Classes and Leveling

This section describes how player characters gain experience and level up. Though gaining Experience Points happens during the game, Leveling Up should typically happen outside of the game, or in “Town Mode”, which means when the player characters are resting up between adventures. It would be silly to level up during an adventure and would potentially waste time leveling up during a play session.

Character Levels

In Starchasers, characters don’t have individual levels. Instead they level up in a specific Class.

Class Levels

Characters typically begin at Level Zero in a chosen Class. This means that any Experience that they earn as part of the adventure is devoted to the first level in their class.

Characters can also begin at Level 1. This means that they select a Class and have 1 level in that class and are working towards level 2.

Each level (including 1) has an Experience Point cost.

Class Leveling Benefits

At each Class Level a character gains the following benefits:

Gain Class Level Features via the associated table
Select 1 Talent from the talent tree
Gain 1 additional Hit Point*

*Note that player characters only gain Hit Points from the first 20 levels. This means that they can only gain a maximum of 20 Hit Points from leveling alone.

Class Maximums

A character cannot have more than 5 classes (mini-classes count as half a class, so having 2 mini-classes counts as a class for the purposes of maximums). This makes the maximum level that a character can have be level 100.

Experience Points

Characters gain Experience Points based on their actions and their ability to complete Adventures. This includes Experience Points for defeating enemies, solving mysteries, finding secrets and so on.

Note that “Defeat” doesn’t mean “Kill”. It’s possible for Player Characters to defeat an enemy simply by bypassing them, rendering them unconscious or recruiting them through Social Actions.

Typically player characters will receive around 30 XP per 4 hour session that the player attends (no XP if the player isn’t there!). This number can increase or decrease if the players are putting in a lot of effort and really clearing challenges well, or it can be lower if players are not trying very hard.

Class Leveling Table

Class Level	Experience to that Level	Cumulative Experience
0	0	0
1	60	60
2	30	90
3	30	120
4	30	150
5	30	180
6	60	240
7	90	330
8	90	420
9	90	510
10	90	600
11	150	750
12	150	900
13	150	1050
14	250	1300
15	300	1600
16	400	2000
17	500	2500
18	500	3000
19	500	3500
20	500	4000

Multiclassing

Starchasers is designed for Multiclassing. At any point a player can select a new Class to devote their Experience Points to. They begin at “Level Zero” in this new Class, but retain all the benefits from their previous Classes.

Now there is an upper limit to how many Classes most players can actually play, since each Class has features and mechanics unique to it, multiclassing across more than 5 Classes is probably not feasible.

When a player has more than one Class that is not maxed out, they can choose after each session where to allocate that session’s XP. They can allocate it all to one class, or split it evenly amongst several.

Player characters can only have one class at Level Zero at a time. They must get their class to at least level 1 before apprenticing in a new class.

Class Contents

Each Class has a few standard features:

Motivators, which are ways that characters in that Class earn Motivation
The unique Knowledge that the class provides.
Built-in Abilities, which are the Class Abilities that each class needs to function at a minimum, and which are available at Level Zero.
A Talent Tree, from which the player can select a Talent for their Character each Level.
Class Level Features, which represent a linear growth in the class.

There are roughly 2 types of classes:

Main Classes: These have 20 levels, 2 Motivators and 30 points in their Talent Tree.
Mini Classes: These have only 10 levels, no Motivators, and 15-16 points in their Talent Tree.

The Mini Classes are mostly for Force Powers, as they don’t constitute a “philosophy” the way that the Main Classes do.

Game Difficulty and Experience

Apart from increasing the power level of enemy units, a Gamemaster can increase the difficulty by applying two extra rules which increase the challenge and also grant an Experience Point Multiplier.

Two new rules that are intended to make the game more exciting and provide mechanics that will drive player behavior towards making better decisions faster and really "feel" the pressure. These two mechanics can be used separately, but will often be used together to increase the pressure on the players.

These two systems are the "Doom Clock" and the "Heat Meter" and are described below:

The Doom Clock

The Doom Clock counts up slowly as an adventure progresses, and represents the forces of darkness slowly growing in power. The Doom Clock goes from Zero to Six. The current "Doom Count" will then be a number from Zero to Six. Minions and Elites will gain additional abilities for each tick of the Doom Clock, making them more powerful and dangerous. Bosses will have more Minions with them, and gain additional Hit Points per level of the Doom Clock. Because of this the Player Characters will gain 1 additional point of Experience per Doom Clock level per Encounter because of this Doom Level.

The Heat Meter

The Heat Meter is a tracker that the Gamemaster uses to indicate how much "heat" the player's actions are generating. In the context of the adventure, "heat" is usually a measure of how reckless and attention-grabbing the player character's actions are. Carelessness and callousness can also increase the Heat. The Heat Meter goes from 0 to 10, and each tick of the Heat Meter increases the chance of the Player Characters getting into an unavoidable Encounter by 10%. So if the Heat Meter is at 5, then there's a 50% chance that the PCs will run into an Encounter the next time they transition locations. The GM will roll a 1d10 die, and if the result is equal to or under the current Heat Meter level, then an Encounter is triggered.