Anwyn
Fantasy Express
Novus 2nd Edition
Novus 1st Edition
One of the standard tropes of a fantasy role-playing game is that the characters will fight creatures and find treasure, including magical items.
Novus is no exception. In this chapter, we will go over the basics of determining a “random” encounter, provide you with a selection of creatures that can be used as opponents for the characters, and even provide you with some sample treasures that you can use as rewards.
While determining the amount of experience points to be awarded to characters is completely up to the Game Master (GM), it is also important for the players to understand how the GM is awarding experience points and why he is doing so.
Experience Awards Key
Experience Awards |
|
| Description | XP |
| Base XP award for an adventure | 30 |
| Group Awards | XP |
| Adventure Length | |
| Per Game Session | +50 |
| Adventure Result | |
| Successful | +50 |
| Unsuccessful, but the PCs can soon fix | +0 |
| Unsuccessful, with no chance to fix* | -20 |
| Encounters | |
| For each successful encounter | +15 |
| For each unsuccessful encounter | +5 |
| Individual Awards | |
| Heroic/Dramatic Actions | |
| Increased overall enjoyment of the game | +10 |
| Posed a serious risk to the character | +10 |
| Accomplish Goals | |
| Accomplished a party goal | +20 |
| Accomplished a personal goal | +10 |
| Plot Elements | |
| Contributes major plot element | +20 |
| Contributes minor plot element | +10 |
|
Uses character background/flaw to contribute a plot element to the adventure/story |
+10 |
| * = Only applies to the Base xp award for the adventure. | |
The Experience Awards table has several sections. Each is described more fully below.
Base Adventure Reward – Every adventure will have this as its base, to which the other experience award modifiers are added or subtracted.
Group Awards – The following experience awards are added to the Base Adventure Award and this total is given to all characters who participated in the adventure. The total is not split between the characters; each character receives the full amount.
Session Length – A game session is defined as 4-6 hours of role-playing when dealing with adventures that occur over multiple sessions. It is possible to have entire adventures between the sessions belonging to a single, longer adventure. It is also possible that only a short amount of time in a given session is spent on the longer adventure, while the characters deal with other things going on. mount of time spent on the longer, more drawn out adventures, so that he can properly award experience.
Adventure Result – This award is based upon whether or not the character successfully accomplished the main goal of the adventure. They either did, or they did not but can still fix things in the next session, or they failed to complete the adventure in a manner that cannot be fixed.
Encounters – During the course of the adventure, the characters will have encounters. These could be planned encounters, such as the players having to negotiate with a trader for some information, or it could be a random encounter with a wandering monster. Either way, each encounter adds to the total value of the adventure. Successful means that the goal of the encounter was accomplished. The information was gained, the monster vanquished or chased off, etc.
Individual Awards – In addition to the group awards, each individual character may also earn additional awards.
Heroic/Dramatic Actions – Characters that perform heroic or dramatics actions that add to the overall enjoyment of the game gain additional experience points. Also, if the actions pose a serious risk to the health or life of the character, beyond the standard risks involved in adventuring, they can get yet another bonus to the experience points earned.
Accomplishing Goals – In order to complete an adventure, the characters will have to complete one or more goals associated with that adventure. The character that completes a given goal gains experience points for doing so.
Players should also be encouraged to draw up a list of personal goals for their characters so that the GM can give them opportunities to accomplish them. Personal goals should never be normal mundane activities. They can, however, include things like “joining a specific organization”, but only when the joining requires some special condition to be met, such as needing the recommendation of an existing member, and existing members never give recommendations except until the candidate proves themselves in some capacity.
Plot Elements – A campaign is made up of numerous adventures. During the course of the campaign, there will be many plot elements that the characters follow. Some will lead to specific adventures, while others will sometimes fade away. The players themselves are often a good source for plot elements that are incorporated into the ongoing adventures of the campaign.
When a player provides the GM with something that can be made into a plot element, the GM should reward the player by doling out additional experience points for it. If the plot element is formed out of something from the player’s character’s past or from an aspect of the character that might otherwise be considered a flaw of the character, so much the better because it will help tie the character, and thus the interest of the players to the game in a stronger fashion.
Don’t forget, however, that the ultimate goal of any game is for everybody to have fun.
The challenge of adventure brings with it a great risk of injury or death. This heightens the sense of danger and makes the rewards of successful adventuring all the more meaningful. A taste of fright gets the adrenaline flowing.
Because of these risks, we provide guidelines on injuries, healing, and death.
Injuries & Healing
Most all injuries result from combat and take the form damage that is subtracted from the character’s hit points. However, some Boon Point options may include other forms of damage, such as Bleeding.
Hit Points – By far the most common type of damage. A character will normally heal a number of hit points equal to 5 + his Constitution Stat Bonus with 8 hours of rest or sleep. Should a character make a successful First Aid roll (TN 20) on the injured character before he rests, then the injured character will regain an extra number of hits equal to the number of ranks that the character applying the First Aid has in his skill. Characters can never regain hit points in excess of their starting, fully healthy values.
Bleeding – This is the loss of hit points over a continuous period. Bleeding will not stop unless specific action is taken to stop it (i.e. a First Aid roll). The Target Number for stopping Bleeding is 15 + 3 for each point of Bleeding. Thus the TN for stopping a wound that is Bleeding 1 hit point per round is 18, and the TN for a wound that is Bleeding 2 points per round is 21, and so forth.
Stat Damage – Should a character receive any sort of stat damage, he can usually regain 1 point to that stat for each full day (24 hours) of complete bed rest. However, this can never raise the stat above its pre-damage values.
Death & Dying
Should a character take enough hit points of damage to give him a hit point total of 0 to -10, the character will be helpless, and unable to do anything other than attempt to stabilize himself using First Aid (TN 25). Others may also attempt to stabilize the character using First Aid.
Once a character has a negative hit point value, he is considered to be dying and will lose 1 additional hit point each round. When he reaches -11 hit points, he will be unconscious and unable to do anything to aid himself. At that point, it will require somebody else to perform the First Aid to stabilize the character and prevent him from dying.
When the character reaches a negative hit point value equal to 10 plus his Constitution Stat Value, the character will be dead. This means that a character with a Constitution Stat Value of 13 can go down to -24 hits before he actually dies.
The above rules regarding Death & Dying normally apply to characters and important non-player characters (NPCs) only. They do not normally apply to average monsters or unimportant NPCs. Thus, most Monsters and NPCs simply die once they reach zero hit points.
The School of Divine Magic is a listing of generic spells relating to the Divine. This list works well for a generic deity or for a setting that includes only a single deity. However, it falls short when the campaign takes place in a setting with multiple deities. In fact, a campaign setting could include multiple religions, and thus multiple Cleric classes, all focused on a single deity.
For example, Belnus the Guiding Light, God of the Sun, the Day and the Truth, may be the focus of several religious orders. One order might focus on Belnus being the God of Truth and work well with the court systems, and have spells that divine the truth or force targets to tell the truth. Another Belnus sect could be focused on defending people from creatures of the night, such as demons, devils, and undead. As such, they would focus on spells that work against those types of creatures.
It is up to the GM to create a spell list for each specific deity and/or religion in his campaign setting. This should be a small list of 10 or 11 spells, like the spell lists for the Schools of Magic found within this book.
| Experience Points | |
| Level | XP Required |
| 1 | 100 |
| 2 | 300 |
| 3 | 600 |
| 4 | 1,000 |
| 5 | 1,500 |
| 6 | 2,100 |
| 7 | 2,800 |
| 8 | 3,600 |
| 9 | 4,500 |
| 10 | 5,500 |
| 11 | 6,600 |
| 12 | 7,800 |
| 13 | 9,100 |
| 14 | 10,500 |
| 15 | 12,000 |
| 16 | 13,600 |
| 17 | 15,300 |
| 18 | 17,100 |
| 19 | 19,000 |
| 20 | 21,000 |
| +1 lvl | +5,000/lvl |
All characters begin their career at full adulthood. This being the case, they have already acquired a good amount of experience just from growing up and training for their chosen profession. Thus, all “first level” characters start off with a base of 100 experience points.
Characters will then gain experience points as they have adventures and accomplish various goals. When the character reaches the required number of experience points for the next level, he automatically advances to and becomes that level.
Once a character goes up a level, the player gets 15 Character Points to spend on developing his character. Thus a character moving from first to second or from second to third receives 15 CP. If the character were going from third to fourth level, he would get another 15 CP.
Players can spend the newly received Character Points on Skills, Combat Moves, Spells and/or available Talents as he see fits, including the Talent that allows him to increase his Stats (see p. 31). However, some GMs may require that the player wait until the character is someplace where he can train.
The Experience Points table shows how many experience points a character is required to earn to advance to the next level.