Ansel Redefined

Approximate time to read: 2 minutes.   

Google+ user Sushi Bacon highlighted concerns about the Defense score for pre-generated character Ansel, the Theurg of the Church of Prios, from the Symbaroum Core Book (see page 241, or check out the free download of The Promised Land from Modiphius Entertainment).

I’m used to running pre-generated characters without paying too much attention to balance (Dragon Age and FFG Star Wars quick start games often have unbalanced pre-gens), but Ansel’s Abilities did get a mention in my second game at Conception.

Without that in mind and after a little conversation with Sushi, I have this alternate version of the character for folks to consider:

Ansel has more than a hint of the fire-and-brimstone style priest to me. While he has responsibilities to a temple, he has a long way to go and he’s still finding his way. He uses his brusque personality and slightly inhuman visage in complete Prios get-up to overwhelm people.

He already has Persuasive to handle people contact, so Dominate fits better than Leadership. Removing the Adept Ability, Ansel can then have a healing ability – to absolve people of the corruption within – and Shield Mastery Fighter to explain his Defense of 9 (which should otherwise be 8). This also ups the damage of his single-handed warhammer from 1D8 to 1D10.

While he possesses the power to activate a Witch Hammer, he owns only the weaponry the Church has seen fit to give him – a dagger and a Sanctified Warhammer. The Warhammer serves as both a channel for the might of Prios and as his holy symbol when drawing corruption from open wounds (with Lay on Hands). For GM who doesn’t fancy the idea of using the warhammer as a holy symbol, I’ve marked ‘holy symbol’ separately in Equipment – perhaps a sun amulet as worn by the Theurg Archetype (see page 91 of the core book).

Note that I have also added a shield to Ansel’s Equipment. At present none of the pre-generated characters with a shield have the item mentioned in their gear – simple as a (shield) after their Defense score. For reference, you might want to mark these items explicitly on the character sheet for the player to see clearly what they have in their possession.

Keen to wheedle out heretics and overcome corruption amongst the masses, I switched his Accurate down to 10, allowing me to up Resolve to 13 (better suiting the Important Attribute scores called out on p 91) and Vigilant 11.

See how that works for you!