Heroic abilities list
These new heroic abilities can be made available to Knights so they can reflect their heroic prowess and their status as future legendary figures. This would be true regardless of what meta-armour they wear or their position in Avalon’s hierarchy
Heroic abilities in Avalon can be activated by spending a number of heroism points. A PC can only activate one heroic ability per scene or conflict phase.
This list of abilities includes a number of technical elements, such as the category, the experience points to be spent to acquire the ability and the number of heroic points to be used to activate it once it has been learned.
As with modules, these are necessary gameplay requirements, but a player should describe what their character is doing when they use one of their heroic abilities. Even if the ability’s description is succinct, the player should always have an idea of how the Knight is using it and what shape it takes in practice. The ‘Relentless Command’ ability, for instance, grants allied characters an additional combat action each turn. The player activating it might describe their character taking position at the front of the battle, yelling clear, precise orders to their banner and other allies. A player activating the ‘Combo + 1’ ability, adding a third characteristic to their combo actions, must explain how the added characteristic modifies their actions, in addition to describing their actions as usual. In short, the GM should ensure that the PCs add flavour to their actions according to the abilities they choose to use.
Finally, abilities are classified into different broad groups: general, combat, investigation and social interaction. These groups help players to find their way around the list and to know when to trigger an ability.
Name | Category | XP | Heroism | Description |
---|---|---|---|---|
Combo + 1 | General | 10 | 2 | The PC may add an additional characteristic to each of their combos. Combos are usually performed with two characteristics, so this ability allows them to add a third one when determining the number of dice they roll on a check. |
Combo + 2 | General | 20 | 5 | The PC may add two additional characteristics to each of their combos. Combos are usually performed with two characteristics, so this ability allows them to add a third and fourth ones when determining the number of dice they roll on a check. |
Art of war | Combat | 10 | 2 | Each of a Knight’s melee and ranged attacks hit all brute, badass, or boss type enemies in range. The Knight must choose one type of enemy each time they perform an attack. |
Eagle eye | Combat | 20 | 3 | The Knight ignores penalties for firing beyond their ranged weapon’s usual range, up to far range. For each success beyond the target’s reaction score, they add 3 points to the damage they inflict on a brute, a badass, a behemoth, or a boss (or 3 points to their violence when attacking a band). This heroic ability stacks with additional damage from the assisted aim weapon effect. |
Fell blows | Combat | 20 | 4 | When the Knight attacks with a melee weapon, they do not roll for damage. Instead, they deal the maximum amount of damage they could have rolled on each of their dice. A 3D6 damage roll, for instance, automatically becomes 18 points of damage. In addition to the maximum damage on the dice, all damage bonuses from a Knight’s weapon (or combat module), their characteristics, their overdrives, and their damage-granting modules are added as normal. |
Predator and prey | Combat | 10 | 1 | The Knight and all their allies receive one automatic success on all their attack rolls, both ranged and combat based, against all enemies in a scene or combat phase. In addition, all enemies are considered to be holo-targeted (the holo-targeting automatic success stacks with that provided by this ability) |
Relentless commander | Combat | 30 | 5 | The Knight grants their allies (but not themselves) an additional combat action (ranged or melee) during each turn of the conflict phase. |
Wrath of the righteous | Combat | 20 | 3 | When the Knight attacks a band in melee or at range, they do not roll for violence. Instead, they deal the maximum amount of violence they could have rolled on each of their dice. A 3D6 violence roll, for instance, automatically becomes 18 points of violence. In addition to the maximum violence on the dice, all violence bonuses from a Knight’s weapon (or combat module), their overdrives, and their violencegranting modules are added as normal. |
Bloodhound | Investigation | 10 | 2 | When a Knight they can use this ability when they absolutely needs to track an NPC that they can see. By following subtle clues, the Knight always finds their NPC quarry’s trail. If the GM considers it necessary, they can ask for skill checks of simple to arduous difficulty to represent the time the Knight has to spend tracking down their prey. This can range from minutes to days, but they inevitably find their mark. |
Expert investigator | Investigation | 10 | 2 | The Knight’s Acuity and Instinct based skill checks receive 3 automatic successes. |
Local intelligence | Investigation | 10 | 3 | The GM must provide the Knights with detailed floor plans of their location, if possible. Once activated, this ability applies only to one floor. The GM should include any hidden rooms and potential threats, such as characters or security systems, on the plan they provide. |
Unerring instinct | Investigation | 20 | 5 | The Knight instinctively senses the location of a room or place nearby that contains useful clues pertaining to their investigations. If a scenario isn’t supposed to have any clues, GMs must create some from scratch, steering the Knights towards the rest of the mission by way of a hidden document or a helpful NPC, for example. |
Knight's majesty | Social | 10 | 2 | The Knight’s Eloquence and Aura based skill checks receive 3 automatic successes. |
Rousing speech | Social | 20 | 5 | By making a particularly stirring speech, the Knight can drag people who are around them back from despair, as well as those on the cusp of it. Anyone who hears the speech automatically recovers 1D6 Hope points plus the Aura score of the Knight using this ability. Hopeless who hear the speech suffer an automatic ray of hope effect. In addition, the difficulty of skill checks for any NPC affected by ray of hope is decreased by one difficulty level. Finally, any band of hopeless who hear the speech can also make an arduous difficulty skill check to regain hope, just like a hostile type hopeless under the ray of hope effect. If the test is successful, a wave of hope ripples through the band and its members gradually recover from their folly. This neutralises the band, who are no longer considered a threat to the Knights. |