The Squire¶

Class Document — Adventures Beyond the Mists

Level 1 at a glance¶

Assist die: 1 at Trained (5-6), rolled as a side pool that never joins a host's Pool; each hit is an Assist.
Signature live now: Join and Leave, Empty Hand, Bump, Lend a Hit, Safeguard, the Blitz-eligibility grant, Assists on Checks. (Guardian's Assist unlocks at Level 5.)
Command Capacity: 0, fixed. No Company of its own.
Starting Pool: none of its own; the Squire feeds a host Company.
Hit Points: 4 base, plus armor.
Starting Specialties: 3 Advancement Points on the Squire's Level 1 menu, priced by tier.

Flavor

Not a soldier. Not quite a peer. Whatever's needed, wherever it's needed most.

You do not command anyone, and no one commands you the way a soldier is commanded. You go where you're needed, and what you bring is never quite a sword arm of your own. It's the spare die that saves someone's turn, the nudge that turns a miss into exactly enough, the readiness to stand beside whoever's line is thinnest today and not be anywhere else tomorrow.

A knight has a household. A captain has a crew. You have neither, and you have never needed one. What you have is the willingness to attach yourself to whoever's fight matters most right now, to give without keeping score, and to leave again the moment somewhere else needs you more, knowing full well that leaving costs you a round of being nobody's and nowhere's, exposed, before you're anyone's again.

This is not a smaller kind of heroism. It is a different one. When the line holds because you were standing in exactly the right place with exactly the right thing to give, nobody will remember your name for it, and that has never once stopped you from being there.

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 Squire is detailed below.

Command Capacity

0, permanently. A Squire never leads Retainers and never has a Company of their own. This is fixed for the life of the Character, the same as the Errant, though for a different reason: this class's whole identity is attaching to others, not building something of its own to lead.

Assist Dice

A Squire begins play with 1 personal die and gains a second at Level 3 (see the Level Table). These dice are never rolled toward the Squire's own combat hits, and, importantly, they never join the Pool of whoever the Squire is helping. They are a side pool, rolled separately, and what they produce is Assists.

The dice roll at Trained (5-6) to start, widening to Veteran (4-6) at Level 7 as the Squire learns to read a battle.

Keeping the dice out of the host's Pool is deliberate and load-bearing. Dropping extra dice into someone else's Pool would change the size that every signature in the game is calibrated against. It would crater an Errant's Blitz, which needs every die in the Pool to hit, and it would inflate a Chancellor's Grand Muster, whose rarity is a fixed-Pool decision. The Squire helps by working on the dice the host has already rolled, never by enlarging the host's Pool.

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. The Squire attaches to a host Company and fights from within its protection rather than at the front, so the personal Card sits low at 4. [PLAYTEST] The gradient is chosen, not yet confirmed in live combat.

Assists

Assists are the Squire's whole economy, and they are deliberately simple: no separate currency to track, no banking across fights. On the Squire's activation each round (see Joining and Leaving, below), roll the assist dice. Each hit is 1 Assist. If the roll produces no hits at all, a genuine whiff, Empty Hand grants 1 Assist anyway, so the Squire is never dead-handed. There is always at least 1 Assist to give.

Assists last the round and are spent as it unfolds, on the host's attack and on defending the host's Company. Any Assist unspent by the Squire's next activation expires. What an Assist buys grows as the Squire advances:

Bump and Lend a Hit, from Level 1.
Guardian's Assist, from Level 5.
Keep Standing, from Level 9.

Joining and Leaving a Company

A Squire's help flows through a Company they have joined. On joining, the Squire attaches to another Character's Company: they move with it, are protected by it (enemy hits land on that Company's Retainers first, exactly as for the Company's own Character), and they activate on that Company's turn rather than taking a separate turn of their own. This is what makes the help immediate: the Squire rolls its Assists at the start of the host's turn and spends them during it and across the round.

Leaving a Company costs a full turn spent exposed and unaffiliated; a Squire cannot leave one Company and join another in the same turn. Remaining solo is mechanically weak and carries none of the compensating payoff that makes solo play viable for the Errant. This is the deliberate cost of the class's flexibility: the moment between one banner and the next is the moment a Squire is nobody's and nowhere's.

Blitz Eligibility While Joined

Normally, only the Detachment containing a Character's own personal die is eligible to Blitz; every other splinter of a split Company simply banks hits with no bonus reroll. A Squire standing with a Detachment makes that Detachment Blitz-eligible even if the Company's own Character is elsewhere. This is passive and automatic, costs nothing, and applies purely by where the Squire has chosen to stand. It is worth the most to a Character who fields many Detachments at once, the Chancellor above all.

Bump

The Squire's signature, and the reason the class matters to every other. Spend 1 Assist to nudge one die the host's Company has rolled up one face: a 4 becomes a 5, a 5 becomes a 6. Multiple Assists may be spent on the same die to nudge it further, one face per Assist. This must be declared before that roll's hits are finalized.

Bump works on the host's own dice, so it does not only add a hit, it can complete a pattern. A bumped die that turns from a miss into a hit can be the die that completes an Errant's Blitz (every die in the Pool has now hit), a Knight's Straight or Set, or a Chancellor's Grand Muster. This is where the Squire's small, reliable contribution becomes a large one: not more damage, but the exact nudge that turns a good roll into a signature.

Lend a Hit

Spend 1 Assist to add a single flat hit to an ally's attack this turn. Unlike a Bump, a lent hit is separate bonus damage: it is not one of the host's own dice, so it does not count toward the host's Blitz or combos. This is the Assist to spend when there is no useful die to Bump, so an Assist is never wasted.

Guardian's Assist — Level 5

Spend 1 Assist to grant one ally in the host's Company, Character or Retainer, a single Guard token: it negates one incoming hit, exactly as a Shieldbearer's banked Guard. This may be spent in reaction to an incoming attack, drawing on an Assist still held from the Squire's activation this round.

This is the Squire's Level 5 signature, and it is what lifts the class from adding damage to keeping people alive. The core rules are explicit that a healer's real job is preventing Falls during a fight, and Guardian's Assist is exactly that job. It is also the Squire's answer to the party-composition problem: a Guard token is worth having beside a Knight, an Errant, or anyone else, no matter how large or small their own Pool. This is what makes the Squire a peer rather than a helper whose worth swings on who they stand next to.

Keep Standing — Level 9

Once per Combat, when an ally in the host's Company would Fall, the Squire may spend 2 Assists to keep them standing at 1 Hit Point instead. No Life is spent; the Fall is prevented outright for that moment. This is the capstone of the Squire's protective role: the hand that reaches out at the last second and refuses to let someone go down.

Assists on Checks

Assists work outside combat too. Bump nudges a die on any ally's Check, and Lend a Hit adds a Success to it, on the same timing rules as in combat (Bump declared before the Check's Successes are finalized). This help is deterministic and risk-free: unlike a second live helper on an Assisted Check, who shares in that Check's collective bust, the Squire's Assists simply add without ever being lost to someone else's failed push. It is a quiet but real second axis of value that does not depend on which ally the Squire is standing next to.

Combos

The Squire does not read Pair, Triple, Straight, or Set. Assists, Bump, and the join mechanic together form a complete, standalone signature system, the same design choice already made for the Witch's Mana and the Ranger's Focus.

Worked Example

A Squire is joined to an Errant, Ysolt, who fights at Pool 2 (both dice Elite, 3-6). On Ysolt's turn the Squire first rolls their own two assist dice, now at Veteran (4-6): 5 and 3. The 5 hits, the 3 misses, so 1 Assist this round.

Ysolt rolls her Pool: 6 and 2. The 6 hits; the 2 misses at Elite range, one short of the 3 she needed. Left alone, that is one hit banked and no Blitz. The Squire spends their 1 Assist to Bump the 2 up to a 3. Now both of Ysolt's dice have hit, the whole Pool has hit, a Blitz. Ysolt scoops up both dice, adds one, and rolls three, her chain rolling on from a turn that would otherwise have ended flat. One small nudge, one completed signature.

Later the same round an enemy lands a blow on Ysolt, who has no Company to soak it. Had the Squire held an Assist back, they could have spent it on Guardian's Assist to negate the hit and keep the fragile Errant upright. But this round the single Assist was already spent completing the Blitz. That is the Squire's constant, genuine tension: the same Assist that wins a turn is the one that would have saved a life.

Level 1 Starting Specialties¶

The menu a first-level Squire 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.

Fluid Footwork (2) — split his Move to reach whoever needs the shield.
Encourage (2, Presence Trained) — hand an ally +1d6 on a roll.
Standard Bearer's Word (2) — Condition removal for whoever he guards.
Iron Constitution (2) — +2 Hit Points; he is base-4 with no screen.
Immovable Object (2) — the bodyguard who cannot be pushed off his charge.
Bonded (1) — sense the state of every ally he serves.

Not a Level 1 pick, but new to the Squire's Growth Potential (Level 2 and up): Quick Attachment (Tier 1, 1 point) — once per Combat, leave one host Company and join another in the same turn, without spending the turn's Action that Join and Leave normally costs. Built to answer how thin the Squire's universal options run.

Appendix

Design Decisions
Favor and Stockpile retired for a single Assist economy. The earlier design ran three layers: roll dice for Favor, spend Favor to roll Stockpile dice, have an ally claim those dice. It was clunky and, by the class's own batch simulation, weak and highly conditional on party composition. The rebuild collapses it to one layer: the assist dice roll, their hits are Assists, and Assists are spent directly. Immediate, clean, and no currency to bank between fights.
Assist dice stay out of the host's Pool. The most direct-seeming buff, dropping the Squire's dice into the ally's Pool, was rejected because Pool size is load-bearing for every signature. Extra dice crater an Errant's Blitz (which needs all dice to hit) and inflate a Chancellor's Grand Muster (whose rarity is a fixed-Pool decision), so the one mechanic that looks like the biggest help is actively harmful to the two classes it should help most. Working on the host's already- rolled dice, via Bump, avoids this entirely.
Bump is the signature because it completes patterns. A bump that turns a miss into a hit on the host's own die can be the die that finishes a Blitz, a Straight, a Set, or a Grand Muster. That makes the Squire's small contribution occasionally enormous, and it is the mechanical form of the class's flavor, the nudge that turns a miss into exactly enough.
Guardian's Assist and Keep Standing are the power bump. The old Squire's problem was that its help was marginal and swung hard on who it stood next to. Fall-prevention fixes both: it is the support the core rules explicitly reward, and it is valuable beside any ally regardless of Pool size. These two picks are what make the class a peer.
The Blitz-eligibility grant is kept and leaned into. Making a Detachment Blitz-eligible is a unique lever worth the most to a many-Detachment Character, which pairs the Squire naturally with the Chancellor. It costs nothing and asks nothing but position.
Solo play is still weak by design. A Squire alone rolls Assists with no one to spend them on. The class's identity is attachment, and the exposed transit turn between Companies is its real cost, in deliberate contrast to the Errant, who is built to stand alone.
Testing Done and Pending

The retired Favor and Stockpile kit was the subject of a 2026-07-30 batch simulation that measured its combat contribution at roughly -0.2% beside a Knight-scale Company, +5.8% beside a Warden-scale one, and +14.8% beside a solo ally, and concluded even its best case fell well short of a second combat-capable Character. That finding drove this rebuild. None of it carries over to the current Assist kit, which is untested; the worked example above is the first time the new mechanics have been walked through with specific dice.

Specifically pending:

Whether Assist generation feels consistently available. One to roughly one-and-a-half Assists a round, with Empty Hand as a floor, needs live play to confirm it is enough to keep Bump and Guardian's Assist regularly in reach rather than rare.
The Bump-completes-a-signature play in practice. The worked example shows a completed Blitz; a real table needs to confirm how often the exact bumpable die actually presents itself.
Guardian's Assist against a real assault, and the offense-versus- defense tension. Whether players feel the pull between spending an Assist to win a turn and holding it to save a life, as intended.
The join and leave cost in a multi-Company fight. No worked example has yet shown a Squire paying the full exposed transit turn to switch which Company it supports.
Level Table

Finalized. Like the Errant and Chancellor, the Squire is off the dice-and-combo scaffold: it has no Company, and its dice make Assists rather than combat hits. It keeps the universal 100 XP per Level (see character-creation, Advancement). Fixed benefits at the odd Levels grow the Assist kit, its dice and its sinks, and even Levels grant Advancement Points on the standard 2/3/4/5/6 schedule, 23 in total. Level 5 is the signature milestone, where Assists learn to keep allies standing.

Level	Fixed class grant	AP granted	Cumulative AP (incl. 3 starting)	Assist dice	Assist range
1	1 assist die; Join and Leave; Empty Hand; Bump; Lend a Hit; Blitz-eligibility grant; Assists on Checks	3 (starting)	3	1	Trained (5-6)
2	—	2	5	1	Trained (5-6)
3	+1 assist die	—	5	2	Trained (5-6)
4	—	3	8	2	Trained (5-6)
5	Guardian's Assist (spend an Assist for a Guard token)	—	8	2	Trained (5-6)
6	—	4	12	2	Trained (5-6)
7	Assist dice widen to Veteran (4-6)	—	12	2	Veteran (4-6)
8	—	5	17	2	Veteran (4-6)
9	Keep Standing (spend 2 Assists to prevent a Fall)	—	17	2	Veteran (4-6)
10	—	6	23	2	Veteran (4-6)

A full arc to Level 10 grants 23 Advancement Points, the same as the scaffold classes. Like the Errant, the Squire cannot spend on Bond (it has no Retainers), so its points go to Guild, Skills, gear such as a Named Token (see Growth Potential), and universal Specialties. Assist generation grows on two axes, a second die at Level 3 and a wider range at Level 7, and the Assist sinks deepen from Bump and Lend a Hit through Guardian's Assist to Keep Standing.

Growth Potential
Reducing the join and leave transit cost. A veteran Squire might eventually switch which Company they support without spending a full exposed turn, representing growing skill at reading a battlefield and repositioning quickly. A natural Specialty.
A stronger Blitz-enabling role. A later feature might let a Squire make more than one Detachment Blitz-eligible at once, or grant a held Assist toward a chained Blitz, deepening the class's already unique synergy with split Companies and the Chancellor.
A Named Token marking a sworn bond. A thematic variant on the Named Weapon: an item tied to one specific Character the Squire has sworn themselves to, granting a bonus while joined to that Character's Company. Progression as a list of the bonds kept, not a bigger number.
Wider or deeper Assists. Raising the assist-die range further, letting an ally reroll a die rather than only Bump it, or letting a single Assist nudge more than one face, are all natural later picks on the same axis.