CORE RULES ~ CHAPTER IV
IV. Character's creation and progression
IV.1. Character's description
Along with the 3-level stat system (KS, US, ES), any playing character has the following traits:
Race: a player can only play a human character.
Age: the age affects the character's KS with modifiers (for details, see paragraph Character's creation).
Morality: it can be measured either as a couple of values (each from 0 up to 5) or by the Morality Index (a score from -4 up to +6, see Character's Morality and faith); this trait impacts various areas of the game, like the PC’s growth.
State of Mind (SOM): this attribute has a score which is needed in case of Reaction checks or to assess the PC’s mental prowess.
Background: this aspect impacts the ES due to the choice of the PC’s origin and the social class (see Character's background).
Way and career: the selection of ES depends on this choice (see The careers).
Gender, Physical traits and Religion: this information is freely defined by the player and it doesn’t imply any consequence on game mechanics; in particular, a character's belief may have impacts on social relationships among characters (both PC and NPC).
Derived stats: traits as the outcome from the 3-level stats, like movement (MOV), load capacity (LOADT) or any character’s state.
IV.2. Character's creation
The steps necessary to create a character should be:
Step 1: features definition listed in the previous paragraph as follows:
Race, Gender, Morality, Religion, Physical traits, Career (and Way) are freely determinable by the player.
Age is freely determinable by the player within a range which is the outcome of a 1d4 roll according to the following table:
Background (i.e. place of origin and social class) should be the outcome of an agreement: player proposes and GM approves.
Step 2: definition of the KS; for this activity, please refer to First level of attributes.
Step 3: the KS are then adjusted according to the following table (the adjustments stack and should be all accounted in):
A sample character has a score of 6 in every KS (i.e. literally an ‘average man’); at the moment of the character creation the character has no modifier. Once the player defines the age of the character, he then needs to apply the bonus or malus according to the range of age:
up to 15, stats are: BU 5 (6-1), CO 6, IN 6, EM 6
up to 30, stats are: BU 6 (6-1+1), CO 6, IN 6, EM 6
up to 45, stats are: BU 5 (6-1+1-1), CO 6, IN 7 (6+1), EM 6
up to 60, stats are: BU 5 (6-1+1-1), CO 5 (6-1), IN 7 (6+1), EM 7 (6+1)
up to 75, stats are: BU 4 (6-1+1-1-1), CO 4 (6-1-1), IN 7 (6+1), EM 7 (6+1)
Step 4: the points to be allocated in the ES are calculated with the table below. Once the initial stock of points is defined and allocated, then the ES will develop according to the rules defined in paragraphs Character's improvement by Growth and Levelling up.
Step 5: the player freely allocates the points in the ES: 50% of the points should be allocated on ES allowed by the Career and 50% of the points on ES by the Background (with no constraints between Place of origin and Social class). A point allocated to an allowed ES is accounted as 1 rank in the ES. Any ES not included among the Career or the Background needs to be pre-approved by the GM and in this case the player allocates 2 points for 1 rank in the ES.
Step 6: the GM calculates the scores in the character’s US and tracks them down in his files with no disclosure. Every point allocated to an ES triggers a probability of an increase by 1 point in the relative US. The rule which defines the US improvement is described in the table here below.
Step 7: assets and equipment at inception are determined both by character’s background and career. Any character has an amount of money to buy the initial equipment. This amount is determined by the table below adjusted by the chosen career (see ‘Assets’ for every career in The careers). The following table shows the number of days of subsistence a PC can last with the owned money (the GM has to determine, according to the setting, the final amount of money):
Within the game setting, the GM has defined that a copper coin is the amount needed to live for a day. Once the baseline of 1 copper coin per day is set, then a character which is born in a populated town (civilized place of origin) and comes from a merchant family (mid social class) will get 100 copper coin as a value to build up his inventory. In case the player opts to follow the career of the Wizard, his starting inventory is 1-4 books and assets to a value of 500 copper coins (5 times the base assets, see The careers).
IV.3. Character's improvement by Growth
A PC can improve in two different ways during the game: either by gaining levels or by improving in the score of a single ES. This paragraph focuses on the first option.
Every character starts at 1st level and then increases his level by means of his actions. The measure of his improvement is the Growth and it is an information not available to the players (only the GM should know it).
The Growth is a value that starts from 0 at every level and once the value reaches the threshold of the following level, then it resets and restarts for the newly acquired level. Even if there might be a decrease in Growth, this score will never be lower than zero.
Growth increases for any of the following reasons: Actions, Targets, Impromptu Situations.
Actions: during the gameplay the GM can ask the player, before a specific action (deemed to be a relevant situation), to ‘call’ the result of the action. The Growth is modified according to this table:
A character needs to move silently in the shadows, the player therefore decides to use the ES of the character; the GM sees that the action has a relevance within the game context and he declares that this action is worth a ‘call’ in Growth; hence the GM asks the player to “call” the result of the check: before the dice are cast, the player needs to state if this action will end with a failure or a success. He decides to ‘call’ a success and then rolls the dice. The GM looks at the result and in case it is a success, he will increase the Growth of the character by 2 points. On the contrary, in case of failure, the character will lose 2 points.
Targets: predefined in certain circumstances by the GM (e.g. the accomplishment of a quest). During the set-up of a game session, the GM can allocate a certain number of points to a specific accomplishment. For the quantification of the targets, the guideline for the GM is to set 0-10 points for each PC per session: there might be cases of sessions with no rewards and cases where each character gets 10 points of rewards if all the targets are met. The GM should keep in mind that these are points to be individually attributed, therefore no group targets fit this scope.
Impromptu situations are close to those that should be awarded with the highest score as a target but these have not been foreseen by the GM (i.e. a brilliant idea or a superb role-playing). For the quantification, this kind of reward might be tuned per session with: 2 points for a good outcome (i.e. something the GM could expect from that player), 4 points for an excellent resolution (i.e. something done better than expected), 6 points for an outstanding result (i.e. something that will be reminded in the future).
IV.4. Levelling up
The character levels up once his Growth reaches the threshold of the next level based on the following formula:
Next level = Actual Level x (20 – Morality Index)
Where the Morality Index is the value from -4 up to +6 (see Character's Morality and faith).
A character of level 4 has a Morality of [4,3], therefore his Morality Index is +3 ((4+3) – (2+2)). The threshold for the next level of Growth is: 4 x (20 -3) = 68. Once the score of Growth reaches this threshold, he can level up to level 5. This implies that, at the same conditions, the new threshold for level 6 is: 5 x (20-3) = 85.
Once the new level is acquired the value of Growth is reset and the PC starts with a score of 0 in Growth for the following level.
The Morality Index is not a stable value and it could increase or decrease during time but once a new level is reached by the character, then any change in Morality does not affect the achievement.
Taking up from the previous example: the character can decrease the Morality Index after he levelled up, from +3 up to -1. The value of the threshold increases compared to the one the character achieved to improve his level: from 68 to 84, which is 4 x (20+1). Any change occurred after the level increase does not affect the level already achieved; the new level is determined with a new calculation and, in this case, a higher threshold: 5 x (20+1) = 105 instead of a threshold of 85 from the example above.
The new level grants the PC 2 points to be allocated either in his ES or in one or two new ES. The allocation of points from a level-up follows the ratio 1:1 for any allowed ES or the ratio 2:1 for any other ES.
The GM has to apply the rule of potential increase in the US (see Character's creation, step 6) even for an increase in ES due to level-up.
IV.5. Character's ES improvement
The second option to improve is by means of practice: an ES score can increase not only by levelling up but even by using that specific skill.
The GM defines a rule not known by the players which enables an improvement in the ES score (or group of ES or all). Every time a character reaches the threshold corresponding to the selected rule, he gains 1-point increase in that ES score. After the achievement, the counter is reset and the character needs to start from 0 up to the new upper threshold for another improvement. Any increase in ES in this context does not affect the level of the character.
The limit of the ES score up to the score of the related KS is valid (see Second level of attributes).
Every time a character improves the score in an ES, the GM has check if the related US increases as well (see Character's creation).
Hereby some examples of rules to adopt:
Option (d) The effective use of an ES which leads to work out a roadblock (or other similar situations) is enough to grant a straight improvement.
Option (e) The effective use of an ES which leads to grant an improvement in the Morality of a character is enough to grant a straight improvement.