Rules Day 2020

Here is a log of the rules changes we have made as of Rules Days 2020 (August 29th-30th). Thank you to all the players who hung around on a video call for many hours and chewed through all this – you guys are awesome!

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General & Broad Changes

Weather Damage
Weather damage has been combined with the pain damage system in order to make a singular Fatigue Track. Fatigue can be from many things – exposure, pain damage, disease, and others. It works very similarly to the prior pain damage system: fatigue is accrued across a day, and fades by half in subsequent days. Every time the total fatigue you accumulate reaches your level, you take a -1 counter on either your HP or your Mana (whichever is higher at the time); if either stat reaches 0 due to -1 counters, you will become unconscious until the problem is addressed. There will be a variety of ways to manage fatigue depending on its source – weather gear, short rests, etc.

Weather specifically will continue to retain non-damage elements (such as impeding travel time or applying things like Slow); the changes outlined in the above system are only for weather damage.

Diseases
We are moving to a symptom-based model for diseases. Each common disease symptom – fever, nausea, itching, etc – will have an effect and fatigue associated with it. When you are given a disease you will be given a list of symptoms (in addition to any nonstandard symptoms the disease comes with). Each of these symptoms can be suppressed with herbs meant to treat that symptom, but the underlying illness itself will still need to be treated either with regular herbs or a Cure Illness ritual of sufficient BR. Some symptom-suppressing herbs may, however, reduce the effective BR of the illness.

Drowning
You no longer automatically become unconscious if you enter the water without swimming; instead, you are immobilized and will take a -1 counter on your HP every 20 count until you are removed from the water. When this means you would go unconscious, you go unconscious, and the count continues. AV does not affect drowning speed.

Nonstandard Skills/Spells/etc
We are doing away with the “standard” and “nonstandard” categories for skills and spells for the purposes of skill-interaction abilities such as dispel magic, avoid, etc. If a spell is a non-sorcery spell, it can be dispelled regardless of whether it belongs in the base 15 classes; a skill can be avoided under the same circumstances. Players who are using skills or spells from other classes need to be prepared to call “no effect” if someone tries to dispel a skill or avoid a spell, etc.
Rationale: This equalizes the power level between the base 15 and other expanded classes; it also encourages approaching the game world and class abilities as something to be learned and explored rather than memorized.

Hobbits
Hobbits’ Immune to Mental Effects has been shifted down to Resistance to Mental Effects.

Aging by Species
Growing Up: Species with lifespans longer than (or simply different from) humans will no longer age on a proportional/parallel scale to human, but spend longer in the adolescent stages of development. I will post a chart for this sometime soon once I have calculated it out.
Growing Old: We have opted not to make a system for stat deterioration due to old age.

Trader
Trader lvls allow you to treat the town @ as up to double the town’s base @ both for the purposes of income and accessible trade goods.

Teacher
Teacher allows you to ask baddies about an underlying need or need they are seeking to have met; baddies at that level or lower should respond in 1-2 words. Example: “Teacher Lvl 20, what do you need right now?” “Hungry”. This operates like peacekeeper in that it can only be used on sapient species, and can be tricked with Lie.

Nonstandard Tradecrafts
In order to learn a nonstandard tradecraft (metaphysics, logistics, unavailable languages, etc) you need an intact and ongoing source in order to continue putting lvls into the craft. Examples of such a source might be a teacher, a book, some ruins or an artifact, etc. This source needs to be something beyond what is commonly available (example: for astronomy lvls, you need more than just access to the night sky). If the source becomes destroyed or unavailable, you can no longer put lvls into the tradecraft until you locate a new source. If you are awarded nonstandard tradecrafts through actions, haps, or participating in certain missions, this does not count as a source and you cannot continue putting lvls into that craft.

Lvls in Specific Subcrafts
If you have levels in a specific sub craft (such as Sketching as opposed to Fine Arts), the sub craft’s lvls only add to your Fine Arts levels when you are doing something relevant to the craft; otherwise, you cannot use them. Example: If you have 5/Fine Arts and 1/Sketching, your Fine Arts lvls would count as 6 if you are sketching, but sill only 5 if you are making pottery.

Tradecrafts & Quirks
If you are working to interface a tradecraft with your quirk, use fluencies. Tradecraft lvls cannot be put into “tracking for Pathfinding” etc. You may also look into discovered class lvls as an option.

Discovered Classes
Discovered Class skills/abilities no longer need to be constructed and leveled like a class; the power level of the skill is determined by the caliber of the experience, not by what level you are or how many discovered class lvls you have taken prior to learning a given one. The exception to this is if you are explicitly trying to make a teachable class tree with discovered class levels (since discovered class lvls normally cannot be taught), but this must be worked out with the GM prior to beginning the tree.

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Specific Class Skill Changes

Class Tree Format
We will be spending the next year working on shifting the current class progression format (a single sequential list of 10 skills) into a class tree format; a group of players will be working with the GM to construct this. In the meantime, we will continue using the existing class progression format.
Rationale: It’s long and a bit convoluted, but this ultimately stems from a combination of removal of guilds as a system and the flavor consequences for training, and bringing back aspects of class progression that were originally in the game but taken out early on.

Banding
Giving your party Banding’s +1HP now also gives you +1HP as well.

Duel Elite
When dueling a class that has temporary or applied passives (such as berserk or effects resistance – something that is not on all the time but is called and applied), these passives – if already active – are not removed. However, all true passives (missile magic resistance etc – something that is on all the time and cannot be turned off) are removed.

Skill Share and Guildmaster Skills
When sharing a skill that you have tweaked through a guildmaster skill, you are sharing the base version rather than your tweaked version. In order to share your tweaked version, they must already have the skill you have tweaked and you must then share them guildmaster for that class. (Example: In order to give someone your guildmaster tweak for fireball, they must already have fireball and you may then share them Guildmaster for Pyromancer).

Skill Share, Skill Steal, and Tradecrafts
As a default, you cannot skill share or skill steal tradecrafts.

Skill Steal From Allies
You are able to skill steal from allies.

Earthbind and Swimming
Earthbind now reads that someone who is earthbound loses flying and swimming. Additionally, if you are earthbound in water, you are dragged to the bottom of the water for the duration of the earthbound count (and float back to the surface afterwards). Normal drowning rules apply. The ocean (or a very deep lake) is the exception and will function differently.

Stun Ray and Healing
You can recover more quickly from a stun ray if administered healing that’s faster than the recovery time; whether it is magical or nonmagical does not make a difference.

Diviner Common Sorcery
We have added Dispel Magic for Sorcery to fill the empty common sorcery slot in Diviner. It will cost 1 mana, but otherwise function as dispel magic.

Sorcery Slots
Sorcery slots are now type-agnostic; rather than a certain number of sorcery slots for each mage class you have, you have a flat number of sorcery slots that can be used on any mage types you have access to. Sorcery slots also scale differently; you now have 1 sorcery slot for every 5 character lvls that character has. If you are lvl 15 you have 3 slots, if you are lvl 25 you have 5 slots, etc.