Crossing Borders, Part 3

(Read part 1 here. Read part 2 here.)

So far, I’ve looked at Garregwen, my wood elf Battle Master, strictly as a high fantasy character. What if we jump genres? Let’s start with a smaller jump, to Court of Blades, a low fantasy, Renaissance-intrigue hack of Blades in the Dark. Garregwen fits into this setting and system with a minimum of mashing. She’s not a perfect match for the Bravo playbook—flashy, she most definitely is not—but she’s close enough, and no other playbook suits her better. Her wood elf lineage can be recast as a coming of age in the wild forests of Calrais, and her background is, of course, military. These origins suggest dots in Maneuver (traversing the woods) and Survey (alertness to threats), which combine with the dots she gets in Maneuver and Skirmish from the Bravo playbook to represent her canonical strengths. Her remaining two dots can go into Skulk and Command, reflecting her skills in stealth, tactics and intimidation.

Starting out, her special ability will be Honor Guard, so that she can carry her long weapon without anyone batting an eye; it also happens to fit nicely with her backstory. As she advances, House Guard and Gap in the Armor will be fine follow-up picks. Her membership in the Harpers can be translated into belonging to a coterie in the service of either House Lovell or House Bastien. The Fine Dread Blade her playbook confers upon her is, of course, her glaive, and the Fine Courtly Blade is her shortsword.

And her indulgence? I’ve never thought of her as a particularly self-indulgent character, but her D&D character sheet points her in one possible direction: She carries a dice set. Therefore, in Court of Blades, her indulgence might be gambling—although, given her origins as a faction agent, obligation would work well, too. She isn’t sorry to have deserted, but on some level, she might feel the need to absolve herself.

Intrigue doesn’t come naturally for a direct, no-nonsense character like Garregwen—in Court of Blades, “Rocheclaire.” She’ll probably spend most of the information-gathering phase in the background, eyeballing locations or perhaps backing up the Key or the Couth as they question their sources. Where she’ll shine is in the errand phase, when quick movement and decisive action are called for—or when the coterie needs someone to delay pursuit while the other members slip away. Very often, she’ll act as a support character, protecting or setting up teammates. On a discreet errand, she’ll typically carry her glaive or her sword along with a couple of throwing knives; going out loaded, she’ll wear armor.

Rocheclaire “the Glaive”

House Lovell
Look Bronze skin; wavy, dark brown hair in pixie cut; nondescript cloak over armor and livery
Indulgence Obligation
Background Military
Heritage Calrais

Contacts

Feng, a bladesmith (friend)
Ari, a childhood rival (rival)

Special Armor

Resist a complication related to physical obstacles or being outnumbered for you and your coterie (that you are present for)

Special Abilities

Honor Guard Your formal training allows you the privilege of wearing your weapons openly anywhere, without repercussion. When commanding others to act or stand fast, take +1d.

Actions

•⸰⸰⸰ Skulk
••⸰⸰ Maneuver
••⸰⸰ Skirmish
⸰⸰⸰⸰ Wreck

⸰⸰⸰⸰ Tinker
⸰⸰⸰⸰ Study
•⸰⸰⸰ Survey
⸰⸰⸰⸰ Hunt

⸰⸰⸰⸰ Channel
•⸰⸰⸰ Command
⸰⸰⸰⸰ Consort
⸰⸰⸰⸰ Sway

On this character sheet, the main focus is on what kind of approach Garre— excuse me, Rocheclaire takes toward the work of her coterie. Her primary strengths are covering distance quickly and skillfully and engaging targets in combat without having to apply overwhelming force. Her secondary strengths are moving carefully to avoid notice, observing situations and anticipating outcomes, and compelling obedience. But we also know a bit about what kind of person she is from her choice of house, her heritage, her background and her means of indulgence. It’s not as fine-grained a picture as D&D provides, but it is well-rounded. It tells us where she’s powerful … and where she’s vulnerable.

But now let’s reach a little further. Orbital Blues is a gritty “space Western”—and it becomes clear quickly that there’s no good way to import Garregwen into it. It’s certainly not that there’s no analogy for the kind of person she is. There’s plenty of room in the setting for someone who used to provide protection to government dignitaries, had a personality conflict with a superior, walked off the job and now does work for an underground information-gathering organization. But Orbital Blues has certain constraints on character creation, and Garregwen doesn’t fit within them without fundamentally changing who she is.

For starters, PCs in Orbital Blues have three core stats. That’s not a problem; the Cypher System is the same. But Cypher’s three stats are Might, Speed and Intellect, which describe Garregwen just fine: She’s above average in the first two and average in the third. Orbital Blues, on the other hand, has Muscle, Grit and Savvy, and this is where the difficulties arise, for two reasons.

First, these don’t map well onto Garregwen’s ability contour. If we read Muscle as Strength, her score should be high—but the rules define it as “the strength of your arm and the bulk under your jacket.” Garregwen is 5-foot-3 and 108 pounds (that’s 160 cm and 49 kg for those of you who use a civilized system of measurement). That ain’t bulky. Her Muscle score, then, should be somewhere in the middle. Grit is part willpower, part courage, part decisiveness and part poker face. She doesn’t have much of a poker face, but she has the rest in spades, so Grit is clearly her 2-point stat, right? But Savvy “represents attributes based around both physical and mental agility.” It encompasses dexterity, which Garregwen has tons of. But it also encompasses intelligence and charisma, in which she’s much more ordinary. She’s quick, resourceful and observant, but not charismatic or unusually clever.

And that brings us to the second problem: “Player characters tend to be very good at one thing, pretty good at another and average at a third.” That might be true of Garregwen if the three things you were looking at were Physical, Mental and Social, but it’s not true if the things you’re looking at are Muscle, Grit and Savvy. To square this circle, we’re going to have to alter our mental picture of our ex-soldier. Probably she comes from a future in which melee weapons have receded in importance as firearms have moved to the fore, so raw physical strength is no longer as important to her job. Thus, her Muscle will more closely reflect her fit-but-not-pumped physique and receive the +0. Her devouring eye and rapid reflexes are going to get averaged together with her standoffishness and lack of interest in abstractions to give her +1 to Savvy, a number with some big error bars on it that Orbital Blues’ system files off. And even her +2 in Grit feels like a bit of an exaggeration, since a key event in her backstory is her giving up on a stable and prestigious job simply because she found her superior intolerably annoying. If she really had so much Grit, couldn’t she have stuck it out? If we’re honest, her scores should be something like Muscle +0.75, Grit +1.5, Savvy +2/+0.5 (reaction and intuition vs. intellect and charisma). In short, Orbital Blues’ stats can’t describe her.

There’s also no Trouble that reflects the actual nature of her struggle, which is that she’s a person who’s very good at one thing … but not good at working within the kind of organization that employs people to do that one thing. In Too Deep comes closest, but it’s more geared toward someone who’s ashamed of what they had to do in a past job. The only problem Garregwen has with the things she was asked to do as a special agent is that more than half the time she thought the orders her commanding officer was giving her didn’t make any freaking sense. (She would not have used the word “freaking.”) At the same time, it’s not quite right to give her Brick in the Wall (“Just a normal, well-functioning person. No Angst. No Trauma. Nothing”). If she were normal and well-functioning, she wouldn’t be wanted for desertion. Nor is she a Reluctant Vagabond, since she doesn’t miss her old life at all. Other Trouble options require either injecting new, previously unimagined events into her backstory or inflating insignificant personality quirks, such as liking to bet on a dice game once in a while, into full-blown pathologies. Meanwhile, several Gambits fit her pretty well, but it’s hard to choose just one of them at the expense of the others, and Orbital Blues allows only one to start with.

An irony here is that Cypher, a genreless system, could integrate a character like Garregwen into a space Western setting seamlessly simply by describing her as “a Sharp-Eyed Warrior who Masters Weaponry”—just give her a carbine instead of a glaive, a longcoat instead of a cloak and lightweight level III body armor instead of elven chainmail, then put her on a spaceship. But that would be forfeiting the unique mechanics that Orbital Blues incorporates for telling a particular kind of story about fortune and misfortune, trauma and recovery, failure and redemption. Unfortunately, not every character we can imagine gets to play a part in that story.

Coming full circle, what happens when we convert Garregwen, a fifth edition D&D character created under the 2014 rules, to the 2024 rules?

We get this:

Garregwen

Wood Elf Battle Master Fighter (level 4), Soldier background, Chaotic Good

Armor Class 17 (Chain Mail)
Hit Points 36
Speed 35 feet

Skills Athletics +4, Insight +3, Intimidation +2, Perception +3, Persuasion +2, Survival +3
Tools Dice, Leatherworker’s Tools
Senses Darkvision 60 ft., Passive Perception 13
Languages Common, Draconic, Elvish

Action Surge (1/Short or Long Rest). Garregwen can take one additional action on her turn, except the Magic action.

Alert. When Garregwen rolls Initiative, she can add her Proficiency Bonus to the roll. Immediately after she rolls Initiative, she can swap her Initiative with the Initiative of one willing ally in the same combat. She can’t make this swap if she or the ally has the Incapacitated condition.

Combat Superiority (4/Short or Long Rest). Garregwen can use a Maneuver fueled by a d8 Superiority Die.

Fey Ancestry (Wood Elf). Garregwen has Advantage on saving throws to avoid or end the Charmed condition.

Fighting Style (Defense). While wearing Light, Medium or Heavy armor, Garregwen gains +1 to AC.

Maneuvers. Garregwen can expend a Superiority Die to use one of the following maneuvers:

• Commander’s Strike. When Garregwen takes the Attack action on her turn, she can replace one of her attacks to direct one of her companions to strike. When she does so, she chooses a willing creature who can see or hear her and expends one Superiority Die. That creature can immediately use its Reaction to make one attack with a weapon or an Unarmed Strike, adding the Superiority Die to the attack’s damage roll on a hit.
• Distracting Strike. When Garregwen hits with a weapon attack, she can expend one Superiority Die and add the die roll to the attack’s damage roll. The next attack roll against the target by an attacker other than her has Advantage if the attack is made before the start of her next turn.
• Trip Attack. When Garregwen hits with a weapon attack, she can expend one Superiority Die and add the total to the damage roll. If the target is Large or smaller, it must make a DC 12 Strength saving throw. On a failure, the target is knocked prone.

Trance (Wood Elf). Garregwen doesn’t need to sleep, and magic can’t put her to sleep. She can finish a Long Rest in 4 hours if she spends those hours in a trancelike meditation, during which she retains consciousness.

Tactical Mind. When Garregwen fails an ability check, she can expend a use of her Second Wind to roll 1d10 and add the number rolled to the ability check, potentially turning it into a success. If the check still fails, this use of Second Wind isn’t expended.

Weapon Mastery. Garregwen can use the mastery properties of four Simple or Martial weapons of her choice. Whenever she finishes a Long Rest, she can practice weapon drills and change one of those weapon choices.

Actions

Glaive. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 10 ft., 1d10 + 2 slashing damage, Graze.

Shortsword. Melee Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., 1d6 + 2 slashing damage, Vex.

Handaxe. Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft. or range 20/60 ft., 1d6 + 2 slashing damage, Vex.

Spellcasting. Garregwen casts one of the following spells, requiring no material components and using Wisdom as the spellcasting ability (DC 11):

At will: Druidcraft

1/day: Longstrider

Bonus Actions

Pole Strike (Polearm Master). Immediately after Garregwen takes the Attack action and attacks with a Quarterstaff, a Spear or a weapon that has the Heavy and Reach properties, she can use a Bonus Action to make a melee attack with the opposite end of the weapon. The weapon deals Bludgeoning Damage, and the weapon’s damage die for this attack is a d4.

Second Wind (3/Long Rest). Garregwen can regain 1d10 + 4 hp. She regains one expended use of this Bonus Action when she finishes a Short Rest.

Reactions

Reactive Strike (Polearm Master). While Garregwen is holding a Quarterstaff, a Spear or a weapon that has the Heavy and Reach properties, she can take a Reaction to make one melee attack against a creature that enters the reach she has with that weapon.

This character is not the same person. She bears a strong resemblance to Garregwen, but she’s not Garregwen.

First off, she can no longer gain proficiency in Stealth. It’s not as though she makes extensive use of it, but it’s handy for getting close enough to an enemy to take decisive action and catch them by surprise, especially in conjunction with Mask of the Wild. But she also no longer has Mask of the Wild; that feature is gone from the game. Instead, because of how her species and subclass work, she has proficiency in Insight and Persuasion (the alternatives were Acrobatics, Animal Handling or History, which suit her even less). These forced differences are already producing a character with a significantly altered personality.

5E24’s species rules have conferred upon her the ability to cast spells. Despite being an elf, Garregwen is resolutely nonmagical. She’s a fighter. She doesn’t cast spells. Given the ability to do so, she still wouldn’t. So this feature is one that, if we’re being true to her character, she’ll possess but never use.

Another feature she’ll possess but never use is the ability to change her weapon masteries after a good night’s trance. Her weapon masteries are her identity. She’d find the idea of being able to change them with a daily training drill offensive.

Because of changes to language selection, she can no longer speak Sylvan: It’s a Rare Language, and she can choose only Standard Languages, of which she must choose two aside from Common. Other than Elvish, she has exactly zero basis in her backstory as I’ve conceived it for her to choose any other language on the list, so I’m stuck with rolling for it randomly. It comes up Draconic. Sure, whatever. I have no idea why, but she speaks Draconic now.

I’ve taken a bit of a liberty, giving her the Alert Origin feat. Going strictly by the rules as laid out in the Player’s Handbook, she ought to have Savage Attacker, from her Soldier background. But the Dungeon Master’s Guide, in “Creating a Background” (chapter 3), permits a Dungeon Master (not a player!) to assign an Origin feat of their choice to a background. I’m positing that my DM will grant me this dispensation and allow me to choose a feat I would have wanted to take—and, in fact, can’t take any other way anymore—over one that I haven’t considered worth taking before now.

As for Garregwen’s former Personality, Ideal, Bond and Flaw, which did so much to shape her in 5E14, in 5E24 I’m merely asked to “think about” or “ask [my]self” what kind of person she is and what kind of life she’s led, without any further guidance, and either fit as much of that as possible into a 2¼-by-1¾-inch “Backstory and Personality” box on her character sheet or record it in a cute spiral notebook, sold separately. I can try to hold onto what I know about her from before, but it’s hard to reconcile much of it with the alterations that the 5E24 character creation process has necessitated. She’s slipping away and becoming vague. She might as well be a simulacrum created by an oblex.

Like Orbital Blues, 5E24 is an engine for telling a particular kind of story about particular kinds of characters—in 5E24’s case, wild high fantasy paragons—and not every character we can imagine gets to play a part in that story. I can play 5E24, or I can play Garregwen. I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Garregwen.