Kits — Expanded System¶
Blitz Eternal: Adventures Beyond the Mists — v0.3 Draft¶
A Kit is a named weapon loadout paired with a small mechanical perk. Every Character picks one Kit at creation, free of cost, as part of choosing their starting equipment. Kits are not purchased with starting XP; they are mandatory. A Character can reconfigure their Kit only during downtime, the same as a change in armor. Kits are distinct from armor; a Character's Kit choice does not affect their armor tier or Speed cost.
Once a Character is built, a Kit is reconfigured only between fights, at rest, treated exactly like a change of armor: no XP spend, but requires downtime access to supplies and time to reset. Starting XP (3 points per Character at creation) is spent separately on Bonded Companions, Named Weapons, or Class-specific Specialties, never on a Kit itself.
Armor is chosen separately from Kit during character creation. See weapons.md for armor tiers and effects.
Range and Hands¶
Every Kit states two things about its weapon beyond flavor.
Range, in squares. A Range of 1 means melee only: the weapon threatens exactly the squares adjacent to the wielder. A Range of 2 or more means the weapon threatens that many squares out without requiring adjacency (Polearm and Chain-Dancer's whip both reach 2; Pike's long pike reaches 3, with its own restriction on square 1, see Pike below). Bow-based Kits are marked Distance instead of a number: they need no adjacency at all, and the exact square count is a placeholder pending the map-scale open question (see open-questions.md).
Hands, the number of hands a Kit's weapon occupies: 0 for unarmed, 1 for a single one-handed weapon (the other hand stays free), or 2 for a two-handed weapon, a shield paired with a one-handed weapon, or two one-handed weapons wielded together.
The Kits¶
The list is open-ended. Kits are the cheapest content in the game to add, since each is one loadout plus one small perk, and there is no reason to cap how many exist. What follows is the current set; numbering is for reference, not a limit.
1. Sword-and-Shield¶
The classic guardian's stance: shield raised, blade ready. A parrying style that turns defense into counter.
Weapons: Shield and 1-handed weapon
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 2 (shield in one hand, weapon in the other)
Perk: Guard. When you score a Hit, you may bank it as a Guard token instead of dealing damage. One Guard token negates one incoming Hit on you as defender on your next turn. Unused Guard expires at the start of that next turn. This is an either/or choice made each time a Hit lands, not a bonus added on top of damage.
Status: Confirmed, fully resolved.
2. Twin Blades¶
A blur of steel, two weapons moving in concert. Quick, vicious, and never wasted: when the strike lands true, it lands twice as hard.
Weapons: Two 1-handed weapons
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 2 (one weapon in each hand)
Perk: Twinned Edge. When one of your personal dice shows a natural 6 and is banked as a Hit, that Hit deals 2 damage instead of 1. This applies only to your own personal dice, never to Retainer dice in the shared Pool.
A natural 6 always hits regardless of Hit Range, but how often a landed hit happens to be that specific 6 shrinks as Hit Range widens with progression (50% at Trained, down to 20% at Legendary). This keeps Twinned Edge meaningful at every tier without letting it overtake a 2-handed weapon's flat, guaranteed 2 damage per hit. A Character with more than one personal die gets more chances at the bonus, rewarding investment in personal dice rather than competing with it.
Status: Confirmed, fully resolved. Replaces an earlier draft that granted a bonus die at Untrained (6), which duplicated the Bonded Companion's paid effect for free and could go entirely dead once a Character reached the 3-personal-die cap through other means. See open-questions.md for the resolution history.
3. Polearm¶
A halberd, bill, or poleaxe held at the ready, its reach making the wielder the master of distance. Enemies who close do so at terrible cost.
Weapons: 2-handed polearm of ordinary length
Hands: 2 (the polearm itself requires both hands)
Perk: Polearm Reaction. Once per turn, when an enemy moves into your 2-square reach during an opponent's turn, you may immediately make a free reaction attack: roll 1d6 at your Hit Range. On a hit, deal 1 hit to that enemy. This reaction happens instantly, interrupting the opponent's movement if needed, and does not cost your Action. If multiple enemies close into reach in the same turn, you may react only once, choosing one target.
Range: 2. You may attack normally at 1 or 2 squares.
Status: Confirmed, fully resolved. Renamed from Pike 2026-07-31, when the long pike was split off as its own Kit; a Kit names the items carried, and "polearm" covers the halberd, bill, and poleaxe this Kit actually describes.
4. Bow and Arrow¶
The bow carries you beyond reach, turning the battlefield into your domain. Distance is your armor.
Weapons: Bow
Range: 8. This matches the Archer Retainer role, so a Character with this Kit and an Archer in their Company threaten the same distance.
Hands: 2 (drawing a bow requires both hands)
Perk: Range. You strike at Range 8 without needing adjacency, which reaches most of a battle map from where you stand. The bow does not function at melee range; a Character caught adjacent to an enemy must retreat, draw their sidearm (a Free Interaction; see Sidearms and backups below), or fight at a disadvantage.
Status: Confirmed, fully resolved.
5. Greatsword¶
A blade too large for one hand, swung with the whole body behind it. What it lacks in speed, it makes up in the certainty of the blow.
Weapons: 2-handed sword
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 2 (the sword itself requires both hands)
Perk: Weighted Strike. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Once per turn, you may forgo your Hit's 2 damage entirely and instead apply the Stunned condition (the target loses its Action for the turn; Move remains available) to the target.
Status: Renamed from Oath-Bearer (2026-07-31) to name the weapon rather than a flavor archetype. Replaces Overwhelming Force, whose choice between 2 damage and 1 damage-plus-Weakened sat too close to Twin Blades' own natural-6 mechanic once Twinned Edge was adopted. Weighted Strike moves away from the "trade damage for less damage plus a Condition" pattern entirely: a full damage-for-Stunned trade, the first Kit to use Stunned specifically, and it plays differently at the table by denying a turn rather than chipping at a Card.
6. Tower Shield¶
A shield built wider and heavier than any duelist would carry, planted like a wall between the wielder and whatever comes next.
Weapons: Tower shield and 1-handed weapon
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 2 (shield in one hand, weapon in the other)
Perk: Braced Wall. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Like Sword-and-Shield, you can bank Hits as Guard tokens. Once per turn, if an ally within your reach (1 square) takes a Hit intended for them, you may declare an Intercept without waiting for the defender's normal choice, bypassing the usual requirement that an Intercept be declared before the Hit resolves; you still take the full Hit on your own Card. Additionally, once per turn, if you do not use your Move action, you may plant your shield: any Guard token you bank this turn blocks up to 2 incoming Hits before expiring, instead of 1.
Status: Renamed from Steadfast Wall (2026-07-31) to make the larger shield explicit. The Intercept half of the perk is unchanged from the original draft; the stand-and-brace Guard upgrade is new.
7. Hobnail¶
No blade at all: knees, elbows, and above all, boots. Where a swordsman commits to a line, this fighter is already gone.
Weapons: Unarmed strikes only
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 0 (unarmed; boots and fists are the weapon)
Perk: Flowing Motion. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Once per turn, if you score a Pair (two dice showing the same face, from your personal dice), you may shift up to 2 squares without using your Move action. This shift does not cost an Action or Free Interaction.
Status: Renamed from Quicksilver and reweaponed from two 1-handed weapons to unarmed strikes (2026-07-31), so it no longer shares an identical weapon line with Twin Blades. Renamed again from Swift Feet to Hobnail, confirmed. Distinct from Bare Fist below: this Kit is about mobility and evasive footwork (Flowing Motion), where Bare Fist is about landing a bonus strike (Unmatched Speed).
8. Pike¶
Sixteen feet of ash and iron, butt braced, point level. Alone it is an awkward pole. In a line it is a wall nothing wants to walk into.
Weapons: 2-handed long pike
Hands: 2 (the pike itself requires both hands)
Perk: Set Against the Charge. Once per turn, when an enemy moves into your 3-square reach during an opponent's turn, you may immediately make a free reaction attack: roll 1d6 at your Hit Range. On a hit, deal 1 hit to that enemy. This happens instantly, interrupting the movement if needed, and does not cost your Action. If several enemies close in the same turn, you react only once, choosing one target.
Range: 3, and you cannot attack an adjacent target at all. A pike is too long to bring to bear on someone already inside the point. Squares 2 and 3 are yours; square 1 is not.
This drawback is the Kit, not a tax on it. A Pike controls the approach and is helpless once the approach fails. The answer already exists in the rules: drawing a weapon is a Free Interaction (core-rules, Part Five), so a pikeman who gets crowded drops the pike and pulls their sidearm (see Sidearms and backups below), at no cost beyond giving up the reach that got them there.
Example. A Pike stands three squares from an advancing orc. The orc moves to two squares away, entering reach: Set Against the Charge fires, one free die at the wielder's Hit Range, and it hits. On her own turn she attacks it normally at range 2. Next round the orc closes to adjacent. She can no longer attack it at all. She spends her Free Interaction drawing a knife, and fights at range 1 with an ordinary one-handed weapon for the rest of the fight, or backs off two squares and levels the pike again.
Status: Confirmed. Replaces the rough-draft Longspear Kit that formerly occupied this slot, whose perk (a reaction at the 1-square boundary rather than the 2-square boundary) was too fine a distinction from Polearm to justify a third entry in the same family.
9. Duelist's Art¶
A master of the single blade, reading enemies like a scholar reads text. Precision over power.
Weapons: 1-handed weapon
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 1 (off-hand free)
Perk: Elegant Footwork. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Once per turn, if you score a Hit, you may shift up to 1 square without using your Move action. This shift does not cost an Action or Free Interaction; it is pure repositioning. This allows you to close distance or create distance on your own terms, independent of your normal movement economy.
10. Reaver's Axe¶
An axe swung with terrible purpose. Where it lands, openings bloom.
Weapons: 1-handed axe
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 1 (off-hand free)
Perk: Overpowering Blow. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Once per turn, when your axe deals a Hit, you (not the defender) choose the direction of that Hit's Wound, the arm and weapon-hand or the leg and mobility, per core-rules Part Eight. This overrides the defender's normal choice for that single Hit only.
Status: Replaces Cleaving Strike, which depended on the target's Wound being directed toward Disarmed, a choice core-rules Part Eight gives to the defender, not the attacker. A defender who understood the axe's perk would simply never choose that direction, so the old trigger was effectively adversarial to itself and would rarely fire. Overpowering Blow removes that dependency: the wielder now has guaranteed agency over which wound they inflict, once per turn.
11. Warhammer¶
A hammer built to crush, not cut. Where a blade might be turned aside, this weapon simply keeps coming.
Weapons: 2-handed hammer or maul
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 2 (the hammer itself requires both hands)
Perk: Guard-Breaker. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] When one of your personal dice shows a natural 6 and is banked as a Hit, that Hit ignores any Guard token the target has banked: the Guard does not apply against it, though the token remains banked afterward and can still block a later, ordinary Hit.
Status: Renamed from Sledge-Knight (2026-07-31); the name is reserved for other use elsewhere per Daniel. Replaces Crushing Blow, whose choice between 2 damage and 1 damage-plus-Slowed sat too close to Twin Blades' own natural-6 mechanic once Twinned Edge was adopted. Guard-Breaker keeps the same natural-6 trigger family as Twin Blades but produces a distinct effect: a hammer's blunt trauma denies a raised shield rather than dealing extra damage.
12. Bare Fist¶
The body as weapon. Speed, precision, and the will to stand unarmored.
Weapons: Unarmed strikes only
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 0 (unarmed; fists and feet are the weapon)
Perk: Unmatched Speed. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Your unarmed strikes deal 1 damage per Hit. Once per turn, if you score a Triple (three dice showing the same face, from your personal pool), you may make a free shift of up to 2 squares and then immediately make one additional unarmed strike against a target in your reach. This additional strike is automatic (no roll); it deals 1 damage.
Status: Its Triple-trigger stacks directly with the Errant's own signature reads (Pair and Triple), a Class already tuned for high-variance burst. Confirmed as an intentional synergy, not an oversight: an Errant carrying Bare Fist trades a starting Kit choice for a bigger glass cannon, which is acceptable since it requires deliberately picking this Kit rather than happening automatically.
13. Chain-Dancer¶
A whip or flail held in constant motion, reaching further than any melee weapon and binding enemies in place.
Weapons: Whip or flail
Range: 2
Hands: 1 (off-hand free). Assumes the lighter, one-handed flavor of whip or flail; a two-handed flail is not covered by this Kit.
Perk: Entangling Lash. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Your whip reaches 2 squares like a Pike. Once per turn, if you score a Hit with your whip, you may apply the Slowed condition (Speed reduced to 0) to the target instead of dealing damage, or deal 1 damage and still apply Slowed. Your choice, made each time. This makes the whip a tool of control first, damage second.
14. Crossbow¶
Slower to load than a bow, but needing only one hand to loose, and hitting hard enough to make the wait worth it.
Weapons: Crossbow
Range: Distance. Does not require adjacency; exact square count is pending the map-scale open question (see open-questions.md).
Hands: 1 (off-hand free; a hand crossbow or braced crossbow, unlike the two-handed Bow)
Perk: Loaded and Waiting. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Once per turn, if you did not make an attack on your previous turn, this turn's first Hit deals 2 damage instead of 1.
Status: Replaces Scout's Path, retired because its bow-and-melee switch never connected to its own perk (Studied Foe rewarded standing still, which has no clear link to why a Character would carry two weapon categories rather than just being an Archer). Crossbow instead gives the ranged-weapon family a genuinely distinct mechanical niche from Bow and Arrow: one free hand instead of two, and a reload-flavored payoff for patience rather than Bow's constant Range.
15. Spellblade¶
Steel and sorcery woven together. The warrior who refuses to choose between the blade and the word.
Weapons: Shield and 1-handed weapon
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 2 (shield in one hand, weapon in the other)
Perk: Arcane Resonance. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed; requires Witch class integration] When you use Mana to cast a spell (Witch class), your next weapon Hit gains a bonus: deal 1 additional damage, or apply a Condition of your choice (Weakened, Slowed, Stunned, or Blinded). Exact interaction with Witch's Mana economy needs design review.
Status: Conditional on Witch mechanics; deferred pending clarification.
16. Paladin's Hand¶
Blessed by faith. The warrior whose mere presence steadies allies and turns back the darkness.
Weapons: Shield and 1-handed weapon
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 2 (shield in one hand, weapon in the other)
Perk: Rallying Presence. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Once per turn, after you score a Hit, one ally within 2 squares of your target gains a +1 bonus to their Hit Range until the end of their next turn (e.g., Trained 5-6 becomes 4-6). This bonus stacks per ally, but only the most recent bonus applies to any single ally.
Status: Introduces group mechanics; needs review for balance.
17. Shadow-Step¶
A fighter who moves like water, always one step removed from danger. Evasion made art.
Weapons: 1-handed weapon
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 1 (off-hand free)
Perk: Slippery. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Once per turn, when an enemy's attack against you misses (their roll misses your Hit Range, or a push/pull/special effect targets you and you avoid it), you may shift up to 2 squares as a free reaction. This shift does not cost your Move or Action and happens before or after the missed attack resolves.
18. Beast-Hunter¶
Trained to face the impossible. Every creature, no matter how large or strange, has a weakness.
Weapons: 2-handed polearm or 2-handed sword
Range: 2 if the polearm is chosen; 1 (melee only) if the sword is chosen.
Hands: 2 (either option requires both hands)
Perk: Monster Slayer. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Once per fight, when you are fighting a single major opponent (a legendary monster, solo boss, or powerful named enemy), your personal die gains a +2 bonus to your Hit Range for attacks against that target only (e.g., Veteran 4-6 becomes 2-6). This bonus applies only to that specific target and only for the duration of that fight.
Status: Combat-scoped bonus; needs review for balance.
19. Whirlwind¶
A flail-wielder in constant motion. Where enemies see chaos, you see control.
Weapons: Whip or flail
Range: 2, though Spinning Defense below triggers specifically at the 1-square adjacency boundary, not the full 2-square reach.
Hands: 1 (off-hand free). Same assumption as Chain-Dancer: the lighter, one-handed flavor of whip or flail.
Perk: Spinning Defense. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Once per turn, when an enemy moves adjacent to you, you may immediately make a free 1d6 reaction attack at your Hit Range (using no dice from your Pool). On a hit, you deal 1 damage and may push the target 1 square away. If the push moves them out of adjacency, they do not reach you this turn.
20. Wyvern-Slayer¶
A warrior who breaks the unbreakable. The shields of legendary foes are merely obstacles to overcome.
Weapons: 1-handed weapon and shield, or 2-handed weapon
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 2 either way (shield plus weapon, or the 2-handed weapon alone)
Perk: Piercing Tactics. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Your Hits ignore banked Guard tokens. When you attack a target who has Guard tokens, those tokens do not consume or apply—your Hits land as if the Guard were never banked. However, the Guard tokens remain banked and can still be used against other attacks.
Status: Unconditional and always-on, unlike Warhammer's new Guard-Breaker (natural 6 only, see Warhammer above). Worth comparing the two before either finalizes: an always-on Guard-ignore may be too strong relative to a gated one occupying the same design space.
21. Commander's Mace¶
Not a soldier's weapon so much as a badge of office, though it strikes true enough when it must. Where you point it, others follow.
Weapons: 1-handed mace
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 1 (off-hand free)
Perk: Commands. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed; fresh idea, mechanic interpretation not yet confirmed] Once per turn, when you score a Hit, you may redirect it: instead of dealing the damage yourself, one Retainer or ally within your reach may immediately deal that Hit's Wound to the same target instead, as a free reaction that costs them nothing.
Status: New. This is one reading of "an ally within range makes the attack in your place"; an alternative reading, where the ally makes an entirely new attack roll of their own rather than delivering your already-scored Hit, was set aside here because it would add a fresh die roll outside the existing Pool math. Worth flagging: this treads on ground close to the Chancellor's own identity, the Class built specifically around "the general who barely fights," echoing the same tension already logged for Marked Prey versus the Chancellor's Mark (see open-questions.md). Confirm the intended mechanic and whether a non-Chancellor Kit should carry a command-flavored effect at all before this moves past rough draft.
Upgrade: The Whole Line Moves. A 2-point Advancement Specialty gated to this Kit deepens the Commands perk into a company movement order: once per Combat, in place of the attack, every Retainer and ally in the Company gains +2 Speed until the start of the wielder's next turn. Migrated from the Legends Diplomat's Flow formation; full text in universal-specialties.md, migration record in diplomat-migration.md.
22. Hidden Blade¶
A blade in the sleeve, the boot, the fold of a cloak. Not a duelist's weapon. A killer's.
Weapons: Concealable 1-handed weapon
Range: 1 (melee only)
Hands: 1 (off-hand free)
Perk: Concealed Edge. You read as unarmed while carrying your concealable weapon, which helps you set up Unaware (core-rules, Part Eleven) and pass a search. When one of your personal dice shows a natural 6 and is banked as a Hit against a target that is Unaware of you, that Hit deals 2 damage instead of 1. Like Twinned Edge, this applies only to your own personal dice, never to Retainer dice in the shared Pool.
Status: New, 2026-08-01. Migrated with the assassin Specialty set (character-creation/universal-specialties). Mirrors Twin Blades' Twinned Edge but conditions the bonus on striking the unaware. Grants no die. Pairs with the Never Unarmed Specialty (durable disarm immunity) and the Vanish Specialty. [PLAYTEST]
23. Houndmaster¶
The blade was never your weapon. The thing at your side is, and it has never once misread you.
Weapons: A trained animal companion (hound, wolf, hunting hawk, boar, or the like), plus an ordinary sidearm.
Range: 1 through the beast, but the beast is not tied to your square; see the perk.
Hands: 0 (the beast is the weapon; your hands stay free for the sidearm).
Perk: Loosed. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Your personal die or dice are the beast's attacks, not your own. On your turn the beast moves up to Speed 6, independently of your own Move, and your personal-die attacks are made from wherever it stands, against targets in its reach, so you may strike while staying clear of the fight yourself. The beast is the fiction of your personal dice and adds no die of its own (the one-die rule, companies-and-command, Part One); more personal dice make a deadlier single beast, not a pack of separate rollers. If a Hit is assigned to the beast, it is driven off exactly as a disarm removes a weapon (core-rules, Part Eight): your personal dice leave the Pool until you recover it after the fight or replace it in downtime. Drawing your sidearm is a Free Interaction (see Sidearms and backups), so you fight on at Range 1 until it returns.
Status: New, 2026-08-01, rough draft. Threads the one-die rule by making the animal the fiction of the Character's personal dice, the same treatment Bare Fist and Hobnail give unconventional weapons. No other Kit lets your personal-die attacks originate from a square you do not occupy. Migrated from the Legends Ranger's Companion Animal (character-creation/ranger-migration; beasts-and-mounts). Open to any Class. [PLAYTEST] the Speed 6 leash and whether the beast should carry a small Card of its own instead of the disarm-style drop.
24. Falconry¶
A hawk on the fist, loosed to strike from an angle no shield covers.
Weapons: A trained hunting bird (falcon, hawk, or eagle), plus an ordinary sidearm.
Range: 6, from the air, no adjacency needed.
Hands: 0.
Perk: On the Wing. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Your personal dice are the bird's strikes, made at Range 6 against any target in the open, the bird stooping from above. The bird is the fiction of your personal dice and adds no die (as Houndmaster). It is hard to pin while aloft: a Hit is assigned to it only by an enemy attacking at range or by its own dive putting it in reach, and being driven off works as a disarm, your personal dice leaving the Pool until you recover it, with your sidearm as the Range 1 fallback. A foe under heavy cover or indoors may be out of the bird's line entirely, at the GM's call.
Status: New, 2026-08-01, rough draft. The aerial, ranged sibling of Houndmaster. Deliberately shorter-ranged than Bow and Arrow (Range 8) and balanced on the downside: a bow is simply stowed when inconvenient, but a driven-off bird takes all your personal dice with it. Overlaps the Skirmisher's bonded falcon in fiction, not in dice (bonded-companions). Open to any Class. [PLAYTEST] the Range 6 value against the Bow.
25. Vermin-Caller¶
Snakes underfoot, rats in the dark, a plague of locusts, or a sudden storm of butterflies whose wings blind and unnerve. You do not strike the enemy so much as afflict them.
Weapons: A controlled swarm of small creatures, its form yours to choose and change between fights (snakes, rats, insects, locusts, or butterflies), plus an ordinary sidearm.
Range: 2. The swarm spreads to enemies near you.
Hands: 0.
Perk: Plague. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Your personal dice are the swarm harrying enemies within Range 2. Each Hit may, at your choice, either deal its 1 damage normally or forgo the damage to apply Weakened to that target until the start of your next turn (core-rules, Part Nine), the swarm sickening and blinding rather than wounding. The swarm is the fiction of your personal dice and adds no die; it is driven off as a disarm, with your sidearm as the fallback. Once per turn, in place of a single target, you may loose the swarm as a Radius 1 Area of Effect (core-rules, Part Sixteen), applying its one roll to every enemy in the radius.
Status: New, 2026-08-01, rough draft. The control sibling of the beast-as-weapon family, trading clean damage for a Condition in the same either-or pattern as the Chain-Dancer's Entangling Lash. Treads near the Chancellor's Pacify; the difference is that this costs the Character's own personal-die damage rather than a withheld command die. Open to any Class. [PLAYTEST] whether the once-per-turn Radius option is too strong for a Kit and should be dropped.
26. Lance¶
On foot an awkward long spear; from the saddle, the whole reason knights terrify infantry.
Weapons: A cavalry lance.
Range: 2. You may strike at 1 or 2 squares, like a Polearm.
Hands: 2 (couching the lance takes both).
Perk: Couched Charge. [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] Once per turn, if you moved at least 3 squares toward the target this turn (a charge), your Hit against that target carries Rend 2 (core-rules, Part Fourteen: a single indivisible hit dealing 2 damage). On foot you will rarely have the Speed to reach a 3-square charge; mounted, through the Rider Specialty (universal-specialties.md), you will routinely, which is the intended pairing.
Status: New, 2026-08-01, rough draft. Realizes the "Rend instead of doubling" cavalry guidance (companies-and-command, Part One) and ties Lance to Rider without welding the mount into the Kit, so the lance still works on foot and the mount still works with any other weapon. Its hard counter is the Pike's Set Against the Charge, the intended pike-wall-beats-lancer shape. Uses the word Lance as a capitalized weapon term, distinct from the retired "Lance" household usage (retired-mechanics, 2026-07-31; style-guide). [PLAYTEST] the Rend 2 value and a possible one-handed shield-and-lance variant.
Kit Integration with Character Creation¶
Every Character chooses a Kit free of cost at creation. Armor choice is a separate decision made at the same time, not tied to the Kit. A Character's starting XP (3 points) is spent on Bonded Companions, Named Weapons, or Class-specific Specialties, not on Kits.
Reconfiguring a Kit¶
Between fights, at rest, a Character may swap their Kit to a different one, using the same downtime window as an armor change. No XP is spent; the swap requires only time and narrative access to supplies. A Character isolated or in immediate danger cannot reconfigure until reaching safety.
Sidearms and backups¶
Every Character may carry one ordinary sidearm: a plain one-handed melee weapon such as a knife, hatchet, or short blade. A sidearm has no Kit perk. It is Range 1, deals the standard 1 damage per Hit, and carries none of the reactive, positional, or bonus effects a Kit grants. It exists only so that a Character whose main weapon is lost, stowed, or useless at the current range is never left with nothing.
Drawing, stowing, or swapping to the sidearm is a Free Interaction (core-rules, Part Five), the same as any weapon swap. This is what the Bow and Arrow and Pike drawbacks already assume: a crowded archer or pikeman drops the main weapon and fights on at Range 1 with the sidearm, giving up the reach or distance that defined the Kit but keeping a blade in hand. It is also how a Disarmed Character re-arms without stopping to retrieve the dropped weapon (core-rules, Part Eighteen, Disarm maneuver).
A sidearm is not a second Kit. It grants no perk and cannot be swapped to for a better perk mid-fight, which deliberately preserves the commit-to-one-loadout-per-fight design (see Reconfiguring a Kit above). A Character who wants to carry and switch between two full Kits, perks and all, buys the Second Loadout Specialty (universal-specialties.md).
Retainers do not carry sidearms. A Retainer has exactly its role's one loadout; the sidearm is a Character-only convenience. A Disarmed Retainer therefore contributes no die until re-armed or healed, exactly as core-rules Part Eight states.
Kit and Class Signatures¶
Kits grant small, positional, utility, or reactive perks. Class signatures (Combos, Mana, Favor, Focus) are where Characters differentiate in combat resolution. A Kit perk should never overlap with a Class's core read or replace a Class's signature system.
Notes on Rough Draft Perks¶
Kits marked [ROUGH DRAFT — not yet reviewed] were drafted against the design principles of Blitz Eternal but need playtesting and review before finalization. Expect refinement, mechanical clarification, and possible redesign.
Confirmed and ready for use: Sword-and-Shield (1), Twin Blades (2), Polearm (3), Bow and Arrow (4), and Pike (8). Everything else is draft.