The Skirmisher¶

Class Document — Adventures Beyond the Mists

Level 1 at a glance¶

Personal die: 1 at Veteran (4-6).
Signature live now: Triple (pays a normal bonus hit), Free Movement, Shared Targeting, Disengage Punish, the Detachment exemption. (Pierce unlocks in full at Level 5.)
Command Capacity: 3 Retainers, scattered. Split Cap: 2.
Starting Pool: 4 dice (1 personal + 3 Retainers).
Hit Points: 4 base, plus armor.
Starting Specialties: 3 Advancement Points on the Skirmisher's Level 1 menu, priced by tier.

Flavor

No banner. No line. Just wherever the fight is, someone of yours is already there.

You do not hold ground. You were never taught to. Whatever household or crew follows you, they did not join for discipline — they joined because you found the gap in the wall before anyone else did, and because you shared what you found on the other side of it.

In the Known World, you might be a ship's captain who trusts a scattered crew more than a tight one, a caravan boss who lets people wander because wandering people notice things, or a raiding leader whose band has never once fought shoulder to shoulder and never once lost for it. In Hynafol, the shape of that trust becomes a kind of law. Your people do not need to stand together to fight together. Wherever one of them has found an opening, all of them have.

A Knight's household is strong because it holds. Yours is strong because it never has to. Scatter your people across a battlefield and you have not weakened your reach — you have multiplied it. Every hand you have touching the enemy is a hand the enemy has to answer for, and answering for five scattered threats is harder than answering for one disciplined line, no matter how good that line is.

And once in a while, when the dice fall right, one of your people finds their way past all of it — past the shieldwall, past the honor guard, past whoever was supposed to be standing between you and the person actually giving the orders. You did not ask permission to reach that far. You simply noticed nobody was covering 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 Skirmisher is detailed below.

Command Capacity

Starting Command Capacity is 3, rising to 4 at Level 5 and 5 at Level 9. This class shares the Knight's now-finalized Command Capacity and dice progression exactly; see the Level Table. A Skirmisher's Company is typically built from the Blade and Archers — mobile, ranged, and comfortable operating apart from one another. This is a convention, not a rule; a Skirmisher may recruit however their story demands.

Personal Die

A Skirmisher begins play with exactly 1 personal die, the universal baseline. The second die arrives automatically at Level 3 and the third at Level 7, the same dice progression as the Knight (see the Level Table). A purchased Named Weapon can add a die too, within the 3-die cap, but since the ladder already delivers dice two and three for free, a Named Weapon bought after Level 7 is wasted on a Skirmisher already at the cap. The movement-granting Named Weapon variant in Growth Potential is the better fit for this class.

Hit range: Veteran (4-6), matching the Knight's baseline. Nothing about the Skirmisher's identity argues for a different number here; the class's edge comes from structure and positioning, not personal accuracy.

Hit Points

4 at First Level, before armor. Armor adds on top: Light +1, Medium +2, Heavy +3. This is the class's baseline under the Level 1 Hit Point table (see character-creation.md, Hit Point baselines).

Design note: the baseline runs inverse to how much a Company can soak for its Character. The Skirmisher fields the widest, most mobile Company in the game, so a great deal of incoming damage never reaches the Character at all; the personal Card sits low, at 4, on that reasoning. [PLAYTEST] The gradient is chosen, not yet confirmed in live combat.

Free Movement

A Skirmisher's Retainers may move through squares occupied by other Retainers in the same Company without penalty, and may ignore movement penalties from minor obstacles — rubble, low walls, difficult terrain up to their own size — that would normally cost other Companies extra movement or a maneuver to cross.

Shared Targeting

Anyone touching one of yours is touching all of you.

Any enemy adjacent to any Retainer in a Skirmisher's Company is a valid target for the whole Company's Pool that turn, regardless of whether other Retainers in the Company are anywhere near that enemy. Hits from a single roll may be split freely across as many different contacts as the player chooses, so long as each targeted enemy is adjacent to at least one Retainer in the Company.

Disengage Punish

If an enemy adjacent to a Skirmisher's Retainer attempts to move away without first dealing with that Retainer, the Retainer may make an immediate free strike against them — one die, rolled at that Retainer's own hit range, resolved before the enemy's movement completes.

No Detachments, Ever

Every other Company pays to spread out. This one never has to.

A Skirmisher's Company is never treated as split into multiple Detachments, no matter how physically scattered its Retainers are across the field. It always rolls as a single Pool, and that Pool is always Blitz-eligible. The Detachment and Split Cap rules that govern every other class's Company simply do not apply to a Skirmisher's Company. This is the class's core structural identity — a Skirmisher never pays the cost every other class pays to operate across multiple fronts at once.

Combo — Triple, upgrading to Pierce at Level 5

The Skirmisher reads one pattern in the shared Pool: the Triple, three or more matching dice in a single roll. It pays out from Level 1 and changes in kind, not size, at Level 5.

Triple (Levels 1 to 4). A Triple may be set aside as one bonus hit, on top of whatever hits those dice already scored normally. The bonus hit is assigned like any other, to any valid contact under Shared Targeting. This is the same flat shape as the Knight's Straight, and it exists so the Skirmisher's dice are never dead while the class waits for its signature.

Pierce (Level 5 and beyond). At Level 5 the Triple gains its full effect. The bonus hit no longer has to be assigned to a Retainer-level contact. Instead it may be placed directly against an enemy Character's own Card, bypassing every Retainer in that Character's Company entirely, provided that Character is themselves within reach of a contact point the Skirmisher's Company already holds. If no enemy Character is exposed this way, the bonus hit is assigned normally, exactly as the Levels 1 to 4 version. The Triple's reward changes from a flat hit into access, which is the class's true signature.

Why Level 5. At Level 1 the Skirmisher's Pool is 4 dice (1 personal die plus Command Capacity 3), where Triple fires on 10.0% of rolls. At Level 5 the Pool reaches 6 and Triple rises to 36.7%, the first point where the pattern is reliably present rather than a rarity. Level 5 matches the Knight's Set unlock exactly, for the same reason and at the same Pool size. Because the bonus hit already pays out from Level 1, the wait is for the upgrade, not for the combo to exist at all.

Pierce does not stay rare as the Pool grows, and that is accepted rather than a flaw, on the same logic as the Knight's Set. Triple climbs to roughly 54% at Level 7 and 71% at Level 9, so a high-level Skirmisher reads a Triple most turns. Because the bonus is a single hit and Pierce only reaches an enemy Character when that Character is exposed, a common Triple mostly means a common ordinary bonus hit, with the occasional Company-bypass when a target overextends. That is small and on-theme.

What softens the early game further is that everything else this class does is Pool-independent. Free movement, Shared Targeting, Disengage Punish, and the permanent Detachment exemption are all fully intact from Level 1 and none of them care how many dice are in the Pool.

Worked Example

Captain Yseult is a mid-career Skirmisher, past Level 5 so Pierce is online: 2 personal dice at Veteran (4-6), the second gained at Level 3, plus three Retainers fielded from her Command Capacity of 4, two of the Blade Retainer role and one Archer, scattered across the deck rather than held in a line.

Her crew is engaged on three fronts at once: one Retainer touching a raider on the port side, one touching a second raider near the mast, and one — an Archer with clear sightlines — within reach of the enemy Chancellor herself, who has stepped forward to direct her own line personally.

Yseult's Pool rolls 5, 5, 5, 4, 2. The three Retainer dice (two Blade and one Archer, all hitting on 5-6) show 5, 5, 5, three hits. Of her two personal dice, the one showing 4 hits at Veteran range; the one showing 2 misses. Four hits banked so far.

Reading the roll for combos: the three 5s form a Triple. Pierce triggers. Rather than adding a fifth hit to either raider, Yseult places it directly against the Chancellor's own Card — bypassing whatever Retainers stand between them elsewhere on the field, since none of them are the ones actually covering this particular Archer's line of sight. Five hits total this turn: four spread across the two raiders, and one that the Chancellor's whole Company could do nothing to stop.

Level 1 Starting Specialties¶

The menu a first-level Skirmisher 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.

Steady Draw (2) — +1d6 on a ranged attack.
Free Runner (2) — move through enemies and walls; the scatter identity.
Longshot (2) — +2 Range on the bow.
Read the Foe (2, Wits Trained) — scout a target's stat line.
Crippling Strike (2, Finesse Trained) — a called shot to Slow or disarm the exposed.
Quick Hands (2) — use an item as a Free Interaction.

Appendix

Design Decisions
Command Capacity and personal die baseline follow the universal rule. 3 Command Capacity, 1 personal die before creation, typically 2 after — the same structure established for the Knight, carried over rather than independently derived, since nothing about the Skirmisher's identity argued for a different baseline Pool size.
Pierce replaced an earlier, weaker version of the Triple. The original design simply granted a flat bonus hit on a Triple, assignable to any Shared Targeting contact. Probability analysis showed this was a worse deal than it appeared: Triple fires in roughly 21% of rolls at a 5-die Pool, meaningfully rarer than the Knight's Straight at 45% — yet both delivered the identical flat reward of one bonus hit. A rarer trigger paying out the same as a common one is a real imbalance, not a matter of taste. Pierce fixes this by changing the reward's kind rather than its size: instead of more damage, the Triple grants access — a hit that bypasses an enemy Company's Retainers entirely and lands on their Character directly, provided that Character is exposed to an existing contact. This is judged to be significantly more valuable than a flat extra hit, appropriate to the trigger's rarity.
The Levels 1 to 4 Triple is a flat bonus hit, deliberately. This is the same flat reward the Pierce note above argues against for the full signature, accepted here for a narrow reason: a class with no second combo and no Pool-read at all before Level 5 would have genuinely dead dice for four Levels, which the game's own Empty Hand rule exists to prevent. The flat hit is the interim, not the destination. At Level 5 it becomes access, and the mild rarity-versus-reward mismatch it carries lasts only until then.
Pierce is gated behind exposure, not unconditional. An early version of this ability had no exposure requirement, effectively allowing any Triple to snipe any enemy Character regardless of position. This was rejected as too strong and tactically inert — it removed any incentive for an enemy Character to stay protected behind their own Company. Requiring the target to already be within reach of an existing contact point preserves the tactical logic: staying behind your lines protects you from this; stepping forward personally, or getting flanked, does not.
No second, rarer combo tier was added. The Knight (Straight plus Set) and Chancellor (four command effects plus a Set-triggered Grand Muster) both have a common-and-rare two-tier shape. The Skirmisher was deliberately left with only Pierce rather than adding a Set-triggered ultimate on top. Pierce's own rarity (Triple, roughly 21% to 37% depending on Company size) combined with the severity of its effect was judged sufficient to carry the class's "big moment" on its own, without needing a second, rarer tier layered above it. This may be revisited if playtesting shows the class feeling thin compared to two-tier classes.
Hit Points left at the universal placeholder. No aspect of the Skirmisher's design argues for a deeper or shallower Card than the standard Character baseline. See the placeholder note under Card Depth above.
The name collision is resolved. This class and the basic fast-melee Retainer role once shared the name Skirmisher. The role was renamed to Harrier, then to Blade (2026-07-31); the class keeps Skirmisher. The class was judged the better holder because its identity is open order as a structural doctrine, Shared Targeting and the permanent Detachment exemption, which is a command-level trait rather than a stat line. See retired-mechanics.
Testing Done and Pending

No worked combat has yet exercised the current Skirmisher kit. Earlier 2v2 test fights in design used a pre-rename version of this class (then called Freebooter), with plain Pair and Triple reads and no Shared Targeting, Disengage Punish, Detachment exemption, or Pierce. None of that testing carries over to the class as currently designed.

Specifically pending:

Shared Targeting in an actual multi-front engagement. The worked example above demonstrates the mechanic in prose, but it has not been run as a live, rolled combat with a scattered Company genuinely spread across a map.
Disengage Punish actually firing. No worked example has yet included an enemy attempting to break contact and eating the free strike as a result.
Pierce landing against a genuinely protected enemy Character. The worked example above uses a Chancellor who had already stepped forward, making Pierce's exposure requirement trivially satisfied. A test where an enemy Character deliberately stays behind their Company, and Pierce fails to find an opening, has not yet been run — this is the case that would prove the exposure gate is doing real tactical work rather than being a formality.
The Detachment exemption against the cohesion system directly. No worked example has yet pitted a Skirmisher's fully scattered Company against a Knight or Chancellor forced to choose which two Detachments get to act — the comparison that would actually demonstrate the exemption's value.
Personal die hit range at Veteran. Proposed by analogy to the Knight rather than independently confirmed. Nothing about the Skirmisher's design argued for a different number, but this has not been separately stress-tested.
Level Table

Finalized. This is the Skirmisher's actual ladder. It shares the Knight's structure exactly: 100 XP per Level (see character-creation, Advancement), odd Levels granting a fixed class benefit and even Levels granting Advancement Points on the 2/3/4/5/6 schedule, plus the 3 starting points spent on the class Starting Specialty menu before play. The numbers remain subject to playtest confirmation like every number in the game, but they are no longer placeholders.

Level	Fixed class grant	AP granted	Cumulative AP (incl. 3 starting)	Personal dice	Cmd. Cap.	Pool
1	die at Veteran (4-6); Free Movement, Shared Targeting, Disengage Punish, Detachment exemption; Triple pays a normal bonus hit	3 (starting)	3	1	3	4
2	—	2	5	1	3	4
3	+1 personal die	—	5	2	3	5
4	—	3	8	2	3	5
5	+1 Command Capacity (to 4); Triple becomes Pierce	—	8	2	4	6
6	—	4	12	2	4	6
7	+1 personal die (3-die maximum)	—	12	3	4	7
8	—	5	17	3	4	7
9	+1 Command Capacity (to 5, maximum)	—	17	3	5	8
10	—	6	23	3	5	8

A full arc to Level 10 grants 23 Advancement Points in total, the same as the Knight: the 3 starting points plus 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 at the even Levels. The Pool column is the maximum Pool at that Level, personal dice plus a full Company at Command Capacity, before any purchased die.

The Level 5 milestone carries the class's signature the same way the Knight's does, but note the difference in what precedes it: the Skirmisher's Triple already pays a flat bonus hit from Level 1, so Level 5 upgrades a live effect into Pierce rather than switching on a dead one. A rare second combo tier is deliberately left open (see Growth Potential); if the dice layer feels thin against two-tier classes in play, a Set-triggered capstone is the slot reserved for it.

Growth Potential
Command Capacity increases, now automatic. No longer a purchase. It rises at Levels 5 and 9.
Widening Pierce's exposure condition. A veteran Skirmisher might eventually threaten an enemy Character who is merely within reach of the whole Company's collective coverage, rather than a single specific contact point — trading precision for reach as an advancement choice.
A Named Weapon variant granting movement rather than a die. Given the class's identity is built on mobility rather than raw accuracy, a thematically appropriate item track might let a Skirmisher trade the usual +1 die for +1 Speed on a Retainer instead — an alternate use of the game's existing "gear grants dice" principle rather than a new system.
A second Pierce use per Combat, at a cost. Mirroring the Knight's costed second Rally, a later feature could let a Skirmisher trigger Pierce's effect without an actual Triple, at the cost of a Life or permanent Hit Point loss — reserved for a genuinely desperate, story-critical moment rather than routine play.
Revisit the missing second combo tier if needed. If playtesting shows the class feels thin against two-tier classes like Knight and Chancellor, a rare Set-triggered ability — most likely extending Pierce or Shared Targeting across every current contact simultaneously rather than just one — is the natural next addition.