Identity
Bounty Hunters are the Rangers who turned tracking into a business. They run Echelon corporate-fugitive contracts, Halcyion warrant-recovery work, Aurelion court orders, frontier scrip-bounties, Black Meridian counter-defector contracts. They are the polite mirror to the Gunslinger Hired Gun — where the Hired Gun shoots, the Bounty Hunter binds, drags, and collects. They keep good ledgers, they know which courts pay on time, and they have a network of fixers, fence-keepers, and station-masters who will take a message in exchange for a future favor. They prefer their quarry alive; bodies pay less and ask harder questions.
Features
- L3 Bounty's Mark
When you spend at least 1 hour studying biographical, biometric, or behavioral information about a specific named target (a wanted-poster file, a corporate dossier, a court warrant, an interrogation transcript) you can declare that target your **Bounty**. Your Bounty lasts until you finish the contract, the target is dead, or you finish a long rest having abandoned the work. While the Bounty is active: you have advantage on Wisdom (Survival) checks to track the Bounty and on Intelligence (Investigation) checks to identify their habits and likely whereabouts; you have advantage on the first attack roll you make against the Bounty in any encounter; and you have advantage on grapple, restrain, and similar nonlethal-capture checks against the Bounty. You can have one Bounty at a time. The contract is the point.
- L7 Reputation Network
You have contacts. In any settlement, station, or fortified position large enough to support an underworld presence, you can spend 1 hour and a small fee to make contact with a local fixer, fence-keeper, dock-master, or back-channel comms operator who can provide one of the following per contact: (a) the last-known location of a specific named individual currently in the area; (b) introduction to one named NPC the GM deems plausibly accessible; (c) a forged courier-token, transit pass, or low-grade credential good for one use; (d) a single rumor about local syndicate, corporate-security, or court business. The GM may rule that a given location has no underworld presence; small frontier hamlets are not Echelon prime ports. You can also recognize Bounty Hunter sign — chalk-marks, light-flicker codes, frequency-shifts — left by other professionals.
- L11 Capture Specialist
You have advantage on Strength (Athletics) checks made to grapple, shove, or restrain a creature. When you hit a creature with a weapon attack, you can choose to deal nonlethal damage with no penalty regardless of the weapon's normal damage type; the target falls unconscious instead of dying at 0 HP and stabilizes automatically. Additionally, you carry a set of **Restraint Cuffs** appropriate to your tech tier; a creature in your cuffs that fails its initial Strength save (DC 10 + your proficiency bonus + your STR or DEX modifier, your choice) cannot break free without an outside tool or an exceptional check (GM's call on the threshold).
- L15 Hunter's Pact
Once per long rest, you can spend 1 minute focusing on your active Bounty (channel slot expenditure: 1) to form a **Hunter's Pact**. For the next 24 hours: you always know the general direction (compass-cardinal) of the Bounty and an approximation of distance (same room / building / district / world / system); the Bounty cannot benefit from teleportation, plane shift, or Rift-tunnel effects to escape you (they are still moved, but the destination is revealed to you instantly and the cooldown of their next teleport is doubled); and the Bounty has disadvantage on Stealth checks against you. The Bounty knows that something is watching for them, though not exactly what.
- L18 Living Manhunt
Your name appears in the contract circles next to the Bounty's. While you have an active Bounty, hostile creatures within Near range of you that are working for, allied with, or hired to protect the Bounty must succeed on a Wisdom save against your channel DC the first time they see you in an encounter or become Frightened of you until the end of their next turn. Additionally, you can call on your Reputation Network at the system scale: with 1 day of effort and access to a long-range comms unit, you can post your Bounty's description to every Bounty Hunter network in the system; for the next month, sightings flow back to you at GM's discretion, and you have advantage on Charisma checks made to convince other professional bounty-trackers to share information about the target.