Basic Rules

Character Creation

At the heart of each roleplaying game is the story, at the heart of the story are the main characters. Like actors in a play, it is up to the players to portray their characters in-game. They have to be able to do this exactly and precise, so through character creation we will go through the simple steps that will lead you to having fully fleshed-out character.

At first, it’s vital for the storyteller to impress upon you what kind of game you’ll be playing. He might limit you all to being Novices, apprentices or allow you to play the full-fledged journeyman mage character. He might limit you to a faction of some kind, be it a light faction such as the Crusaders or the powerbase of some Dark Master. Perhaps he even sees the group as independent mages, part of some neutral organization. Whatever the case, be ready to fit his idea and work with a character concept from there.

Now, first you must think “who is my character?”. This question carries a myriad of implications like; what does she do for a living? Who trained her? What did she do before magic? Does she have family, if so who? The list is nigh endless, but you must limit yourself to the most important bits. Those bits you feel define your character.

Now that, that’s out of the way we look to the character sheet. At the top of your sheet you’ll notice six boxes, each of these requesting some kind of information. Time to write! At first you’ll fill in your characters name. Simple. Second comes your recognized rank, this has nothing to do with your actual power just what rank you’re viewed as in game, an apprentice could have the power of Journeyman without actually be recognized as one. Next is faction, this is a little more tricky as it could be as simple as “Light mage” or “independent” but, it could also include “Isolationist Faction of the Light council”, “Auxiliary to the order of the star” and so on. Now comes her mage name, this is only relevant in-so-far your character is a recognized mage and no longer an apprentice. These names can be anything from a simple thing like “Jolt” or “Char” to something a little more elaborate like “Vihaela”. Now comes your magic type, it is important to note that a characters magic type is strongly tied to her personality. A Fire mage is almost always passionate, they feel strongly and are often as dangerous as the element they command, while a probability mage(Diviner) will be curious and eager to gather information and knowledge. Lastly is advancement, we won’t touch that yet.

Attributes! We finally get to place some numbers, attributes all start at +1 at character creation you then distribute +10 points between them to a maximum of +4 in anyone given attribute.

Skills work similar, though they all begin 0. At character creation you have three individual pools of +’s to divide in your skill groups. One group gets +11 points, one +7 points and the last get +4 points. None can be rated higher than +3 at this time.

Next thing we look at is Disciplines. These display a characters raw Power, his Control of his magic and his knowledge of General magic and Mastery determines your overall ability to wield magic. How high your mastery is and what level of you get to divide between your Disciplines is determined by starting Rank.

Novice: Mastery 1 – 2 dots. Apprentice: Mastery 2 – 4 dots Journeyman: Mastery 2 – 8 dots

Ordinarily you’d gain 10 points for features, but we’ve not made those yet so we’ll do those on the fly.

Time to do derived stats! These are statistics that are derived from your other stats, such as HP and evasion.

Derived stats HP = 10+(conx3) Evasion = 8+dex Initiative = Wis + dex

Movement Base movement is 10 + strength Running is 1½ times base Sprinting is double base movement. Only in straight lines.

Manoeuvres are divided by power and finesse Manoeuvres.

Power manoeuvres are executed using Strength + Brawl Finesse manoeuvres are executed using Dexterity + Brawl

Both are defended by Strength + Brawl + 5. This is your manoeuvre defense.

'''Action economy''' Every character has 1 Instant action (Attack, cast spell, initiate grapple, something the like. – A character can chose to move during his instant action, though not run or sprint. Both of which is an action on it’s own. 1 Partial action, this is usually something that can be done during your instant action. Like standing up from prone, moving your full move or the like. 1 Free action, talking, activating quickened spells, the like. And then they have 1 reaction during the enemies turn. These could be for ranged characters to attack at advancing characters, or throw up a defense or the like. Sometimes there’s a Complete action, a complete action costs 1 instant, 1 partial and one free action or the reaction.

Reaction: A reaction is a unique action undertaken during allies or enemies turns, these actions can wary in nature from defensive, offensive or utilitarian. Cover: A reaction can be spent in order for a person to duck for cover, if he’s besieged by gun fire or magic. Thus allowing his full defense to function against both. If actual cover is nearby, he can duck behind it to assume proper cover on his following turn. Opportunistic attack: If an enemy charges at a character armed with a gun or spell, and that enemy knows he’s being charged at and there’s a distance of more than 10 meter, the enemy can chose to attack the target once. Likewise if a character is engaged in melee with an enemy and the enemy seeks to disengage, the character can chose to react and attack once with a melee weapon. Bodyguard: A character can spend his reaction to jump in front of an ally or civilian, this gives the recipient a grade 2 cover, however should the enemy miss thanks to the cover, the damage is taken by the Bodyguard. Several spells and abilities take up the reaction, prohibiting other use. Armor piercing: AP 1 by passes 5 points of armor, AP 2 by passes 10 points and AP three by passes 15 points. A Shield provides 1 degree of cover, which doesn’t stack with anything, unless specifically noted.

Cover is done in degrees. There’s four degrees of cover, each representing how much this cover protects your characters body. This is represented by a d4 dice, say you’re cowering behind degree 3 cover and someone shoots at you. You roll the d4, at 1, 2 or 3 the attack hits the cover. At 4 it would hit you. If a character behind cover, leans out to shoot, his cover counts as one degree less during the next turn as he’s had to expose himself. Say that the guy from the first sample, leans out to shoot a stream of lightning at his enemy. His degree 3 cover would become degree 2 for the following turn.