Hello everyone! I’m kind of new to Blades in the Dark and am struggling with tying up a few loose ends in my knowledge. My question is this: Can a player who has already switched playbooks switch back to his original playbook?
Example: one of my players, who started out as a Leech, changed to a Hound to flush out what he said was his “support character” with some veteran skills from that play type. We’ve been playing the game for 6 episodes, and he asked me if he could change back to his leech with his new skills and action dots. Can he change back?
Short answer, yes, if you allow it. But could you elaborate on his reasoning for switching in the first place? It sounds like if he only wanted a couple veteran advances, and if that’s true then there was no need to switch in the first place.
Certainly. He wanted to get Sharpshooter, Focused, and Survivor. Sharpshooter, so he could use firearms more effectively for crowd control or just regular ranged combat, Focused, also for more ranged and tracking support, and lastly Survivor, for that extra stress to burn. From there he can more easily take up the long-game, then swoop in after the battle with his Physicker and Alchemist skills to heal the party at HQ.
For context, IRL he’s kind of a loner, so he tries to avoid talking or situations with a lot of heavy combat, so he’ll usually be the sniper/lookout, using some sparkwright walkie-talkies he made after the 2nd episode to communicate with the team on the ground. I let some things slide as it’s a miracle I can have him play at all, but he asserted himself as more of a side character and he wanted his build to show that.
Ok, yeah, was flipping through the book and I can see the confusion. Basically the veteran advances are meant so that you can freely take another playbook’s advances, meaning that you don’t need to switch between them. However the only reference I can find to them on a cursory read is in regards to if you want to switch over, which is about letting you change your character’s xp triggers while maintaining continuity, but it implies that you have to make that switch to get those advances.
Basically, if he had switched over solely due to a desire for advancements, then there was never a reason to switch over in the first place, so yes, he should be able to switch back with the xp and abilities. And if he switched because he reimagined his character as having a fundamentally different core, and now wants to switch back, the answer is still yes, but you might want to have a conversation to nail down the character motivation.