Miniature Monday - Crafting a Psion
Welcome back to another Miniature Monday. After last week's article where we created a custom Aberrant, we decided it was only fair to go through the process again and make a custom Trinity: Battleground Psion as well. This time, we're going to go about things the opposite way. First, we will decide what we want our character to do, then figure out which model to use. After looking over the characters included in the boxed set, we decide that while Cameron is a fine commander we want to try something different. He's a psionic powerhouse, but we want a Strike Team leader who can mix it up with the Aberrants in close combat. Looking at the close combat weapons available to the Psions, we see that the most lethal is the Spider Harness, so that makes our choice of miniatures obvious.
Having picked McGowen as the miniature to represent this new character, we then turn to generating his statistics. Cameron is a 3rd Tier Psion, the highest Tier the rules suggest for a starting Strike Team. Since we want our new character to fill Cameron's role, we decide he will also be 3rd Tier and note down his base cost of 150 points. His Tier gives us 16 points to distribute among his attributes, each of which can be no higher than four. Since we're making a close combat focused character, we max out his Strength and Stamina right away, leaving us with eight points left. We aren't planning on giving our character a gun, so we leave his Dexterity at its minimum of two, and then split the remaining points evenly between Mental and Social. This new character won't be as good as Cameron at leading his troops, but will still have a respectable level of psionic power.
Being 3rd Tier means our Psion gets 3 skill points, each of which buys one level in a Primary Skill or two levels in Secondary Skills. Since we want to make him as dangerous as possible in close combat, we put our first point into Melee to boost his close combat accuracy. Not wanting to neglect his Psi Powers entirely, we put his second point into the Meditation skill, to help him regain Psi Points more reliably. Splitting his last skill point between two Secondary Skills, we give him a point in Evasion to help him escape from any close combat he might lose, and Fight Multiple Opponents to help protect him if he gets outnumbered.
Our new leader's Social of three means his Psi Powers are limited and we have to choose them carefully. As a Psion, we first have to choose an Aptitude and Mode for the majority of his powers to come from. Looking over the available powers, we decide the Telekinesis Mode of the Psychokinesis Aptitude suits our needs the best. Wanting to keep our commander protected, we choose Force Barrier as his first power. This power offers solid defense at range and even better protection up close, but at a hefty cost in Psi Points and AP. It's also not a power that can be used reflexively, leaving us in danger if our opponent does something unexpected. Considering that, we give him Tow as his second power, which gives additional protection against ranged attacks and heavy weapons, with no AP required. We are allowed to choose one power from a different Mode for our Psion, and we copy a page from Cameron's book by choosing Heatburn. This power doesn't cost many AP or Psi Points and offers our character a respectable option for sniping Aberrants he can't reach or doesn't want to charge into melee with.
With all our free choices made, we are left with spending points on equipment. We already decided to give our new character a Spider Harness, which is a deadly close combat weapon but costs a hefty 50 points. We don't want our new commander to cost much more than Cameron, but that leaves us with only five points remaining and no other equipment. Deciding we can splurge a little bit, we spend 15 points to equip him with an Armor Vest. It's not the best protection, but combined with one point from his Spider Harness and respectable Stamina, his final Soak is still an impressive seven.
Now, all we need to do is give our new character a name. We decide on Michael Valdez because we like the sound of it, and after filling in the details on our sheet, our new character is ready to take the fight to the Aberrants!
Making custom characters is a fun exercise that can fill holes in either factions' roster and adds even more variety to your games. Our rereleased version of the game will come with form-fillable unit sheets to make character creation quick and easy. When it's game time, simply place the relevant equipment tokens on your character's sheet and you're ready to go.