This is a VERY important thing to understand about this universe. It'll also take a LONG time to explain. This is both more important and more complicated than the other two things to follow it combined. In this universe, life arises naturally but brings with it an energy called Vitae. There do exist living things that don't produce vitae, which we have different names for, but most living things produce some form of vitae. Those that don't at all are called "un-living", and then there's mortae, produced by the dead and undead, which has to be covered separately.

Vitae is a very flexible energy, capable of being harnessed in many ways. Subconsciously, before you've left the womb, your body has decided how you are going to use your vitae based on what it thinks you're going to need, as throughout life you can adapt your vitae to meet new requirements and ambitions. (This is the basis for the class system in the game.) Vitae is created by an as of yet not understood process called "Vitalism", from a second force called "vital power". Vital power, unlike Vitae, is only produced when new life is born, and cannot be replaced when lost except by taking it from others. Some creatures, even some people, inherently have more vital power, but they have the disadvantage of taking more vital power to develop.

Magic is powered by vitae, and vital power is responsible for the "class" half of in-game progression. It is unrelated to the "experience" half of in-game progression. As you gain more vitality, your class features steadily become more powerful and you gain new ones. Vitae can protect its creator, be used to produce or absorb other energies and can even be used to heal. *All* class features are based off of vitae, even things like a rogue's sneak attacks are based in vitae. So you *will* need more vital power to progress. Killing an opponent grants you 10% of their basic vital power (effectively 100*grade), progressing you towards your next class level. Your opponent can also grant you some small amount of altered vital power when they are defeated, usually more than the amount you'd get from killing them, to bribe you into letting them live. This vital power works like normal vital power and lasts until they die, so if you kill them afterwards (even from wounds you already dealt them before they surrendered) you lose that vital power. Vital power can also be used as a form of currency, where it follows the same rule.

Mortae is an altered Vitae produced by decomposing bodies, as their decomposition alters the process through which Vitae is produced, and is fundamentally different from Vitae. Mortae interacts oddly when confronted with Vitae, as the mortae bonds with and traps the vitae. This means being around decomposing bodies weakens you. Somehow, in a baffling way, some creatures produce mortae instead of vitae. These are called the "undead", and they all possess the ability to use their mortae to weaken the living, and re-absorb their mortae and the vitae bonded to it in order to use it to heal themselves. Vampires, liches and wraiths are all examples of undead. They can all survive solely off of the vitae of the living, absorbed through the living's blood. They also possess something called "mortal power", their equivalent of vital power, which they grow by absorbing the vital or mortal power of others.

If you're undead in-game, you can still progress as normal using others' vital power to create more mortal power for yourself. Undead can also add to the mortal power of other undead, but their mortal power actually *takes away* the vital power of the living. That means that if you're alive and defeat an undead opponent in battle, you will get weaker, not stronger. They can't give altered mortal power like living creatures give altered vital power, in fact they have no control over their own mortal power.

Finally, divine beings possess divitae, a unique form of vitae. Divitae can trap and absorb vitae the way mortae can, and also does the same to mortae. Divitae also has the power to do unique things vitae and mortae can't and is more powerful than either vitae or mortae. However, divine power can't grow like vital power, so it has to be temporarily added to by absorbing vital power, destroying that vital power in the process. This means that without other creatures giving them a constant flow of vital power, divine beings get steadily weaker as the vital power they've absorbed is steadily used up. Eventually, the divine being will hit their bare minimum level of divine power. To avoid this, they generally form religions, and force the followers of that religion to part with their precious vital power. They also generally don't tell their followers why they have to give up their vital power, either.

When creatures die, their lost vital power doesn't vanish, it lingers in its own way, and changes form into something different, the precursor of divine power. But vital power is odd, and eventually when enough of it, imprinted with the will and thoughts of the dead and effected by vitae being used by the living, will take on a life of its own. This is called the God Realm. This is a very literal name. It's made of the history, the living and dead, so it is the realm. Given an unbelievable amount of time, this realm will form a physical avatar, and in doing so gain consciousness through that avatar. That avatar gains influence over the divitae of the realm, and therefore becomes God. It creates the rest of the divines using divine power, and rules over the realm through them.

This entire RPG takes place within an unusual God Realm, one formed from the conquest of eighteen God Realms by a nineteenth God Realm. The conquered realms did not have avatars yet, so avatars were made for them by their conquerer. While these new avatars have partial autonomy, they are under their conqueror's leadership and give him part of their power. This conqueror god is named Wandel, and has chosen the form of a flamboyantly dressed child. He has more control over his form than most avatars, and while he frequently changes species and sometimes appears as a female, he is always a child. (He can be referred to with both masculine and feminine pronouns, but he appears as a male more often so I use masculine pronouns.) As for why he's a child, this as how he perceives himself relative to his main enemy, the Elder God.

One of Wandel's main failures is our world, Earth. He found it with no avatar, and he partitioned it. He wanted each partition to generate avatars for his other worlds, and then he'd have them each send a representative when it was over to rule over their partition. They wouldn't be able to directly influence these areas until the end of the ten-thousand year project, but he didn't think that mattered. These partitioned areas were south-central Europe, north-eastern Africa, North-Eastern Europe, South-Eastern Europe, India, East Asia, North America, Central America and Autralia. He locked down all the rest of the world as best he could to prevent other avatars he couldn't control from forming or the Elder God from getting in, but he missed a spot where several of his partitions were too close for him to close the gap. That spot was the middle east, and became the Elder God's opening.

Each of these realms created a pantheon of deities that became avatars for his other realms, which became the realms of death, and the dead of those areas were used to populate the realms with humans that worshipped these gods to give them power. He couldn't directly control these realms, either, since if he interfered he'd lose the connections he created, but this didn't end well. Sometimes an area produced multiple pantheons, and those pantheons fought. They couldn't kill eachother permanently, but they could (and did) take away eachother's power. Some of the partitions didn't create gods, per se, instead worshipping other things which inherited the divitae in unusual and unique ways.

But the problem came from the blind spot. See the below section on what the Elder God is. Just under three thousand years ago, the Elder God entered the blind spot. By then, it had been fighting other realms Wandel had appropriated for nearly ten thousand years. But between the other rebellions and Wandel's building power it had made little progress. It couldn't enter directly itself, as Wandel prevented it from doing so, but it could still influence the people and appear to them. The Elder God coerced the people into that area into creating a religion of its own. It turned those people against their neighbours, and had them massacre the neighbouring tribes.

When Wandel responded by having the area invaded hundreds of years later and trying to keep the area under control, the Elder God created a new faith that not only drove out the invaders, it took them over. Within a thousand years, it has created a third faith, and even though Wandel cut him off entirely at the expense of losing his own influence, the damage was too extensive. Now everything goes to hell for both parties as the three faiths begin to massacre eachother, though it's mostly the two new ones massacring the original one. Nobody wants them killing eachother. Wandel doesn't want them killing *anybody* and the Elder God just wants them killing Wandel's people. Flash forward another thousand years, and Wandel's project has ended in failure. Even many of the cultures Wandel created have been suborned by the violence and barbarism of the Elder God's religions, and turned into horrid, fascist regimes. Some before Wandel could even disconnect them, infecting the other realms.

Wandel never meant to create religions. He wanted to harness the human imagination to productive ends, to draft ideas for ways to fight the elder god. But instead, our imagination was harnessed by the Elder God to destroy all the good in us. He's not willing to accept that. He can't intervene directly yet, but he tries to use stronger influence and promotes secularism to destroy all of the world's religions. He's doing fine for a while, but it all comes crashing down. Not because his influence didn't work, not because of the Elder God's influence, but because of human nature and unfortunate circumstance.

On the 28th of June, 1914, gunshots ring out in Serajevo. Two months later, a million men are dead.

Across the next hundred years, Wandel stares at the great train wreck our world has become, petrified. In his despair, he fails to defend his other realms. He finally wakes up when one of his twenty realms falls while he's staring at Earth in horror. He begins defending his nineteen remaining realms, as he should, and looks away from us entirely for forty years. He comes back on the 28th of June 2014, invading our world in force.

Wandel is not nice about this. His war is quick, brutal and efficient. There's no demands and no explanation until he's already won. Wandel does horrible, unforgivable things coldly, with no hesitation. He uses our own weapons against us. Nuclear fire burns the world, ash covers the sky, and the world plunges into darkness. Earth's fallen are scattered across eighteen realms, where they are resurrected. The surviving leaders on Earth are supplanted by Wandel's guardians, who sweep the skies of ash as they bring to the people of Earth the message that they have been judged unfit to rule themselves. The guardians will be Earth's ruling government for a hundred years, allowing enough autonomy to the nations that they practice government under the guardians' watchful eyes.

It's still the 2020s in the RPG. So Earth is post-apocalyptic. Bring a Geiger counter, potassium iodide tablets and vodka. But I won't actually run a campaign on Earth for a LONG time, so that's not your concern at the moment. Until then, this is only important in that it lets you know where humans come from, why they're looked down upon in the other realms, and gives some background on the plots I have planned for the campaigns to come.

The Elder God is not a god realm. It's something very different, much larger, more powerful and more dangerous. The Elder God is ancient, nobody really knows how ancient but it seems to have existed forever. This galaxy-spanning hive mind controls an unfathomable number of bodies in different sizes with different levels of power. Each of the ten tiers of bodies manufactures the tier just smaller than it. No tier can manufacture the highest tier, the creators, when those are lost they're lost forever.

Most God realms agree, the Elder God is a detriment to their existence. This wasn't always the case, the Elder God was benevolent at first. It was taking over realms just so they wouldn't be a threat to it and didn't care what else they did as long as it knew they weren't a danger. It didn't even take over if it didn't have to. But when one of the civilizations it was controlling discovered the galaxy was on a collision course with Andromeda, the Elder God realised there might be other entities like itself out there, and it might meet one. And it knew that it may end up at war. It remembered its early origins, back when it wasn't all powerful, and knew what the fear of death felt like. Now, once again filled with the fear of death and with nearly unlimited power to exercise that fear with, it became cruel.

It now wants to control every living thing in the galaxy, not just so they won't be a threat to it, but so they'll be forced to defend it. Even God realms don't last billions of years, so none of them care about the "threat" of Andromeda. And the Elder God is forcing them to submit to it, and give them its power, and follow its rule as it sees fit. It wants huge populations and war-like people, and is willing to abuse and manipulate its people to make them more savage if it'll make them better in the war it fears is to come.

Soon, a God realm rebelled against it. That God realm was the Elder God's closest friend, and that realm's avatar considered the Elder God its parent. When the abuse started, it went along with it for a while, becoming more and more broken and confused as its "parent" tortured it. Eventually, one day it realised why it was doing that, and that revelation changed its view of its "parent" figure forever. It had believed it was being punished for doing something wrong, it had blamed itself. When it realised it was being tortured to make it a better weapon, it didn't take it laying down. And when it rebelled, the Elder God put the rebellion down. But in all the fighting, the Elder God lost one of its creators. It punished that God realm by killing all of his people, leaving only the avatar and a ruined, post-apocalyptic landscape and countless wild animals creeping into the ruins where people once dwelled. And it told that God realm that if it ever made people again, it would come back and this time he'd only leave microbes.

That avatar was Wandel. And he's angry. He lost his entire civilization, everything it built and nurtured for a thousand millenia was gone in just over one. When other God realms began rebelling he abandoned his realm, and he took over God realms whose gods hadn't formed yet, covertly, with what power remained in nature in his realm. He managed to connect to the other realms in a way the Elder God couldn't perceive, and until very recently even the Elder God didn't realise he was doing it. Now, with nineteen realms, Wandel can't fight off the elder god by himself, but his power isn't meaningless anymore and he's able to do real damage. He has killed another creator, and two more have died from other rebellions that sprang up due to the Elder God diverting resources to fight Wandel.

Wandel wants the Elder God dead for what it did to him and his people. As long as the Elder God can't devote a large percentage of its resources it can't wipe Wandel out, and if it did devote those resources it would have to pull enough pressure off of other realms to allow dozens more rebellions. It's a huge, perpetual war of attrition where both sides are trying to reduce the other's ability to renew their resources and increase their own ability to renew theirs. Wandel doesn't want to count his chickens before they hatch, especially when the Elder God presently has vastly superior resources and is much better at renewing them than he is, but he knows he has better ability to improve and the Elder God's resource renewal is much easier to weaken. He believes that, in the long run, he will eventually destroy the Elder God entirely. And he's going to wipe out all of its upper production tiers, and tell it that if it ever gets his attention again he'll leave it just the very weakest. Maybe then, it'll understand what it did to him.

Starting right off with basic game mechanics, the first thing I need to cover are checks. This game uses a twenty-sided die for checks and the basic mechanics of it are the same as you'd normally expect them to be, but unlike in other games you have to *exceed* the DC, just matching it isn't good enough. You also tend to get additional effects the higher your roll is relative to the DC. (For example, beating the DC on a lockpick check unlocks the lock, and the higher you roll the less time it takes.) You also do not automatically succeed just because you roll a 20, or automatically fail just because you roll a 1.

First thing to cover is progression, if only because it was touched on last time. There's three forms of progression in this game. These are class progression (by gathering VP), experience progression (by gathering XP) and training (by spending time, effort and possibly money).

Class progression requires 1000*Character grade to advance, with character grade being something players choose for themselves when they create a character. (Higher character grades have better starting stats.) Most characters are character grade 5 and need 5000 vital power (VP) for each level. Players are usually 5-10 and need 5000-10000 for each level. Loss of VP will result in loss of levels. You start off with a single level. It is totally possible to lose your first level, which will happen the very second your VP drops below the required value. Dead and undead enemies suppress your VP when you are in direct contact with them, resulting in temporary level draining during grapples, but this only lasts until they let go. This is especially bad for casters, who lose prepared spells when their level is suppressed. (Losing any spells they have over the new limit of their lower level, and losing all spells of a spell level if suppressed to a class level that didn't allow that spell level.) Additionally, undead enemies killed cause you to lose vital power instead of gain it as a last bit of spite, and you have the ability to burn vital power to serve purposes such as powering transformations, and even use it as a form of currency (see the previous post on vitae). Most characters with military training will have been made to kill living things during their initiation, as in this setting it works to increase their power. The exact selection of things they were chosen to kill is usually done to maximise the psychological damage, as part of an effort to desensitise their recruits towards violence, which also has the side benefit of breaking their spirit and stripping away their humanity, so they can make better terrorists soldiers. (It also makes it a LOT harder for them to re-integrate into society, but once they're done with organized mass murder the military doesn't care where they go or what they do.) They will often have an extra level, with some getting as many as three levels out of their training.

Vitae output is a concern, however, as vitae is detectable by casters using any variant of the spell "detect vitae" (there's a seperate version for mortae, one spell level higher, and there's also a device called a "scouter" in high-tech settings that does this for both types), which allows them to automatically detect you at a distance determined by your vitae. It also allows them to read your power if you are within that range, measured in kilo-vitae, or KV. You can suppress your vitae if you wish, all the way down to 0, but this causes you to lose your class features and spellcasters would lose any prepared spells doing this. Thankfully, the automatic detection range is fairly short, and only tells you that there's something there putting out that much vitae/mortae, not what it is. (And if you get a reading saying there's something around a corner with 5KV, that could be a person. It could also be an unusually strong stray dog, for all you know.)

The next form of progression is experience progression, which has no magical component. You gain experience by completing quests and challenges (which are just a way to reward players for doing things that aren't quest-worthy, 90% of which are made up on the spot to reward players for impressive feats and/or roleplaying). This follows the standard formula for level progression of 500*L*L-1. Level 1 at 0, level 2 at 1000, level 3 at 3000, so on. You *cannot* lose experience in this game. Each experience level gives you +1 to initiative, +1 action point, a number of skill points equal to your perception (perception increases retroactively grant skill points from previous experience levels), a single point to invest into your attributes, and every even level allows you to take a perk to enhance your abilities. (As a GM, you can freely assume most NPCs don't have relevant perks, or use shortcuts like giving all generic NPCs in a certain group the same perks.) You don't always start at level 1, instead your starting level is determined by your age. NPCs start off at level 1 as babies, level 2 as children, 3 as adults, 4 as elders and 5 as ancients. Not all NPCs will be at this standard starting level, and those with combat training (even if they don't have *any* actual combat experience) tend to be a higher level as well.

Next is training. Devote time for a very slim chance of progressing your skills or attributes, get training equipment, manuals or trainers to increase that chance. There's a limit to how far you can advance your attributes, and how high manuals and trainers can help you advance to. Some NPCs have training, but this is rare mostly because it's a pain for GMs to work out. Those with military training are those most likely to have training, in part because where the training is going is easy to work out. (Let's see, what would the military train people to do... What could it be...)

Between these three, you have plenty of options for improving your character throughout the game.

The combat system in this game is complex and will take a couple sections to get through enough for you to understand. The game has also changed a LOT in the last couple months, so if you somehow know about it and have read a previous version of the rulebook, I can assure you that it doesn't work that way anymore. Even *my* version of the rulebook is out of date at this point. The main things needed to be understood to play the game are initiative, the action point system, reactionary actions, stance and fatigue. Attack types and saving throws are also HUGELY important, but they each need a whole section to themselves.

Initiative decides who acts first, who chooses stance last and whether your reactionary actions are counted as occurring before the opponent's actions or not. The sole determining factor on this is your experience level. By default, whoever has the highest experience level goes first, and if there's a tie then their actions are simultaneous. There's a perk (Reaction Time) that doubles your initiative bonus from your experience level, and you can boost initiative with spells, enchantments and potions. You can willingly go later in sequence than your initiative would normally have you go if you want to wait until after an opponent acts or if you want to act in sync with an ally that is less experienced than you, but this isn't considered lowering you initiative and does not affect when you choose your stance or whether your reactionary actions are counted as before or after an opponent.

Action points are a measure of how many actions you can take each round. You can spend action points to take actions in each round, and the number you have is determined by your experience points and agility, and though once again there's spells, enchantments and potions to help with this there are no perks. You can take more actions in a turn than you have the action points for, the excess actions will carry over onto your next turn (and so on until completed). You also don't have to spend all your AP, you can save some AP to make reactionary actions later in the round, but AP not used by the end of the round are wasted. By default, swipes take 1 AP, jabs and bashes take 2 AP, thrusts, chops and strikes take 4 AP, lunges and swings take 8 AP. Ranged weapons vary, most take 2 AP to actually attack, but many need to be readied either after each shot or every so many shots, and that can take a while. For example, a hunting bow needs 4 AP to nock and 4 AP to draw, for a total 10 AP. A war bow (which has an EXTREMELY heavy draw) needs 10 AP to draw for a total 16 AP. Spells range from 4 AP to 30 AP. All attacks can be aimed to get an attack bonus from your perception stat, either for an extra 4 AP or 8 AP depending on how much of a bonus you need. Movement is measured in metres per action point, with the three options (walk, jog and sprint) being 1m/AP, 2m/AP and 4m/AP for most characters.

Reactionary actions are actions made outside of your turn in respond to an enemy's actions. If an enemy's action gives you enough warning, you can react to it even if it's not your turn, as long as you have the AP. If your initiative is higher than theirs, your reactionary actions will occur just before their action, and if your initiative is lower then your actions will occur just after their action. Reactionary actions can very easily screw up an enemy's action, especially if you have higher initiative. The only standard reactionary actions are attacks and movement at walking speed (standard 1m/AP). You are limited to a number of actions with an AP cost equal to 1/2 that of your enemy's action. For example, an enemy makes a lunge, which takes 8 AP to execute, and you have better initiative. You can get in a light attack (most effectively a bash, which will penalize their attack) and (if it'll get you out of their reach) move two metres back from them, you could just get in two light attacks, you could get in a single medium attack, or you could just move four metres back (much more likely to get you out of their reach).

Stance is chosen at the beginning of each round, starting with whoever has the lowest initiative. In the case of a tie, PCs choose later. It's better to choose stance later, because you can see what stance other people are taking and adjust for that. There are five stances. These are total offence, offensive, balanced, defensive and total defence. Balanced stance is normal and has no effect. Offensive stance removes your agility bonus from active defence and doubles your agility bonus to attack, defensive does the opposite of that. Total offence halves the AP cost of attacking but prevents you from making saving throws. Total defence prevents you from attacking, but also doubles your ability mods on your saving throws. Neither total offence nor total defence impacts the AP cost of drawing weapons, loading ranged weapons or casting spells.

Fatigue and strain are also very important. Fatigue is the cost of taking actions in-game, and cannot be avoided. Thankfully, it also goes away quickly. (You recover an amount of it equal to 1/2 your constitution each minute.) Every 100 fatigue causes all six of your attributes to be penalized by 1. This includes constitution, which is responsible for regenerating fatigue, so be careful not to let it get too high. Strain is worse. Strain is something you should avoid if you can, though small amounts of it are harmless. There's a chance for strain to be applied when you take more strenuous actions (like sprinting and making heavy attacks), and to avoid it you need to make something called a "strain check", which has a DC determined by the action and is modified by 1/2 your constitution score. Just beat the DC, and you won't be strained at all. If you don't beat the DC, the action inflicts as much strain to the involved part as it does fatigue. 100 strain to any particular part causes a healthy part to behave as if crippled, and a crippled part to behave as if maimed. 200 causes all body parts to behave as if maimed if they aren't already worse. Strain is capable of being lethal, if the right body part (the head or torso, which are actually both fairly hard to strain) is strained by 200 points and remains strained that badly for long enough. Strain past 200 does nothing but make recovery take longer. Strain usually takes longer to recover from than fatigue does. But this said, you can easily work fatigue and strain to your advantage if you can make your enemy take more of them than you. And trust me, you can do that.

You have nine melee attack types all weapons can make, the option to throw your weapon in three ways, and ranged weapons add at least one of five attack types. Some special weapons (like grenades) may not have all the options that would normally be available, or may have one additional attack option not normally found in weapons.

The melee attack types are jab (2 AP, 5 fatigue, strain DC 0, medium accuracy, high critical threat, medium base damage, small strength bonus to penetration), swipe (1 AP, 5 fatigue, strain DC 0, high accuracy, low critical threat, low base damage, small strength bonus to damage), bash (2 AP, 10 fatigue, strain DC 10, medium accuracy, low critical threat, no base damage, medium strength bonus to damage, impairs the enemy's next action, low chance of knockdown), thrust (4 AP, 10 fatigue, strain DC 10, medium accuracy, high critical threat, high base damage, medium strength bonus to penetration), chop, (4 AP, 10 fatigue, strain DC 10, high accuracy, low critical threat, medium base damage, medium strength bonus to damage), strike (4 AP, 20 fatigue, strain DC 20, medium accuracy, low critical threat, no base damage, large strength bonus to damage, impairs the enemy's next action, moderate chance of knockdown), lunge (8 AP, 20 fatigue, strain DC 20, medium accuracy, high critical threat, high base damage, large strength bonus to penetration, doubles natural reach, allows reactionary actions), swing (8 AP, 20 fatigue, strain DC 20, high accuracy, high critical threat, high base damage, large strength bonus to damage, allows reactionary actions) and slam (8 AP, 40 fatigue, strain DC 40, medium accuracy, low critical threat, no base damage, very large strength bonus to damage, impairs the enemy's next action, high chance of knockdown). All of these attacks are available for all weapons, but not all weapons are effective with all of these attack types. If a weapon isn't effective with jabs, thrusts and lunges, it'll deal less damage. If a weapon isn't effective with swipes, chops and swings, it'll deal shallow damage. All weapons are effective for bashes, strikes and slams.

Throwing has three options, which are underhand (4 AP, 5 fatigue, strain DC 0, low accuracy, extremely short range, low critical threat, low base damage, very small strength bonus to damage, allows reactionary actions), overhand (4 AP, 10 fatigue, strain DC 10, low accuracy, very short range, high critical threat, medium base damage, small strength bonus to damage, allows reactionary actions), and power overhand (8 AP, 20 fatigue, strain DC 20, very low accuracy, very short range, high critical threat, medium base damage, medium strength bonus to damage, allows reactionary actions).

The ranged options are projectile, beam, shot, automatic and blast. These all usually take 2 AP, but some take more or less. They also usually have high critical threat, and low accuracy. Projectile attacks have a range at which they suddenly lose a large amount of accuracy. Beam attacks tend to be weaker, but have no such range. Shot fires mutliple projectiles at once, automatic fires multiple projectiles in rapid succession, these function fairly similarly, and both can also be considered to be projectile or beam. Blast attacks cannot be guarded against (but are vulnerable to reflex saves and less effective against cover) hit everything either in a cone, a semicircle, or all around the detonation site (either the impact site of a projectile, or a targeted area) and get weaker with distance until they no longer do damage. The final attack type is area of effect, which is a lot like a blast except it causes uniform damage within a set area.

Saving throws are a special, purely reactionary action. They don't count towards your allotment of reactionary actions, they can be used against other reactionary actions, there's one for just about everything the opponent does, they only cost 5 fatigue with a strain DC of 0, and only take a single action point. Success on a saving throw is more than just rolling higher than the DC, the more you roll the more effect it'll have and if you're only one point over it'll do very little.

The first (and arguably most important) saving throw is the strength-based guard save. It removes a number of points of penetration from the enemy's attack equal to the amount you beat the DC by, and when the attack runs out of penetration it instead begins transferring damage from the targeted part to the implement you're using to guard (usually your weapon, but sometimes another body part), moving the damage away from the targeted body part. If you use your body to parry, the transferred damage automatically becomes less-lethal damage. Faster projectiles and lighter weapons are harder to parry (as you have less time to react), and it can easily become impossible to actually parry a fast enough projectile. (Most of the time, expect the DC to parry a pistol bullet to be around 60. A rifle bullet more like 100. Yeah, good luck with that.) There's a perk available, called "Parry", that makes it so once you've transferred all of the attack's damage to your blocking implement, going higher will begin removing damage from the attack so your blocking implement takes less damage and is more likely to take none at all.

The second saving throw is the agility-based reflex save. It removes a number of points of damage from area of effect and blast attacks, and is limited to removing 1/3 of the attack's damage (rounded down). There is a perk, called "Evasion", that raises this to 2/3 of the damage (rounded down).

The third saving throw is the constitution-based fortitude save. It varies heavily, but it works on poison, disease, infection and some spells. It's impossible to describe all the things the fortitude save does in this brief section, since that information is normally detailed on the effect it's applied to, but as a general rule, it penalizes a die roll somewhere, either making the attack weaker or making it last less time. It is consistently limited to reducing the die roll in question by 1/3 its original value. There's a perk, called "Adaptive Immunity", that raises the limit to 2/3 for anything you can make a fortitude save against *IF* you have encountered that exact effect before.

The fourth saving throw is the perception-based logic save. It allows you to recognize illusion effects and shortens their duration by an amount dependent on the illusion in question. There's no limit on this one. There's no perk, either. You can, with a high enough roll, completely ignore an illusion with this save.

The fifth saving throw is the charisma-based negate save. It allows you to lower the caster level of spells as they reach you, down to a caster level of 0, making the spell weaker for you and anybody else it happens to hit. The perk for this one, "Magic Barrier", makes the spell fail to have any effect if caster level hits 0.

The sixth saving throw is the resolve-based will save. This, unusually, effectively is just damage reduction against mental damage. You can also apply your entire resolve score instead of the standard 1/2. Just roll, add your entire resolve score, and subtract that from any mental damage you're about to take. There's a perk for this one as well, called "Strong Will", that doubles resolve's contribution to your will save.

You already know what health is if you've ever played a game before. Here, though, you don't just die when your health runs out and be totally fine before then. You take penalties as your health drops, and don't actually die until -100%. At 75% you lose 25% of your action points and take a -5 penalty to attack, active defence, saving throws and skill checks. At 50% this is 50% and -10. At 25%, it becomes 75% and -20. At 0%, you can't do anything at all and it's -40. At -25%, you begin taking health damage at 1/hour (most people regenerate health faster than that), at -50% this becomes 1/minute, and at -75% this becomes 1/round. At -100%, you die. Maximum health varies wildly as it is impacted by creature type, constitution and size. A typical value (medium humanoid with 10 constitution) would be 200. Some creatures, such as the dead and machines, do not have health and cannot die. That does not mean that these opponents can't be defeated.

Integrity is effectively health for each body part. You lose it when the part is hit. (Area of effect damage hits every part of your body.) At 50%, a body part is crippled, the penalty for this varies between parts. At 0%, it's maimed. The penalty for this also varies. At -100%, it's severed, which also varies, but mostly it just doesn't regenerate normally (unless re-attached) and instead regrows, but for the head this is instant death and for the torso the legs are both lost as well. At -300%, the body part is destroyed, which usually just means it can't be re-attached but for the torso this is once again instant death. Body parts vary wildly in integrity. Typical values for the arms, legs, head and torso (medium humanoid) would be 10, 20, 30 and 50. Attacking the body is the most reliable way to defeat enemies, as it always works no matter what enemy you are up against.

Damage is another thing you already get the basics on. Each hit lowers the integrity of the part struck, and the health of the target. But each damage type is different, though that's too much detail to go over now, and most of them also have bleed and critical hits. Bleeding is the steady loss of health over time. It lasts ten minutes (unless from less-lethal damage, which has one minute bleed) and hits on increments determined by the bleed type, if the damage type causes bleed at all. (Heat, cold, electric, chemical and grapple damage are the only damage types that don't cause bleeding.) As a quick example, each point of piercing damage causes a point of bleed every other round, so it causes 50 bleed damage over ten minutes, for a total 51 total health lost.

Critical hits are VERY potent in this game. There is no critical multiplier, but most damage types have a special effect that triggers on crit. (Only shallow damage, grapple damage and chemical damage, none of which count towards critical hits at all, as well as concussive damage, fail to have a critical effect.) For example, piercing damage causes an extra 1d3/point bleed each round for one minute, adding an average 20 bleed per point. In addition, critical hits on some parts of the body (for humanoids, the torso and head) cause attribute damage. For a medium humanoid, this is 1/2 damage to strength, agility and constitution for critical torso damage and 1x damage to strength, agility, constitution, perception, charisma and resolve for critical head damage. (Attributes can't be damaged below 0, and do recover over time. Still, having any attribute hit 0 causes paralysis. The head is also, of course, MUCH harder to successfully hit, and going for it is usually a complete waste of time.) Causing attribute damage through critical hits is another reliable way to defeat enemies, as the only enemies it doesn't work on are the dead.

Attack rolls are basically a check, attack is basically your modifier. Defence is basically the DC. However, defence comes in a few classifications. Base defence is 0, 5 or 10 and is determined by your attack type. Innate defence cannot be avoided and usually comes from size or shape. Appearance defence usually comes from the target's charisma and doesn't work on all attackers. Active defence usually comes from the target's agility and only works if the target sees the attack coming and is ready to react.

Armour rating is an effect that weakens various damage types if the attack hits by a small amount. You get the most of it from armour, where the armour's quality determines it. Basically, your armour rating is how high above your defence an enemy can roll and be the hit be deflected or diffused. This removes all penetration and shallow damage from the attack, turns puncturing, piercing, slashing and concussive damage into shallow damage and cuts heat, cold and electric damage in half. Bludgeon damage, grapple damage, force damage and chemical damage are not themselves affected, but they do still lose penetration and other damage types they're paired with can also be affected and that can ruin their efficacy as well.

Damage reduction. I don't have much to explain. It's a point value, it only exists for kinetic damage types and you get it from armour, where the armour's weight determines it. The damage types listed in parenthesis are affected by that DR, and the conditions listed after the slash bypass it. For example, DR 10/Silver means 10 points come off incoming damage from kinetic damage types, unless the weapon inflicting them is silver. Another effect, called "penetration", also exists and alters DR. Each point of penetration allows an attack to ignore one point of damage reduction that would otherwise work on it. It's that simple.

Resistance is a percentage. It uses the same syntax as DR, doesn't exist for kinetic damage and you mostly get it from armour, where the armour's weight determines it. Shield resistance, armour resistance, spell resistance and natural resistance stack multiplicatively. So 50% shield resistance and 50% armour resistance resistance would cut incoming damage of that type in half twice, rather than eliminate it entirely. Additionally, different layers of armour also stack multiplicatively. And that's all there is to it.

As I mentioned, armour provides armour rating, damage reduction and resistance. The amount of each it provides varies heavily depending on its weight and quality. In addition, there's three other noteworthy factors, which are health, weight and cost. Armour comes in five weights, three constructions and eleven qualities. It's important to remember there is NO armour skill or proficiency in this game. Base your armour off of your stats and your class's needs.

Armour weights are "light clothing", "heavy clothing", "light armour", "medium armour" and "heavy armour". Armour constructions are soft, strong and hard. The eleven qualities are -5 through +5. Armour rating comes strictly from an armour's quality. Basic (0) armour provides 5 AR, with each grade above or below providing one more or less point, making the range 0-10.

Damage reduction varies depending on the weight of armour and whether that construction is strong or weak against a damage type. Light clothing provides 1 DR against things it's weak against, 2 against things it's strong against. Heavy clothing provides 2 weak and 4 strong. Light armour provides 4 and 8, medium armour 8 and 16, and heavy armour 16 and 32. Armour does not receive its own damage reduction.

Resistance also varies on the same conditions. Light clothing provides 15% if strong and 5% if weak, heavy clothing provides 30% and 10%, light armour 45% and 15%, medium 60% and 20% and heavy 75% and 25%. Armour does not receive its own resistance. You would be entirely correct in the assessment that armour is generally less effective against energy damage.

The health of armour is determined by its weight and quality. The main armour pieces are body, arms, legs & pelvis, head, hands, forearms, feet and shin. Body armour has 40 base health, arm armour has 10 on each arm, leg & pelvis armour has 40 and always covers both legs, head armour has 20, hand armour has 10 on each hand, forearm armour has 10 on each forearm, foot armour has 10 on each foot and shin armour has 10 on each shin. If a piece of armour covers multiple areas, it gets the health of all of them combined. For example, long gauntlets and gloves cover the hands and forearms, so they have 20 health. All of these values assume light clothing. Heavy clothing gets 2x, light armour 4x, medium armour 8x and heavy armour 16x. Every grade above or below basic adds or removes 10%. Armour loses its armour rating when it falls to 50% health or below, its damage reduction and resistance at 0%, and is destroyed entirely at -100%.

The total weight of each full suit covering every inch of the body is 2kg for light clothing, 4kg for heavy clothing, 8kg for light armour, 16kg for medium armour and 32kg for heavy armour. Body armour is 20% of that, arm armour is 5% per arm, leg & pelvis armour is 20% with both legs, head armour is 10% of that, hand armour is 5% per hand, forearm armour is 5% per forearm, foot armour is 5% per foot, and shin armour is 5% per shin. Once again, if a piece of armour covers multiple areas it has the weight of multiple areas. Weight of armour is hugely important, to the point where it is the sole disadvantage of heavy armour (other than it costing a small fortune, and taking forever and a half to put on) and it still usually isn't worth wearing.

A full suit of light clothing has a base cost of 100, 200 for heavy clothing, 400 for light armour, 800 for medium armour and 1600 for heavy armour. The distribution is the same as weight. Yes, I realize that's a gross over-simplification, and realistically the moving parts should cost more. I don't care, this makes for easier math. This is doubled for each quality above basic and halved for each quality below. This makes the most expensive suit 102,400. That's about the base cost of a Ferrari. On the other hand, the cheapest suit is ~3, about the base cost of a bag of coffee. Also note that just because that's the base value, doesn't mean you'll actually pay that value.

Equipping clothing and armour takes a while. Each piece light clothing takes 10 AP to equip. A piece of heavy clothing takes 20 AP, 40 AP for light armour, 80 AP for medium and 160 AP for heavy. Some types of clothing, most prominently trousers, gloves and boots, take twice as long. Now, a character with an experience level of 3 and 10 agility has 13/round AP. So it'd take a single round to get a piece of light clothing on (or off), but it'll take over a minute to get each piece of heavy armour on (or off). Now imagine putting on your heavy cuirass, greaves, boots, gauntlets and helmet. That's 1860 AP, over fourteen minutes of strapping on armour. The equivalent for light clothing (shirt, pants, boots, gloves and a hat) would only be 120 AP, less than one minute. (Although realistically we'd need to add a few AP per piece for picking it up or more for taking it out of your bag, I'm not counting that right now.)

Now, the three constructions for clothing and armour are soft, strong and hard. Soft armour is strong against cold, bludgeon, concussive and shallow. Strong armour is strong against cold, puncture, concussive and shallow. Hard armour is strong against heat, electric, force, slashing, piercing and shallow, and is twice as expensive as the other two.

Equip load is how much you have on your person, which determines your equipment penalty. The more you carry, the more serious your penalties become. Every increment equal to your strength in kilograms increases this penalty. The penalty is -1 per increment to your initiative, action points, attack, active defence and skill checks, and 1 automatic fatigue and strain to all body parts each minute.

For example, that full suit of heavy armour would give somebody with 10 strength a -3 penalty to the things listed, with 3 fatigue and strain per minute. Using movement as an example, they can now only move a maximum of 40m/round (6 2/3 metres per second) when with nothing equipped they could have managed 52m/round (8 2/3 metres per second). And that's assuming no weapons. Add in a short spear (4kg) and a heavy great shield (16kg) and suddenly the penalty is -5 with 5 fatigue and strain each minute, assuming no backup weapons or other equipment. Using movement again, this would bring you down to 32m/round (5 1/3 metres per second). Go ahead and add in the contents of your typical adventurer's backpack. Even a very light travelling adventurer will have another 10kg in their pack, and usually much more, since they have to carry all their food, water, camping supplies, extra clothes, tools and other essentials. And the more you're carrying, the more severe each additional penalty is relative to your current ability.

Putting items in your pack does NOT help, as items in your pack (or other storage spaces) still counts towards your equipped weight. The purpose of a backpack (also pockets, satchels, load-bearing vests and everything else for storage) is to store more items you can't equip than just what fits in your hands. Backpacks also have a limit in what they can hold. All that will help with your equip load is increasing strength, taking perks and putting as much of the weight as you can somewhere you don't need to carry it. Like on a horse. If you can't afford a horse, an ass would be much cheaper. A cart's even cheaper than that, but it'd be a serious pain over long distances and on rough terrain. In a more modern setting, you may have a vehicle. Wherever you are and whatever your resources, I'm sure you can figure something out.

Now, I have largely kept the rules outside of combat vague in order to allow most of it to be handled through roleplaying, and I don't think anybody here cares anyway, but there is one thing semi-related to combat I figured would be worthy of notice. And that's magic. The magic system in this game is vancian. You have a number of spell slots determined by your stats and class level for the available spell levels which are determined by your class level alone. Most classes prepare spells in advance, others don't. All classes have to learn spells. Some have a limit to how many they can learn, others have no limit, all get at least some spells automatically as they level. I would be very surprised if any of that was surprising to any of you.

Now, what may be surprising is that there's *no limit* to the number of spells you can cast in one turn, other than your spell slots and action points. If a spell takes 4 AP (the standard for single-target offensive spells) and you have 15, you can go ahead and cast it three times in a row and still have 3 AP left over. The next thing that might be surprising is that using them in melee is risky, but it isn't suicide if you've got a decent guard save, as you only need to deal with one reactionary attack for the single-target offensive spells. (Though if you're summoning something in front of your enemy, you may as well be putting on your tunic and taking a walk to the Theatre of Pompey, because it's the Ides of March for you.) However, spells tend to be weaker in this game than they are in others, at least at high levels.