Hey guys, let's fight everyone! Bounty Hunter Design Diary Part III

So, as part of my Bounty Hunter designs, I've been picking on one of my Tall Tales players, Xerxes, because he actually has Bounty Hunters as an enemy, so it's fun to tailor some opponents around him. But realistically one would not expect to see every bounty hunter tailored to their target.  Certainly, if bounty hunters realized that a Witch Cat was their target, those who specialize in hunting Witch Cats would pick up their kits and rush out the door to take down their preferred target.  But that anti-cyborg guy needs to put food on the table too.  Sure, he might not be as good at it as the first guy, but he only needs to get lucky, right?

So, we should have at least one "generic" bounty hunter.  This also makes it useful since you, dear reader, are unlikely to need a bounty hunter who specializes in hunting Witch Cats.  Thus, of the three-ish hunters I've proposed this week, this is the one you're most likely to actually use.

But what to do?  Every hunter needs a schtick, and our first one already melds excess collateral damage with precision planning.  Our second one melds melee excellence with a sympathetic character.  Every hunter should feel different enough that they represent a unique challenge for the PC, so ours should feel different.

Well!  I've been discussing Bounty Hunters with some of my Patrons, and Gentleman Gamer suggested that most bounty hunters are "either bosses or groups of mooks." I corrected him on the latter: you're unlikely to see a group of mooks.  "Why?" he asked.  Well, the real reason is that we expect to see highly competent loners doing these tasks, and that it's hard to pay an entire crew off of the sorts of bounties most people collect.  But that just means its rare, so why not have a bounty hunter with a group of mooks at his disposal?  It offers some unique opportunities: when searching for the character, his posse can canvas an area as a group and when they close in for the kill (er, capture), they can "beat" the target towards the primary hunter, like dogs in a hunt.  Gentleman Gamer went on to muse about drones, robot dogs and Shinjurai hunters, and I'm not going to dismiss any of those as ideas.  There's an entire world of hunters we could be making.  I'm going to focus, for now, on a guy who uses human mooks to help him fight.

How to fight, like, literally everyone

So, we need one last hunter who uses a group of allies to help assist in his defeat of his target.  This suggests a few traits already that should help differentiate him from the other hunter's we've had so far.  Mainly, what sort of hunter is it that has a bunch of people helping him?  Such a hunter might lack the skills to do it himself, or he might prefer to have an audience, or he might be highly organized and runs his hunts like a business that he brings partner onto.  I'm going to push more for the former two (especially since our hunter is worth no more than the 300 points that Xerxes is worth): he's not that great of a hunter on his own, and he likes a bit of an audience.  That said, he'll make good use of his minions: they'll make noise, push and chase the target and drive them into an ambush by our primary hunter.

This suggests some traits:

• Ally Group: Obviously, our hunter needs a group of hunters to assist him.  I would say at least 5, but probably no more than 20.  These would be mooks, of course, their BAD associated with his BAD, but likely between BAD 2 and BAD 5.
• Nothing without his minions: Our hunter should be at a heavy penalty when he's lost his troops.  He might have a trait like Chummy to represent this: if you can defeat enough of his mooks, he'll retreat.
• Kind of a Dick: This is a hunter who sends "wave after wave of his own men" after the target, so he's probably a bit egocentric, and he claims the lion's share of the bounty once the mark has been taken, so he's also probably selfish.  I had mentioned yesterday that having an NPC that the players will relish defeating can be fun.  This might be such a character.  I see braggadocio in the character.
• Charisma and Good Looks: I picture Captain Laser from "I'm not a Monster." This character needs to attract people willing to accept low pay for a high risk profession.  He needs to be the sort of guy who talks the 10 campers into jumping the bear, claiming "only some of you will die," and then claim to be the one who killed the bear.  You need to have a nice smile and a lot of charm to pull that off.
• Command and Coordination: This is not a solo hunter who traps targets through cunning and research, but a middle manager who uses his employees to do the hard work for him, but that requires him to know how to get the most out of them. That suggests Leadership and Tactics.
• Ambush: If he's going to have his minions make noise and drive your target towards you, you need to know how to take advantage of that.  He's likely a skilled ambusher, which mean he needs Stealth.
• Non-Lethal Take Downs: He's likely the sort that wants to look like a hero, so he'd rather have a photo op getting a mark to do the perp walk than he would showing up at the bounty collection office with a body bag.  Thus, he'd likely favor stunners and stun grenades, and perhaps good old fisticuffs, for taking his target down.
• Media Attention: If you're good looking, trying to present yourself as a hero (to get more gullible mooks to join you), then it helps to have great media presence.  It might also make a valid tactic to beat out the target from hiding: set yourself up as a glamorous bounty hunter, do some interviews about your latest target, offer a modest reward for information leading to the capture of this "dangerous fugitive," (a tiny percentage of the award, obviously, like "Here's 20 credits, thanks kid") and otherwise plaster the area with holo-posters of your target.  That lets you turn Propaganda into a research skill and get everyone else to do your work for you, which seems to be this guys schtick.

Put all this together, and you get an interesting and useful bounty hunter, in that despite his stealth, he's really really obvious.  When he joins in the hunt, wanted posters go up everywhere, he starts doing interviews, and his mooks start running around really obviously interviewing people and looking for the target.  It's a clear shot off the PC's bow that he's being hunted.  It's not the worst bounty hunting strategy, though it does tend to interfere with other hunters' desire to keep the character from being aware of their presence and interest in the target, as it puts the target in a heightened state of awareness, but for an NPC vs a PC, it's a pretty good GM strategy.