Skirmisher Talent doubt

Conan: Adventures In an Age Undreamed Of
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Hello everyone, fresh of permissions to write, I take this opportunity to ask you how the skirmisher talent actually works, from Conan the mercenary’s manual.

I don’t really understand what he means by fighting in a team with another player, and what reactions he refers to that he would not lose, can you help me understand ???

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Normal: If you have a PC who can defend by using Reactions form a Squad with another character, assisting the PC’s actions, the PC loses the ability to perform Reactions.

Skirmisher Talent: If you have a PC who “buddies up” with another character, the PC still retains the ability to perform Reactions.

Individual PCs (and all Toughened and Nemesis type NPCs) can react to attacks or other events by generating Doom and performing a Reaction - which turns the opponent’s attack into a Struggle, an opposed type of action.

Example: NPC A, the attacker, slashes with his sword at PC B. As B is declared target of A’s attack, the player of B may declare to take a Defend Reaction against this attack. So A will roll Agility+Melee usually against a Difficulty 1. And the defending B will roll Coordination+Parry usually against a Difficulty 1. Both sides compare the amount of Momentum generated by the attack and the defense. Whoever has more Momentum wins and gets to keep the difference in Momentum to use for Momentum spends or to put into the Group Momentum pool.

If in the example above B would have been with character C in a Squad, B would normally not been able to perform a Reaction. So if attacker A succeeded in the Agility+Melee test, A would deal damage to B.
Squads are a special case of groups, having only a single turn, despite being made up of a number of characters. The advantage is, that on the offensive the other characters perform an Assist to the action of the leader of the Squad. The disadvantage is that a Squad just like a Mob of Minion NPCs does not get any Reactions.

The Skirmisher Talent allows for the special case of a character in a Squad with just one other character (as a kind of “buddy” team) to still retain the ability to perform Reactions. That makes a huge difference.

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Frank, I swear that Modiphius should have gotten you to write the CRB! It’s so much clearer when you explain things! :slightly_smiling_face:

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honestly I still don’t understand D:

Isn’t the team the prerogative of NPCs? Or does it refer to the PNGs that are with the character? Or do you mean when the characters use “collaborative” actions like NPC teams do to help the “Leader”?

Maybe I missed a piece somewhere (some manuals I haven’t read very well yet > _ <)

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A player character can create a Squad by leading allied Minion NPCs anytime.
Some are more regulated like having an animal companion Minion NPC forming a Squad with the PC.
There is sometimes a good reason to form a Squad as a PC to get better chances on the offensive, but at the cost of losing the ability for Reactions.
And the Skirmisher Talent allows for an exception to that in the case of having only one NPC as a “buddy” in a Squad while still retaining the ability for Reactions.

Of course, you will more often see NPC Mobs and Squads, as those NPC groupings allow for more dice on the offensive, giving weaker NPCs the ability to challenge the tougher PCs.

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Another way of stating it:

  • Normal: If you form into a squad you lose your ability to take any of the Reaction actions.
  • With Skirmisher Talent: If you form a squad with a single ally (who might be a minion, toughened, or another PC), then those characters with the Skirmisher Talent can still take Reaction actions (including Defend, where they might be protecting the squad member from attack).

Can you form a mob? No, because your character is Nemesis-level and so you always form squads.

Why do you want to form a squad? It might be because you have an animal companion who is good in combat (but too fragile to operate independently without severe risk of death), so you want it to give you an extra d20 which does not count toward your limit of 5d20. You might want the noble you’re protecting to form a squad with you so they act and move with you so you can Defend them.

Normally, NPC squads and mobs are formed of n people, where the leader (either a Toughened/Nemesis character, which means it’s a squad) or one of the mob (meaning they’re all minions) gets to benefit from the aid dice of the n-1 members.

  • 5-man minion mob; one is acting as leader (and would normally roll 2d20 for their base die pool; but this is a minion, so the “leader” only gets 1d20. The other 4 act as assistants and donate 4d20 to the “leader’s” roll, for a total of 5d20, to which the GM can add more d20’s from various means, most commonly Doom.
  • 5-man toughened+minions squad; toughened character is leader (and rolls 2d20); the others add their 1d20 each for a 6d20 base die pool (which again can be added to).
  • These die pools can be added to because they don’t count toward the normal 5d20 limit as they’re assistance from other characters. This is very important to understand and makes mobs and squads a touch more effective. They will still get clobbered by a melee-oriented group of PCs (primarily because they have worse target numbers and usually only 1 or 2 “focus” [Fields of Expertise act as both expertise and focus for NPCs] but also because they don’t have Talents), but it makes them more effective at first.
  • Finally, a group of PCs can assist one another with various tasks and I mention this here because those assistance dice also don’t count toward the limit of 5d20 from the acting character.
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ok, I understand everything now :smiley: thanks to all