Can someone explain how Bonds work

By Daeglan, in Rules Questions

Can someone explain how Bonds are meant to be used by the player and the GM?

Ok, so bonds work like this. First of all the XP spent on them are not worth anything for the purposes of rank or title advancement.

Second, each kind of bond has a special ability exclusive to them that you get at rank one that also gets better as you increase your bond rank.

Third, you can use any of the special abilities that you get an amount of time per game session up to your bond rank. So, for instance, let's say you have a Rank 4 Comrade. You can per game session, negate a number of strife up to 4 when performing a check that the bonded character has ranks on it, get a skilled assist bonus (no matter where the NPC is), play a scene as the NPC (which I find completely useless) or use the Ring or a skill value that the NPC has up to 4 times per game session in any combination.

20 minutes ago, Diogo Salazar said:

Ok, so bonds work like this. First of all the XP spent on them are not worth anything for the purposes of rank or title advancement.

Second, each kind of bond has a special ability exclusive to them that you get at rank one that also gets better as you increase your bond rank.

Third, you can use any of the special abilities that you get an amount of time per game session up to your bond rank. So, for instance, let's say you have a Rank 4 Comrade. You can per game session, negate a number of strife up to 4 when performing a check that the bonded character has ranks on it, get a skilled assist bonus (no matter where the NPC is), play a scene as the NPC (which I find completely useless) or use the Ring or a skill value that the NPC has up to 4 times per game session in any combination.

How do bond ranks work? And i assume narratively the ability is done by the person you have the bond with?

Edited by Daeglan

Ok, I just described how they work, so, I’m not sure what else you are not understanding. The player has a bond with ema PC or NPC, when it’s between players they must increase the rank together and each one uses them independently. Technically, an NPC shares the same rank with the PC and they could use those abilities accordingly if the GM says so.

OOC is just the player saying I’m using ability X when rolling this and the player can describe it as a moment of inspiration or lesson learned from the bond, if that’s what you were asking.

Edited by Diogo Salazar
OOC explanation
6 minutes ago, Diogo Salazar said:

Ok, I just described how they work, so, I’m not sure what else you are not understanding. The player has a bond with ema PC or NPC, when it’s between players they must increase the rank together and each one uses them independently. Technically, an NPC shares the same rank with the PC and they could use those abilities accordingly if the GM says so.

OOC is just the player saying I’m using ability X when rolling this and the player can describe it as a moment of inspiration or lesson learned from the bond, if that’s what you were asking.

you left out how they increase rank

By spending XP?

At this point I am assuming you haven’t read either the path of waves or courts of stone as both of these books have the rules for how bonds work.

31 minutes ago, Diogo Salazar said:

At this point I am assuming you haven’t read either the path of waves or courts of stone as both of these books have the rules for how bonds work.

I read them but it was not clear to me and i didnt see advancement rules.

Like for rings and skills there is a formula for advancing them. I didnt see that for bonds

Table on page 139 for Courts of Stone.

Table on page 190 for Path of Waves.

it contains the xp value for each rank of bond as well as the special abilities.

Thake you that is what i needed