I hate to unpick old wounds, but do we have some definitive answers on the Zealot career?

- is the starting insanity free?

- are you free of its negative effects when it's 'exhausted'? Does it stay exhausted until the end of the current act? So in other words, if the Zealot uses his special ability, is he then free of the negative insanity effects until the end of the current act?

- is this a crap career to start with?

Some clarification would be helpful. I've got a player picking this career and I'm confused ...!

In my game, I don't think I will allow Zealots to pick an insanity in Character creation. It opens the door to Witch Hunter too early, in my estimation.

1. To my reading, no it isn't free. 'You may attach an insanity as if it were a talent' says to me that there's an extra rule on how to use Insanities but no change on ho you gain them.

2. I'd say yes, the effects are postponed. Both narratively and mechanically, this makes sense. In mechanical terms, exhausted talents are out of the game and have no other effects while they are exhausted - you turn them over because you don't need to read them (you also can't read them if their turned over, so it makes sense to postpone the Insanity on this simple level as well). Narratively, a the Zealot uses their force of will to suppress their condition and focus on the task at hand.

3. If I'm right about 2, no, as it means that the Zealot can not only suppress their insanities (no other character can do this) but can gain something beneficial from them every act. If I'm wrong about 2, HELL YES, THAT SUCKS!

UniversalHead said:

From the FAQ

Talents: Non-Standard Talents
Some careers allow the player to socket a non-standard card into a
talent socket and treat the card as a talent.
For example, Zealots can attach an Insanity card they are currently
suffering from to their career sheet. This often allows the socketed
card to benefit from a special effect or interact with another
example. The Zealot career ability allows the player to exhaust
the attached Insanity cards for a benefit – adding fortune dice to a
check equal to the severity of the attached insanity.
When a non-standard card can be attached to a talent socket, the
effects will generally be indicated on either the career sheet or the
career special ability card.
As a further note, careers that can socket non-standard cards into
a talent socket can acquire these cards during character creation
or during character development in the same way other careers
acquire talents.
For example, a Zealot could invest creation points or advances to
acquire an Insanity card of his choice (which the Zealot can treat as
a Talent card), even if he has not acquired one during play. However,
unless the Insanity card is currently exhausted, the negative
effects of the Insanity are in play, even if it is not currently socketed
to an active Talent slot – the card functions as both a Talent and an
Insanity card, and abides by the rules and effects of both.

UniversalHead said:

I would say yes you are but it only lasts for the time the card is exhausted, what is that 4 rounds as standard?

UniversalHead said:

- is this a crap career to start with?

Depends what you’re looking for, mechanically you might find it a bit crap but I think it has some great roleplaying potential

Using the FAQ is cheating. You should've come up with your own cobbled together homebrew answer.

An addition to Amketch's speculation culling point, the exhausted insanity recharges at the end of an act (detailed on the career talent card).

Thanks for those clarifications folks. It certainly should have been clearer in the rules.

UniversalHead said:

Yeah, that's why they wrote the FAQ.

Is there a way to get rid of insanities buyed as talent cards ? Same rule to clear normal insanity? Or is it parmanent? If it is, what about pre-requisites for Witch Hunter?

I'd bet that you wouldn't want to buy off your insanity if you wanted to be a WH since that's a prereq.

Now, after you become one...hmmm...good Q.

I've been thinking about the zealot myself - I wanted to play a Solomon Kane-style witchhunter and was considering zealot as the best way to do so.

Here's my understanding of the zealot and his insanity, based on the FAQ.

1) An insanity is not, normally, a talent. This seems obvious, but it's important.

2) Since zealots have an insanity slot where one of their talents should be, they can slot an insanity as a talent.

3) Since they can slot an insanity as a talent, they can buy insanities like they were talents.

These are pretty straightforward, but when you stop being a zealot, the implications of those are weird.

Suppose you are a Zealot, you buy an insanity, you complete the career, and you purchase the career completion bonus, allowing you to retain the zealot career ability. Great! You can now become a Witchhunter.

But notice: the Witchhunter career card doesn't have a talent slot for insanities.

Thus, you can't equip an insanity as a talent.

Thus, you can't use your old zealot career ability, because you can no longer have an insanity attached to your card.

Thus, all witchhunters have at least one insanity, but unlike zealots, it grants them no benefit whatsoever, even if they were previously zealots. The only way you could be a witchhunter without having an insanity (which is not a good thing to have when your current career is not zealot) is to complete the zealot career without ever purchasing or acquiring an insanity, which means completing the career and buying its career ability without ever being able to use that career ability.

What's more, there's one one other career that has an insanity talent slot. (The... fanatic? flagellant?) If you advance into ANY career other than that career, you cannot use your zealot career ability; you have the same handicap as a witchhunter.

At the beginning of this thread, Deltabob expressed concern that being able to buy an insanity as a zealot would be overpowered because one could access the Witch Hunter career fairly quickly. I don't see how this is an issue; since you have to take a penalty which will almost certainly outweigh the benefits of being a witch hunter, players doing so are shooting themselves in the foot.

It's easy to think of witchhunter as being a class that one would work towards, but I think that, in light of the prerequisites, we need to re-evaluate that assumption. If you are trying to become a witchhunter, you are on the road to throwing a big stack of XP down the drain to acquire penalties you don't want. Witch Hunter shouldn't be considered a reason to want an insanity - it should be considered the golden lining to acquiring an insanity. ("Well, I may be totally mad and a liability to my party, but at least I'm now qualified to hunt witches!")

Silverwave said:

Still no answers?

Also, the pre-req for Witch Hunter is 1 permanent insanity. So, is this legit to say you start your first game as a Zealot and buy 1 insanity with creation points, then switch immediatly to Witch Hunter since both share 3 traits, so with the human Adaptable ability, you can switch to WH with 0 advances ? This isn't look legit... but then, if not, it means insanities buyed as takent cards are not permanent? So you could get rid of them at the end of any Act?

It also came to me that text about Insanity is inconsistent. The rulebook says :

• While his Willpower is distressed, any time the character suffers a level of stress, that character may become temporarily insane.

then also says :

• While in this fragile state [strained], each time the character suffers a level of stress or fatigue, that character automatically becomes temporarily insane.

Is there two different ways to acquire insanities?

Silverwave said:

Simple answer is Yes.

If you willpower is distressed then there is a "chance" you will gain an insanity, when you gain stress.

If you are strained, they if you gain stress or fatigue, you also get an insanity, no ifs and buts.

Its not inconsistent; the two rules are independent of each other.

Silverwave said:

First of all requirements for Witch Hunter are: either Zealot finished or 1 permanent Insanity gained. I just can't see the point in jumping from Zealot to Witch Hunter immediately, when you can finish it at least for the dedication bonus (free specializations).

From what I know, the Zealots bought insanity is just a permanent insanity - with all the rules concerning it. The career adds the ability to slot it, but it doesn't take normal insanity traits from it (it's in the FAQ afaik).

For the insanities you get them either if your Willpower is distressed for each new loss of one or more stress, or when you are strained ( any physical attribute fatigued and any mental distressed at the same time) for each fatigue or stress loss of one or more. Yes this means also Exertions on red dice.

FAQ clears up a bit.

D.

BurritoAlPastor said:

From above:
*But notice: the Witchhunter career card doesn't have a talent slot for insanities.

*Thus, you can't equip an insanity as a talent.

*Thus, you can't use your old zealot career ability, because you can no longer have an insanity attached to your card.

This is really broken in my opinion, making the Zealot Career Ability worthless unless you go into Flagellant. Was this intentional by the developers or a mistake? I don't see the ability being too powerful, hell the bounty hunter ability would be far better.

From the FAQ

As a further note, careers that can socket non-standard cards into
a talent socket can acquire these cards during character creation
or during character development in the same way other careers
acquire talents.

For example, a Zealot could invest creation points or advances to
acquire an Insanity card of his choice (which the Zealot can treat as
a Talent card), even if he has not acquired one during play. However,
unless the Insanity card is currently exhausted, the negative
effects of the Insanity are in play, even if it is not currently socketed
to an active Talent slot – the card functions as both a Talent and an
Insanity card, and abides by the rules and effects of both.

This got me looking at the insanity cards, wondering what insanity effect would a Zealot ever want to buy? First he would want a card that has a high severity with a penalty that is not too bad. But after that, why would he ever want another card?

Then I saw the one and only card he would want to go along with his first one: Unhinged

Unhinged causes the severity of all your other insanities to go up by 1. And since " the negative effects of the Insanity are in play, even if it is not currently socketed to an active Talent slot – the card functions as both a Talent and an Insanity card, and abides by the rules and effects of both." This means this insanity card does not even have to be socketed to enhance your socketed talent.

The best 2 cards would be Reclusion, severity 4, combined with Unhinged ... making Reclusion severity 5.

He would, as you can remove recharging talents, and swap them with a new one.

Not sure if Zealot is only usable once per session, but after you get further down the line you could use Zealot one turn, and then Flagalant the next.

It seems to me that Zealot is intended to be a "line" of careers that players are heavily "encouraged" by the mechanics to stick to and progress in that line rather than shifting careers. Similar to the Slayer, or Wizard/Priest lines, for example.

I'm still at a loss to see why slotting an insanity as a talent is a benefit to that line of careers. I only have the Player's Guide so far, do I need to cards to see what the point is here?

The benefit comes from the Career Ability, which allows you to exhaust the insanity to add fortune dice equal to the insanity's severity to a check.

Heber_Helios said:

Well don't I feel silly, thanks

Also, additional careers in that line, I believe, get additional ways to use insanities. I believe the Prophet of Doom gets to deal extra damage equal to their slotted insanity rating, for example.