Again, apologies for taking so long to answer...
While Fidoric did an excellent job of responding, I still wanted to put in my own 2 cents...
Starting Languages (p. 19): is there some kind of number going with how well a character knows a language (as with HARP)? What do I write on the little lines on the right of the language's name on the character sheet (there is one column for Spoken and one for Written)?
This is something we discussed and went over extensively in playtesting Novus...
As most of my playtesters were Rolemaster or HARP players, this is something we wanted to get right. Considering the number of Character Points per level, that we were looking at, having to make multiple purchases to learn ranks or levels in a language seemed to basically be too much for what we were going for. Just having both written and spoken fall into the same single listing was also too little. So we went with what amounted to 1 rank in spoken and 1 in written.... It allowed for learning new languages, and for languages that might not have a written or spoken component
Saves: how do I record those on the character sheet? What numbers do I use? I suppose that when the book says to "make a Save vs [stat]" it means to make a roll setting the Save stat number as the TN, right? But it would mean that as the stat gets higher, so do the TN? I'm confused here.
There is a Save for each Stat, the bonus for Saves is derived by using the Stat Bonus (the Bonus column of the Stats section of the character sheet) and adding in that static modifier, and any other mods, to get the Save Bonus.
As Fidoric mentions, this is in the Stats section at the top of the first page of the character sheet. As he also mentioned (though I think it was in conjunction with something else), the TN of any roll where a number is not explicitly mentioned is 15, this includes Saves and Skill rolls, etc... Other factors may influence rolls a bit, but they are modifiers, and not the base...
