Hello everyone!

It has been pointed out to me on a few occasions that the two “good guy” goals of Salvation and Protection are the two weakest of the seven goals in Rack & Ruin.  Naturally, I felt the need to test it myself, and opportunity has recently presented itself in the form a new campaign being Heralded by another local player.

After the first, extremely successful game with my new party I decided to share with you all how it was built. So, gentle reader, without further ado, I present how I built…

The Cheese Menders

Step: 1 Choose Miniatures

For this party I wanted to go full on treasure hunting/questing.  I discuss why in greater detail under goal, but I needed to be able to grab as mush treasure as possible.

Beastmen are perfect for Salvation, in a way. Using creature traits to duplicate the effect of gear allows them to benefit from the Monastic trait, which is super important for the early game of a Salvation party.

However, giant, clunky minotaurs are not generally the master thieves we all wish they were. So I needed something small.

Luckily, for Christmas a couple of years ago I was given a wonderful set of mouseling miniatures made by Reaper Miniatures. All in all I have about 20 mouselings to choose from, but I opted to go with a thief looking mini and a ranger looking mini from my collection and then added two more in cloaks with bows.

I haven’t painted them yet, but when I do I am going to paint their cloaks different colours to help my opponents tell them apart (one green, one grey, one brown).

Also, using all mouselings may make this the cutest Rack & Ruin party ever built.

Step: 2 Choose Goal

Well I already knew where I wanted to go with this party.

Salvation has a built-in quest mechanic, which can allow it go get the jump on other goals, legacy wise.  For each miniature that takes the Monastic trait the party gains a Feed the Starving Quest.  Since Feed the Starving is the bonus quest for Salvation this means off the start you could have 16 legacy worth of quests waiting for you to finish.

Monastic has a drawback, though. A miniature can never been equipped with more than 10g worth of items.  That alone basically says “no armour”.  10g also will not allow a player to properly gear up a magic user. So, I ignored both those things, no armour, no casters.

Step: 3 Create your Heroes

Race/Racial Traits

As I stated earlier, Beastmen work rather well with Monastic. Choosing Beastmen allowed me to construct my heroes perfectly for the treasure hunting play style I was planning on.

Each Beastman is allowed 2 major and 2 minor traits (the errata lists them as two separate groups, and that might be easier to understand). For each mouseling they were given Size (-2) and Strong Attribute (Perception) for their major traits. The size was a full representation requirement, so I had to take it, and the Perception is exactly what I need for finding all the things.

For minor traits I took Darksight and Camouflage. Darksight will make it easier to treasure hunt during games at night and Camouflage will protect me from ranged attacks.

Beastmen can also bump their challenge to add more traits, one major or one minor.  Now, usually I try to play low challenge parties, as I hate giving up free experience and love taking free experience, but in this case I felt I could spare a bit.

For each miniature, except the one that would be my party captain, I added 2 more minor traits, Prehensile Tail and Leaping. Leaping should help me get from one terrain piece to another, or get away from danger. Prehensile Tail adds a bonus to Athletics skill rolls, like climbing into windows.

Record Attribute/Apply Size Modifiers

After taking into account having strong perception, then applying my size modifiers all my miniatures have the following attribute line:

W: 4 S: 2 A: 6 C: 4 P: 7 Health: 8 Movement: 8” Natural Save: 2

Traits and Skills

Beastmen heroes gain two additional traits, after their racial traits. Since my captain is going to get even more extra traits I use one of the additional traits to get the two extra minor traits I gave all my other mouselings, another Beastman trick.

Then, every mouseling gets the Monastic trait (giving me four Feed the Starving quests). And, since winning game is always nice, I give them all Looter, except my captain, who used one of his traits already.  Looter will give me a victory point whenever I find treasure, which should be often.

Each hero is then given 2 skill ranks. I choose to give each one of my heroes a rank of the Athletics skill and a rank of the Searching skill.

Gear

Three of my heroes have cloaks and short bows.  I decide those cloaks are Thief’s Cloaks, giving the miniatures extra capacity. Short Bows and Thief’s Cloaks together cost 9g, so I am under the 10g limit of Monastic. The last one has a knife and a cloak, totaling 7g.

All together I have spent 34g, leaving me 24g to buy supplies with.  Which is perfect, since it is enough for me to feed my party in their first game, and have enough left over to do at least one of those Feed Starving quests afterwards.

Step 4: Promote Your Captain

Now I get to give my captain 2 extra traits, 2 extra skill rank, 1 rank of the Leadership skill and +5 health.

I give my captain the Looter trait I gave everyone else, then Prowler. Prowler should help him stay alive a little bit, by giving him even more cover than his size and Camouflage will provide.

He is then given a rank of the Thievery skill and a rank of the Alertness skill. Thievery will help if I have to unlock doors and Alertness gives a bonus to attribute saves and is just a great skill to have.

Step 5: Spark of Life

After naming my party the Bless’d Cheese Menders and assigning them all names (Stewart, Jerry, Speedy and Mickey). I am done and ready for a game.

Game Play

So I am aware that my “mieces will get sliced to pieces” by any half decent fighter, or made rodent BBQ by any reasonably powerful caster. The only answer for that is to try and stay away from those things, or just grab the loot and then eat the damage.

And this is where Monastic really kicks in. A miniature with the Monastic trait doesn’t pay for Donate to the Temple actions, so I can get my injuries healed, for free, saving the treasure I find for feeding those hungry people.

During the game, my goal is to get into every terrain piece I possibly can. Hopefully one of two things will happen, I will find supplies (In Bloom or Preserves) or I will gain another quest. For this strategy to work I will need to add more quests as I go and keep up the treasure level to make sure I can complete the quest.

Following entering every piece of terrain, I plan to search every piece. My starting searching roll is an 8, which means standard searching is on a 4+, pretty good. However, most of the time I will be using the Scan action rather than standard searching, which will increase the difficulty a bit.

Out of game, my actions will be straightforward, make, buy or steal as many supplies as possible. Once per out of game action Salvation allows to a party to get supplies and complete a Feed the Starving as one action, so do that.

Final Word

So I hope this little explanation of party creation helped, and maybe shed some light on how to play salvation. This basic idea (get stuff, complete quests) would also work with Halflings and/or martial artists.

Thanks for reading,
Gene