I'm looking for Edges/Hindrances to allow a player to play a character who focuses on defending other characters. We don't use miniature combat a lot (thus far they've been fairly small), and I don't have a lot of familiarity with powers and Edges from other SW settings.
[RPG] Savage Worlds Edges for bodyguard-type fighters
savage-worlds
Related Solutions
No, the end-of-session xp award if for PCs only. Extras advance in a different manner.
SW Deluxe Edition p 43:
Don’t create your Extras with the character creation rules. Just give them what you think they ought to have in their various skills and attributes and move on.
While that says nothing about their advancement, it most assuredly sets a certain attitude.
SW Deluxe Edition p 81:
Allies & Experience
Allies who take part in battle with their more heroic employers gain experience as well—but not as quickly as player characters. Don’t keep track of their experience points—just roll randomly to see if they’ve “leveled.” At the end of a game session in which the allies had a significant role (usually by participating in combat), roll a d6 for each group of identical troops. On a roll of 5-6, the survivors level up just like player characters and get one Advance. On a failure, they don’t.
That is - roll to see if the allies levelled up whenever you feel like they had a chance.
The core rules don't say how big or small a group can or should be. Indeed, it's not really an important concept compared to other roleplaying games, such as Dungeons & Dragons (where it's strongly recommended that you have the "core four" types at least).
I've run many Savage Worlds sessions for as few as two players (both one shots and multi-session campaigns) and it generally works out. Pinnacle mentioned a while back that they are even working on a solo Savage Worlds adventure, so I imagine it could even work in a one GM/one player game.
Going a bit beyond the scope of the question, I think that there are things that need to be run a little bit differently with a small group than you would with a 4-6 player game:
- Combat needs to be a bit smaller and/or more rare. Especially since in Savage Worlds characters can be killed by a single bullet, it's important that the characters aren't going to have half their firepower eliminated with a lucky die roll. If something goes wrong, there is only one character around to pick up the slack. Many adventures from Pinnacle already scale for this by saying things like "two enemies per player" for setting up combat.
- Characters probably ought to be more well-rounded, since you don't have enough characters to fill all the specialized roles.
- Allies are an excellent way to help in combat and fill in any skill gaps. The core rules explicitly state that they ought to be controlled by the players and, especially if they are Extras, I find that they generally are simple enough that anyone familiar with Savage Worlds can play them along with their own character. For small games I usually give at least one out.
- If your players enjoy roleplaying, consider relying more on that than the mechanical rolls since that is oftentimes enhanced when you have more time to put each player in the spotlight
So in short, it totally does work with only a few players. You might need to tweak the scenario a bit along with the number of enemies, but there is nothing mechanically preventing it from being run with only a few players.
Best Answer
There's a number of ways to build a defensive fighter. I'm going to assume you're not using powers/magic (though there are a lot of good defensive powers too).
There's some non-edge stuff to consider first, like attributes:
After setting up your attributes, it's time to start picking edges. I would not recommend most leadership edges, as they mostly only apply to NPCs. If you're limited to core rules, you might ask your GM to house-rule leadership edges to work on PCs.
I've listed a few edges that I think are useful for defensive fighters. Many of these edges have improved versions that aren't listed. This is in no way a conclusive list:
Core/Expansion Settings:
Licensee Settings:
Finally, there's one last ability that's worth mentioning. Absorption from Necessary Evil allows you to absorb attacks against you and increase your Vigor instead of taking damage. If you're allowed to combine settings, the Guardian edge and Absorption power make for a ridiculous combination.