Arcane Background: Trooper

This is a new Savage Worlds Edge for the Elves & Espers setting:

Arcane Background: Trooper

Arcane Skill: Spellcasting (Spirit)

Starting Power Points:10

Starting Powers: 3

Troopers are powered-armor wearing shock troops.  Their focus is a MultiGun, capable of throwing various destructive magic.  They are also allowed to wear Powered Armor, though they don’t necessarily start with it.  Firing the MultiGun requires a SpellCasting roll that doubles as the Shooting Roll.

Troopers may take the Special Edge Powered Armor.  Each time they take Powered Armor they can upgrade their Armor with another 5 points of powers according to the power costs in Necessary Evil.  This starts from a base of 0, so the first thing they will probably do is buy several points of the Armor power.  Powers must make sense as coming from Powered Armor (albeit magic powered armor) so, e.g. Deflection would be ok, while Construct would not (donning the Armor can’t change you into a construct).   Powered Armor automatically has the Device limitation applied to every aspect of it, so gets no additional discount.  Other limitations applied to specific powers (e.g. Requires Activation, or Partial Protection) may be applied as normal. The Powered Armor Edge can be taken once per rank.

Backlash: On a roll of 1 on the Spellcasting Die (regardless of the Wild Die), the Trooper experiences magical backlash and is Shaken.  This can cause a wound.

Bonus: The Trooper automatically gets a discount of 1 Power Point (as if the Trooper had the Wizard Edge and rolled a raise) whenever he fires a single normal damage (2d6) Bolt from his MultiGun.  He must have at least 1 Power Point left in order to activate the spell, even though it will end up costing 0.  (So if he runs his power completely dry, he can’t keep firing forever.)  This doesn’t stack with the Wizard Edge should the Trooper have it.

Notes:

This Edge represents what the Trooper class was about in the previous incarnation of Elves & Espers.  Mechanically it’s pretty much identical to AB: Magic, except for the new special Powered Armor Edge it allows access to.  I’m a little concerned whether the Powered Armor Edge is too powerful (since it introduces powers from Necessary Evil, which is geared towards Super-Hero levels of power), but I’m hoping that by halving the initial points and making the Troopers worry about splitting their advances between making their MultiGun more effective, improving their Powered Armor, and anything else they might want it’ll be about on par with other characters who can specialize more.