XP and Leveling

Characters in the Novarion Sector gain XP from one of three methods, depending on the campaign: Interests, Missions, and Plunder.

Characters level up when they hit XP milestones:

Benefits of Leveling

Reroll Hit Points

Roll the hit dice for your class show in the table below. Multiply your CON modifier by your level and add that. If you have the Die Hard Focus, multiply 2 by your level and add the total. If the grand total is higher than your current HP, your HP is now that new amount. If it is lower, you add 1 + CON (+ 2 with Die Hard) to your old HP.

Gain and Spend Skill Points

Characters gain three skill points when they gain a level. They can spend these to increase their level in a skill. The skill costs and level limits for each skill level are:

Skill points can be saved to be spent later.

Experts and Partial Experts gain one additional skill point each level, but must spend it on a non-combat, non-psychic skill.

Psychics and Partial Psychics must spend at least one point on psychic skills or techniques. They can save this point to spend later, but cannot spend it on non-psychic skills. When they increase a psychic skill, they get a free technique from that skill. The technique's level must be at or lower than the new skill level.

Psychics and Partial Psychics can also spend skill points to purchase additional techniques. A technique's cost is equal to its level. Characters cannot purchase techniques of Psychic techniques are specific abilities within each psychic discipline. A psychic can only buy techniques equal to or less than their level in a skill; e.g. a psychic with Telekinesis-2 can only buy Level 1 or Level 2 techniques.

Any character can spend skill points to improve their attributes. Each purchase adds +1 to one attribute. Characters can only ever purchase a total of five increases across all attributes. Attribute improvements can be purchased for the following costs at the following minimum levels:

Improve Psychic Effort

Psychics recalculate their maximum Effort, which is equal to 1 plus their highest psychic skill, plus the better of their WIS or CON.

Choose New Foci

At levels 2, 5, 7, and 10 a character can add a level to an existing Focus or pick a first-level new Focus.

If the Focus taken after character creation grants a free skill, the character gains three skill points that can be spent on that skill. This can immediately put a skill up to 1, or improve a skill from 1 to 2. The character can improve the skill even if they would normally not meet the level requirement to do so. If the skill points can't raise the skill to a new level, the points remain as a credit towards future purchases. If the skill is already at level 4, the character can spend the points on any other skill.

Improve Attack Bonus and Saving Throws

Your saving throws improve by 1, and your attack throw improves according to your class's progression. If you are using the Novarion Sector character sheets, this will be updated automatically.

Interest XP

Characters have two of eight interests. One is rolled randomly, the other is chosen by the player.

Each XP point costs 500 credits. Each interest indicates the sort of things that these credits are spent on, though exactly how the player is spending the credits is up to the player and GM to determine. However, these credits cannot be spent for meaningful in-game benefits (equipment, services, etc.) Characters spending credits on interests represents them synthesizing discoveries from their adventures, and creating space to develop themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally.

The speed at which a character can spend credits on their interest depends on the size of the settlement. Each character can spend 500 credits per day in massive metropolises, million-person habitats, or well-connected hubs. In most cities, each character can spend 250 credits per day. In smaller urban areas, arcologies, large habitats, and other settlements, characters may only be able to spend 100 credits per day or none at all.

For each XP point gained in an interest, a character gains an additional, one-time benefit. Each benefit can be spent when the character wishes, and can be held indefinitely. When using the bonus, players are encouraged to describe how their interest helps the situation.

Debt

During character creation, and occasionally during play, characters might get hit with significant personal debts (distinct from debt used to purchase a ship or other asset.) If a character has debt, they must pay it off in full before they can spend credits on XP.

Interests

Carousing

You are here to party hardest, with the most interesting people, in the best places you can find. In the drink and dance, in the song and chatter, you lose yourself, feeling your mind unfolding as you melt into society high or low.

When carousing, you may hit bars, drug dens, or dance halls. You might spend your money generating invitations to exclusive clubs or society dinners. You might just buy ten rounds for everyone in the pub. You don't have to actually imbibe substances (though most carousers do.) The important thing is that you freely socialize among dozens, if not hundreds of people night after night.

Bonus: Gain a Contact (Random).

Spectacle

You live for seeing the spectacular. You need to see the highs, the lows, the drama, the comedy, and the tragedy. You want to feel the thrum of the locker room, the roar of the engines, the energy of a crowd. You want the true novelty of seeing once-in-a-lifetime event that reshapes your cosmos.

You might spend your money on not just access to sport matches, daredevil stunts, or performances, but to actually sponsor and fund such events. You need not take part in the spectacles yourself, but you do need to be close to the action. You might purchase a stake in a flagging sports team, fund a dark horse holofilm, or publish an experimental band's first album. You need not stick with the same people, or even the same events. As you watch, follow, and play along, you world expands outward, and you gain a resilience found only in those that reach for limits of the possible.

Bonus: Reroll a failed save.

Charity

"God helps those who help themselves" is a load of horseshit, and not just if you're an atheist. You know that there are too many structural issues, too much oppression, and too much random chance in the universe as-is. People need to help each other. You have the ability and desire to help lots of people.

You spend your credits on opening homeless shelters, mutual aid funds, or food pantries. You can fund existing organizations or found new ones. While you will undoubtedly ruffle some feathers (helping people can be quite controversial in some circles), most people will recognize that you made the world a little bit better. You never know what a good deed might do down the road.

Bonus: Reroll a reaction roll. You must take the new result.

Devotion

You have devoted yourself to a higher calling. This is typically a religion, but people also devote themselves to ideologies, or even certain aesthetics and philosophies. Whatever the calling, it gives you comfort and strength when facing the darkness of the universe. You rely on it to make sense of a chaotic cosmos.

Money spent on devotion is spent on ascetic retreats, philosophical investigations, or public acts of faith, depending on your predilections. You can spend to create and bolster organizations dedicated to the object of your devotion. Your credits will commission art, fund missions, or support even more fanatical devotees.

Bonus: At any time, lose 1 Stress per character level.

Prestige

The universe will know your name.

You spend money on biographers, memorials, and promitions. You build the public memory of events in which you played a role. You hire assistance to help narrativize your life, and communicate it. It might even be you as an individual. You might raise awareness of events you were caught up in, or heap prestige upon one of your titles.

Bonus: Increase a Hired Help's Loyalty by 1.

Training

The way you improve, the way you process your life, is through focused, intense training. Whether in a group or alone, you practice your skills over and over again, learning the latest techniques, and trying to glean all you can from other practitioners. Mastery over skills is your own reward, but your training regimen is intense enough that you learn your skills into the bone marrow (or neural net, as the case may be.)

You spend your money on training spaces, instructors, and equipment. You pay for other trainees to face you in contests of skill. If tournaments or competitions are available, you purchase entry and pay other assorted costs. You may membership fees to professional organizations where you can talk shop with the masters. Of course, you also spend money just to have the ample free time available to train at the necessary intensity.

Bonus: Reroll a failed skill roll.

Hoarding

You gain immense comfort and security from knowing that you have a vast collection of objects stored safely. Your hoard need not be money or wealth-storing items; you can have a hoard of sentimental objects and niche collections. All hoards must be physical, rare, and expandable. You might finish collecting every original first copy work by a famous poet, and then to collecting all of the original first copy of their contemporaries. You might hoard a set of collectable playing cards from a particular planet. Or, you could just hoard precious metals and pretty jewelry.

You must note where your hoard is. It can be damaged by the elements or stolen by enemies where appropriate. If the hoard is ever lost, you gain an XP debt equal to the value of your hoard; you cannot advance until this debt is paid off by building your new hoard.

Bonus: Each point of XP purchased by hoarding costs 250 credits instead of 500. There are no other bonuses provided from hoarding.

Hobby

You have a particular crafty or artistic hobby. You enjoy the time spent in focus and contemplation, honing your craft over and over again. Your hobby is your life, not your livelihood, and your nourish your mind, body, and soul with the pure act of creation. On occassion you may stumble into a wider insight, but this is a happy accident.

You spend the credits on materials, workspaces, and experts in areas you aren't familiar in. Every day you spend on your hobby, you slowly sharpen your skills as you tinker, draft, and sketch.

Bonus: You produce a 1 Encumbrance trinket related to your hobby. (Quality is highly variable.) You halve the time to mod, repair, or create artistic works, intellectual works, equipment, or starships once.

Mission XP

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Plunder XP

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