New Playbook: The Blooded

I haven’t tested this at all yet and plan to have it be a single one-off sort of situation. The small paragraph about the Confederacy of Royin sparked my interest. I thought the idea of these Blooded descended from the Chosen of whatever god the Confederacy worshipped was really cool. It also felt like an easy way to squeeze Weave into a playbook. The special abilities are mostly stolen from someone’s custom Wizard playbook for Bands and inspiration drawn from several playbooks in Blades Against Darkness.

Playbook: Blooded

An Enchanter and Creator

One of the few survivors of the Confederacy of Royin, the blooded are descended from Chosen and have a unique connection to divine powers. Blooded are not original a part of the Legion or the Old Empire but are a unique cultural part of the Confederacy’s Chosen. When serving with the Confederacy’s forces, they often formed a protective role much like a Medic. Blooded are responsible for how long it took the CInder King to take and corrupt their land.

When you play a Blooded, you earn xp when you help your squad with unexpected solutions or divine insight. Help keep people protected from corruption and assist them to success by employing out-of-the box magical options.

Starting Abilities:

  • 1 Weave
  • 1 Research
  • 2 Rig
  • 1 Skirmish
  • 1 Consort

Specialist Action

A Weave use will allow you to identify if something is an artifact or to detect magical or divine presence.

Blooded special Abilities:

Magical Preparation - When you are about to roll for an action, you can spend a point of Weave and narrate a short Flashback to describe how you made a one-use magical implement for this kind of occasion. You can then use your rank in Rig to determine the number of dice to roll. Blooded gain this ability for free.

Divine Protection - When an ally nearby takes corruption, you can spend a use of Weave to reduce the total amount of corruption by your total ranks in Weave. This can only be used as someone experiences corruption and not to heal existing corruption. Additionally, when sent on secondary missions the Blooded can prevent 1 Rookie or Soldier death in exchange for taking an additional level 3 harm.

Foresight - When the Blooded is assigned to a Primary mission, the Commander counts as having 1 more Intel than they actually have. If the Commander already has 3 Intel, the Blooded may ask an extra question from the zero intel list. Additionally, gain +1d Insight resist.

Blood to Fire - Your blood carries the power of long-dead Chosen, gifted with their strengths from the Everburning Flame, Goddess of Fire. You may take a level of harm to conjure divinely created fire. Say the effect you desire and mark harm based on the base effect (1 for limited, 2 for standard, 3 for great). This fire can burn through undead flesh and stone alike.

Protective Amulets - When choosing your load for the mission, you can take along Protective Amulets by marking 1 Utility load. Choose an attribute and yourself and one other person going on the mission gain +1d to resist with the chosen attribute.

Durable - Your ancestry and heritage harden your mind and body. You get +1 stress box. Also, you can probably eat undead flesh without dying immediately.

Divination - You can push yourself to do one of the following – You can see into a nearby location as if you were there or you can take control of a single Threat 1 undead for a scene.

Blooded Items and Loadouts

Light Load

  • Fine Reliquary: A reliquary containing a piece of a long deceased Chosen. Spend to reduce corruption taken by 2 and +1d to resist it. Was it one of your ancestors?
  • Fine Hand Weapon - A masterfully crafted Confederate weapon forged from divine fire. Who created it?
  • Fine Books and Scrolls - An assortment of papers and books on arcane and divine subjects. Are these from Royin or your own collected works?

Normal Load

  • Ammo - Orite pistol shells for your fine sidearm.

  • Fine Pistol - A well-crafted Orite pistol with five shots and embossing on the side. Did you obtain this before or after the fall of the Confederacy of Royin?

  • Armor: Leather cuirass and chain shirt. Provides 1 armor against physical attacks. Is this Legion issue or leftover from your time in Royin?

Heavy Load

  • Enchanted Jewelery - Provides 1 armor against magical attacks. IIt loses its luster or crumbles to dust when used. What type of jewelery is it?

  • TBD

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Sounds like you have a thematic concept that may be fun to explore, but it’s not “there” yet. Besides designing for games FitD can be tough! Are you looking for evaluation and comments or ??

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Oh yes, absolutely. The abilities are a little all over the place but…that’s also a bit intentional? BoB’s playbooks all already have such great roles. I figured something for the near catch-all Religious type missions could be useful. I had a hard time nailing down a specific thematically appropriate approach other than “divinity and magic toolbox.”

My feeling is that it’s a great concept, but needs more polish. You’re right that it’s all-over-the-place, which I don’t think works here: I’m not getting a “descended from a Chosen of the gods” feeling from the power set, it feels more like “here are some random magic powers”.

Specific critiques: this is an odd playbook to start with, as it isn’t something you can advance into. A character would have to start play as a Blooded (and as Royin). I don’t know they need the two extra Actions; I assume you went this way to make them like the Medic. I would drop one from Rig and remove Skirmish (which isn’t really thematic to a “divine enchanter” playbook).

Magical Preparation: Is it necessary this be gained for free?

Divine Protection: The “takes an additional level 3 harm” piece in some instances will kill the Blooded instead. Is this intentional?

Blood-to-Fire: Cool! This seems like the thematic heart of the design right here. Work from it.

Protective Amulets: There’s some overlap with Magical Preparation here, and I think I would go with either that OR this and then lean into that direction for the rest of the playbook. (With Divine Protection already on the list, I’d focus in that direction).

Durable: Fits thematically with historical “demi-god” concepts. I’m not sure about the “can eat undead flesh” piece… is there a lot of cannibalism in your game that this matters? Maybe switch this to personal resistance to Corruption?

Divination: Taking control of the undead is a step over the line thematically for Band itself, since the Legion is fighting the remorseless, corrupted horror of undeath. The Broken can control the undead because they’ve been Broken… but why can the god-children of Royin?

To tighten the concept, and give the Playbook its own specific niche, you might wish to replace some of the Abilities instead with ones that guard against or reduce Corruption, increase Potency, or add to Resistance rolls. These could either be buffs that apply to the character given their ancestry (along the lines of Durable), or that of others (following the “enchanter” concept). Another possibility is something that affects Reliquaries or counters Hexes.

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I agree with the above. I would add to this that the first ability is something we can already do if it makes sense in the fiction. So that one’s not doing much

Protective Amulets makes me quirk an eyebrow because there is an item that is almost the same thing. Consider that an item can be taken away but an ability cannot- not without some kind of complication in play anyways (probably a serious one)

I think the others who have posted here have pointed out some great stuff but I just wanted to say that I really like the idea for this as a playbook and would love to see the second version! One thing that strikes me as a key thematic element of the weave skill is the cost of magic, I think it would be cool to see more abilities that lean into that aspect of things (Blood to Fire is sick, love it)

Thank you for the detailed feedback! It gave me plenty of ideas on narrowing things down and the main thematic issues with the playbook.

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Updates below.

Fix Description

  • Google Doc for proper formatting and more info than is in post
  • Focus in on Supernatural Guardian/Protector aspect
  • Expand on Weave, integrate both vague book description & aspects of the Relic that grants it.
  • Overhaul of abilities for niche focus

Starting Abilities:

  • 2 Research - Delve into the past, spot corruption before it spreads
  • 1 Skirmish - Guard the flesh as well as the soul
  • 1 Consort - Know your allies, bring reprieve and joy

Starting Builds:

Spellblade: Skirmish +1, Maneuver +1, Wreck +2

Sun Priest: Skirmish +1, Consort +1, Sway +2

Pyromancer: Rig +1, Shoot +1, Research +1, Wreck +1

Nomad: Maneuver +2, Scout +1, Skirmish +1

Specialist Action

As a Blooded, you start with one rank in Weave. As with all Specialist actions, these are not rolled. Instead, each rank gives you one Weave use per mission. Weave allows you to identify if something is an artifact, or to detect the presence of the divine.

Each Weave use allows you to identify the divine and reveal it to others. You may unveil the purpose of a magic trap or ancient ritual and then reveal that purpose to others. You may detect an unseen divine effect and share that vision with the squad.

   Blooded special Abilities:

Blood to Fire - Your blood carries the power of long-dead Chosen, gifted with their strengths from the Everburning Flame, Goddess of Fire. You may take a level of harm to conjure divinely created fire. Say the effect you desire and mark harm based on the base effect (1 for limited, 2 for standard, 3 for great). This fire has potency against undead and ‘worked’ materials such as carved stone and metal weapons. Additionally, it can ignore some scale differences depending on the base effect used.

Ember-Blessed: When you push yourself, you can do one of the following: grant potency to a single melee weapon for a mission or see into a nearby location as if you were there.

Divine Protection - When an ally nearby takes corruption, you can spend a use of Weave to reduce the corruption gained. Reduce corruption by rolling Weave and subtracting the highest die from the corruption gained. Corruption can be only reduced to a minimum of 0 in this way.

Foresight - When the Blooded is assigned to a Primary mission, the Commander counts as having 1 more Intel than they actually have. If the Commander already has 3 Intel, the Blooded may ask an extra question from the zero intel list. Additionally, gain +1d Insight resist.

Shield Other - You may use assist on the resistance rolls of other Legionnaires against corruption, physical harm, or supernatural effects.

Durable - Your ancestry and heritage harden your mind and body. You can take an additional level three harm. Also, you can probably eat corrupted animal flesh if you had to, why would you want to though?

Thicker Than Water - You can spend one use of a reliquary as special armor against corruption or supernatural harm.

2 Likes

I haven’t yet jumped into BoB yet so my sense of balance is not refined but I really like this, thank you for sharing