101st MC(A)

A Warning

The 101st is an experimental Attunement. It'll be adjusted as needed and closely watched for power problems or playability problems. The victims I have lined up for it already understand that I feel neither shame nor regret in adding/revising/deleting things as the whim strikes me. If it proves out the concept I hope it does, we'll release some other things that work on similar mechanics.

This page deliberately isn't linked from any other page; if you're looking at it, you either hit Random Page and this came up, or you typed something in the search bar that starts with 10. It's a casual but deliberately obfuscation measure. I'm not locking it completely out or securing it because that runs counter to our "players are not the enemy philosophy". It's gently obfuscated because 101st isn't in a state yet where I can (or will) answer a lot of questions about it or ingest the inevitable complaints. When it's tested out, I'll release it to RFC. Until then, feel free not to send any Rules comments that include "101st is...".

The Basic Idea

Summerfall's 101st Missile Corps (Augmented) are magically enhanced firearms experts in both senses of the term. At present, there are two Academies, one in Summerfall proper and another in the Shield mountains to the west, training candidates with the right mix of skills and attributes to one day qualify for a 101st badge. The badly-depleted Human army uses them as a combination of force multiplier and terror weapon, and so far it's been successful at holding back other armies that might want to finish what the bugs started. Summerfall is careful to keep varying effects and equipment so any military encounter with a squad of 101s is a brand new question mark, hard to plan against and frightening because of it. 101s are also trained in controlled applications of chaos; when everything goes sideways, the advantage goes to whoever can cope the best with the changes, not the strongest or most numerous. 101st officers are taught to generate large volumes of chaos for any reason or no reason at all and expected to keep their troops grounded and functioning literally no matter what happens around them.

All of the five company commanders are keenly aware that soldiers need leave time if they're going to stay functional, and Summerfall Army doctrine only requires two companies on active duty at any one time until or unless war breaks out. This frees up individual soldiers to go out adventuring on the weekends, and two CO's have been out in those weeds deep enough to understand the value of the experience. B13's and Widowmakers can expect some minor, off-the-books material support as long as they don't get out of hand with it.

Admission

Summerfall's 101st Academy is elitist about who's accepted for training. Because they're using the weirdness and mystery of Spellshots to hold back the rest of the world, they don't accept non-human candidates at all. The academy teaches Ballistic Magic, not the basics of firearm operation, and therefore rejects candidates who can't already operate a firearm safely (maybe not accurately or precisely, but without hurting themselves.) They strongly prefer Soldier backgrounds - the 101st is an Army unit and graduates are expected to serve their terms - but this is a shorter hurdle to jump. There are some former farm kids in current service; some kids are just born with the right set of attributes it takes to succeed in training and the Crown is not so overcome with candidates that they can afford to demand years of military service before letting those kids in the door. People skilled in magic and not dangerously foolish or clumsy are taught firearms as part of initiation.

The human requirement is a hard stop. Summerfall is badly outnumbered and relies on the force-multiplication effect of Spellshots, along with an unconventional military doctrine, to discourage Elves or Rok'Shen or anyone else from finishing what the bugs started. For that same reason, outlanders are also not welcome, but transplants are - if you're one of the people living in Summerfall lands because of their open human immmigration policy, you're both allowed and encouraged to test for admission. Where you were born sort of matters, but the fulcrum here is loyalty to the people of Summerfall; the Crown is happy to train more 101s to defend the people but way less happy to train some offworld rando in the quick way to fame and fortune. There is exactly one potential case of a nonhuman gunmage; Empress Priya is in a very similar position and her Ninja corps is an excellent force multiplier. It'd take a good diplomat with ties to both cultures, but there are conditions under which Summerfall might accept one of Priya's Deep Elves into the academy in exchange for her permitting a human to train as a Ninja. Outside of that, no.

Active Duty

If you're 101 is on duty - likely but there are some retirees already - there's good news and there's bad news.

• The Good News:
  • Summerfall takes paying the army seriously. You'll be paid 4cp per month for each of five enlisted ranks. You may also be able to draw a stipend for housing and food.
  • You're entitled to draw weapons and armor from Supply, as long as you're not overdoing it. Spellshot guns are expensive and if you lose one every month, you'll be detached and assigned somewhere that you're less likely to lose another. Mucking out stables, or cutting lawns with scissors, maybe.
  • Similarly, you're entitled to file requisition requests for whatever you can think up. You might actually get production items. Filing hilarious requisitions is an art the Quartermaster appreciates but they actually have to be hilarious and "the King's Crown" stopped being funny before the first 101st's graduated.
• The Bad News
  • You'll be given orders to do things you may or may not like. Sometimes this means modules you don't care to run. Sometimes it means surrendering a BGA to do nonsense like "maintenance duty". Sometime's it'll be something you or your buddies do like but this is never because the brass cares what you like.
  • You are expected to comport yourself as a soldier wherever you go. If you're the reason anyone ever rolls their eyes when they hear "Summerfall", you're in for a meeting you will not enjoy.
  • You're expected to follow lawful orders given by your superiors. If you have problems, you'll escalate them up the chain or correctly or get your ass kicked.

Attunement Powers

As mentioned above, these (mostly) are not attunement powers in the sense of other attunements - there's still a Favor progression but new skills do not simply appear on your sheet as you advance in rank. What does appear are unlocks; once you've achieved a certain rank, you can then purchase the skill(s) opened to you at that rank. That in mind:

Category	Skill Name	Prerequisites	Skill Point Cost	Use Cost
Basics	xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
	Ballistic Magic	Rank 1	5SP	Passive
Fuel
	Joules (1-50)	Rank 1	1/2 SP	Fuel
	Joules (51-75)	Rank 5	2SP	Fuel
Ballistic Magic
	1st level Spellshot spell	Rank 1	1	1 Joule
	2nd level Spellshot spell	Rank 2	1	2 Joules
	3rd level Spellshot spell	Rank 4	1	3 Joules
	4th level Spellshot spell	Rank 7	1	4 Joules
	5th level Spellshot spell	Rank 9	1	5 Joules
Gun Combat
	Accuracy +1	Rank 1	20	passive
	Accuracy +2	Accuracy +1, Rank 3	20	passive
	Accuracy +3	Accuracy +2, Rank 6	20	passive
Details
	Conservation	Rank 2	2
	Truesight	Rank 10	5
	Consume	Rank 8	5	passive

Damage

Accuracy: This is what shooters use to increase firearm damage.  Precision gets you a tight group and that’s great for competitions.  Accuracy puts you close to center; that’s better if you’re fighting for your life.  A tight group ten feet to the right of the ogre bearing down on you is not particularly helpful

Accuracy applies to no weapons outside of firearms.  It also carries a limitation Focus and Precision do not - no combination of Accuracy and  base weapon damage ever exceeds 10.  Shooters can surpass this limit momentarily at the cost of resources but cannot sustain 11+ damage by any mechanism or combination thereof.  

Accuracy (obviously) interacts with exotic ammo, blade spells, and lots of other things that increase damage for a swing or a shot. Those function normally, and add their damage after the Accuracy cap. If your total standard damage would be, say, 12's, Accuracy reduces it to 10 (see above) and then the blade spell attaches. If you just use a blade spell, you shoot 15 for that one shot. If you elect to employ Called Shot to violate the cap, you'd shoot 17 for that shot.

This also means that no shooter will ever swing more melee damage than the weapon they use.  That is correct and intentional. 

Spellshot Spells

The Ballistic Magic skill is the core of a Spellshot, the one lynchpin around which all of their magic relies. Ballistic Mage allows your character to deliver spells effects by dart, rather than packet. This applies only to Spellshot spells; if you managed to wrangle your way into the academy as a magician, rather than a shooter, your other spells are all delivered according to the more general spell rules. Ballistic spells cannot be made into potions, or runes, or forked with Chain Spell. Research is ongoing into all of those things and a great deal more, but Ballistic Magic is still very, very young and even getting the functionality it has now was the second biggest problem Summerfall's ever had to tackle.

Spellshots are presented with one scroll for each spell level; the rest they must either learn by force (spending SP) or acquire from the academy at some widely-varying cost in coin. The average graduate pays 5 copper per spell level for a Spellshot scroll. That cost is set by the academy quartermaster, and goes up or down depending on how much that guy likes you, or how much pressure you can bring to bear on him. Spellshot officers can requisition scrolls as needed for mission capability.

That one scroll is not dealer's choice. It's set by Army regs. Spellshots are gifted with these scrolls as they become capable of using them:

Friendly Fire

Magic Shot

Emergency Backup

Knockback Shot

Ward Shot

Those things are provided because of larger concerns - they're things that improve percentages and reduce Crown costs. Friendly Fire is provided because trainees are guaranteed to shoot each other and the less of that the academy has, the better. Emergency Backup saves the Crown from having to provide backup arms to every Spellshot that goes into the field. Knockback Shot is taught early as a safety measure - for all the Spellshots can do, they are not great against a barbarian standing in their faces and beating them to death. Ward Shot means that the Crown can deploy Spellshots against anything without requiring specialized ammunition.

The list below is common but not exhaustive. The Academy overall and every senior Spellshot stay up nights working up the math on new effects. All of the 101st CO's have some personalized effects they can't share for lots of reasons, usually a personality clash between the shooter and the effect. Ballistic Mage is a very young branch of magic, yet to be stabilized and codified to the extent that magery is.

Spellshots can stack effects, so long as:

• The combination is legal by Gunmage rules (you cannot, for example, combine Impossible with Penetrating for voice-delivered body damage)
• You pay the Joules cost for every included spell at once.
• You otherwise obey the weapon call rules described in Combat. Loosely, you cannot stack vectors or effects. Magic Disarm Shot Silver is fine. Magic Elemental Whatever is not. You can use Elemental Knockback Shot but not Magic Disarm Tranq shot. One each of vector, effect, and x-to-hit is generally the limit. Spells that do not involve incants or otherwise avoid inflicting cognitive load can generally be stacked to the limits of your joules.

Finally, Spellshot calls are warnings, not explanations. You must finish your verbal before you pull your trigger. Packet casters tend to be terrible about this, in the heat of combat. They incant while their throwing arms are moving forward and maybe they finish before they release, maybe they don't. The amount of motion required to pull a trigger is much smaller and early calls will be much more obvious. Avoid this.

Level One:

Tracer - this causes a bullet to glow.  The effect is identical to the 1st level Magician spell “Light”.  It can be applied to a shot in flight, if for some reason Light seems an advisable weapon, and if so deployed is cast as “Magic Light”.

High Velocity - this functions as a blade spell for guns, adding 5 damage to a single shot.

Fallback: This spell exactly replicates the Initiative skill.

Friendly Fire - this is how gunmages avoid fistfights over backshots.  This spell functions as a defense to the gunmage’s own most recent shot, canceling it entirely regardless of other factors.  

Mana Prism: Mana Prism allows a Spellshot to deliver their Mage spells via dart blaster. The joule cost is in addition to the spell cost, and this has no impact on the usual spell-delivery rules. You must still complete your incant before you pull your trigger. Mana Prism affects incanted spells only; it does not allow for any of the Metamagic delivery flavors common to mages.

Silver Shot - this changes the type of damage a gunmage’s weapon inflicts to silver, for one encounter or five minutes.

Level Two:

Magic Shot - this changes the user’s damage to magic, for one encounter or five minutes.  While magic guns are readily available to active duty 101st, many choose to carry normal weapons given the surprising number of targets that ignore magic (or worse).

Disarm Shot - puts a bullet in between the target’s weapon and manipulator, acting as a Magic Disarm.

Muscle Memory - defeats the attack timing portion of the Slow effect (although it does nothing for walking speed or counted actions).  Muscle Memory can also be used in melee to add +1 Flurry but probably don’t. Muscle Memory lasts for one encounter or five minutes.

Trueshot - allows a gunmage to continue targeting an opponent after conceal/invisibility/whatever.  This does not proactively break stealth effects, it just prevents them from being used as an escape hatch.

Tranq Shot - Tranq Shot absolutely guarantees it will not kill its opponent. After inflicting fatal damage to a victim, the gunmage or a marshal can notify the victim that he has been Stunned and shouldn't engage a death count. Tranq Shot is how Sloan's Widowmakers engage human criminals without risking murder.

Level Three:

Elemental Shot - changes the user’s weapon damage to one elemental flavor for one encounter or five minutes.  Once selected, the choice holds for the entire encounter - you can shoot Fire for five minutes on one casting, but if you suddenly need Wind, you’ll have to re-cast this spell.

Explosive Rounds - adds the ‘critical’ tag to one shot.

Friction Reduction - allows for blade poisons to be applied to bullets.  Friction Reduction is cast per-shot, not per-clip.  This gets very expensive very rapidly and lacks for efficiency.  It does offer some unexpected lateral attacks, if used wisely.

Piercing Shot - a Penetrating Shot goes right through shields, and is called as “Pierce” at the end of another shot.  Penetrating Shot is inherently magical and uses the Magic delivery vector. (We realize Pierce typically punches through shields; the addition of “Magic” is a deliberate down-powering of the skill, allowing for Resist Magic to stop the shot.  Piercing shot is substantially cheaper in SP cost than the Pierce skill available to Rangers and should correspondingly be less field-effective.)

Emergency Backup - creates an exact copy of the gunmage's usual weapon (this prevents lengthy and boring recalculations for differing guns in combat - this keeps you going when your gun is lost, it's not here to generate Spitfire for you).  Holdouts last for one encounter or five minutes.

Level 4:

Penetrating Shot - deals body damage, adding “Body” to the end of a gun attack.  Like Piercing Shot, this is inherently magical and changes the delivery vector to “magic”, making it vulnerable to Resist Magic where a more honest shot might not be.

Rapid Reload:  Rapid Reload allows you to violate the rate of fire limit.  For the minute following the activation of Rapid Reload, you may fire 75 darts instead of the usual 50. (I have commented this damned thing out a dozen time and it just keeps springing back up. Until we've settled out rate-of-fire and the darts/minute cap, we're avoiding manipulations of that system. Rapid Reload seems likely to return in some incarnation, but the actual numbers are a second-order problem and not ready for field-testing yet.)

Knockback Shot - pushes the target ten steps away from the gunmage, as the usual knockback effect.

Wraithbane Shot - changes the user’s damage type to “spirit” for one encounter or five minutes.  Wraithbane explicitly overrides the x-to-hit cap of Shadow-based opponents, and may be called with silver/magic as needed, or Ward if the cap is unknown.

Level 5:

Ward Shot - changes the user’s damage type to Ward for one encounter or five minutes.

Powder Charge - Powder Charge allows a gunmage to exceed the usual ten point damage limit for one encounter.  As long as Powder Charge is active, all of the gunmage’s weapon modifications and Accuracy stack together. Powder Charge does not stack with Called Shot. Calm down.

Hyperaccurate - Used alone, this causes 50 points of normal damage.  Hyperaccurate can be combined with other spells, but cannot be made to do Body damage.

Impossible - this changes the gunmage’s effects from bullet-delivered to voice-delivered for one shot.  This is the spell by which gunmages shoot around corners, though walls, blindfolded, all the hallmarks of an impossible gunshot.  Impossible shots stack with other shots, but I can't think of a reason for, say, an Impossible Piercing shot.

Dailies

Conservation: Conservation provides you with two options when (not if) you outright fail to connect your bullet with your target. You can elect to re-take the shot without paying the Joule cost, or you can elect to unspend the Joules used to deliver the failed attack. Conservation does not save your Joules if your bullet hit but then drew a defense; it only saves you from the consequences of your own marksmanship.

Consume: Consume allows a gunmage to run Runes through a Prism - this allows your gunmage to deliver any Rune they could normally use with a bullet, at the cost of a joule. It does not provide for the skill involved in using Runes in the first place, though.

Truesight: True Sight passively counters effects that aim to violate line of sight. When used, it stays active for one hour or module. This effect allows the character to see things as they truly are. This effect sees through Invisibility, Disguise, and Illusions, and other magical effects at plot discretion. Truesight can also be invoked reflexively, allowing normal defenses to be used against surprise attacks, after which it runs its normal duration.