I am halfway through writing up my own version of this post, but was going to try doing something unusual, a 500+ point scout who favors a staff-sling or heavy sling, as that featured prominently in my FnordCon5 Meatgrinder scenario, and I wanted to see what could be done there. It ran into several rules questions, which actually became politely contentious in one of the discussion groups I was in, so it took a back seat to other work.

Nonetheless, frequent contributor and playtester Kalzazz wanted to take a stab at it, so here is his version. I’ve wrapped some structure around the post, but it’s basically his thoughts as he uses Delvers to Grow to put together his scout. Kal is template-averse, so the format of the book is pretty much his worst nightmare in terms of efficient character generation. For me, Delvers is perfect, and the thing that takes me the longest is writing about it. To each their own.

So…with that in mind…let’s make a half-ogre scout!

The Basics

Going to make a 600pt Scout, so, having played archers in DFRPG before, I want some skill but I am not so worried about a ton of it, as every time you can shoot something at range in the eye you will fight a pudding at 3 paces. No, what you really want is to hit like a truck! Also, you have no Prediction Shot, so Extra Attack is super nice to. So that is what I want.

Step 1 – skim Fast Delvers to see if it contains anything Cannot Live Without! Rune-carved is pretty nice if you expect to see the character actually get played a lot, and I love Erika’s art, but nothing seems real applicable to my Scout.

Step 2 – On to Delvers to Grow! Master Scout. We have 20 weapon skills we put into Bow, 2 secondary weapon into Broadsword.

Scout bundle 1, a whole bunch of stuff we don’t care about and 1 pt in Fast draw arrow. Most bizarrely no Traps. I would totally drop Navigation or Camouflauge for Traps.
Scout Bundle 2, we get Heroic Archer! And Scout Bundle 2 gives us 8 more points on Bow! And we get Traps! YAY TRAPS! And a bunch more stuff who cares.

Now we need disads. So we need an idea for the character. Okay, the character is going to be like Artillery, so say military (theres no super status stuff in DFRPG so we say they are a Colonel! Colonel and sole Member of the 77th Mountain Battery (I picked survival mountain).

Lets look at disads!

Old Soldier seems great for a Veteran! For Hajarl and Country! Nothing else really jump’s out, but we’ll go Fortune’s Fool as Soldier of Fortune and could be fun! I am not going to worry about the individual components I am writing them down as 25pt lumps as that is good enough for government work and DFRPG as far as I’m concerned.

The character now also has a name! Artie.

Two modules!

Archery Specialist is a no brainer. Strongbow, Weapon Master Bow, 4 more for +1 Bow
No character should be without Luck, so Favored by Fate. We pick Luck, Will +1 (saving throws good) and Basic Move 1 (move and attack good).

I have entered everything in and am at 187 points! This has NEVER happened to me with templates before, so Kudos to Doug and Kevin on this being easy to follow.

Step 3 module time!

Module 1 goes to Race.
Let’s look at Nordlondr Folk. We want something beefy to hit those damage breakpoints we need 27 effective ST, we get 2 from Strongbow, we can get an elven weapon for 2, and that leaves us wanting 23.

• Himneskur could do it if we buy Striking ST
• Dragon blooded the same
• Triger folk the same
• Boarfolk (my favorite!) the same! Boarfolk can also get 30 HP!
• Bearfolk to!
• And the old but boring half ogres can as well, but without Striking ST. Half Ogres can rack some sweet DR in Nordlond Folk

Boring as it is, Half Ogre seems best, and its only 20. 5 goes on slush pile. ST is now 15.

You know what, we aren’t Artillery, we are thinking Tank, able to move, able to hit things at range, ability to take the hit! Our name is now Matilda instead of Artie in honor of the early tank!

We just dropped all our IQ skills a notch, next time, take a race FIRST.

Our ST is 15, we want it to be 23, so 4 levels of Brute-ish, that gets us to 23 and Striking ST capped at +2, so we convert further 10 to +1 ST total. We are at 24.

312 point character. This is looking grim.

We want Fight Faster definitely, and we want Favored by Fate 2 for 30 luck! We take Move and Luck and Will again.

Up to 362.
There is no Combat Reflexes option? I would want Combat Reflexes to add to Fast Draw and Defenses.

So a new power up!

Seen the Elephant!

You have seen action before and you didn’t die! Can only be taken once.

• Attributes: HT +1 [10]
• Advantages: Combat Reflexes [15]

We are at 387 points. Ugh.

What modules are available now?

• Acrobat, not for Scout.
• Archery Specialist, already have.
• Backstab Artist, not for Scout.
• Brute-ish – maxed.
• Cat Burglar – not for Scout
• Chi Mastery – not for Scout
• Faster Delver – possibility!
• Favored by Fate – neither Danger Sense or Peripheral Vision hugely appeals, but possibility
• Fight Faster – capped
• Finesse Fighter – does not make any sense
• Fixer and Fixer II – not for Scout
• Fortified Chi – not for Scout
• Ghost – Maybe
• Not Left Handed – not for Scout
• Punter – not for Scout
• Quick – I guess
• Street Rat – not for Scout
• Throwing Artist – not for Scout
• Unarmed Focus – not for Scout
• Wilderness Guide – it is for Scout, but I don’t want it
• Witty Duelist – not for Scout

Let’s take 7 more levels of Faster Delver, we now have 20 DX, 14 HT so Speed 8.5. Kromm has stated its always good karma to round so we spend 10 to crank speed to 9. We are allowed as a Scout to have move +6, so we are at move 15 (our Sprint is +3!).
We refund 5 points to slush.
We refund our 2 move from Favored by Fate over to Per instead, since we are a scout.

Up to 572

We’ve made it to 572 (admittedly 10 of that is slush) without compromising our core concept, so pretty good, but now I am stuck.

Matilda really needs more HP to get to 30, but otherwise she feels pretty complete, maybe some more HT or Will to resist stuff, and since she has high DX why not more DX skills maybe. Definitely Acrobatics. As a Scout scrounging to recover arrows is nice. She could expand her weapon master and buy more melee skill, she can wield a greatsword as a broadsword and deals 5d base damage so that’s something, but melee weapon so goes against our core concept. Unarmed skills, eh, she could use brawling to punch with her bow maybe, but honestly at 600 points I don’t see that resulting in anything other than symbolic gestures.

Also needs quirks and so on, but overall good to go.

Gear wise she needs a bow and the heaviest armor she can afford. Really, with 24 ST she can handle epic plate and a bow and still be unencumbered!

Took around 3 hours give or take, but I am far from a DtGr expert and I find templates to utterly ruin my ability to accomplish things, so I am not the best at it.

Gaming Ballistic’s Parting Shot

Despite it not being his idiom, Kal took a Scout with a racial package to about 575 points. Again, we find that somewhere about 150 points north of the “professional” template that is the 250-point scout, we start to run out of things that are core to the concept.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, in that in-campaign growth is supposed to be organic and piecemeal, rather than plunking down 25 points at a time on modules. The goal of Delvers to Grow is to make character generation fast, and minimize the number of choices required to get to the table and play.

Using this method for characters verging on super-heroes works – to a point – but at some point, larger upgrade modules (similar to Just That Good from Action 4: Specialists) might be needed. For Holy Abilities and other advantage/power-based purchases, these can get expensive fast, so something like them are needed.

I’ll return to my staff-slinger/heavy-slinger scout at a later time.