Optional Variants¶
Blitz Eternal: Adventures Beyond the Mists — v0.1 Draft¶
Rules that are deliberately not part of the core game, collected for tables that want them. Each entry states what it changes, why it was kept out of core, and what it costs to run.
Nothing here is assumed by any other document. A table that ignores this file entirely is playing the game as designed.
Variant: Bond Bought Back With Blood¶
Changes: Retainer mortality, and the value of Bond.
A Retainer at Bond 3 or higher may survive a killing blow once. When they do, their Bond drops by one level. The Retainer stands, wounded but alive, and the relationship is the thing that paid for it.
Why this is not core. Bond is a paid investment. Raising one Retainer from Bond 0 to Bond 4 costs 10 Advancement Points, more than a Named Weapon, a Guild entry, and a Skill combined. Under this variant, a player who spent real points on a soldier has part of that purchase erased at the exact moment it was meant to pay off. That conflicts with the game's general principle that Advancement purchases are durable.
It was also a cleaner idea under the older, automatic Bond ladder, where Bond levels arrived through play rather than being bought. The mechanic did not survive Bond becoming a purchase; the fiction of it survived fine.
What it is good for. A grimmer table. Campaigns where the household is meant to be worn down rather than built up. GMs running a long war rather than a quest, where losing ground is the texture.
Running it. State it before the campaign begins, not after a Retainer is about to die. Retroactive adoption reads as the GM saving a favored NPC.
Interaction to watch. Dropping from Bond 2 to Bond 1 costs that Retainer their Distinguished status and their eligibility as the player's fallback character if their own Character Falls (core-rules, Part Twelve). Decide in advance whether the growth-menu pick bought at that Bond level is also lost. The recommendation is that it is not; the Retainer keeps what they learned and loses only the standing.