#BladesAgainstDarkness:

#BladesAgainstDarkness:

#BladesAgainstDarkness:

The Widowmaker

I’ve tried to give each of the traditional dungeon crawling classes a bit of a unique spin. The fighter has proved one of the hardest. The result is The Widowmaker. A master tactician. An armored gunslinger. A die hard soldier.

If you look closely you can get a preview of some of the changes to the core game hidden in amoung the layout…

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B4bjxjnr2p_IM09ZQXBEWlJFWXM/view?usp=sharing

11 thoughts on “#BladesAgainstDarkness:”

  1. This is very cool, I love new playbooks. I see some changes to the actions, such as Finesse moving to Resolve and a few replacements (Survey becomes Observe, Command becomes Marshal, Skirmish becomes Battle, etc). I look forward to seeing what each of these will be used for.

    I absolutely love Live by the Sword, and I might make this an option for the Cutter in my Blades game. 

    My only real question is about the Eastwood ability. It seems like this would make it easy for the widow-maker to roll dominantly in most combat situations, even against something like the Tarrasque. Should it really work on something like a dragon? Also it feels like the kind of ability that should work at the beginning of combat, but not in the thick of it. Perhaps needing to “lock eyes” precludes using it in the heat of battle, but that’s open to interpretation.

  2. Good observation. Some better language about when the move triggers is probably a good idea.

    I think whether it works on a dragon or not is something players at every table will sorta have to work out for themselves. Does it work on a tiger? Okay a tiger is legit. How about a dire tiger? Okay cool, how about a possessed dire tiger? Blades relies a lot on the table building a collaborative framework for what works under what circumstances. Exactly how epic your heroes are is something I figure will vary from table to table. 

  5. Eastwood also doesn’t state it has to be in combat, or a combat-related action- just a charged situation, and your next action. I imagine most situations PCs find themselves in could be described as “charged”,  so could a PC use Eastwood to put themselves in a dominant position for any sort of action against an individual in a tense situation- to Observe them, to Sway them, to Recall something about them, to Vault over them, etc?

  6. Jason Eley It definitely seems like a strong ability that could use some more precise language. Hopefully as players and GMs we could come to an agreement that rolling dominant for everything isn’t fun or balanced (although I have one player I know would be petulant about what he sees as a house ruling ruining his ability)

  7. So I still love Live by the Sword, but upon another reading I have a question.

    Is there no roll involved? The text says pay the stress cost and it’s done. I think of it as a martial version of Tempest, trading stress for cool effects, but in the case of Tempest I think there is still an attune roll involved in addition to the stress cost. Should that also be the case for Live by the Sword?

  8. Mapforge J. Vandel That’s high praise coming from you.

    Jason Eley Mark Griffin  Eastwood’s intent is that when things are getting tense, but people have not yet drawn weapons you can pick out a particular individual and both of you know that you will be able to draw first. This can be used as leverage or to essentially put a hold on one person’s action.

    Or, if things go south, you can shoot them. 

    Eastwood wont save you against a crowd, a boulder, a trap or a monster sneaking up on you. If you wanna stop in the middle of a fight and lock eyes with an indiviudal and freeze them up while their buddy takes a swipe at the back of your head, that’s your prerogative. It.It won’t let you roll dominant against everything. 

    That being said, I think it’s clear that some re-working is necessary at this point.

    (I don’t have a Widowmaker in my current play-test group sadly, so that move is untried.)

    Live by the Sword is intended that you pay for the result you want and it happens, no roll. It’s done. If you play it like Tempest at your table though, I won’t stop you 😉

  9. Returning to Eastwood:

    I’m considering the following triggers for the move. 

    “Before weapons are drawn…”

    “When shit is about to go wrong…”

    Any preference or suggestions for others?

  10. I like “Before weapons are drawn” because that fits mostly with what I wanted this move to accomplish. Right before a fight starts, you’re such a BAMF that people hesitate and that gives you an opening.

    “When shit is about to go wrong” is a much more open trigger, and could leave the move open to more general application (though it is less open than the current trigger, since this implies that it only works at the beginning of things). If that’s what you want, then that’s cool too, but my vote is still for the first one.

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