Character Advancement

Character advancement on Red Tide MUX operates in much the traditional D20 fashion. Once your character accumulates enough experience points to gain a new level, you can use the Jobs code to put in a request to advance- "+request Advancement=I want to gain a level. I want Power Attack as my bonus feat, and I'm selecting Piercing Smite as my encounter power." and so forth. Advancement requests should include all the statistic changes you want for your next level.

Characters must accomplish something meaningful to their goals in order to advance a level. It's theoretically possible for a PC to gain an entire level's worth of XP based purely on roleplaying votes. While laudable, really good bar and social RP does not make for mighty heroes. Some plot which tests their adventuring skills must be undertaken in order for them to earn advancement, and this Mighty Deed should be noted in the advancement request.

Characters can advance in level once every two weeks at most, up to level 5. Beyond that, the minimum timeframe is apt to extend, though staff will have to see at the time how quickly things are progressing. As a general guideline, it's expected that advancing to 2nd level will require 2 plots, 3rd will require 3 plots, and so on up to 5 to attain 5th. Beyond that point, plot requirements are apt to rise sharply. the aim is to get players to level 5 reasonably quickly, as characters begin to get some of their more impressive tricks around fifth level. Plot XP is apt to be scaled to these requirements, with the more elaborate and Adventurous plots being more remunerative than the simpler and plainer ones. See player-run-plots for details.

Multiclassing is permitted within reason. Classing into a "trained" profession that requires special education, such as Wizard, requires some sort of training justification from another PC or from an NPC. The justification need not be elaborate, but the PC should be able to come up with a sensible answer when someone asks them where they learned to cast spells. Standard fourth edition multiclassing rules are used- you can only select one multiclass feat.

All canonical paragon paths are available, though the absence of paragon-level heroes on Ektau means that PCs are apt to be the first heroes to demonstrate such awesome skills since the passing of the last of the old heroes of the exodus. Other paragon paths may become available, ones specific to the MUX.

Acquiring Magic Items on Leveling
During the course of adventure, most survivors tend to pick up useful knicknacks from the shredded corpses of the dead. Also, from monsters. To reflect this, every time a PC gains a level, they can select a magic item of that same level from the Player's Handbook. Thus, on gaining level 6, a PC might choose to get +2 magic plate armor- a level 6 item. How they acquire this can be written in as desired, whether as plunder from a recent adventure, some lucky happenstance, or simply their own armor being imbued with a touch of their heroic greatness.

As an alternative, the PC might choose to take a random item instead. They have no guarantee of getting the exact item they want, and they might even get an item of minimal use to them- but that item will be 0-3 levels higher than it would otherwise be if they picked it. The process for doing this is simple:

1) Pick a slot type, an armor type, or a weapon type. Examples are "arm slot", "plate armor", "fullblade", "orb", or so forth.

2) Type "+roll 1d4-1". That's how many levels higher than you the item is- if you roll 2 and are a freshly-leveled level 2, you get a level 4 item.

3) Staff then checks the tables to see how many items fit the type and level, randomly picks between available choices, and gives you the item. If no item of that level exists, then you get an item from the next lowest level and the difference in value in cash. For armors, you have even odds of getting any particular masterwork armor type appropriate for that level and armor type.

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