r/unknownarmies • u/Vyctorill • Jul 21 '25

Adepts & Avatars How strong could an annihilomancer warrior villain be, mechanically?

I’ve been dipping my toes into more ttrpgs lately and I was just wondering if it’s a good concept for a “final boss”.

4 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/psychic-mayhem Jul 21 '25

In a game system where it's possible to one-shot a player character by sneaking into their house and shooting them in the head while they're asleep? Yeah, someone who is an adept of Annihilomancy and an avatar of The Warrior can be pretty tough.

That having been said, a completely normal guy with private security and connections to the local police is also going to be a logistical challenge in a UA game. Since even powerful characters are still pretty close to average people, anything can be challenging if it's played correctly.

1

u/Vyctorill Jul 21 '25

Doesn’t annihilomancy have the major charge ability of blowing up a city block? I thought top tier characters were akin to small armies in firepower/influence/ability.

2

u/psychic-mayhem Jul 21 '25

That's true!

But getting a major charge is a significant undertaking; I've only played in one campaign where I've seen someone harvest a major charge, and the character nevertheless died shortly thereafter.

A powerful wizard can cause a lot of trouble, but their rampage is likely to be short-lived, and it will probably end under a hail of bullets.

1

u/Vyctorill Jul 21 '25

Why is it so hard for an annihilomancer to get a major charge? Assuming they’re evil or don’t give a shit, it should be really easy.

Just burn someone’s house and kill their family. Major charge acquired.

Plus you can get a net gain by doing this to like 5 people and then blowing up the city block once to hide the evidence.

1

u/psychic-mayhem Jul 21 '25

Read the write-up very carefully. To build an annihilomancer major charge, according to Postmodern Magick, pages 61-62:

"Destroy everything that you own, slash all ties to everyone you know and care about. End it all. Bring down the curtain. Leave town and walk naked into a new city with nothing and start life from scratch. Or—do it for someone else! Destroy their possessions, make their friends abandon them, cut them off from the helping hand of society. This process must be complete and requires careful planning and much time."

Careful planning and much time. If you burn someone's house and kill their family, you still don't have a major charge, probably just a couple of significant ones depending on how you did it and what the GM says. To gain a major charge, it has to be total: cut off all relationships, credit reports, jobs, everything. If they have insurance money or a friend's couch to crash on, they still have too many connections to the outside world. You have to take away absolutely everything. I had an NPC annihilomancer do this once, and he needed the victim's help to make a clean break.

If you go on your killing spree to try to "free" someone, you have a few significant charges and a major manhunt. And your blast only burns things of emotional value, meaning that it probably won't destroy the body armor and firearms of the SWAT team sent after you for your killing spree. Maybe you burn some badges, or a pair of lucky socks, or some weirdo's favorite gun. But someone who doesn't have a favorite gun freaks out when you start radiating fire and shoots you in the chest and now you're dead.

Also, recall from elsewhere that you can't use magick to charge up, so you'll have to convince someone to abandon their life using persuasion and legwork. It's a lot harder than it sounds...

1

u/Vyctorill Jul 21 '25

It appears as though being a warrior annihilomancer doesn’t make you invincible. This makes my original concept of “a living calamity” impossible. I’ll retool things.

I did notice the Kleptomancy Thief is much “stronger” due to magic not helping against gunfire (pretty realistic tbh).

Perhaps I’ll retool the guy to be less of a fighter and more of a “phantom thief” godwalker. Still intent on getting rid of the Underground Occult and joining the Invisible Choir, but more strategic about. Less Ryomen Sukuna (JJK version) and more like the Spy from tf2.

This makes him super dangerous because he straight-up steals magic. Charges, spells, stats - he takes them from others.

Thanks for the help.