#glowinthedark
A quick follow-up to my Driver playbook – here’s the Reaper.
The Reaper is about killing shit and not getting killed in return. It’s a pretty bread-and-butter playbook, but the primary examples I’m using as inspiration are Furiosa, Wez, Ironbar, and Rictus from the Mad Max films. There’s a bit of standard 80s action hero in there too as well as a splash of slasher villain.
That Had to Hurt: When other foes see you kill an enemy, describe the poor bastard’s gruesome end. You gain potency against these enemies.
Ayatollah of Rock’n’Rolla: When you squander ammo, your ranged attacks gain +1 scale. You may take this ability a second time; this mitigates the requirement to waste ammo.
Blaze of Glory: When you mark a trauma you may retaliate against any and all enemies within range. Say how you bring ruin to your foes before they take you down. You may mark a trauma prematurely to use this ability.
Roadkill: When you attack from a vehicle, you gain +1d. If you are using personal weapons, your attacks gain potency against vehicles.
Last One Standing: When you’re outnumbered in close combat, you may spend 1 stress per additional effect: increase scale – adjust your positioning – increase effect
Brute Squad: When you lead a group action in a raid, you may count 6s across different rolls as a critical success.
Walk it Off: When you suffer harm, treat the penalties and recovery time as if it were one level lower. Level 2 harm only applies less effect and heals with a single downtime action, for example, and level 1 harm has no effect other than taking up a harm slot for the session.
Not Today: When you make a resistance roll against physical damage, you may appear to die (fall off a vehicle, disappear in an explosion, etc.) only to reappear in a location of your choosing with a +1d to your next action.
For brute squad, it’s any kind of group action? So a group skirmish and a group sway also?
Ah, no, raid is my skirmish action replacement. The bolding indicating an
action type didn’t carry over.
Gotcha. Bold would have made that more obvious, but maybe it could be worded differently?
Really excited about this hack. Be interested in getting it to my table. If you need help or want feedback from anything let me know.
And I’m back.
That Had to Hurt – I like this ability. I pretty much always let PCs narrate their kills, but the potency works well here I think.
Ayatollah of Rock’n’Rolla – So when you take this ability I imagine you just spraying ammo everywhere to hit your targets. When you take is a second time you all of a sudden can aim really well? Seems a weird advancement path to me. How does ammo work exactly? Do you need to count every shot in this game? I think I’d prefer just the +1 scale
Blaze of Glory – This is a pretty cool ability that will see very little use. I’m not sure how I feel about that. What does Retaliate mean exactly? Why is it bolded, is it a specific move? Is it just a free roll, or do you defeat all your enemies? I need more info here to decide.
Roadkill – Very Fury Road, I like it.
Last One Standing – looks good
Brute Squad – a nice repurpose of a crew ability from blades
Walk it Off – looks good
Not Today – I love this ability, it would definitely be my first choice. I wonder if it would get silly with the repeated use (I would be literally popping out of everywhere). Not that there is anything necessarily wrong with silly.
WRT Not Today: I leave the silliness level to the table. 🙂
Blaze of Glory: I personally would let you kill everyone you can see, tempered as always with “as long as the table thinks its cool”. You’re taking a trauma, after all. Only got a few of those to burn. But you gotta entertain us with that mayhem.
Ayatollah engages the ammo hack I’m working on, which currently I have a possible draft with how it interacts with load (but not Supplies yet).
The first time you use a weapon that expends ammunition, mark an ammo dot under Items. Mark the second dot if you engage in a gunfight (usually a raid action as opposed to hunt). Mark the third dot if you squander ammo; suppressing fire, full-auto, two guns at once, and so on. You’re out of ammo if you don’t have the load to spare or if it makes sense in the fiction. It might also come up as a devil’s bargain.
The second dot for Ayatollah is when you learn how to fire short, controlled bursts, to quote everyone’s favorite Michael Biehn character.
Would you let them kill a Setarra or Scurlock level entity. As in one that may not be entirely flesh and blood and discovering how to kill it is sort of the point? Perhaps your setting doesn’t have those kinds of people though.
Is it one dot for every gunfight I engage in, or just a single dot for all my gun fights?
I don’t know if I’ve have something that individually tough that it’d bother me to have it wiped out by someone just dumping a Trauma to curbstomp them. Although, if the Reaper in question could kill the Big Bad, then I’d be okay with it. However, if it’s not possible, even given their available equipment and maximum effort, then I’d say the fiction should hold and they don’t get the kill?
I get the potential for abuse – drop a Trauma and kill the room – but I’m hoping that it’s such a cost that it doesn’t lead to burning through PCs like popcorn. Instead of trying to limit the ability, I think I’d rather see if it’s a problem first. IME people test limits if they’re there, but put no ceiling above them and they’ll fly at a reasonable altitude, you know? 🙂
Oh, and it’d be one ammo dot if you’re in any gunfight. Multiple gunfights don’t trigger another dot unless the table thinks your half-dozen separate shootouts warrant “squandering ammo”.
Not sure if there’s a way to convey that better. I’ll look at it.