Levels#

What a level gives you

Each level costs 1000 experience times the level you’re at. When you reach one, your health, willpower and stamina grow, and you get a training point and practice points to spend with a trainer. Your class page lists the abilities each new level opens. The planner at the bottom works it out for any race and class.

Experience#

You start at level 1 with no experience. The next level costs 1000 experience times the level you’re at now, so level 2 is 1000 away, level 3 another 2000, and level 10 another 9000. Keep your running total in Experience on the sheet. When it reaches the next line of the table, write your new level in Level.

The cost keeps climbing, but so does everything you earn: foes get tougher and deeds are measured against your own level. A level takes about the same amount of play at level 50 as it did at level 5.

There are 100 levels. Past 100 come heroic levels, which work differently (see Heroic levels).

Earning experience#

The storyteller hands out experience at the end of a session, or after each fight if your table likes the bookkeeping. You earn it from the foes you beat and the things you get done.

A foe is worth 50 times its level, times the experience modifier on its creature entry (most are x1). The storyteller picks a creature’s level when they put it in front of you. Then scale it by how the foe’s level compares to yours. Beating a foe doesn’t have to mean killing it: driving it off or talking it down counts.

Everyone who fought earns the foe’s full worth. In a party of three or more, each of you earns half of it instead.

Deeds are measured in your own level, so finishing a quest is worth as much to a level 60 knight as it is to a level 3 page:

Leveling by milestone

If counting experience isn’t your table’s idea of fun, skip it and give out a level when the party finishes something that matters. The experience rules come to about a level every two sessions, so that’s a good pace to aim for.

Dying#

Death in Sedia isn’t always the end, but it doesn’t wait. Priests learn to resurrect at level 20, and a resurrect only works within a minute of the death; a greater resurrect, at level 40, works for ten days. After that the character is gone. A character brought back loses two thirds of the experience they had earned toward their next level, less 50, but never the level itself. Characters of level 5 and below lose nothing, which gives a new character room to learn the hard way.

Defeat & Death has every way back and how long each one has.

Who can bring them back

Decide before the campaign starts how easy a priest is to find. If resurrection is a short walk to the temple, players will be bold. If the nearest priest is three provinces away, they’ll be careful.

Leveling up#

When you reach a new level, work down the list:

1. Health. Roll your class’s health die and add your constitution’s bonus from the table below. Add the total to your health maximum.
2. Willpower. Take your class’s willpower base and add a fifth of your intelligence and a fifth of your wisdom, each rounded down. Classes that don’t cast take half. Add it to your willpower maximum.
3. Stamina. Add 6 to your stamina maximum.
4. Points. Take one training point and your practice points (wisdom decides how many, see Practice points and efficacy). Note the unspent points in Notes until you can get to a trainer.
5. Abilities. Check your class page for abilities at your new level and write them in Abilities. The ones listed at level 0 are yours from level 1.

If you’d rather not roll for health, take the die’s average, rounded down.

Training points#

A training point raises one ability score by 1, up to its Max Score. It can also grow one of your pools by another level’s worth (the same roll or sum you make when you level). Spending one takes a trainer and a day of downtime. That might be a guild hall, a garrison yard, a temple, or anyone in the world who knows more than you do.

Every score can climb 5 above your race’s starting score. Your class’s primary stat climbs 5 more and its secondary stat 3 more; that’s the Class Ability you wrote on the sheet. A human priest starts every score at 10 and can raise most of them to 15, intelligence to 18 and charisma to 20.

One training point a level doesn’t sound like much, but there’s only so much room. That priest fills every score at around level 45 and puts every point after that into health, willpower and stamina.

Trainers are people

A trainer is a character, not a shop. Think of the sergeant who only teaches soldiers who’ve bled for the garrison, or the hermit who wants a favor first. When a player wants to spend points, that’s a good reason to send the party somewhere.

Practice points and efficacy#

Every ability on your sheet has an efficacy from 0 to 100, which is how well you actually do it. Pencil it beside the ability’s name. A new ability starts at 0.

Each level gives you practice points by your wisdom, as the table shows. A practice point raises one ability’s efficacy by 10. You can practice on your own up to 75, and past that only a trainer can take you, all the way to 100.

Using an ability with efficacy under 80 takes an efficacy check: roll a d20 as you use it. A roll inside its fizzle range means the ability fails, but it only costs half its willpower or stamina. At 80 and above it never fizzles.

You also learn by doing. When an ability fizzles, or you roll a natural 20 on its check, put a tick beside it. The next time you rest, each ticked ability gains 1 efficacy and you erase the ticks. Keep rolling the d20 past 80 if you want those natural 20s.

The game has a word for every band of efficacy, and they’re good for talking in character (“I’m still lousy at it”):

0 none 1-9 abysmal 10-19 atrocious 20-29 incompetent 30-39 lousy 40-49 passable 50-64 adequate 65-74 accomplished 75-84 outstanding 85-99 exceptional 100 mastered

Make the fizzles count

At low levels a fizzle happens a few times a session, so describe them. The heal that only warms the wound, or the arrow that misses by a hand’s width, tells everyone at the table this character is still learning.

Trading points#

A trainer will trade points either way: 10 practice points for 1 training point, or 1 training point for 10 practice points. A fighter with low wisdom who’d rather have the strength turns practice into training. A scholar whose scores are full turns spare training into practice.

Past level 100 you can spend a training point teaching instead of learning. The trainer pays you 5 Sovern for the lessons.

Heroic levels#

By level 100 every ability your class teaches is open to you. Past it come heroic levels, one for every 100,000 experience. Awards past 100 still count your level as 100.

A heroic level gives a training point and practice points like any other, but no new abilities and no growth to your pools. What heroic levels buy is standing. Your class’s higher ranks open at levels 100, 200, 300 and 400, the top citizenship ranks ask for heroic levels too, and nobody becomes Emperor of Sedia before level 500.

Living legends

Few campaigns get this far, and that’s the point. When you put a duke at level 250 or an archbishop at 400 into the world, you know how much they’ve done to get there, and so do your players.

The road to Emperor#

Here’s every level that opens something on this site, and the experience it takes to get there.

1. Level1

   Where everyone starts

   • Your class's level 0 abilities
2. Level20

   190,000 experience

   • Rodes open
   • Citizenship as Citizen
3. Level40

   780,000 experience

   • Rode rank 2 test
   • Citizenship as Gentry
4. Level60

   1,770,000 experience

   • Rode rank 3 test
   • Citizenship as Seigneur or Madame
5. Level80

   3,160,000 experience

   • Rode rank 4 test
   • Citizenship as Baron or Baroness
6. Level100

   4,950,000 experience

   • Rode rank 5 test
   • Citizenship as Lord or Lady
   • Your class's last abilities
   • Second class title (a page becomes a squire)
7. Level150

   9,950,000 experience

   • Citizenship as Count or Countess
8. Level200

   14,950,000 experience

   • Citizenship as Marquis or Marquise
   • Third class title (a page becomes a knight)
9. Level250

   19,950,000 experience

   • Citizenship as Duke or Duchess
10. Level300

    24,950,000 experience

    • Citizenship as Vassal King or Vassal Queen
    • Fourth class title (a page becomes a centurion)
11. Level400

    34,950,000 experience

    • Citizenship as Sovereign King or Sovereign Queen
    • Fifth class title (a page becomes a templar)
12. Level500

    44,950,000 experience

    • Citizenship as Emperor or Empress

A worked example#

Take the dwarf page from Getting Started and play them to level 10. Every training point goes into constitution, every practice point into turtle (a level 0 ability pages start with), and every health roll takes the average.

A page’s health die is 1d6+11, so the average is 14. Willpower is 4 for the class, plus 1 for intelligence 9 and 2 for wisdom 11: 7 a level. Wisdom 11 is worth 1 practice point a level. Health, willpower and stamina below are what they’ve gained since level 1.

Constitution climbs one a level, and at 15 it starts adding to the health roll: from level 5 on, every level is worth a little more health than the last. That’s the whole argument for spending early. Turtle goes from fizzling on 1-4 to fizzling on a 1 by level 9, where it reaches 75, as far as practice alone can take it. From there the practice points wait for a trainer, or go into another ability.

Ways to grow#

Where you spend your first training points decides a lot, because some scores pay you back every level from then on.

Plan a character#

Pick a race, a class and a level to see the scores they can reach, what each level gives them at their starting scores, and what’s open to them.