peirce thick armour.
Rocket: A simple incendiary rocket strapped to an awkward 8 foot wooden stick, for stability. Not terribly accurate.
Petard: A really large breaching charge.

1 Like

I like it quite a lot, and you have obviously put a lot of thought into it.

How do you intend to integrate it with the “Grenadier” special ability of the Soldier? Will this ability be required to become a Sapper? Would you replace it with another, in order not to create abilities which are too similar?

Also:

  • Surveyor: this look quite powerful if able to be used in any situation. Maybe restrict it to certain circonstances in line with the Sapper’s work? Also, would the potency come in addition to the +effect of the setup?
  • I would give this Specialist a defensive weapon in its light load instead of the Flare gun (already present for 2 specialists)
  • Breaching and demo charges are more or less the same, maybe subsume it

Now the Assault Pionner sounds too much WW1 for me, in a setting which I myself find verging too much on the 19th century.

Glad you like it! I was thinking maybe a soldier with grenadier might optionally swap that ability out for a new sapper ability.

I was wondering if surveyor was too powerful, but I think it is roughly in line with other moves. A restriction that it be based on planning or observation makes sense.

The entrenching tool is intended to be usable as an awkward two handed weapon like a mattock axe or shovel. I’ll make a note.

I think it might be neat to have a fictional distinction between explosives designed to blow a hole in something and those designed to totally destroy it. You don’t need to pick which they are at mission setup so it is just in-mission color.

Assault pioneer is deliberately a bit WW1. I’ll see what I can do to make it less clearly that. Pick weirder examples like knee mortars.