Category: Blades in the Dark: Rules & Sheets (Official)

I’ve finally read through all the changes, and I’m super stoked for all the new changes. As always, here are a few thoughts/questions I have. 

Spider

– Great work Stras, if I actually got to play instead of GM, I’d now have a tough choice between the Spider and the Slide.

– Does foresight apply to healing long term clocks also? I don’t see why not, and rules as written is certainly does, just checking.

– I like all the abilities but I really wish they had one more ability that could be used during a Score. At the moment it’s really just Ghost Contract and Mastermind, which feels a little limited. Ideally I think they should have some power related to flashbacks. Like +1d or potency on rolls that happen during flashbacks.

Thieves 

– I’m sad to see the Shadows ability be replaced by Patron, which appears on multiple sheets. Couldn’t you have a list of advances available to all crews and put Patron on that? Unless you really don’t want cults and smugglers to have patrons. It’s not even that Shadows was outstanding, I just don’t like the, albeit minor,  loss of diversity.

Ghost

– I really like this class, and now am even more excited for the Hull and Vampire playbooks. Drain and gloom are my favorite new rules. I almost wish it was harder to get Possess, making it more unlikely that a ghost player will survive, and insuring those that do are suitably insane.

– The manifest ability makes it seem like a recently dead NPC (who probably hasn’t leveled as a ghost yet) could not be summoned via Compel, is that intentional?

Breakers

– Pretty sure if my crew could start over, they’d be breakers instead of thieves. Maybe I’ll float that idea past them.

– I wish they had at least one more fictional move instead of a mechanical move. For example thieves have Ghost Echoes and to a lesser extent Synchronize, Cults have Bound in Darkness and Glory Incarnate, Hawkers have The Good Stuff and Smugglers have Like Part of the Family and Ghost Passage. Maybe something based around lower tier factions being scared shitless of you and able to be bullied? Or maybe a better idea than that.

Cult

– I don’t know if I’ve said this before, but Bound in Darkness and Glory Incarnate are super cool. They are the measuring stick I think all other abilities should be compared to. Of course I realize not every ability needs to be that cool, but each crew should have 1 or 2.

– What does blessed do to weapons and armor, or to documents, gear, etc? Is it basically like +1 quality? Something cooler? Up to the GM or the players?

Hawkers

– This crew sheet is pretty good. It doesn’t have any abilities that quite live up to Glory Incarnate, but still solid. What I love is the Arcane Market crew upgrade. Somehow I wish it was a special ability instead of an upgrade to make it more prominent and give it some more oomph.

Smugglers 

– Like Part of the Family is another amazing ability. All rules should endeavor to make BiTD more like Firefly or Star Wars.

– I want more from Ghost Passage. Because smugglers are all about movement, I really expected to be granted passage somewhere ghostly (though I guess that would step of the toes of the Thieves Ghost Echo, secret ghost passages seems pretty smugglery to me also ). I guess this does allow you to smuggle ghosts, but I’m left wanting more.

All in all, I’m super happy. I didn’t mention enough things that I loved, but there were many many more great things I didn’t mention.

Love the new rules, playbooks and crews, and I really appreciate all the new text being red. Thanks John!

A couple thoughts:

Is the intent of the Breaker ability Dangerous (as well as the Cult Chosen and Hawker Silver Tongues) that you can get 3 dots in an attribute even before you have mastery unlocked? Also, did you mean to change Everyone Steals on the Thieves crew sheet to have the same text?

I don’t love the Conviction ability on the Cult crew sheet. I wish it was something like ‘heal up to 4 of your stress’ instead of ‘heal half your stress’. In the best case you have 8 stress and heal 4, which still leaves me pretty stressed out. It’s pretty easy, even early on, to have 2 dice to roll (3 if you get help from a friend), and in the case when I have a lot of stress I’m going to reach for a big roll where the average roll is 4.5 and the mode is 6. In the case where I have less stress (ie 4), I’m unlikely to want to spend an action just to lose 2 stress. If, however, I have something like 3-6 stress, and I know an action would clear up to 4, I might do that instead of rolling. Another solution might be to make the ability clear stress AND give the bonus die. My feeling is that downtime actions are so powerful and so limited that I don’t know that I’d ever want to use Conviction as currently written.