The Plugger

Basic Information

The Plugger is a combat role and type of ace pilot whose specialty is staying calm, reacting as appropriate, and never making mistakes. It overlaps a bit with the The Tank (and especially variants like Evasion Tank), except The Plugger isn't really trying to draw enemy fire, they're just Fighting Defensively in hopes the enemy screws up, exhausts their ammo, or wears out.

Sources

Bibliography

1. TV Tropes Wiki

Game and Story Use

• While this is actually a common and effective fighting style in the real world, it doesn't always work so hot in gaming.
  • If your game has no morale rules, fatigue rules, or ammo tracking rules, then it's unlikely to work.
  • Drawing out the battle as long as possible isn't really the way to maximize your fun at the tabletop.
• However, rules-lite Indy RPGs can sometimes make this work. Games that give players a lot of Narrative Control can do so - you can narrate that the battle takes a really long time, and start rolling stamina-related attacks instead of dexterity-related ones. Some RPGs let you make up your own skills and attributes, so you could just make one called "Plugging".
  • And obviously, if a fight has actually been going on for a really long time with no real progress, a GM could just start calling for Constitution checks or whatever to bring a merciful end to it, but we don't really want to get there.
  • A Plugger-type character might be able to end a fight faster if there's some effect that calls for stamina rolls or imposes a time limit… say, bad air, poison, energy drain, or plot.
• This character is the natural enemy of The Steamroller.

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Building This Character

Attributes

• Stamina and Endurance are key.
• Anything that can improve your Sanity or make you harder to provoke, if the system has rules for that.

Skills

• Anything that improves your defenses. Evasion, Parry, and the like let you fight defensively.
• Anything that improves your resistance to social combat, such as Resolve or Integrity.
• Damage output and accuracy are not priorities.

Special Abilities

• Your advantage is that you don't make mistakes. Make sure to have abilities that allow you to take 10 or otherwise automatically succeed on routine tasks.
• Any abilities that improve your resistance to fatigue or stress are useful.

Variants
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