Being a fighter/venturer hybrid with a Eastern Viking flavor.
http://wanderinggamist.blogspot.com/2015/09/acks-class-varangian.html
Good stuff. I’d absolutely play this.
The “3 month irrevocable favor” deserves a bolded name - I don’t think that’s part of anything else?
I think there needs to be an effort to collect all these custom powers somewhere, like we did for the classes earlier.
One of the strengths of AKCS:PC is how you can take almost any generic feature, wrap some flavor text around it, and come away with something that feels completely different - this is obviously a fighting venturer, but the writeup makes it something completely different.
And it validates my “2F-1H-1T makes the best classes” theory.
And-and, speaking of Varangian, there’s a 50-issue comic series called “Northlanders” that’s both really good and very ACKSy - there’s domain management in there and everything!
This will replace the venturer in my games from now on.
Mm, I wasn’t counting the 3 month favor as a separate power; my players are not particularly generous masters to their henchmen, so it’s not something we’ve ever had come up! Intended as flavor and a minor differentiator.
I am glad that it is received that way! I’m still not sure Fighting 2 / HD 1 / Thief 1 is the best (I’m partial to Arcane 4 myself :P) but it’s certainly a solid and versatile base for multi-focus classes.
May have to take a look at that! Thanks for the link.
Huzzah! My players reacted pretty similarly; “I would think about playing that as a PC, but I already have a PC I like so I will try to acquire one as a henchman instead.”
I can’t say I much care for the Venturer class. THIS, however, is awesome. Have you had a chance to playtest it much?
The 3-month thing may only qualify as half-a-power? I can see it only giving a big advantage when you’re in a circumstance when you really need to lean on your vassals for something like troops or the like.
Over-analyzing it a bit I could see where it would tempt abuse between different favors/duties; the Judge would have to weigh things out to see when a ‘gift’ is really a ‘gift’. (for example, the ‘tax demanded’ and ‘gift’ entries cancel each other out; a gift and tax lasting 3 months gains the liege lord profit)
Appropriate that you would comment on this, since Harald Sigurdson, called Hardrada, was a Varangian in the 1030s.
My current party has one varangian henchwoman. So far she’s been pretty overshadowed by the rest of the party’s melee (due both to being the lowest level member of the party and rolling really poorly for HP), but she hit 3rd yesterday and rolled well for HP, and they’re preparing for a couple of wilderness adventures soon, which will mean broader fronts than the 2-man-wide dungeon phalanx. I expect she’ll actually see some action sooner than later. The market class bonus hasn’t been useful yet (surprising, since their primary market is class V) because they haven’t been buying much, and bribery hasn’t come up yet but might once they leave the sparsely-inhabited highlands. Amusingly, Seafaring and Navigation, the two “potential dud” class powers, are likely to be useful in the next couple of sessions.
Overall my player whose hench she is seems pretty happy with the class.