Character Growth


 

He who goes through life without learning is a life wasted. Knowledge is power, without it man kind is nothing more than just another animal…

One of the first questions that many new players ask is “How do I level-up my character?” This becomes even more curious to the new player when the new player realizes that the character sheet does not have a spot for levels or experience points. That is because Legends of Nor'Ova does not use an experience based system. Instead, character growth and progression is tied to acquiring and improving skills.

The idea behind this is simple, simply hacking to death hordes of foes will not necessarily increase your character's understanding and ability. It doesn't matter how many enemies your character has slain if your character has learned nothing from it. Growth requires learning new skills and improving ones self. To better illustrate this idea, Legends of Nor'Ova uses a skill-based growth system where the only way you can grow is through the skills system. You do this by gaining character points. Character Points are points that you use to obtain new skills and spells, upgrade spells, and increase your character's stats. You get character points for using skills, successful stat checks, and at the end of your game session. Your GM may also reward character points for showing real use of skill to overcome obstacles.

The Importance of Acquiring Skills

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Warrior Skills on your character sheet

While it is possible to go throughout the game without acquiring a single skill, skills are the best way to improve your character. Skills improve your attacks by increasing the damage you can do, causing status effects, and giving you more attacks. Skills improve your ability to survive attacks by increasing your defense, allowing you to wear armor your profession normally doesn't allow, and allowing you to better handle status effects. Skills improve your use of magic, and allow you to craft items and the like. While skills don't tell you how you can attack or what you can do they improve on your abilities. Also the more skills you have and use at a time, the more character points you get which not only help you get more skills, but can also be used to increase your stats.

Gaining Character Points

During Character Creation you would have created a character point pool to help you get your first set of skills. But how do you acquire more skills after that? Simple, by using and acquiring skills. Using will get you character points, and the more skills you use in a skill chain, and the higher that skill's level is, the more points you will get. Your character point rate will change depending upon your profession, and your Profession page will detail how this works for you, but it is simple. It star ts with your Mental stat and gives you a bonus based on how many in profession skills you have. 

Character Growth with Professions

Your character's profession greatly affects your character's growth. Through your character's profession your character can access skills. Each profession page has the skill page from your character sheet on it. You can of course use any of skill pages, even if your character isn't in that profession. However, getting the skills from your profession will be easier, cheaper, and more rewarding. You should strive to grow within your character's profession if you want to get the most out of the profession you've chosen, while using the other skills to fill in the blanks for the skills you find yourself needing that can't be found on your character's profession skill page.

Acquiring Skills & Leveling Up Skills

In order to acquire a skill, you must spend character points. The amount of character points you must spend depends on the skill's

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This is a non-attached skill. Nothing is attached before this skill or to the front of this skill. Therefore, you can acquire it without having other skills.

  attachedskills.png

These two skills are attached. You can acquire the first skill without having other skills, however you have to have acquired the first skill before you can get the second skill that is attached. Furthermore, you have to go left to right in progression, so you cannot have the first skill at level 1 and the second at level 2. The first skill has to be at level 2 before you can get the second skill at level 2.

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This is a skill chain. Any skills that are attached are referred to as skill chains, although skills that aren't attached but say they can be used with other skills are also included in skill chains. Just like in the previous example, you have to acquire the first one before the second one and level the first one before the second one. 

cost, which is halved if in your profession. In order to acquire a skill, it needs to be a skill that isn't linked to another skill by an arrow, or linked to a skill that you already possess

When you get a skill you can use that skill. There is no need to roll to use a skill, unlike with spells. Instead, the skill might increase a stat check for you to roll. 

Once you have acquired a skill, you will fill in the first bubble on the skill block on your character sheet for that skill. After you've acquired that skill, you could pay a higher cost to acquire its second level, then its third, and finally its fourth - if the skill has more than one bubble. For each level you acquire of the skill, you will fill in a bubble.

Each level doubles the stat cost and the effect of the skill. For example, the skill Inflict Wounds inflicts 1d6 bleeding out damage per round until healed at the first level for 0 stat cost. At the second level this would be 2d6. Inflict Daze gives a 10% chance to daze the target for a round at the first level, but a 30% chance to daze for a round at the third level.  Since there is no rolling to use a skill, you don't fail to use the skill. You just apply its effects and costs. 

Using Skills & Skill Chains

In order to use a skill, you must have the skill and declare that you are using it. Meaning that if you want to use the 1d10 damage skill, you need to have it and say that you are using it. You would then apply the effect and stat cost. You also need to decide at which level you want to use the skill. Just because you have the skill all the way at its fourth level, it doesn't mean you have to use it at its fourth level. You might find it more beneficial to only use that skill at the second level, usually because you don't have enough Soul or Endurance to do otherwise. Also skills don't tell you what your character is doing, they just give you the effect. You must describe what your character is doing.

Let's take a basic attack for example. Say you see an enemy, and you want to swing your sword at that enemy. Great! You say that and roll your Hit Chance to see if it goes above the target's Evade. All of this will be better described in the combat rules, of course. With skills, you can do just that, and add in Slashing Proficiency to increase your Hit Chance. The higher level of Slashing Proficiency you have and use, the higher of a chance you will have at hitting that target with your sword. As you may have noticed, Slashing Proficiency gives you a 10% increase to your Hit Chance. This is not a +10. Instead, it is what you rolled to hit increased by 10%. So if you rolled a 24 to hit, with this skill it will be a 27. If you have and use slashing proficiency at level 4, that would be a 40% chance, turning that 24 into a 34. 

Using that skill will give you character points based on your character point rate. Lets say for this example that your character point rate is 2. Using that skill at level 1 will give you 2 character points. You get these character points per skill per skill level. So if you used this skill at level 4, that would be 8 character points. Also you get character points for successful stat checks, and Hit Chance is a stat check even though you are rolling it against the target's evade. If you were successful at hitting that target, you got an extra 2 character points. So using this skill at level 4 and hitting the target would get you a total of 10 character points.

Skill Chains are a group of skills linked together by arrows and/or state that they can be used with other skills. In combat you get 1 chance to do each of the following type of actions: attack, move, support, defend, and magic. An attack action, for example is attacking once, and you can use a skill or skill chain with this attack. One example of a skill chain is in the warrior skills for slashing. If you have Slashing Proficiency, Swords Proficiency, +1d10 damage, Inflict Wounds, Increased Critical, and Extra Strike; then you can use all of these with your one attack action because it is a slashing attack skill chain. They are all connected together by arrows. 

If you use that skill chain, you will get all of the effects of each skill on your one attack. You will also have to pay the total stat cost of all the skills, and remember these are doubled per skill level. So if all skills are at level 1, but you have all skills in that chain and decide to use them all, your Hit Chance increases by 10%, your attack value of your sword increases by 10% (again a percentage, not a +10), you add +1d10 to your total damage, you inflict 1d6 Vitality bleeding damage, have a +5 to your chance to crit, and get an extra strike that is weapon damage only (not increased by the previous skills since it is at the end of the chain). Your attack has just become more significant that it was without using this skill chain, but at a cost of 7 Endurance. Not terrible really. 

If these skills were all at level 4, you'd have increased your hit chance by 40%, increased your sword's attack value by 40%, added on 4d10 damage, inflicted 4d6 Vitality bleeding damage, increased your crit chance by +20, and got in an extra 4 weapon value only strikes. This would give you significantly higher attack power at a cost of 28 Endurance. 

Your character point gain would increase also, since you get character points per skill per skill level and per successful stat check. So with the skill chain all at level 1, and a character point rate of 2, you would get 12 character points just from the skills. This skill chain includes 2 stat checks, giving you an extra 4, bringing your total to 16 character points by spending only 7 Endurance. Much better than just the 3 you would get from using only slashing proficiency. If the skills were all at level 4, and including the two stat checks, you would get 52 character points from that skill chain at a cost of 28 Endurance. As you can see, skill chains are powerful and useful.

Picking Skills

Once you reach this part of character creation, you should be able to pick up skills for your character. You will be doing so by spending the Cost to Acquire for the skills you desire. All of the skills you can choose from are on your character sheet, divided by the different professions. They are also listed on each profession's page. On the profession's page, you will also find a more detailed description of each skill.

To acquire the skill, you need to spend character points. Each skill cost 50 character points at level 1. Here's a breakdown of the costs per level.

  • Level 1: 50 character points
  • Level 2: 100 character points
  • Level 3: 150 character points
  • Level 4: 200 character points

If the skill is in your character's profession, each cost is halved. 

Before continuing on with picking your skills, lets first go over some of the terms that you will find. Lets start with skills.

  • Skill: This is the name of the skill. 

  • Effect: This is the skill’s effect, whether it be damage, restoration, or whatever. This info is listed in the Effect field on your skill record sheet. This will be a brief description of the skill's effect.

  • Stat Cost: This is how much it cost to use the skill in stat points. This is typically either Soul or Endurance.

  • Level of skill: These are the bubbles that you shade in, showing at what level you have acquired the skill. Most skills have 4 bubbles, but some might have 2 or even 1. No skill has more than four levels so therefore no more than four bubbles.

The last thing worth mentioning is that magic spells are different from skills. You cannot use this information found here for spells. Please refer to the magic section for information on acquiring, using, and mastering spells. 
 

Increasing Stat Points

The final topic of character growth in how to increase your character's stat points. Luckily, this is very easy. You spend character points. The rate is 10 to 1.

10 character points = 1 stat point

You cannot increase your stat points beyond your character's race maximum. That really is the only restriction.

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