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Sources of the Second Die

Blitz Eternal: Adventures Beyond the Mists — v0.4 Draft

When your Class grants an additional personal die, you choose its Source: what that die is in the story. The die is yours either way. It is rolled from your Pool, it follows the progression on your Class ladder, and nothing here changes the numbers. The Source is the fiction the die wears, a small Trait that comes with it, and a lane of Specialties to grow into later.

The Rule

A Source's Trait is live only while its fiction is present. When it is not, a warhorse left in the stable, a blade struck from your hand, you still roll the die at full effect; you simply cannot use the Trait that scene. Your skill is always yours. The horse, the weapon, or the spirit is the part that can be absent.

This also settles what happens when a Source is lost for good. The die stays, because the skill is yours, and the Trait returns when you find a new mount, recover the blade, or bind a new spirit. Losing a Source is a story beat, never a lost die.

How the Die Grows

Every Class that gains an additional die brings it in the same way: at Untrained, hitting only on a 6, sharpening up the ladder toward that Class's own range. Where a Class's range is wider than Trained, the newest die usually settles one step short of the others, so a Knight ends at Skilled, Skilled, Trained. Where a Class holds at Trained, its dice all converge there. Your class page carries the exact steps and governs where it differs: the Squire, for one, widens both of its two assist dice to Skilled rather than holding the newer one short.

Two Classes stand apart. The Errant's second die arrives at its full Elite range at once, uniform with the first, because every die hitting at full range is exactly what lets its Blitz chain build. The Chancellor keeps a single personal die and gains no additional die, so it chooses no Source.

The Four Sources

The same four are open to every Class that gains an additional die. What differs by Class is the Specialties that later hang off each one.

A Bonded Beast. A warhorse under you, or a hound, hawk, or wolf that fights at your side. (This is the home for the old Palfrey, Warhound, Falconry, and Hunting Hound companions.)

  • Live when the beast can reach the fight: open ground, a road, a field, a hall wide enough for it. Quiet in a cramped cellar, a ship's hold, a packed street, or when the beast is stabled, lost, or hurt.
  • Trait, Charge. While the beast is with you, your Speed rises by 2. Once per Combat you may move your full Speed in a line and, if you end adjacent to an enemy, that enemy is Slowed until the end of its next turn.

A Guardian Spirit. An ancestor, a sworn dead kinsman, or an oath-bound presence that keeps pace with you. (The old Guardian Spirit and Familiar companions live here.)

  • Live when almost always; the spirit goes where you go. Quiet when the story bars the dead: warded ground, a binding curse, a scene the GM names rather than a routine one.
  • Trait, Interpose. Once per Combat, when a Hit is assigned to you, the spirit takes it instead and the Hit is negated. This works even at 0 Hit Points; it is the spirit standing, not you.

A Bound Weapon. A blade, a bow, or a staff with something living in it. The weapon is more than its steel.

  • Live when you are armed with it. Quiet when you are disarmed, stripped, or parted from it.
  • Trait, True Strike. Once per Combat, while armed, you may reroll your weapon die and keep the new face.
  • This is the one die that can carry a relic. A found Named Weapon (see weapons.md, Named Weapons) Binds into this Source, and its signature property rides your weapon die.

The Killing Art. No horse, no blade, no ghost. Your hands, your reach, a faster and deadlier version of you.

  • Live always. It cannot be disarmed, banished, stabled, or left outside. It is never quiet.
  • Trait, Sure Hand. Once per Combat you may treat your die as a natural 6, an automatic hit, on any ground. You are never counted unarmed, and fighting in a grapple, a press, or a cramped space never narrows your Hit Range.

Growing a Source

Each Source opens a lane of Specialties, bought with Advancement Points and shared across every Class that took that Source, so a mounted Knight and a mounted Witch reach for the same Rider Specialty. The Bonded Beast grows toward the mounted and beast-handling Specialties; the Guardian Spirit toward warding; the Bound Weapon toward the found relics it can Bind; the Killing Art toward close, enclosed fighting. These menus are still being written.

Choosing a Source is not a life sentence. Between fights, at rest, you may change a Source the way you retrain a Kit or a Retainer role, within reason: a second blade is easily swapped, while an oath-bound spirit is not the sort of thing you trade every downtime. Where a Source sits on that line is a matter for you and your GM.

Designer's notes

This page replaces the earlier Bonded Companions treatment, where the second die was flavor pinned to one companion per Class. That framing had gone stale (it still listed the deprecated Warden's warhound) and, more importantly, left the die feeling meaningless. Sources make the die load-bearing again without touching Pool size: the fiction now carries a conditional Trait and a Specialty lane, balanced by axis rather than by power, and further differentiated by how often each Source's Trait is actually live.

Staggering is universal (resolved 2026-08-09): every Class but the Errant and Chancellor brings its extra dice in at Untrained and sharpens them. This was safe for the signature-system Classes because a die's hit range does not touch their resources: Mana banks on 1s and 2s, and Focus feeds on low dice, regardless of range. The one real gameplay cost is the Squire, whose second assist die generates few Assists in its Level 3 to 5 window. Open work: the per-Source Specialty menus are unwritten, and the four Traits still need a parity pass in play.

Changelog
  • 2026-08-09: Unified the combat Hit Range and Check competence tiers into a single ladder (Untrained, Trained, Skilled, Elite, Renowned). Renamed Rabble to Untrained, Veteran to Skilled, Expert to Elite, and the combat Legendary tier to Renowned; the Legendary Difficulty rung is unchanged.
  • 2026-08-09: Softened the "newest die settles one step short" rule to a tendency and named the Squire exception (both its assist dice widen to Skilled), resolving a contradiction with the Squire's class page.
  • 2026-08-09: Made staggering universal. Every Class but the Errant and Chancellor now brings its additional dice in at Untrained and sharpens them; the Witch, Ranger, Squire, and Sage were converted, keeping their finalized endpoints. Rewrote How the Die Grows accordingly.
  • 2026-08-09: Rebuilt from Bonded Companions into Sources of the Second Die. Defined the four Sources (A Bonded Beast, A Guardian Spirit, A Bound Weapon, The Killing Art), each with a conditional Trait, and the rule that the die is intrinsic while the Trait is live only when its fiction is present. Recorded which Classes stagger their dice and which keep their own progression.
  • 2026-08-08: (As Bonded Companions) removed the deprecated Warden's Warhound, added a Sage companion placeholder, corrected the Squire entry from Favor to Assists.