The knight in shining armor. The warrior priest. The sniper. Censors, furies, shadows, tacticians, and troubadours can tap into these and many more archetypal concepts using kits. A kit is a combination of weapons, armor, and fighting techniques that lets you personalize your martial hero for battle.
Your choice of kit is always flexible, and your hero is never locked into a specific kit. If you want to change your kit, you can do so as a respite activity (see Respite in The Rules).
Each kit's equipment entry details the armor and weapons the kit provides. It's important to know what equipment a kit uses, because that informs your hero's appearance and story. Equipment is part of what affects the math behind your kit's benefits, alongside the fighting techniques each kit provides. Equipment also determines the type of magic and psionic treasures your character can wield.
The description of equipment in your kit is limited to broad categories, leaving you free to decide the specifics that best align with your vision of your character. For instance, the Guisarmier kit provides medium armor and a polearm. One player using this kit could wear heavy layers of hide and wield a longspear, while another might wear a shining breastplate and carry a halberd into battle.
You can wear armor and wield weapons that aren't part of your kit, but if you do, you don't get your kit's bonuses.
Customizing Equipment Appearances
You should absolutely feel free to describe your equipment in a way that makes sense for the story of your game and hero. For instance, if your hero uses a weapon in the whip category as part of their kit, they could use a leather whip, a spiked chain, or a dagger tied to a knotted rope. A hero who wears heavy armor might wear a suit of chain mail, plate armor, or heavy wooden planks tied together. Your choices for equipment aren't limited just to the examples in this book.
The armor provided by each kit fits into one of five categories, indicating the kind of protection you have while using the kit.
If a kit provides no armor, you can wear whatever clothing you like! Robes, a fashionable tunic and pants—or your character might just loincloth it. It's totally up to you.
If a kit features light armor, you might wear padded cloth, leather armor, or a chain shirt.
If a kit has medium armor, you might wear layers of thick hides, a breastplate, or armor made of metal scales.
If a kit has heavy armor, then you're likely wearing metal from head to toe. Chain mail, ring mail, and suits of plate armor protect you better than any other mundane defense.
If a kit has a shield, then you wield a shield that can be any shape and made of any mundane material you like. The best shields have a sweet insignia on them, so start thinking about yours!
The weapons provided by a kit fall into eight categories that indicate the types of weapons you wield while using the kit.
Bows cover any weapon used to fire an arrow or bolt projectile, including crossbows, longbows, and shortbows. This weapon group also includes weapons that hurl bullets, stones, darts, or small spears, including slings and atlatls. You don't need to track mundane ammunition for these weapons unless the Director says otherwise.
Ensnaring weapons include bolas, nets, and other weapons made to capture an enemy and hold them in place.
Light weapons are one-handed melee weapons that can be used to make several strikes in rapid succession. Many such weapons can be thrown or used as an off-hand defensive weapon. Daggers, shortswords, rapiers, handaxes, and throwing hammers are typical light weapons.
If your kit uses a light weapon, you can wield two light weapons at a time.
Medium weapons are one-handed melee weapons that can be carried into battle while leaving one hand free, allowing you to use that hand to hold a shield or implement. Battleaxes, clubs, longswords, and warhammers are medium weapons.
Heavy weapons are two-handed melee weapons with weighty bladed or bludgeoning heads, made to seriously harm or kill enemies in a single mighty blow. Greatswords, greataxes, mauls, and morningstars are all examples of heavy weapons.
Polearms are two-handed melee weapons with long hafts that increase the wielder's reach. They include glaives, halberds, longspears, and quarterstaffs.
Any kit that uses unarmed strikes allows you to use your body as a weapon. Punches, kicks, eye gouges, and the like are your forte.
Whip weapons include the standard whip, spiked chains, flails, and any similarly long and flexible melee weapon.
When you find a supernatural treasure such as a magic sword, you can use the item as long as it's in one of your kit's equipment categories. A Blade of Quintessence is a medium weapon, so you can use it with the Ranger or Shining Armor kits. However, you can't use it with the Cloak and Dagger or Stick and Robe kits because those kits don't include medium weapons, meaning you haven't done the necessary preparations to use the weapon effectively. You can still swing a Blade of Quintessence around as an improvised weapon, but you don't get any of its bonuses or benefits.
If you find a piece of equipment you really want to use that isn't part of your kit, you can always change your kit as a respite activity.
A kit can grant a bonus to your Stamina, speed, and stability, as well as the damage and distance of your weapon abilities, including your free strikes. (Abilities in Chapter 5: Classes has information on abilities, ability keywords, and more.)
Your kit's Stamina bonus is added to your Stamina maximum and scales with your echelon.
Your kit's speed bonus is added to your speed.
Your kit's stability bonus is added to your stability.
Kits can grant you a bonus to damage with both melee and ranged weapon abilities. If a kit has a melee damage bonus, that bonus is added to the rolled damage of any damage-dealing ability with both the Melee and Weapon keywords. A kit's ranged damage bonus is added to the rolled damage of damage-dealing abilities with both the Ranged and Weapon keywords.
Kit damage bonuses increase based on the tier outcome of the power roll for a weapon ability, and are presented as "+X/+Y/+Z." The X bonus is added to a tier 1 outcome, the Y bonus is added to a tier 2 outcome, and the Z bonus is added to a tier 3 outcome.
For example, the Shining Armor kit has a +2/+2/+2 melee damage bonus, increasing the damage of melee weapon abilities across all tier outcomes. The Sniper kit has a +0/+0/+4 ranged damage bonus, having no effect on a tier 1 or tier 2 outcome on an ability roll, but increasing the damage of tier 3 outcomes by +4 for your ranged weapon abilities.
A kit's melee distance bonus increases the distance of abilities with the Melee and Weapon keywords. A kit's ranged distance bonus increases the distance of abilities with the Ranged and Weapon keywords.
A distance bonus doesn't increase the size of any ability's area of effect.
A kit that has a disengage bonus increases the number of squares you can shift when you take the Disengage move action (see Chapter 10: Combat).
Each kit grants a signature ability, whose distance and damage already includes the kit's bonuses. For instance, the Guisarmier kit's Forward Thrust, Backward Smash ability has a distance of melee 2 and deals 4, 7, or 9 damage depending on the tier outcome, with that distance and damage including the bonuses from the kit.
For details on the ability format, see Abilities in Chapter 5: Classes.
See List of all Kits