Brigandine Abyss Rally and Support: Monster Traits Explained

Two different commands

Rally and Support both pair a leader with a monster from their own troop, and they are easy to confuse. They are not the same thing.

Rally is new to this entry — it did not exist in earlier Brigandine games — and the producer has described it as the mechanic the developers most wanted players to experiment with.

Confirmed Rally Traits

The developers have introduced traits one at a time rather than publishing a table. These are the ones stated outright so far:

• Unicorn — “Regenerate Ally HP.” Unicorns are recovery-type monsters. A leader who Rallies one restores 5% HP to all adjacent allies at the start of each turn. The producer’s own example: give it to a backline unit such as an Enchantress, who then heals the frontline units protecting her, every turn, for free.
• Ash Wolf — “Continued Movement.” Ash Wolves are wolf-type monsters, agile and built for direct attacks. The trait lets a unit spend any remaining movement points after using a skill — attack, then retreat out of reach in the same turn.

More traits exist for other monster families; the developers have said they will keep introducing them. This page lists only the ones officially described, and will not guess at the rest.

Support abilities

Support is the army-facing version, and the official system page names three:

• Dragon — movement +1
• Pixie — recovers 5% of MP at the start of each turn
• Demon — all allied units become the Dark element, but magic defence decreases by 20%

The Demon ability is the one to think hardest about: it is an army-wide element swap, which interacts directly with the five-element advantage system. Against an enemy weak to Dark it is a blanket damage boost; against a magic-heavy army the 20% magic defence loss can cost more than the element gains.

How to use them

Match the trait to the leader’s job, not to the monster’s strength. The Unicorn example works because a healing aura on a backline caster is a free per-turn effect she would otherwise never provide. Putting the same trait on a frontline bruiser who is already taking hits wastes half of it.

Continued Movement is a positioning tool, not a damage tool. A leader with the Ash Wolf trait can strike and step back out of an enemy’s attack range — which also removes them as a counter target, since counters need a unit in range.

Squad composition sets your options. A leader commands up to five monsters, so the traits available to Rally are exactly the monsters you brought. Building a squad is choosing a menu of Rally Traits for that leader in advance.

Recruiting is how you widen the menu. New monsters join through Fate Binding — the achievement wording is “Bind fates with a monster unit for the first time” — and through hiring at strongholds during the Organization Phase.

Achievements that track this

Three of the game’s 39 achievements point straight at this system:

• “We must all fight as one!” — rally a unit for the first time
• “Our bond’s stronger than anyone’s!” — defeat an enemy leader unit who has a monster rallied
• “Remember to love beasts as family…” — bind fates with a monster unit for the first time

The second one is a hint in disguise: enemy leaders use Rally too, so an enemy that suddenly moves further or heals its neighbours has combined with something in its own troop.