Earthborne Rangers: Stewards of the Valley
Earthborne Rangers: Stewards of the Valley Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
New Concepts and Keywords
- Aspiration (Keyword)
- Deployed
- Manifestation on Attributes
- Disabled Thresholds
- Spirit (Keyword)
- Spiritspeaking
Aspects
There are four aspects: Awareness, Fitness, Focus, and Spirit.
Your Ranger's aspects are printed on their aspect card.
During Phase 4 of the round, Refresh, add energy tokens to your energy pool until you have a number of each energy type equal to the corresponding aspect value. At this time, if you have energy tokens in excess of any of your aspect values, you must discard the excess tokens.
During Phase 2 of the round, Ranger Turns, you can have any number of energy tokens in your energy pool. You are not limited by your aspect values in this way.
Your aspects determine which cards you are able to include in your deck. Each Ranger card has an aspect requirement on the lefthand side of the card. You can only include a card in your deck if your corresponding aspect value is greater than or equal to the requirement.
Thematically, aspects represent your Ranger's inherent characteristics.
Aspiration (Keyword)
An aspiration is a personal goal that an individual Ranger may wish to achieve while they patrol the Valley. Each aspiration has a corresponding narrative card that describes what inspired your Ranger to pursue it. Similar to the rules of a mission, completing the task described in an aspiration's rules text will unlock a reward card to include in your Ranger deck.
When you add a card with the aspiration keyword to your deck during character creation, read the "Introduction" aspiration narrative card matching its name and record the name of the aspiration in the notable events area of your campaign tracker. You will be recording checkmarks after this entry to track your progress on this aspiration. There are two ways an aspiration can gain checkmarks.
- Aspirations that gain unique tokens (such as gear), add checkmarks based on those tokens. At the end of the day, record a number of checkmarks next to that aspiration's name on the campaign tracker equal to the number of unique tokens on the card.
- Aspirations that don't gain tokens will instead instruct you when to record progress. In these cases, record checkmarks on the campaign tracker when instructed during gameplay.
After recording any checkmarks, if the aspiration's total number of checkmarks is equal to or greater than the value indicated after the keyword, you unlock a reward card unique to this aspiration. Read the "Aspiration Complete" aspiration narrative card matching the Ranger card. This grants a new reward card; however, only the Ranger that unlocked that reward can include it in their deck. This is indicated by a Reward keyword on that card followed by the name of the aspiration that unlocked it.
Note: Cards with the aspiration keyword cannot have tokens added to them by any means except those described on the card.
Backgrounds
Your Ranger's background represents their experience from early life and young adulthood. Each background has an associated set of cards. You choose a background at character creation and can choose 5 cards (2 copies of each) from that set to include in your deck. The set contains the skills and equipment you bring with you into the Rangers. The backgrounds include:
- Artisan
- Forager
- Shepherd
- Talespinner (Available in the Stewards of the Valley expansion)
- Traveler
Talespinner (Background)
Talespinner is one of the available backgroundsets for Ranger decks.
In your youth, you were fascinated by the stories told by travelers from afar and by the histories and traditional tales shared by the talespinners of the Valley. You have spent many years studying the craft of storytelling and are adept in both the art of song and the spoken word. Talespinner cards focus on soothingfatigue, manipulating the fatigue stack, and aiding your fellow Rangers with powerful situational effects in the form of moments with the tale trait.
Deployed (Keyword)
When rules text on a gear card is preceded by "Deployed," that card represents equipment that must be set up or assembled to be functional.
The ability that follows "Deployed" is functional only while the card is ready. When it is exhausted, that ability is inactive and its effects are not applied to the game.
At the beginning of the Ranger Turns phase, you may exhaust any of your equipped cards with Deployed in their rules. Additionally, when you play a card with Deployed, you can choose to have it enter play exhausted.
Disabled Thresholds
If a path card's progress threshold or harm threshold shows a slash, the corresponding type of token cannot be added or moved to that card. If an effect requires you to add or move progress or harm to a card with a disabled threshold to resolve the remainder of the effect (such as if you must add progress or harm "to" resolve an effect), the effect does not resolve.
Manifestation (Keyword)
To play a card with the manifestation keyword, use (discard) a token from one of your equipped cards that has the conduit keyword.
Manifestation on Attributes
When the Manifestation keyword appears on an attribute card, you must discard a token from one of your equipped cards with the conduit keyword to commit that attribute to a test. (Note: This is not true of non-attribute cards with the manifestation keyword. Those may be committed to tests as normal without spending a token from a conduit.)
Personalities
A Ranger's personality helps determine the way in which they interact with the world around them. As you play, you might ask yourself, "What would my Ranger do in this situation?" This may be different than what you might do if you were in that situation. Making decisions based on your Ranger's personality can be a lot of fun if you enjoy roleplaying.
Each card in the personality set is an attribute, which means they can only be discarded for their approach icons during tests. You can use personality cards to help balance out the mix of approach icons in your deck, but you can just as easily use them to make your Ranger even better at the things they're already good at.
If you'd like to lean into the roleplaying opportunities of the game, you can choose your personality cards based purely on theme. Choosing a card simply because you like the title, or because you like the accompanying narrative text, is a totally valid approach.
Spirit (Keyword)
Cards with the spirit keyword represent the spirits of nature and the ancestors who dwell, unseen by most, in the Valley. By journeying to the spirit realm, Spirit Speakers are able to communicate with these interdimensional beings and ask for their assistance with the task at hand.
You cannot interact with cards with the spirit keyword with any common test.
Note: Other tests can still interact with spirits as normal.
Only attachments with the Spiritual trait can be attached to cards with the spirit keyword.
Spiritspeaking
Spirit Speakers are adept at interacting with beings in the spirit realm, but to do so, they must first enter the trance-like state known as "spiritspeaking." When a Ranger does this, they gain the ability to interact with spirit beings. In this state they can also influence the physical world in ways they could not previously.
When an ability instructs you to spiritspeak, exhaust your role and replace your Common Tests card with the Spirit Speaker Tests card. While you are spiritspeaking:
- You no longer have access to common tests.
- You cannot perform any tests that are not printed on, or used to interact with, a spirit.
- You can perform any of the tests on the Spirit Speaker Tests card (the Influence test can be used on any type of being, not just Spirits).
When you ready your role (either during the refresh phase or due to another effect), you stop spiritspeaking. Replace your Spirit Speaker Tests card with the Common Tests card.
Note: The Descendant of the Guide role does not instruct you to spiritspeak when it is exhausted. Instead, it instructs you to perform a single test from the Spirit Speaker Test card.
[Spirit Speaker Tests card: the card's test list is an image on the publisher's page and is not transcribed here.]
Specialties
Your Ranger's specialty represents the training and experience of your Ranger's adulthood and the specialized training they bring to the Rangers. The specialty sets include:
- Artificer
- Conciliator
- Explorer
- Shaper
- Spirit Speaker (Available in the Stewards of the Valley expansion)
Spirit Speaker (Specialty)
Spirit Speaker is one of the available specialtysets for Ranger decks.
Spirit Speakers are gifted counselors and sages, adept at communing with the world of the unseen. Spirit Speaker cards revolve around playing and interacting with spirit beings; calling upon their aid and following their guidance to affect the game state and further the Rangers' goals.
The Spirit Speaker specialty's mechanics are described under Spirit (Keyword) and Spiritspeaking above. Its individual card text is not included in this document.