We have some great insight into Numenera types from Shanna and Sean, so grab your favorite Ninth World brew and read on!
One significant change in the new Cypher is that we sped up and simplified character creation by giving each type three specific abilities, instead of making you choose from a list of options. As we started updating the six types from Numenera Discovery and Destiny (Arkus, Delve, Glaive, Jack, Nano, and Wright) in the new Cypher rules, this led to some interesting design choices. This design is an early draft and may change as we work on the rest of the book, but here’s a peek under the hood at what we’re thinking so far.
Glaive:
The word “glaive” is what people of the Ninth World call an elite warrior. We wanted the iconic Glaive type to be familiar with all kinds of armor, excellent with weapons (training in one kind or category of weapon; +1 damage with either melee or ranged weapons), and dangerous when wounded (gaining a free level of Effort if they have a certain number of wounds). But there are also many glaive-style types in the Cypher Character Rulebook that are appropriate for the Ninth World, like the Archer, Axe Fighter, Monk, and Swashbuckler. We don’t need to reinvent the wheel and make new versions of those, all they need is a little update about inabilities in the three numenera skills and they’re ready to go.
Nano:
Nanos are the characters who wield the strangest powers of the numenera. In this case, we’re including two nano-style types, called the Nano and the Aeon Priest. You read that correctly, you can start as a PC who is already a member of the Order of Truth—after all, in a fantasy game you can play a cleric who is already a member of an organized religion or a noble who belongs to an established influential family, so it’s okay if your character concept is that you’re already an Aeon Priest. Both of these types have slightly different abilities. Also, you get to choose which one of the three numenera skills you’re trained in, instead of defaulting to being trained in understanding numenera and having inabilities in the other two.
Jack:
Characters known as Jacks have a really diverse selection of abilities—they’re the “jack of all trades,” after all. For this type, we had a hard time paring that selection down to a specific set of three. After all, some jacks are slick talkers, some are sneaky and hard to kill, and some are especially dangerous in combat, and we don’t want someone who wants to play one kind of jack to get shoehorned into a different theme. So we made three different kinds of jacks—the Slyjack who changes their face and can hide things, the Spiderjack who is especially stealthy and good at overcoming obstacles, and the Shukkerjack who uses poisons and is dangerous when wounded. All three of these kinds of jacks have the flex skill, too, so they’re adaptable to many circumstances. (And like the many kinds of glaives, you could still choose a type like Burglar or Rogue, add in the numenera inabilities, and be ready to explore the Ninth World.)
Arkus, Delve, and Wright:
There are precedents for all three of these kinds of characters in the Cypher Character Rulebook, and we’ve built a custom Ninth World version of each of them that really captures the gist of what they’re all about. And for the Delve and Wright, they’re like the Nano and Aeon Priest—you can choose which of the three numenera skills is your good one.
We’re also going to reiterate to the player and the GM that it’s okay to swap some abilities between types so you can play the character you want to play. For example, if you like the special abilities of the Archer and the “dangerous when wounded” Glaive ability, the GM can let you mix and match a bit. Plus, there are some miscellaneous abilities that haven’t yet landed in a particular type—these might end up on bonus list of abilities that any character can take at tier 1, perhaps by swapping out a type or focus ability or in exchange for something else. We’re still in the early stages and expect to experiment a bit before we lock anything down. And we’re still a ways away from working on the setting content, including the Steadfast, the Beyond, the Datasphere, and other strange places!
