Core Rules/Game Mechanics

# Player Characteristics

Characteristics represent the backbone of the character. This is what they are when mind and body are put together. Characteristics are used for stat checks, and higher stat scores provide higher bonuses whenever a check must be done. Stat bonuses are added to skill bonuses when the relevant skill utilizes the respective characteristic. For a frame of reference, an average human being would have eight through twelve in all characteristics.

This first table shows the bonuses and penalties a player would receive when making a stat-check of a respective skill. For example, if a player wants to lift a heavy rock, they would roll a strength check. They then add a bonus or a penalty depending on their strength level. What bonus or penalty they get is determined by the table below.

## Stat-Check Bonuses

When creating a character, all stats begin at a base of 10. (A score of 10 indicates an average score in said Characteristic.) You are then given 15 points that you are free to divide up amongst the six categories. Those categories are:

Strength

Dexterity

Constitution

Intelligence

Wisdom

Social

You are free to subtract from your base 10 and make some skills worse (down to a minimum of 5) in order to increase your spending pool. For example, you could reduce your Constitution to an 8 and now you’ll have 17 points to spend across the other stats, but you’ll start with less overall hp.

## Strength

Strength represents a character’s physical and martial ability. Strength checks can be used to lift objects, break down doors, break locks, etc. The higher the strength, the better your character is in martial combat.

The higher your starting strength score, the higher your melee damage bonus. This bonus affects the amount of damage one does with every successful melee hit. This does not affect accuracy (melee attack).

## Dexterity

Dexterity is a character’s athletic and acrobatic ability. This characteristic represents agility, nimbleness, acrobatics, balance, and other such traits. While a strength check would be battering down a door, a dexterity check would be balancing on a pole to cross a gap. Your dexterity also affects your initiative, which is your position in the combat order.

## Constitution

This is how beefy a character can be (and how much liquor they can take). Constitution has a direct impact on the amount of starting HP a character has. This is also a person’s ability to resist poisons, disease, and willpower checks. Everyone starts with a base of ten HP, which will be modified by the initial constitution level.

## Intelligence

Intelligence is often described as the character’s “book-smarts.” This is reflective of a person’s overall knowledge. This is how well versed in lore, politics, or the greater picture. This stat is used when checking to see if you know some fact, or something about an artifact, etc. This is also a very beneficial stat for mage-like characters given that it increases your base Ability Point pool.

## Wisdom

Wisdom is someone’s common sense. An awareness of how the world actually works, none of that physics or chemistry garbage. This is sometimes described as a character’s “streetsmarts”, wit, instinct, or life experience. This is used when making perception/awareness checks, or for an information based check that’s more around the ways of the world rather than something you’d read in a book. Monks, roguish types, and people who have lived a long time normally have a high wisdom.

Your instinct is how well you are able to sense things without trying to. In other systems it‘s called passive perception. It can be seen as a sort of extraordinary sense or intuition. For example, a player with high instinct will be able to notice, without making a roll, that the guards are discreetly locking the doors at the party, meaning something nefarious is afoot (see: The Red Wedding)

Instinct can also be used in an active sense at the DM’s discretion. For example: if the party is traveling through an abandoned mine and there it a pitfall trap coming up, and nobody checked for traps, the DM can roll instinct for every player. Whichever player rolls high enough can spot the trap. The advantage this has over telling the players to make perception checks is that it is better at not letting the players have meta knowledge that there is something they should be looking out for.

## Social

Social is a character’s ability to understand people and interact with them. Whether introverted or extroverted, this can represent a character’s ability to read people as much as it could reflect that they are the life of the party. This is involved in manipulation checks, diplomacy checks, etc. Anything that involves conversation, commands, or something related to getting someone to do something you want.

The favor bonus is how good or bad your first impressions will be with NPCs. This can make it easier or harder to get others to do what you want. In technical terms, the DM can roll favor each time a PC meets an NPC for the first time. This will determine how willing the NPC is to like the PC off-the-bat.

# Tokens

Tokens are earned through adventuring and looting, as well as accomplishing difficult tasks. Category specific tokens such as a melee attack token or what have you can be purchased in shops around the world for various prices.

One extraordinary way in which Tokens can be earned is by award by the DM for playing a character extremely well. This would be, for example, if a player remains in-character and acts out a particularly touching, moving, or clever scene within the game. Tokens are rewards for good roleplaying.

Spending 1 token can grant a player:

+5 Max health

+10 Max AP

+1 To melee attack

+1 to ranged attack

+1 to dodge

+1 To a skill

Spending 3 tokens can increase a characteristic by 1.

# Skills and Flaws

Nobody is perfect. While everyone might come with a particular set of skills, everyone also has flaws. During character creation, players are given eight skill points to allocate across five skill slots. A character can grow in expertise of a respective skill through assigning a token to it.

Skill bonuses provide a positive modifier on skill check rolls and are added to the bonus of the root characteristic.

For example: if you have a chef skill of 4 and an Intelligence bonus of 2 and you go to roll to cook some soup, you will roll a D20+6. The resulting number is how well you cooked the soup.

Flaws on the other hand are mental, emotional, or physical issues that the player character has. These can manifest in a multitude of ways. Some characters have a big ego which makes it hard for them to compromise. Some characters may have a specific phobia that makes it difficult to deal with situations involving said phobia. Others may walk with a limp or are missing a finger. The grim choice is yours. It is recommended that each player character has around three flaws.

For a list of example skills and flaws, check appendix a.

# Combat Modifiers

Combat modifiers reflect how skilled your character is at fighting. Combat is divided between the categories of melee and ranged combat respectively.

In character creation, you are given 5 modifier points that you can put into melee attack, ranged attack, or dodge (Armor is not increased this way.) These categories reflect how your character fights. These skills can be increased later by spending tokens earned through gameplay.

### Melee Attack

This represents how skilled you are at hand-to-hand combat. The higher your Melee Attack stat is, the better you will be at bashing people’s heads in with a variety of weapons. Keep in mind that Melee Attack only affects one’s accuracy and has no effect on the amount of damage dealt.

### Ranged Attack

This represents your ability to hit something or someone from long-distance. This could be with an arrow, crossbow bolt, thrown weapon, or a long-range magical attack. Essentially, if the thing intended to harm your target leaves your hands, it will be modified by this stat. Keep in mind that Ranged Attack only affects one’s accuracy with ranged attacks and has no effect on the amount of damage dealt.

### Dodge

Increasing your dodge score increases your chances of not getting hit by enemies in both range and melee distance. An all around useful skill that most adventurers would want to throw at least a couple of points into.

### Armor

Your armor represents what you are wearing and how it protects you from receiving damage. Armor does not help you avoid getting hit, but it does mitigate the amount of damage sustained from hits taken. This will be explained more in the “Combat” section.

While some people may be more comfortable in armor, it is not a stat that can be increased with modifier points during character creation or tokens in-game. The quality of armor is primarily the concern of the armor itself and not the one who wears it. In addition, armor can be damaged or outright destroyed by certain types of attacks. It would be devastating to invest 5 hard-earned tokens into armor, only for it to be destroyed in a single dungeon crawl. Those tokens could have instead been invested in things that usually can’t be taken away like melee attack or maximum health.

### Ability Points

This is your mana pool, your stamina, your faith points, ki points, Psi points, etc… This is whatever you need it to be. Your initial Ability Point (AP) pool is 100, and can be modified based on your intelligence score. It can be further increased with tokens throughout the course of the game.

Ability Points are used to modify attacks and use magic. Simple attacks require no ability points, but if you want to increase your chances of success or pull off an overly extravagant maneuver, you would use Ability Points. For example, attacks where you would use AP include hitting two enemies at once or casting a fireball. If your AP reaches zero, you pass out. AP can give you an extra push when you’re in a tight situation, allow you to cast spells, or do something awesome/creative.

AP is typically used in increments of five, each one adding an additional +1 to a hit or damage roll. Every point of armor increases AP consumption by 1. So instead of getting a +1 to an attack roll by spending 5 AP, someone with an armor class of 3 would need to spend 8 AP. Is a character has an armor class of 2, then an ability that would normally cost 20AP to use will not cost 22.

### Abilities

Abilities are the spells/feats/powers/miracles of the Raventower system. It is recommended that each player character starts off with 3 abilities. More abilities can be gained throughout the course of the campaign. Players are encouraged to come up with their own abilities and get them approved by the dungeon master.

How they work

When a player declares that they want to use one of their abilities, they first pay the base AP cost (BC) and then add more AP if they wish to increase the accuracy, range, scale, or damage of the ability. They then roll against their opponent and let the dice fall as they may.

Appendix B has a list of abilities that players can start with or use as inspiration if they wish to come up with their own.

# Combat

Another major distinction of Raventower is the momentum-based combat system.

You and the enemy roll against each other. Dice against dice. Modifier against modifier. Combat begins with setting initiative, which is based upon Dexterity scores. Those with higher dexterity get to act first and so on.

The goal of combat is of course to kill or otherwise disable all enemies on the field. A player will be knocked unconscious upon reaching 0 HP. If the player sustains enough damage to reach -6 HP, they will begin to bleed out. A character who is bleeding out loses one hp per turn. A player will officially die when reaching -10 HP. Keep in mind that if a player has 4 HP remaining and sustains 14 damage from a foe, that player will be at -10HP and is now dead. A dead individual can only be brought back to life through divine intervention or extremely expensive and powerful resurrection magic. Unless the DM makes an exception, all NPCs are slain at 0hp.

If the attacker is using a melee attack, then he will roll a D20 and add his melee attack bonus, and the defender will also roll a D20 and add his own melee attack bonus. Whoever has the higher number gets to deal damage or hamper their opponent. If the attacker is the one who failed, the defender gets to deal counter damage. The turn is then ended and moved to the next person in the line of initiative. The same rules apply for ranged attacks, if the defender is capable of making a ranged attack.

Various modifiers and effects can appear in a combat setting that are not explicitly detailed in the handbook, but the party may gain more help or hindrances at the DM’s discretion. This can include bonuses for being at a higher elevation than one’s target, bonuses for attacking an enemy’s weak spot, penalties for fighting in rough terrain, and penalties for fighting in dark environments.

### Attacking and Defending

Players and NPCs may attack up to three times per turn. If the attacker successfully hits their first attack then they may go for a second attack with a +1 bonus to hit. If the second attack lands, then the third attack gains a +2 bonus to hit. If the attacker fails an attack then their momentum is stopped and their turn is over.

If the attacker succeeds on their first attack but fails on their second attack, then the defender gets a +2 to any counter damage they deal. If the attacker lands their first two attacks but fails on their third attack, then the defender gets a +4 to any counter damage they deal.

### Dodging

A character may add their dodge bonus to their defense roll in order to gain a bigger bonus. However, a character who successfully dodges deals no counter damage to the attacker. Increasing one’s Dodge stat is a good defensive option against both melee and ranged attacks since it is one single stat that can be added to one’s ranged attack bonus or one’s melee attack bonus in order to protect the user.

In other words, increasing one’s dodge stat grants a bonus for defending against both melee and ranged attacks but gives no bonus to attacking. On the other hand, increasing one’s melee or ranged attack increases the chances of dealing damage or defending against their respective damage types, but only benefits one damage type at a time.

### Armor

Your number of armor points is subtracted from an enemy’s damage roll down to a minimum of 1.