New for Legacy: The Herald! Another of our Titan-level custom playbooks, the Herald is someone who has dedicated themselves to an icon of pre-Fall culture.
By wearing their symbols and re-enacting their legend they gain the power to bring that legend into reality: gaining heroic strength, mythical tools and a whole cast of supporting characters.
It’s still in pretty early playtesting, but any feedback is welcome!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/m0n2bf0o23jcl4g/The%20Herald.pdf?dl=0
I’m not entirely sure I’m understanding how the Charges thing works.
Also: those Roles are awesome. Is this the only playbook with alternate roles?
Aaron Griffin
Say, your Antihero Herald (+2 Steel, 0 in all other Stats) found an ancient dojo in the ruins (or is a martial arts store in a shopping mall?) and there you gathered a ninja-to (3 charges), a black kimono (3 charges) and a battered book (1 charge) where Mr. Kim teaches ‘men like you how to become a silent and deadly assassin’!
With you 7 new charges, you decide to unlock the Masks of God for 5 charges and spend 2 Charges in the black kimono, a simple Camo Outfit, to give it Mobile as well.
Later that night, you use the powers of the deadly ninja to infiltrate a Faction stronghold… carefully following the instructions of Master Kim, the book’s wise author.
The guards there can kill you with their guns (3 Harm), so you set up an ambush in the dead of the night (Key element of a Scene! 2 Charges), using your ninja kimono (Camo, Mobile) to deftly reach a vantage point. You dare to Fiercely Assault them from stealth! If you succeed you have just performed a Stunt! for 3 Charges (based on the guards Harm) and you just passed Mr. Kim’s first test, who becomes your Iconic Ninja’s Mentor, thus gaining yet another 2 Charges.
What move will you unlock now with your new 7 charges? Or what about finding out you ninja sword (melee, silent) is in fact a legendary weapon (+hidden, +area!!) by spending 4 charges with Masks of God?
The big deal about the Herald is that you can become an honest-to-god ninja, just to switch to Sherlock Holmes in another occasion!
Aaron Griffin It’s the only playbook so far with alternate roles, yeah. We thought it’d be cool for the playbook that’s about assuming dramatic roles to do something a little different with them 🙂
It’s such a neat idea that the roles a playbook can assume may be different from other playbooks. I might steal that!
Definitely do go ahead! We’ve removed the association between roles and stats so there’s no reason not to change things up.
I was coming to look for insights on this one, and it looks like it will need some extensive How to Play.
Yeah, it’s a tricky one to get across in the single-page playbook format.
Trey Palmer Let me know what are your main doubts – it will be a pleasure to answer them, and it’d help writing a comprehensive How to Play.
I’m reading Douglas Santana’s post above and I don’t understand how the Herald is gathering charges because it doesn’t read like the Herald’s rules in the dropbox.
How does the ninja-to get him 3 charges? No longer relevant?
Is the Stunt move removed?
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Assuming the rules have changed, it looks like the Herald ought to start with a few charges (2? 3?) and then take risks in play to get additional charges.
But basically, it’s going to need a worked example – ninja, Bat Dude™, Sherlock Holmes, Man With No Name or some public figure (Elvis perhaps?).
But with explanations, I think this is a flexible and potentially powerful playbook.
Trey Palmer true! the example posted above came from an earlier version of the playbook. I’ll update it!
The quest for Icon’s remains is central to the experience, and they start with an extra Data precisely to point them in the right direction as soon as possible. In any case, few to no starting charges function exactly to balance this playbook – on the long run it can truly be incredibly flexible, and thus powerful.
But keep an eye out to their Harm slots: if you have 3 of them with penalties you already start with 6 charges! This is a power into itself, as you may start without any stat penalty, a boon only shared by the Untamed. And if you have at least 1 Charge, you can cheat death with a smile in your face.
Thanks for the interest, I’ll add these elements on the play advice.
Hmm, maybe we should add the harm slot thing into the move list? To make it more obvious as an ability.