Hey Guys, Let's Annoy the Witch Cat: Bounty Hunters Design Diary Part II

Yesterday, in an effort to keep the blog from being empty and giving the impression that I'm not busy behind the scenes, I unveiled some of my thoughts on making an interesting and rather tailored challenge for a character who took Bounty Hunters as an enemy.  The point, of course, is not to single him out for having the temerity to take the Enemy disadvantage, but to use his Enemy disadvantage as a spring board to create some interesting NPCs, because I expect you'll want to feature Bounty Hunters in your campaigns too, and why not have some ready, on-hand ones, even if these are rather specific.

But not every game is D&D, and even D&D doesn't really benefit from making every single encounter as lethal as possible.  Yes, we can treat Bounty Hunters as random Boss encounters, but  we don't have to.  An encounter, especially with something as "random" as a broad and general group of ill-defined enemies, offers us opportunities to explore and reveal some things about the setting.  Not every enemy needs to be lethal.  Some can really suck.  A weak opponent not only reveals something about the world, but makes the game feel less like a mechanical series of ever more difficult encounters and more like a real world to interact with.  And an inept enemy creates an interesting set of choices.  Sure, you could just, you know, kill them, but are you the sort of person who would do that? Or you can leave them alive to threaten you further and eventually they might get lucky.  Or you can try to talk them out of killing you.  But suddenly, you have a more interesting set of choices beyond just "kill or be killed."

So, I propose we introduce a bounty hunter or, actually, a team of bounty hunters that isn't constructed to be a thoroughly dangerous opponent, but an interesting NPC encounter that happens to involve a strong desire to kill you. I want to introduce a "newbie" bounty hunter.

How to Annoy a Witch Cat

Okay, so, simple enough, we create a weak opponent that our PC can easily trounce.  But, if we just do that, we leave our weak bounty hunter open to being killed.  We put in a ton of work and then Xerxes, that sinister space pirate, rolls his eyes, shoots him dead and walks on.  Boring, a waste of his time and ours.  So, we need to tempt him not to kill his opponent.  So, a better question is, then: how do we create a character that our Witch Cat won't want to kill, despite them trying to kill the Witch Cat?

You make it a kid.  Or better, a couple of kids devoted to one another.  Even better, you make them misguided Asrathi kids who are hoping for a big break so they can chase their crazy dreams and they happen to see Xerxes as their ticket to the big time.  It's not Xerxes, it's just business.  Only they suck and they sort of need your help.  That should be at least tempting.

Of course, the point here is not to put a Xerxes in front of a couple of waifs in rags, one of whom has a knife that he halfheartedly tries to shiv Xerxes with.  They should represent a real threat.  Not a major threat, but not such an easy opponent that Xerxes can just roll his eyes.  Were they too easy to defeat, then Xerxes would just smack them around and set them on the straight and narrow path.  No, we want to create a scenario where he knows he could win by killing them, but he doesn't want to, so he must put himself at serious risk by attempting to capture them.  His charity could result in their victory, creating an interesting choice.

There should be a consequence to not killing them. Mainly, they should become better.  This fits with a story of green hunters trying to make a name for themselves.  We can give them additional traits that the GM can start stacking onto them for each additional encounter as they learn with each fight.

There should also be a consequence for choosing to kill them: they should be very difficult to kill.  Easy to defeat, of course, but you'll have to really go out of your way to kill them, and by making two of them, we create a situation where vengeance becomes more likely.  That way, we don't just have to rely on Xerxes' compassion to keep them alive, and we still get interesting play if he just blasts them.

So, some traits

The Brother

• Rogue Hunter: He's not a true bounty hunter, he just pays close attention to the bounties.  He lacks a license, which means he technically can't arrest you and the cops can stop him.  He hopes to make a score that will make a Lodge sit up and notice and hire him and thus ensure that he gets his license, but he doesn't have one yet.
• Asrathi: Of course
• Obsession: He's the one who really wants to become a hunter and is lost in the dream of it
• Gullible: He's a big dreamer, so naturally he's buying all the things he can to "look cool," but some of his gear is surely substandard and he's likely easily tricked.  He is, after all, just a kid.
• Unluckiness: This might seem like a terrible trait to pair with a bounty hunter that we're going to throw at a Witch Cat, but that's rather the point.  Maybe our hunter would make it if he just caught a break.  Yet, he never seems to.  Perhaps the Witch Cat could even cure his perpetual unluckiness... The only downside is that this isn't a great NPC trait, as it relies on the GM deciding when it happens, but if the GM wants terrible things to happen to an NPC, they just do... So we might allow the players to contribute suggestions for bad luck.  It might be fun!
• Hard to Kill: Obviously, he's going to be at risk of death a lot, yet he never seems to die.  We might pair it with some Rapid Healing and other traits that make him more likely to spring back after defeat.  We might also consider Extra Life with limitations that require it to be used in a way that seems plausible, like a set of coincidences that keep him alive.
• Code of Honor or Pacifism (Cannot Harm Innocents): The point, of course, is to be the best bounty hunter, but we have an idealistic idea of what it means to be a bounty hunter.  So we follow the niceties that many other "real" hunters neglect. He's not a bad guy, he just happens to be your enemy.
• Natural Talent: He has real potential.  Most PCs will optimize their character, but you can get a lot of interesting mileage out of not optimizing your character: characters with Talent 4 for skills they don't have (or barely have), or too much DX for the amount of skills they have.  If we give our Asrathi boy an extremely high DX, he'll have a lot of unrealized potential.
• Total Lack of Skill: Paired with this, we should have sufficiently low skills that the character is fairly easy to beat.  I think we should be aiming at a BAD of 2 or 3, so skill 12-13 where possible.
• Flashy Skills: Our Asrathi has cinematic ideas of what it means to be a bounty hunter, so likely focuses on "cool" skills: Acrobatics, Karate, parkour, and moves and techniques that make him fast, allowing for lots of quick, light, inept strikes. He might even have a Showoff Quirk, forcing him to take as many penalties as possible even when it's not necessary.  He shouldn't have highly effective skills though: no feint, no highly lethal targeted attacks, no sniping from a distance.
• Ally (Sister): He's part of a pair of hunters. They come as a package deal.  The fact that his sister has his back is fundamental to the character. 
• Sense of Duty (Sister): They're in this together, and he'll do whatever it takes to keep her safe, whatever her flaws.  Just as long as it doesn't interfere with his bounty hunting, of course.

What about Overconfidence?  Well, the problem isn't that he thinks he can do it, the problem is that he desperately wants to do it.  He knows he's outclassed, but he feels he doesn't have a choice.  He needs this.  What about Daredevil? Well, that would give him a bonus for punching above his weight, and his problem is that he lacks those bonuses.  It's tempting to go the other direction: Low Self Image, where if he has everything lined up, he does great, but the moment things start to go south, they really go south for him.  I think Low Self-Image is a criminally underutilized disadvantage, but I'm not sure it's the right choice here.

The Sister

The sister needs to be both a contrast and complement to the brother.  She needs to represent the other side of the coin, keep him stable, but also help explain why he is the way he is.

• Rogue Hunter
• Asrathi
• Pitiable or Beautiful or Honest Face: The point of the pair is to invoke sympathy, and few things push someone to reconsider murder than being pretty or cute. I also think having a high reaction modifier is an underrated bounty hunter tactic that I've not seen used outside of Killjoys.  If the mark underestimates you, it's easy for you to get close and use unarmed skills against them. She's that sort of hunter.
• Debt: One of the reasons her brother might be desperate for a big win is because his sister might have built up a big debt and have pressures on her from the underworld to drag her into things she really doesn't want.  By hunting, they hope to pay it all back.
• Compassionate: Like her brother, she's good people (which is one of the reasons killing her should be hard).  She's the sort of street rat that looks out for other street rats, even if it gets her into trouble.  She might also pick fights that she can't win, hence why her brother has picked up some combat skills.
• Smart: Where her brother is physical and skilled, she's street smart and practical.  She's good at manipulation and avoiding scams. Where her brother has a lot of potential to be good at the physical end of bounty hunting, she has a lot of potential for the mental end of bounty hunting, but like him, only actually has skill 12-13.
• Thieving: Her hunger for material goods and class has led to a skillset in sticky fingers, which she can also turn to her benefit when helping her brother hunt.  She's also stealthy and observant.
• Scrapper: She's competent at self-defense.  She can handle a blaster and if a drunk guy tries to get handsy with her, she can handle herself.  She's not the real combat specialized of the pair, though.
• Sense of Duty (Brother): Were it up to her, she wouldn't be a bounty hunter, but a smuggler or a con-artist, or something even classier, like a performer. Circumstances have forced her into this line of work, but especially her brother's passion.  She's fiercely protective of him, and the people who try to manipulate him.  If he dies, she'll seek vengeance.
• Ally (Brother): They come as a paired set.

Together, they should make a nice one-two punch.  She can try to shadow, then dazzle and bamboozle Xerxes into an ambush, and he can try to capture (not kill, of course!) Xerxes.  They'll fail, probably, and Xerxes will see through most of it, but it'll be up to him to decide what to do with them.  They make a great warning shot, a reminder that he's being hunted and a definite inconvenience, but not the "OMG I'm going to die!" of the previous bounty hunter.  Sometimes, non-stop death traps makes for a tedious set of encounters, and they make for a nice change of pace.

(Incidentally, you don't have to make sub-par opponents "nice."  The tension between "Do I kill them or not?" isn't nearly as fun as hitting a player with an annoying little bastard that squirms his way out every time, only for them to finally pin them down and relish actually eliminating them. I personally think the sub-par opponent is underrated.  Yes, if your game lacks challenge people can lose interest, but constant high tension can be exhausting).