Something that’s been on my mind bugging me for a few weeks now. I briefly mentioned it in the Wave 8 errata thread but recent conversations made me want to make this it’s own topic here. And that’s “What is a Presence Skill?”
On page 28 under Action:Use Expertise there’s a callout to Skill: Presence which says:
Presence may be used to inspire or intimidate
others, using abilities detailed on their unit cards.
To Use the Presence skill:
- A model must not be engaged, and
- The target must be within the color of the
model’s Presence icon.
In addition to the bullets in the rules there are two more inferred:
- since it’s under Action: Expertise it takes an action to use.
- since it’s a Skill it takes a dice roll
So what could be Presence based skills for this action?
On unit cards there are lots of Abilities that aren’t auras but only work within presence range (none of these have the aura icon and are just some random abilities I pulled from newer and older cards to have a spread):
Elder Lyons Inspiring
During activation may give up to 2 friendly Brotherhood of Steel Models withing presence ready tokens if they do not currently have ready tokens.
Scribe Rothchild’s Teacher
Friendly Brotherhood of Steel models within Presence may use Scribe Rothechild’s INT on Computers.
Three Dogs Broadcast
Other Friendly models within three dogs presence gain green dice in CHA skill checks
Gunner Commander’s Tactician
Other Gunners within Presence Not counted when Calculating Advantage
Mr Tims Rousing
Can remove one stun from 1 other unit within presence
Centurion’s By Example
If friendly Legionary or Decanus within presence Centurions melee + green dice
Elder Maxsion’s Command:
Once Per activation may spend 1 action for 1 unengaged friendly model within presence to preform that action instead.
Vault Security Officer: Vault Protector:
immune to Battle Cry if model with Vault Dweller faction on card (not self) within presence.
Right now the community treats all of those abilities as free actions. But they meet the brief definition of the Skill: Presence. Which is: “an ability detailed on their unit card that uses presence”. But there’s a wide Varity of abilities that use presence and several I listed above would be useless if treated as a Skill: Presence while still meeting the RAW definition (which is, to be fair, rather vague).
Lets start with Mister Tims. His ability is he can remove a stun marker from another model within Presence range.
A question was asked a while ago on him in this forum:
Mr. Tims & Rousing - when can it be used, and how often? - Fallout: Wasteland Warfare - Rules Questions - Modiphius Forums
And it was ruled he can use his ability once per activation and on Friendly models but, to me, if this isn’t a presence skill I don’t know what is? You’re actively removing a status token from another unit at presence range by “yelling at them”, and it meets all the criteria as RAW. Right now people treat this as once per activation bonus action as per page 14 (see below) though.
what about Gunner Commander’s Tactician which also is a non-aura presence based ability to just not count units for Advantage? It seams like, to me, that it should take an action and skill roll for that ability as RAW which would render the ability useless. Same could be said about Vault Security Officer. They’re included more as the opposite end of the spectrum as while they have a presence icon there’s no implied action unlike Mr Tims.
Then we have the presence abilities that call out that they use an action, like Lyons and Maxon. These abilities do make sense to be unengaged to use and a skill roll wouldn’t be out of place (though would greatly weaken the appeal of the figures). So are these presence skills?
Lastly we have the ability share or bonus dice abilities. Do those require a roll to grant for the round? It kind of makes sense they could, die rolls to help/share skills isn’t uncommon in RPGs and boardgames, but these are also written like they’re aura abilities without the icon (I did bring this up in the errata thread) so they’re likely typos.
Is Skill: Presence just an unused part of the game?
This is my feeling for Rules as Played right now for FWW is that section on page 28 is just not used anywhere in core FWW and all these abilities are part of the extra actions covered on page 14:
When Used, a model can perform up to TWO main
Actions. These can be any mixture of those below –
including performing the same Action twice – plus
any specific Actions a model has access to due to
their abilities or equipment
So everything is just an extra bonus action I listed above and that’s how the game is played even if it may not be as written. But it seams strange to me that there’s an unused/forgotten action/skill type in the core book.