The Errant

Class Document — Adventures Beyond the Mists

Level 1 at a glance

• Personal die: 1 at Elite (3-6). Her Pool grows through the Blitz Chain, not through a Company.
• Signature live now: Blitz Chain, Pair, Triple, Falling Alone. (Early Blitz and her second die both unlock at Level 5.)
• Command Capacity: 0, permanent. No Company, ever; nothing to split.
• Starting Pool: 1 die, before Blitzing.
• Hit Points: 6 base, plus armor (the highest baseline, in place of a Company to soak).
• Starting Specialties: 3 Advancement Points on the Errant's Specialty Menu, priced by tier.

Flavor

No household. No banner. Only what you carry, and how many times you've already died.

The word is older than the armor you wear. A knight-errant rides out from no fixed post, serving no household, wandering because that is the only shape a life like this can take. You are that word made literal. Nobody follows you. Nobody is owed to you. What you have, you carry — a blade with a history, a horse that has outlived better riders, a promise sworn to someone who may already be dead.

Other heroes measure themselves by who stands with them. You have only ever had yourself, and the mists, and however many times the mists have already taken you and given you back. Some Characters count their strength in soldiers. You count it in lives spent and gear earned, and you are always, quietly, counting.

This is not a safe way to live. There is no household to catch a blow meant for you. There is no line of shields to absorb what comes next. When it goes wrong, it goes wrong all at once, and it is entirely yours. But when the dice turn — when one good roll becomes two, becomes three, becomes a wanderer fighting like an army of one — there is nothing else in either world that feels quite like it.

Mechanics

This document assumes familiarity with Core Resolution (the shared Pool, hit ranges, and the bank-and-push loop), Wounds and Fatigue (Hit Points, wound direction, death and return), and Command Capacity (Company size and Bond). Only what is specific to the Errant is detailed below.

Command Capacity

0, permanently. This is not a starting value that grows — it is fixed for the life of the Character. An Errant never leads Retainers, never has a Company, and never benefits from Detachments, Bond, or any mechanic that depends on having one. Every die this Character ever rolls in combat is their own.

Personal Die

1 personal die at Elite hit range (3-6), and this Character stays at a single die longer than any other class. That is the deliberate shape of the Errant's growth curve: the climb, through Blitz chains in the moment and through gear and named relics across a campaign, should feel earned rather than incidental. A player who wants a wide Pool early should not choose this class.

The second die arrives at Level 5, bundled with Early Blitz, later than any other class's second die (the rest gain theirs at Level 3). This is deliberate. The Errant spends its early Levels as a pure single die, and Level 5 is the one transformation: two dice and the ability that needs them, in a single step.

The ladder stops there, at 2. A third die is reachable only through a Named Weapon or similar acquisition, bought with Advancement Points and never granted automatically, which keeps this class's growth a matter of relics earned rather than Levels counted. The universal 3-die cap still applies as the absolute ceiling; the Errant simply never reaches it on the ladder alone. Command Capacity will never provide a die, because this class has none.

Hit Points

6 at First Level, before armor, the highest personal baseline in the game alongside no one (see character-creation.md, Hit Point baselines). Armor adds on top: Light +1, Medium +2, Heavy +3. For this class the number is a floor to build on rather than a fixed fact. Because the Errant has no Company to soak damage and no Intercept to redirect it, every hit lands on its own Card directly, so survivability is a deliberate purchase, not a class given. An Errant spends Advancement Points to stay alive: Hard to Kill for raw Hit Points, Parry to turn blows aside, Refuse to Fall for one defiance of death a Combat, and armor like anyone else (see The Errant's Specialty Menu). A player who pours points into the chain instead stays at 6 and lives on the knife-edge. That choice, how much of your growth to spend on not dying, is the class's central tension made mechanical.

Design note: the Level 1 Hit Point table runs personal depth inverse to how much a Company can soak. The Errant has no Company at all, so she sits at the top of the range, 6, the same base as the Warden. An earlier discussion floated a flat 8 for the Errant specifically, to compensate for her total lack of cushioning. That was set aside in favor of letting the player buy further durability from the Specialty menu, which keeps fragility a choice rather than a stat. [PLAYTEST] If playtest shows even a fully survival-invested Errant too fragile, a base bump remains the fallback.

The Blitz Chain

A Blitz grants one bonus Action, not a new turn (see core-rules, Part Six). For this Character alone, that bonus Action is another full-Pool roll one die bigger than the last, so a chain of Blitzes reads, in practice, as an escalating one-Character storm rather than a single big swing.

The Errant uses the standard Blitz rule with one addition: each time every die in the Pool has hit, cumulatively, across that roll's full roll-and-push sequence, the Character's bonus Action is to pick up all the dice — including any already banked — and roll again, one die larger than before. A second consecutive Blitz adds another die on top of that, and so on, for as long as the chain continues. Nothing about the chain grants extra Move or a Free Interaction; it is exactly one bonus Action per Blitz, spent on another roll of the growing Pool.

A single push that produces zero hits busts the entire turn, per the standard rule — every hit banked across the whole chain is lost, not just the most recent roll. The stack itself also resets; the Character's next turn begins back at their base Pool.

Early Blitz — Level 5, Once Per Combat

If exactly one die remains in the Pool that has not yet hit, whether on the initial roll or partway through a push, the Errant may declare the Blitz condition met without rolling that final die. The chain then proceeds exactly as a normal Blitz: all dice, including the skipped one, are picked up and the Pool is rolled again, growing by one die as usual.

Combo interaction. The skipped die has no rolled face value and therefore cannot be part of a Pair or Triple for that roll. A pattern requires actual matching numbers, and a die that was never rolled does not have one. This does not disable combo-reading for the rest of the roll; every die that was actually rolled is read normally for whatever patterns appear among them.

Gating. Once per Combat, with no additional resource cost. Spending a Life or a permanent Hit Point loss was considered and set aside in favor of the simpler limit.

Why it is gated this hard. Direct calculation showed that being exactly one die short of a full Blitz happens roughly 4.5 to 10.5 times more often than an actual Blitz, and the gap widens as the Pool grows. An ungated or frequently-available version would not supplement the Blitz Chain, it would replace it.

Example. An Errant at Level 5 with a Pool of 2 rolls 4 and 2. The 4 hits at Elite range; the 2 misses. Exactly one die has not hit. She declares Early Blitz rather than pushing the 2. Both dice are picked up, a third is added, and she rolls 3 dice with her banked hit safe.

Build constraint, now satisfied. Early Blitz requires a Pool of 2 or more. The finalized Level table meets this exactly: the second personal die and Early Blitz both arrive at Level 5, so the ability is never available at a Pool of 1.

Why it matters: at a Pool of 1, any turn whose opening roll misses satisfies "exactly one die has not hit," so Early Blitz would convert a total whiff into a free Blitz with no roll at all. It would also have nothing to push from, colliding with the rule that a push requires at least one banked hit (core-rules, Part Six). Bundling the second die with Early Blitz at the same Level removes both problems by construction.

Combos

The Errant reads two patterns. Set was considered and rejected — at the Pool sizes this class actually reaches in play, four or more matching dice is close to mathematically impossible except very late in an already-long chain, making it a rule that would almost never fire.

Pair

Two matching dice in a single roll may be set aside as one additional bonus hit, on top of whatever hits those dice already scored. This is the class's common, low-stack trigger — noticeable even at the Character's base Pool of 1 or 2 dice.

Triple

Three or more matching dice in a single roll, occurring as part of a Blitz, add 2 dice to the stack for the next roll instead of the usual 1. A Triple occurring on a roll that is not a Blitz has no special effect under this rule. Four or more matching dice are treated identically to three — there is no additional benefit for a larger match. This is the class's rare, chain-accelerating trigger, and it only becomes a realistic possibility once the Character has already chained several Blitzes deep.

Falling Alone

If an Errant Falls, there is no Bonded lieutenant to take over, the way a Character with a Company might provide for their player. Unless this Character has joined another Character's Company as an ally that turn, or a Squire is attached to them, their player has no fallback and is simply out of the fight until the mists return them. This is a genuine, harsher consequence than any other class faces, consistent with the Character's total lack of Retainers.

Worked Example

An Errant with no gear acquisitions yet — Elite hit range, 1 die, Pool 1 — begins a turn alone against a group of raiders.

Roll 1 (1 die): 5. A hit at Elite range. Every die in the Pool hit — a Blitz. One hit banked. The Character picks up the die, adds one more, and rolls 2 dice.

Roll 2 (2 dice): 4, 4. Both hit at Elite range — another Blitz. The two 4s are also a Pair, worth one additional bonus hit. Three hits banked this roll (two from the dice, one from the Pair), four total across the turn so far. The Character picks up both dice, adds one more, and rolls 3 dice.

Roll 3 (3 dice): 6, 6, 6. All three hit — a Blitz, and a Triple as well. Triple's effect is to grow the stack by 2 rather than 1; it does not add a bonus hit the way Pair does. Three hits banked this roll, seven total across the turn. The Character picks up all three dice, adds two more, and rolls 5 dice.

Roll 4 (5 dice): 6, 5, 4, 2, 1. Three hits (6, 5, 4 all within Elite's 3-6 range); the 2 and 1 miss. Not every die hit, so this is not a Blitz — the chain's automatic escalation stops here. Three hits banked this roll, ten total across the turn.

The Character could push the two missed dice for a chance at more, but ten hits are already banked and a bust would lose all of it. They bank instead. Ten hits, dealt in a single turn, by a Character who began it alone and rolling one die.

Level 1 Starting Specialties

The menu a first-level Errant spends its 3 starting Advancement Points on. Costs are the standard Specialty tiers (see character-creation, Starting Specialties): universal picks are open to any Character, picks marked (exclusive) are this Class's own, and a requirement in parentheses must be met. Spend the 3 points however you like across the menu: one Tier 3 pick, a Tier 2 plus a Tier 1, or three Tier 1s.

• Parry (3, exclusive) — a reaction die that negates damage; her stand-in for a shield.
• Hard to Kill (2, exclusive) — buys Hit Points (the audit aligns it with Iron Constitution's +2).
• Bloodied Ferocity (3, exclusive) — dice widen to Legendary at half health or below.
• Duelist (3, exclusive) — dice widen against a lone adjacent foe.
• Never Caught (3, exclusive) — cannot be ambushed; the answer to having no screen.
• Never Alone (3, exclusive) — once per adventure, a debt from the road catches you when you would Fall with no one beside you.

Faster First Step is held for Level 2 and up (a strong first-Blitz pick, better earned than taken at creation), and Second Early Blitz needs Level 5.

Costs shown are the audited tiers. Hard to Kill still reads +1 Hit Point in its full writeup below; the audit re-rates it to +2 (matching Iron Constitution), pending the re-price sign-off (see specialty-tiers-and-pricing.md).

Appendix

1. Design Decisions

2. Command Capacity fixed at 0, never a variable. Every other class has a Command Capacity that can be discussed, tuned, or grown. The Errant's is fixed by design — this is the class's entire premise, not a number waiting to be balanced.

3. Second die held to Level 5, later than any other class. Every other class gains its second personal die at Level 3. The Errant is the deliberate exception, gaining its second die at Level 5, bundled with Early Blitz, so that the class's growth, both the in-fight Blitz chain and the across-campaign accumulation of gear and relics, reads as a real climb rather than a small step up from an already-comfortable baseline. The ladder ceiling is 2; a third die is gear-only.

4. More Advancement Points, spent on a personal Specialty Menu. The Errant is the only class with no Company, so it gets no free Retainers and no Command Capacity growth on the ladder. That value is returned as points: 30 over a full arc rather than the scaffold's 23, spent on a deep menu of combat tricks (section 4). This is the class's whole growth model, a bag of tricks rather than a household, and it self-balances because every pick has an opportunity cost against the others; a bigger pool means a sharper wolf, not an unlimited one.

5. Survivability is bought, not granted. Hit Points stay at the base 6 rather than a flat bump to 8. The Errant's total lack of cushioning is answered by letting the player buy durability from the menu (Hard to Kill, Parry, Refuse to Fall) or wear armor, so how fragile the wolf is becomes a build decision. This keeps the boom-or-bust identity available to players who want it while giving a survival-minded player real tools. A base bump remains the fallback if even a fully survival-invested Errant tests too fragile.

6. Elite hit range, not Legendary. Probability analysis during design compared Veteran, Elite, and Legendary tiers for this single die. Legendary produced Blitz chains reaching 3 to 4 stacked dice roughly 1 in 3 to 1 in 6 fights — frequent enough to feel routine rather than special. Elite keeps a first-roll Blitz likely (roughly two in three attempts) while keeping the largest chains rare enough to still feel like an event when they land. Veteran was rejected outright — chains rarely developed at all, failing the requirement that this class feel impactful from its very first roll.

7. Set removed from the combo list; Pair and Triple kept. A four-or-more match is close to unreachable at the Pool sizes this class typically operates at, except very late in an unusually long chain. Rather than include a combo that almost never fires, the class was left with only the two patterns it can realistically expect to see.

8. Triple's effect is tied specifically to Blitz, not a standalone bonus. An earlier version considered giving Triple its own independent effect regardless of whether the roll was a full Blitz. This was simplified to only matter on a Blitz, keeping the class's entire combo layer oriented around a single throughline — the chain — rather than introducing a second, parallel escalation path to track.

9. Testing Done and Pending

The core Blitz-chain concept was discussed and probability-checked extensively during design, including the hit-range comparison above. The worked example in this document is the first time Pair and Triple's current wording has been walked through with specific dice.

Resolved (2026-07-29): whether the class needs an additional balancing mechanic. Two full combat replays plus a 200,000-turn batch simulation (09-playtest/combat-replay-01, -02, and playtest-findings) confirmed the Blitz Chain and Pair/Triple alone are a complete, competitive kit. A lone Errant carries a 33% dead-turn rate against an 11.5% chance of dealing enough damage in three turns to solo a fully maxed Knight's entire Company and Card, the intended boom-or-bust shape. No additional balancer (double damage on a Blitz, a bonus hit per personal hit, or similar) is needed. See open-questions, Resolved.

Specifically still pending:

• Survivability against the Hit Points placeholder. No worked example has yet tested whether a standard 6-Hit-Point Card is survivable for a Character with zero damage cushioning. This is the single most important open test for this class specifically.

• The Falling Alone consequence in practice. No worked example has shown what happens at the table when an Errant's player has no Company, no Squire nearby, and no allied Character to fall back into. This needs to be observed in live play rather than assumed.

• Level Table

Finalized. The Errant is the first class to leave the shared scaffold in shape as well as number, because it has no Command Capacity to grow and only one die to gain on the ladder. It keeps the universal 100 XP per Level (see character-creation, Advancement) and has a single fixed milestone, Level 5, where the second die and Early Blitz arrive together. Every other Level grants Advancement Points, and the Errant grants more of them than any other class. That surplus is its compensation for having no Company: its growth is a deep personal Specialty menu (section 4), not a household.

Level	Fixed class grant	AP granted	Cumulative AP (incl. 3 starting)	Base dice	Base Pool
1	die at Elite (3-6); Command Capacity 0 (permanent); Blitz Chain, Pair, Triple, Falling Alone	3 (starting)	3	1	1
2	—	3	6	1	1
3	—	3	9	1	1
4	—	3	12	1	1
5	+1 die (to 2); Early Blitz (once per Combat)	—	12	2	2
6	—	3	15	2	2
7	—	3	18	2	2
8	—	4	22	2	2
9	—	4	26	2	2
10	—	4	30	2	2

A full arc to Level 10 grants 30 Advancement Points, seven more than the 23 the scaffold classes receive. That surplus is the Errant's Company converted into choice: where a Knight spends the ladder gaining Retainers and Command Capacity for free, the Errant gains points and buys a personal kit. Base Pool is what the Errant rolls at the start of a turn, before the chain grows it mid-turn; it caps at 2, with a third die reachable only through a purchased Named Weapon. The exact point amounts are a playtest dial; the shape, a single fixed milestone at Level 5 and a larger-than-usual point pool, is the finalized decision.

Level 5 was chosen to match the Knight's Set and the Skirmisher's Pierce deliberately, not coincidentally. All three mark the point at which a class's signature crosses into reliably firing; for the Errant it is also the moment the Pool first reaches the 2 dice Early Blitz requires.

1. The Errant's Specialty Menu

The Errant's growth is this menu. Where other classes deepen a Company, the Errant buys combat tricks with its larger Advancement Point pool, one at a time, building a particular kind of lone wolf. Each entry is a Specialty bought through ordinary Advancement (see character-creation). Major Specialties cost 3 Advancement Points; the one repeatable Hit Point pick costs 2. The menu is meant to grow, the same way the Priest's Domains and the Mage's Aspects grow; these are the launch set.

No Errant can afford everything. Thirty points across a campaign buys perhaps nine or ten of these, so every wolf is a different animal: one all chain and ferocity, another a patient duelist who rarely falls.

Two general rules keep the menu honest. Any effect that widens the Errant's Hit Range caps at Legendary (2-6); multiple wideners never stack past it. And where two picks would both grow the first Blitz of a turn, they do not stack; the Pool grows by 2, not by more.

Staying alive

Hard to Kill (2, repeatable). Flavor. You have died before. You have learned what it costs not to. Effect. +1 Hit Point. May be taken up to four times, to a maximum of 10 Hit Points.

Parry (3). Flavor. The blade you carry answers for you when no shield will. Effect. Once per round, when an attack would deal damage to you, roll one reaction die (not from your Pool) read against your Might tier. On a hit, negate one point of that attack's damage.

Riposte (2, requires Parry). Flavor. You do not only turn the blow aside. You answer it. Effect. When you parry, a natural 6 on the reaction die also deals 1 damage to the attacker.

Refuse to Fall (3). Flavor. Not yet. Effect. Once per Combat, when you would Fall, instead remain standing at 1 Hit Point and immediately take a bonus Action. No Life is spent; the Fall is postponed, not cancelled. If reduced to 0 again this Combat, you Fall normally.

Overcome the Wound (3). Flavor. A ruined arm is a problem for a lesser fighter. Effect. Spend your Action to set aside one of your own wounds, a lost weapon-hand or a lost leg, for the rest of this Combat. Its penalty is ignored from now until the fight ends. Nothing on your Card changes and no Hit Point is restored; the wound is simply willed away, exactly as the Knight's Rally, but for yourself alone and lasting the whole fight.

Never Caught (3). Flavor. No one watches your back, so you learned to watch every direction at once. Effect. You cannot be made Unaware. An ambush or backstab lands on you as an ordinary attack, with your Company-soak rules (such as they are) and your reactions intact.

Turning fragility into a threat

Bloodied Ferocity (3). Flavor. Corner the wolf and learn what the wolf is for. Effect. While at half your maximum Hit Points or below, your personal dice widen one tier, Elite (3-6) becoming Legendary (2-6).

Position and movement

Hit and Run (3). Flavor. You were never going to stand there and trade. Effect. After your Action you may move up to your Speed a second time, and you never trigger a Disengage Punish or similar free strike by moving away from an enemy.

Whirlwind (3). Flavor. Surrounded is just another word for target-rich. Effect. Once per Combat, when two or more enemies are adjacent to you, one attack roll this turn applies its hits to every enemy adjacent to you at once, dealt simultaneously as an area effect (see core-rules, Part Sixteen) rather than to a single target.

Duelist (3). Flavor. One blade, one throat, no distractions. Effect. While exactly one enemy is adjacent to you and no other enemy is adjacent to you, your personal dice widen one tier against that enemy, Elite (3-6) becoming Legendary (2-6). The lone wolf is deadliest one on one.

Mastering the chain

Faster First Step (3). Flavor. The first cut sets the rhythm. Effect. The first Blitz of each of your turns grows the Pool by 2 dice instead of 1.

Second Early Blitz (3). Flavor. Once was never going to be enough. Effect. You may use Early Blitz twice per Combat instead of once.

Last Gamble (3). Flavor. You have spent lives for less. Effect. Once per Combat, when a push would bust, you may spend a Life to cancel the bust: the chain ends, but every hit banked this turn is kept and dealt. In the Known World, where there are no Lives, this option is unavailable.

1. Candidate Combo — All-Same-Parity

Logged as a candidate, not adopted. Every die in the Pool showing the same parity, all odd or all even.

The wrinkle is that this is automatically true 100% of the time at Pool 1, which is the Errant's actual starting point, since a single die cannot disagree with its own parity. That may be a feature rather than a flaw, an intentional always-on baseline touch for the one class that starts alone, but it has to be addressed explicitly rather than left as an accident. It becomes a genuine, tightening trigger from Pool 2 onward (50%, then 25%, and so on). A looser "at least 3 dice share a parity" variant was proposed as the natural higher-Pool cousin, taking over once "all dice must agree" becomes too strict to fire.

No effect has been assigned. See open-questions.

1. Growth Potential

Most of what used to live here is now the Specialty Menu above, bought with Advancement Points rather than sketched as a future direction. What remains is the gear track and a couple of ideas still on the shelf.

• Named slots, the gear track. The Errant's one route to a third die, and to other relic effects, is named, individually acquired gear: a Named Weapon, a Named Mount, a debt owed by someone powerful, each occupying its own slot on the sheet and bought with Advancement Points. Progression for this class should read as a list of relics and promises alongside the Specialty tree, not a bigger single number.

• Stack-shaping picks, still open. Raising a chain's practical ceiling, or widening the hit range on stacked dice specifically (separate from the base personal die), are natural later Specialties for the chain branch of the menu. Not written yet; logged so the branch has room to grow.

• The offensive balancer question is closed. The 2026-07-29 testing confirmed the Blitz Chain and Pair/Triple need no extra offensive balancer. This class's later investment is survivability and tricks from the Specialty Menu, not more raw damage.