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Above the Law Pursuits Discussion


EnternalVoid

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So wanted to have some fun and see what others chimed in as this forums been quiet.  So lets see if we get a discussion.

So on the Monday Previews we have been getting drops on the pursuits and advance pursuits of the next book coming out, Above the Law.  So far we have been shown 6 pursuits and 5 Advance pursuits.  Per Mason's comment below there is going to be less general pursuits in this book to prevent pursuit bloat.  So these ones are all we are getting though to be fair I was beginning to worry about pursuit bloat as well so this is kind of nice.  So for the pursuits we know we have Commander, Marksmen, Magewright, Bureaucrat, Gunner and Propagandist.  For the Advance pursuits we have Executioner, Witchling Handler,  Soulstone Aficionado, Guild Lawyer, and Mage Killer.

So for the commander we did not get much hints on what it is fully capable of like with other pursuits *likely as it was the first reveal*.  But we can likely guess some of it based on the info we were given.  It sounds much like the Swineherder you get a talent that lets you draw in your allied soldiers to command.  The only other hints are that the Commander will get talents to enhance those soldiers under them and even one that can call in hidden sniper shots *stealing Lucius's trick*.  I suspect there will be something in there somewhere that also lets the commander give order to more soldiers as we have seen similar stuff with other pursuits that involve having NPC underlings.

The marksmen seems to be a shooting pursuit that focuses on the ranged aspects according to the preview.  Apparently very early on it will have a Talent that increases the range of your range attacks by 4 yards.  While it does not strait up say it it seems this pursuit favors Long Arms, or at least firearms, from Mason's comment.  It seems at least a few Talents will work regardless of the shooting weapon you use.  From the preview it suggests some talent to debuff at range and something perhaps to stay well hidden in cover while attacking.

The Magewright is the Enchanting counterpart to the Dabbler and Graverobber according to the preview.  From the sounds of it like the two it also starts with a Grimoire to insure you have magia and immutos.  It also sounds like they get the options to Master Immutos and Magia as well.  So I suspect this pursuit will have less unique talents but have some pretty nifty options to tempt players.  From the sounds of it the magewright likely will have the ability to enchant items with a stored spell early on in their pursuit ranks, possible even as their 0.  Another possible talent seems to suggest they might be able to give a boost to an aspect to those they enchant as well.  Another talent that is strait out mentioned is Spontaneous Animation that lets the Magewright transform scrap into a clockwork trap as a side effect of casting their spells.  I also imagine they will have a talent that adds a Ram to their Enchanting similar to Dabbler and Graverobber to make their spells more consistent.  So between the hints, the likely talent for getting the Ram, and the likely Master Immuto and Magia that likely fills out a lot of the magewright's talents.  I would not be surprised if there is also one for enhancing the Enchanting of items *Maybe the last one will let them work twice or something*.

Bureaucrat seems to be built on the whole Favor notion though I doubt it is a condition.  I am guessing the Powerful Favor the article mentions is a talent for taking the pursuit on character creation, like Arcane Shield is for Mages and the Stage Magic talent for Illusionist.  Otherwise there is not a lot of direct reference to what the talents would be.  There are examples of what a Bureaucrat can pull off like getting invites to a party, finding out about people, and network of contact sort of things but little in hard details to what talents, or even talent, generate this.  The only clear cut description is the Plausible Deniability Talent which for a discard can avoid repercussions for being accused of a crime.  Whether this can get you entirely out of it or just protects you to a degree we will see.  I suspect it will either be a series of Talents that give you different benefits like the criminal's Friends in Low Places or a more all exclusive one like the infiltrator's Infiltration Talent that has Tiers of use requiring a test to access them.

Gunner, okay if Gunfighter is about pistols, Boomer about shotguns, Marksmen favor Long arms, then Gunner is the Heavy Guns class from the sounds of it *Heck is strait out says this in the description of the weapons they use*.  I suspect we will see some "Cheaper" heavy guns in this book that will serve to expand the role of the weapons in TTB.  I suspect we will see at least 2 if not 3 that are in the 20-25 scrip range, currently the cheapest are like 45 scrip.  That way the Gunner can get one for their starting bonus.  We get what can be guessed to be the 0 rank Talent in  Heavy Weaponry Talent as it says they begin with it.  It apparently lets the gunner use their heavy gun like a heavy melee weapon meaning no need to swap out weapons if engaged.  I can already pictured someone whipping there gatling gun around and clocking some zombie upside the head that stumbled up to them.  One nice thing about this is that both Heavy Gun and Heavy Melee are linked to Might as their aspect letting you double dip.  I imagine it will get a single strait profile for all Heavy Guns in combat rather than try to make multiple weapon stats, kind of like Into the Steam did with Rifle Butt under heavy melee.  The Behind the Gun Talent that is mentioned says that the gunner can count as having Heavy Armor when wielding a heavy gun, making a nice bit of defensive tech without costing more money *which to be honest the gunner will be spending a bit on ammo*.  We get three more talents mentioned in the description making it the one that names off the most.  The three are the Walking Artillery Talent, Fusillade Advance Talent, and the Mow Down Talent.  Walking Artillery seems to lets you haul around heavy guns that normally need wagons or carts, ideal if you get your hands on the biggest guns.  Fusillade Advance says you can do a charge and then make range attacks, letting you move up the field while laying down fire.  I suspect you will not be able to charge actually into melee range and shoot but rather if you charge and are not engaged you can take a range attacks.  Still this lets you advance a bit and still get your two attacks *if your weapon has that capacity of more than 1*.  I also would not be surprised if they limit this to Heavy Guns to keep people from doing it with Rifles and Shotguns.  Mow Down sounds like it might be similar to the Boomer's Unchecked Carnage talent but used with a machine gun to target each model with a shot.

The last of the General Pursuits mentioned so far is the Propagandist.  Oddly the pursuits this reminds me most of are the Pugilist and Ghost Eaters.  The reason is that both pursuits build up a condition that their later talents use for additional effects.  The Rank 0 talent is likely one that lets you get the Voice of the People condition when you pass Social Duel to insure you can get the condition right off the bat.  Voice of the People gives a buff to Art, Printing, and Convince duels for the rest of the session.  A comment in the original thread, Mason mentions that Voice of the People can only buff by +3 regardless of how high the condition reaches *like Chi for Ghost eaters*.  We get only one Talent named but we get 4 examples that are likely all other talents the Propagandist can take.  The mentioned Talent is Deadly Slander which does damage and give the target a long lasting penalty to social skill challenges.  The first example is that you can spend Voice of the People to repeat failed Social challenges which we have seem similar abilities with stuff like the performer and Academic.  The second example also likely uses Voice of the People to buff allies, though what sort of buff is up in the air.  It might be using the fact people are listening to you to give them a buff to their own social challenges or a buff that uses the condition to give them some sort of benefit to their flips *give them confidence or something*.  The third example is using the condition to create an Angry Mob for the Propagandist to order around.  Could be pretty mean as they can sweep up people and are not easy to take down with out Blast or similar tools.  Be a good distraction to tie up an enemies.  The last example is a trigger mentioned called "Tell It As It Is" which is mentioned in relation to Deadly Slander but I suspect it is more of a general Social trigger like Student of Knowledge for Academics.  I suspect it can trigger on any social duel and the description says you can lower your Voice of the People to draw cards.  A good use if you either need cards or built up your condition above +3 so those extra points are not immediately helping you.

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*Edited to add Guild Lawyer and Mage Killer*

The Advanced Pursuits, not surprising that of what we have seen three are directly tied to Guild duties.  so far we have seen the Executioner, Witchling Handler, Soulstone Aficionado, Guild Lawyer, and Mage Killer.

So we already know a bit about Executioners fluff from Malifaux and from the description I imagine a big part of their requirement will be loyalty to the Guild and some tests to pass to prove it.  For the first step I imagine it is the whole chopping off one or more hands and having them replaced with the killing tools of the job.  From the description we know what two of the additional ranks give.  One gives the Love the Job talent where the Executioner heals when they deal a severe critical effect to an enemy and even more when they kill an enemy.  Can give them some staying power against Enforcers and higher which you sometimes deal 2-3 severe crits to before they die.  The second is one that gives the Bloody Exhibition trigger.  According to the article is needs double rams to trigger but the Executioner gets a Ram if the target is suffering from one or more critical effects already.  It does not strait out say what the trigger does but it does say it helps put them down fast so I imagine it kills the target or does some nasty additional effect *like an extra flip on the Severe table maybe*.  The fact it is double Rams means I am willing to guess that most people will take Specialized Skill to get a Ram so they can do it with out needing the enemy to be suffering the critical effect and if they are it auto triggers.

The second was the Witchling Handler, ie the guy that leads Witchling Stalkers.  It does not give what the requirements are but I imagine it has some requires about being part of Sonnia's division and having certain skill sets like tracking and leadership.  Not to mention being ruthless to the enemies they hunt.  For the first rank it looks like you get a Runed weapon *does not say sword or greatsword interestingly enough* and with it you can order multiple stalkers around.  I imagine a different rank opens the talent that lets the Handler use their runed weapon to discern the distance and direction to witchling stalkers under their control.  The article also mentions increasing the number of stalkers under their control, likely either another rank will give additional stalkers or there will be something where you get stalkers based on your rank in Handler.  It also looks like other talents you can gain are a Burning resistance, as stalkers have a way of blowing up and spreading fire, a powerful trigger to end all conditions on a target *might be tied only to the Rune weapon attacks*, and a rank that gives some fire magic.  I imagine the last one is sort of like the Silent One's rank where you gain access to Magia regardless of a grimoire.  I find it interesting though that they stick to Runed weapon throughout the article suggesting some sort of choice on what the weapon is.  It might be from a small selection of choices or it might be more expansive but it still suggests a choice.

The next one shown was the Soulstone Aficionado.  from its description unlike most of the others it is not tied to a Guild position *some of the others are strait out jobs in the Guild*.  I imagine the requirements will be more to do with Soulstones and less having a job in the Guild itself *though I could be wrong*.  I imagine it is more like the Demolitionist or Rocketeer and be more neutral.  The comment that they get their soulstones from allies and not the Guild reinforces this idea too.  From the description it is not surprising the pursuit is all about the soulstones.  For one it seems you get a Soulstone each time you gain complete a rank in the pursuit, insuring you expand your collection of the very resource that it uses.  More so it says the more charming the character the higher the lade of said stones.  For what the ranks actually do I suspect the first one will be the one that increases the range for being recharged.  For the other talents it hints at the ability to give fast to anyone that is healed by one of the soulstones, the ability to recharge a soulstone from draining from people around them, and the last one mentioned lets you spend a soulstone to draw cards from the Fate deck into their hands.  The interesting thing about this is that it says fate deck rather than personal deck, meaning it might let you draw from the communal deck in this case.

So Guild Lawyer was revealed as the fourth advance pursuit.  It is pretty clear that this one is tied to the Guild and is also pretty clear on some of the requirements of obtaining this advance pursuit.  Know Law, lack Morals, Sign contract trading soul for power.  Ya pretty honest there.  We get examples of three of the five talents.  The first is Objection! which seems like it could be pretty powerful.  It seems like it can force someone to redo an action or force them to tell the truth and from a comment further down the page it can be used on both allies and enemies.  Even to redo a failure.  The speak the truth can be pretty powerful and really throw wrenches at Fatemasters if they are not careful.  Closing Arguments kind of remind me of the Virtuoso in that is sounds like an area affect action.  Possible Paralyze and/or Debuffing can be pretty big though being locked into Slow in the process means you are more of a team player, so larger your group or having some NPCs to issue orders to could be good.  Criminal's thugs could be nice as you can command both with 1 AP or 1 with a (0) action.  The last one I suspect is the last step of the pursuit as it is pretty nasty.  Sign away your Life basically is a contract that locks the person into it; from the description they have to follow it till the contract is destroyed.  Incredible nasty possible tricks that the Fatemaster has to be careful of unless it has some more stipulations that were not revealed.

The Mage Killer like the Soulstone Aficionado seems to be a more generic Advance Pursuit, as in not tied to a certain organization.  So the Mage Killer is pretty clear by the name to specialize in dealing with magic users.  We don't get really get an idea what is the requirement for this pursuit though I imagine it is somehow related to hunting magic users or being trained by a mage killer.  We do get an idea for some of the talents.  The Rank 1 talent is likely the Warding Glyphs as the description strait out said "right from the start".  It seems this talent is closely tied to the action with counter spell to basically put up magic static on someone to protect them.  This talent lets the 1 AP action be done as a zero and also reduces damage from spells by 1.  Could be pretty nice combined with Balanced Five magic theory as it also reduced damage from spells.  We get two other talents in the description.  The first mentioned is a Magical Ward talent.  This reminds me of the Pioneer in that it can be used to effect the 'terrain' either as a protective buff for allies or a method to hamper enemies.  While a negative sounds rough, considering how Fatemaster NPCs work it will generally just be a positive to resist.  But against Fated it can be nasty.  Violation of Magic is the next Talent mentioned.  This one makes me think of Sonnia in Malifaux.  It seems to do damage based on the targets magic skill level and how many they have.  So someone with a high skill and a couple different skills could mean a lot of damage.  And it seems to give a Grounded condition that prevents them from casting *though it does not say for how long*.

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  • 2 weeks later...
32 minutes ago, CaptianEinsteinAlucard said:

They have said that there is the guild lawyer and mage killer advance pursuits

And have previewed them, no less!

 

As a side note, that's where we're sitting for Pursuits and Advanced Pursuits: 6 basic pursuits and 5 advanced pursuits.

I'm cutting back on basic pursuits a little bit in order to control Pursuit bloat and ensure that the ones that you're getting all have their place in the game. This is a trend that will likely continue into future books (or at least, the Neverborn and 10T books that I have planned out).

In return, I'm giving Guild folks some Counter-Spelling Magia. :P

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