Growing stronger

A character has two numbers that matter: strength and magic. Each is both how powerful you are and a pool you spend (stamina and mana; see Effort). Together they make your rank, the letter from D upward. Your people sets a limit on each: a people of scholars may have little strength to grow into and a great deal of magic, and some peoples have no magic at all. Engine

• Experience to the next level equals your current strength plus magic, so each level asks more than the last.
• Each level grants about 9% more points (three-quarters of a rank point, in Khorvale). You spend them yourself, split between strength and magic, up to your people's limits. Engine
• Experience comes from fights won outright, quests (more for more dangerous ones), and hard moments along the way that the storyteller judges were a real test. Storyteller
• No single reward can be worth more than five levels. Engine

Beyond levels, a character can transform: a change in what they are, granted by the storyteller when the story earns it. Storyteller Each people has a fixed number of transformations, and each one raises that people's limits for you. Engine

Only about a third of the new headroom arrives at once. The rest is room to grow into with later levels. In Khorvale the steps are Awakening, Ascension, Transcendence, Apotheosis and Exaltation, each raising your limits by a share of your people's own: 25%, then 35%, 50%, 80% and 125%.

Each world has its own kinds of magic: Khorvale has six currents; another world may have schools, paths or none. You choose up to two when you make your character, and your magic is split evenly between them. Engine

• Taking up another later happens in play, when the storyteller judges you've earned it. A newly attuned kind answers at your full magic. You need some magic to begin with.
• Only the world's own kinds of magic exist; the engine refuses anything else.
• Forbidden magic is something a world's people fear and punish. The storyteller knows it's forbidden and plays it that way. Storyteller

In Khorvale a career holds five skills, which become available at level milestones spread across it: a basic one, an advanced one, then three master skills. When one is ready, the Training tab shows a mark. You learn it from a teacher (someone who trusts you deeply and is at least half again as strong as you, and, for a magical skill, shares one of your kinds of magic) or teach yourself from how you've been playing. Engine

A builder's world sets its own: how many skills, when they come, how the tiers climb, how strong they are and who can teach. See World rules.

• In Khorvale you can't train with a quest under way, or within a few minutes of a fight.
• Training teaches a skill; it doesn't raise your numbers.
• The storyteller can also grant a skill when something in the story teaches you one.

Weapons, armour and accessories can be equipped, one of each. You can't change gear in the middle of a fight. A better weapon against weaker armour makes your blows land harder, and the difference by rarity (common to legendary) is real arithmetic, not description. Engine

Wear and repair

Gear wears: pristine, notched, failing, broken. Broken gear counts for nothing in a fight. Repair brings it back to pristine for 15%, 30% or 50% of its value, depending on how bad it got. Engine

Selling and salvage

• Selling pays half an item's value, anywhere. Value comes from rarity, the kind of item, its condition and whether it grants abilities, so it can't be talked up in a scene. Engine
• Salvage breaks an item down into material for crafting.
• Bound items can't be sold, taken or salvaged. Equipped items must be taken off first.

There are no recipes. Put two to five ingredients on the bench and describe what you're making, whether that's joining parts into something new or working one thing onto another. A judge decides whether it works and what you get. Storyteller