I’m having trouble with redoing the prefab characters for Blades in the Dark. Part of it is the urge to redo some abilities because they don’t make sense to me, and I want to put in an alternative that is easy to understand and feels cool.
I’m working on the Cutter, and here’s an official special ability:
“Leader: When you Command a gang in combat, they stand fast when they would otherwise break or flee. They get 1 armor.”
I’m just not sure how to use this. “When they would otherwise break or flee” is totally fictional, so that requires the cutter to a) be with them in the fight, not delegating, and b) have a circumstance where they would run and you don’t want them to. Furthermore, there’s some way to track damage to them that I don’t know, because I guess you could apply conditions to them, but they’re NPCs without PC style stats and conditions. So how does the 1 armor come into play? The special ability feels more like an invitation to abuse the gang in a rule way instead of a fictional way, because there is a rules fix.
What else could be done to get the same thrust but with different system?
“Leader: When using Command to determine a gang’s success in combat, allow the gang to ignore 1 complication per fight. Fighting gangs gain +1 Potence.”
That way the gang is generally better with the potence boost, and can ignore 1 complication which may be broken morale.
Hm. Maybe I’ll just pick a different special ability. I want these prefabs to be useful for anyone, not just me. Better keep the tinkering to a minimum.
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(Actually I was mostly just whining because making prefabs is not much fun for me, but I need them for a game on Monday, wah wah wah. I made 5, that’s enough to choose from for one event.)
I read the “they stand fast…” bit as flavour for the Armour bit.
As a specifically called out flavor text, it has fictional power on its own. It offers an advantage independently of armor.
Benjamin Davis I think about flavor text that way because of the comments on this earlier thread about special abilities.
https://plus.google.com/113881370051836623777/posts/4HbVc5HTitx
Cohorts can suffer harm (see the harm trackers on the crew sheet). One type of harm is “broken”, which is level 3 harm, putting the cohort out of action.
The cutter ability means that a cohort can’t be taken out of action while you lead them, and you may use the armor box in the cohort harm tracker to resist harm.
And yes, it’s also a fictional ability. The cohort won’t break and flee when confronted with a ghost, for instance.
(this is why each special ability gets an explanation in the book beyond the very terse text on the playbook)
Thanks for the clarifications.
Minor quibbles on my end, I should not post on the internet while grouchy. =)
No worries. 🙂