Arc Philosophy & Knowledge: Part 32 – Champion Ranks (Patreon)

The home stretch for the written portion of this series is now in swing just as the video companion series starts to take off. We've got Dreamism, Gatherism plus the current subject of Champion left to get through and once that is done the series will just be revisited whenever new philosophies are released.

Champion is our second of the current tier 3 philosophy options an din many ways I've found it to be thematically the opposite of Ambitionism. Ambitionism has a survivor come from relatively normal, humble beginnings before growing towards a grand destiny that is ultimately selfish. Culminating in their departure from the settlement due to the inflated sense of self worth that they have. Ambitionists end up “sacrificing” the settlement for themselves as they believe they're better than the place that birthed them.

Champions on the other hand are chosen from the beginning by an Entity known as The Champion; we don't know too much about this particular Entity at this time but we can be sure that it is very powerful due to it being able to speak through survivors without their consent. We also don't really know what its agenda is beyond it gifting great power to its Chosen and eventually delivering a terrible fate to the survivors unfortunate enough to be targeted by it. In some ways The Champion is a bit like The Goblin (People of the Stars), except The Goblin kills the survivor immediately, while The Champion takes a bit longer to do so.

This means at its centre champions are the very pinnacle of the thesis that survivors are disposable, only the settlement matters. Champions gain access to very powerful knowledges that have dangerous observations, each of which will end in the ultimate death of the survivor when they are all filled in. These knowledges that are gained also do not care who has them, non-Chosen with these knowledges are just as vulnerable to The Champion's fatal touch as their damned brethren. Stories in the world of Kingdom Death have power, and the stories here are no exception.

In many ways Champion feels like a second attempt at Saviors, survivors who were initially thought up for Kingdom Death: Labyrinth and exchange a shortened lifespan for bursts of power. Saviors didn't quite stick the landing and even with some revisions they're still not quite there for me. In fact I do think that when/if People of the Lantern gets a Core philosophy, each of the three savior types should get their own philosophy/wanderer style book in the same release. There's a lot of narrative and thematic potential here to explore and I think Team Death have shown so much growth in their game designs that I want to encourage them to take a second shot at saviors using their new booklet/knowledge based format.

To return to Champion, we have a lot of friction going on within this Philosophy that can make it awkward to use at first. I'll get more into that as we dive into each of the individual ranks and knowledges over these two weeks. Given that, let us move into the Hunt XP track and neurosis.

Our hunt track has a very accelerated front portion with 2, 4 and 6 XP for our first three ages; this track is a little deceptive as when we reach 12 hunt XP and Rank 4 the survivor is intended to die. I'll get more into that with the Rank 4 section breakdown below, but for now the key thing to consider here is that we get the first three ranks quickly, but we do not have a lot of time before the survivor reaches the end of their career.

Compelled is another difficult element of this philosophy; we're forced to deploy as many Champions as possible each hunt and nothing that would let the Champion skip that hunt will work. Instead the champion heads out with a potentially lethal 0 survival and 0 insanity. That's rough, especially considering the self destructive nature of these survivors, so one of the things we need to operate around is ensuring not too many Champions clutter up the place. This is very much in sharp contrast to Ambitionists who are so pompous that they won't let any other of their fellow glory hounds come along with them.

Our first tool is printed on the Forum and that is the Philosophy Lecture Forum activity, it costs two lumi and the next survivor who adopts a philosophy draws two and chooses one. That means we can avoid having excess Champions at the source. If that does not work out, then the innovation Sacrifice offers us a direct way to dispose of additional unwanted Champions before they wander out to the hunt and threaten to nuke the entire hunt party (more on that in the rank sections). Because of the nature of how Champions work, you'll want to dispose of these survivors after you've used all the other endeavours outside of the ones earmarked for sacrifice.

This is of course a more expensive labour than stopping Champions first, lumi is a more plentiful resource than endeavours. There are also other potentially fatal activities one can send spare Champions on such as Scrap Scavenge (Weapon Crafter), but that again runs into the endeavour problem and because of the Rank 4 mechanics Sacrifice pays out very well. Homicidilists rejoice you have many victims to impale upon the giant stone nose of sacrifice.

Rank I – Champion's Omen

The rank ups in Champion are somewhat special when compared to others, due to Rank 4 being so fatal, we're getting a lot more automatically and the random tables are offering additional bonuses rather than unlocking Knowledges. We get +1 Accuracy, +2 Lumi and the [K] Story of the Hunter's Arrow knowledge. The d10 result breaks down to:

1 – 2: +1 movement

3 – 8: +1 strength, -1 movement token if departing this lantern year

9 – 10: +2 strength with the CC 38 addition of +1 torment.

The narrative text on the 9 – 10 portion of this is a little interesting as it covers the concept of the Curator “an entity only you can slay!” along with the additional question at CC 38 of why the survivor knows who the Curator is despite never seeing or hearing of them before. It is hard to tell exactly if this is a part of The Champion's obsession, a part of the Story of the Hunter's arrow (the goal of the seven-eyed Archer) or just a cruel trick on the part of the Champion. We don't have enough information, maybe we'll see more mentions of the Curator in the future.

In respect to the Knowledge, I'll get into it next time, but the key thing here is that it is a ranged based Knowledge. This means at the moment it's basically a bow knowledge because Thrown weapons are massively underdeveloped in KDM. Bows are very dependant on your campaign quarry selection as there are no bows in the generic base game locations, so that is something to bare in mind when you are constructing a campaign. Without ranged weapons this one is basically a knowledge that does nothing.

Before we move on, shout out to the artwork, which is excellent as always, I really love these little guys who I assume are a depiction of cancer pigeons. Imps and Cupid type creatures are a delightful part of Renaissance art and these are very much in that theming.

Rank 2 – Champion's Tale

This particular rank is interesting because it is titled as “Champion's Tale” while we can't be sure that the story being uttered by The Champion through the Chosen is true, given the nature of stories in Kingdom Death this may be a tale of how the Champion came into being. At the completion of this short tale our Chosen gains [K] Story of the Four Hands and +2 lumi before rolling:

1 – 4 gives us +1 luck and another survivor gaining +3 hunt XP. Because we're dealing with Arc Survivors here our best target is going to be a survivor who is going on the hunt and will reach a new rank or two with this bonus hunt XP. That changes at CC 39+ because the Chosen will kill the chosen survivor as soon as they gain the hunt XP, so pick someone you don't like or who has run out of use.

5 to 8 gives the Chosen -1 accuracy and +2 strength and at CC 41+ we get two additional eight digit survivors, there's no special rules for these survivors though you should probably note that they're missing their index fingers just in case it matters. To provide an example of this from elsewhere: Losing your nose as the Mare Navi means you shouldn't Skyfish (Sunstalker) because Jowls will kill you.

9+ is +1 speed and at CC 37+ the Chosen becomes Deaf in exchange for +2 strength. As always because it is returning survivors who ponder and get the ranks up you can ensure the Chosen has a Dried Acanthus in their gear grid upon returning, but given the disposable nature of The Champion's Chosen that's probably not worth it unless you are excessively acanthus rich.

Also, once again one of the silly little intestine eating cancer pigeon imps are in the picture. I do love a silly little guy doing disturbing things.

Rank 3 – Champion's Victim

In rank 3 our Chosen comes to understand that their entire existence is part of a horrible joke being played by this Entity. They are not a special chosen one, they've always been the fool. The Chosen gains [K] Story of the Gloaming and +2 lumi before rolling.

A 1 to 3 is a pretty disastrous result here, the Chosen gets not just the shattered jaw severe head injury due to a self inflicted wound but they are also given the “gift” of life exchange, which is the main downside of Saviors. This result honestly pushes the Chosen into the “time to die” category for me and I'll be looking to either dispose of them in this settlement phase or during the next hunt as they're not going to make it much further because of that accelerated hunt XP schedule.

The 4 to 7 gives the Chosen +1 accuracy and +3 strength and also innovates [I] Saga if you do not already have it. That's pretty useful, but now that you have Saga you'll need to use the Forum Philosophy lecture before each Intimacy whenever you want to sidestep multiple Champions. With CC 46+ we also have the Chosen gain +99 Insanity, so if you want to get rid of them you can go hunt a Screaming Antelope I guess.

8 to 10 is a mixed bag, you get +2 Evasion on the Chosen at the cost of four other survivors gaining +1 torment. While torment is not as harsh as Systemic Pressure, this is still a pretty nasty side effect. Generally I try to end up having four “torment lightning rods” who sit around and soak up this result without being sent out on hunts. Sorry guys, your job is to be miserable about these Champions like some kind of sin eaters. We do get a little more compensation when we're at CC 43+ as we get a big old feast that sets all departing survivors to maximum.

Rank 4 – The Champion Arrives

Old big face in the sky (aka The Champion) itself turns up at Rank 4 and kills the survivor with some acidic phlegm. This is a death with varied effects depending on if it has happened during the showdown or settlement phase (it seems to do nothing during the hunt phase). We'll start with the Settlement phase result because it's the softer of the two. What happens is the settlement innovates [I] Sacrifice and can only spend endeavours on [I] Sacrifice for the rest of the settlement phase. This is a big part of why we're sadly looking to kill the Chosen before they hit Rank 4,as effectively losing all your endeavours for a lantern year is pretty unpleasant. Though a Homicidalist might be very thrilled about their nose spiking ceremonies.

With CC 60 one survivor in the settlement will gain the knowledge [K] Story of the Rootcrown. We'll cover the Rootcrown card next time, but in case I forget its design and style reminds me of the Gabel's Tree (King Showdown) but I am not calling them .

Story of the Rootcrown is not a good time, it does have edge case uses but most of the time it's more of a dead draw in the Knowledge deck.

On the showdown board the death is a different matter entirely. The arrival of The Champion is a devastating acid nuke reaching 10 spaces in every direction from the unfortunate Chosen but only harming survivors. The Chosen still dies, but even worse, any other survivor within that 10 space range suffers Blind and three other random severe injuries. If you've got a Chosen about to hit max observations on a knowledge you need everyone else to move out of range. If you don't do that then if there are any survivors one of them is “gifted” with [K] Story of the Rootcrown.

I do think that it's both unfair and un-thematic that the monster doesn't suffer some automatic wounds if it is in range of the "phlegm-polsion", this Rank 4 “gotcha” is already unpleasant enough as it is. One could try and argue that Team Death were seeking to avoid “gaming” this occurrence with that omission, but given the mechanics of Story of the Rootcrown which we'll go through next time, I don't think that holds much water.

It is worth highlighting two important factors about this Rank 4 event, it only occurs once per survivor and very significantly it is not an unavoidable death. We have tools that prevent deaths such as the Deadism knowledge [K] Evermore and the Green Charm from the Barber Surgeon. A Champion returning to the settlement and pondering Rank 4 can have a Green Charm gear grid and survive 50% of the time. Cheating the Champion out of its victim and letting the Chosen reach retirement (unless they received Life Exchange at Rank 3, in which case time to use them until they burn our). This is quite a fun little interaction and it can allow you to protect champions that for some reason have gained essential elements such as weapon proficiency or unique abilities. Combine that retirement with the old Survivalism Shadow Caesar and you can keep the Champion running for Lantern Years if you want.

We'll get even further detail on these and other forms of mitigation and control next time when we dive into the knowledges, but I did want to cover them here because a large portion of Champion's use revolves around managing/mitigating Chosen in order to keep the Champion Knowledges from advancing.