Part 6 - Systems

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Time for a bunch of small things!

Acid

• Acids are a big factor in alchemical research, but naturally can also be used for their more BASE properties.
• Acids can be either Weak, Strong, or Concentrated, which affects how much damage they do and how long they last when splashed or sprayed.
• Acid damage is done to armor first, until the AP of the location is reduced to zero. At this point the damage is done directly to the location.

Action, Time, and Movement

• Like most RPGs, Mythras has dynamically scaling timekeeping, split here into three levels.
• Combat Rounds are the smallest scope, dealing with segments of five seconds of real time and measuring frenetic bursts of activity in detailed sequences.
• Local Time is the standard scope, dealing with anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours of real time.
  • Similar to other systems, the best way to deal with this is to have the character state their intention, and the GM responds with how much time they think it would take them to achieve their goals.
  • Any needed rolls would then be made, the results narrated, and time would pass.
• Strategic Time is the broadest scope, dealing with days to years of real time passing with abstracted descriptions.
  • This is used most often for travel sequences, crafting processes, or training montages.
  • A classic chart provided for distance/travel times.

Movement

• Movement in Mythras is broken down into three “gaits”; Walking, Running, and Sprinting.
  • Walking is the average speed when moving in no particular hurry. This is the number referred to as a creature’s base Movement Rate.
  • Running is a trot or jog that can be me held over long periods. Max speed here is 3x Movement Rate, but can vary according to Athletics.
  • Sprinting is full throttle, only maintainable for short periods. Max speed at this level is 5x Movement Rate, again varying according to Athletics.
• Moving in Armor inflicts different kind of penalties and complications depending on the type of movement.
  • Walking = no interference, but possible Fatigue increases.
  • Running/Sprinting = subtract the Armor Penalty from the running/sprinting speed.
  • Swimming = divide swimming speed by two and subtract the Armor Penalty, rounding up. If zero then can stay afloat but cannot move, and if negative they sink.
  • Climbing Rough Surfaces = subtract half the Armor Penalty, rounded up. If zero or less, they cannot climb.
  • Climbing Steep Surfaces = same as above, but subtracting the full Armor Penalty.
  • Jumping = subtract half the Armor Penalty (rounded up) from the max jumping distance. Standing jumps only subtract a quarter of the Armor Penalty.

Ageing

• When characters cross into a new Age Band they make both an Endurance and Willpower roll at a specific grade.
• If a roll is failed that character then he suffers one or more Ageing Effects, reducing a characteristics by 1d3.
• Humans cross a new Age Band every ten years, starting at 40 years with Easy grade rolls.

Breathing

• Characters can hold their breath for a number of seconds equal to their Endurance skill, but only if prepared (like actively diving).
  • If not the period is halved in a passive situation (pushed from a snooze) or reduced to one fifth if the character was engaged in a strenuous activity.
• Once their breath has run out, the character must make an Endurance roll every Round:
  • On a critical = nothing happens.
  • On a success = gain a level of Fatigue.
  • On a failure = gains 1d2 levels of Fatigue.
  • On a fumble = gains 1d3 levels of Fatigue.
• Death is quick with asphyxiation, but the Fatigue will also clear quickly; once able to breath again characters regain Fatigue lost to suffocation at a rate of one level per minute.

Blood Loss

• Blood loss is reflected in the Fatigue system, similar to suffocation.
• Unlike suffocation, characters Fatigue lost to blood loss at a rate of one level per day, starting the day after the blood loss is stopped.

Character Improvement

• Time for a player favorite. In Mythras skills form the core of a character’s expression and progression, and besides material equipment is the key way players will advance the power levels of their characters.
• Characters can improve in a few ways; improvement of existing skills, characteristics or passions, or the learning of completely new ones.

Experience Rolls

• The mechanism for most of this improvement is the Experience Roll, a sort of currency the GM will give out at appropriate breaks or reprieves in the action.
• The book states players cannot demand Experience Rolls but they have a right to expect them at certain times/pacing, so no whining.
• Some GM-focused writing about pacing and structuring definitely-not-evil Experience Rolls.
• Players will receive the same amount of Rolls with one exception; when a character may put their influence and community standing to use, that character gains additional Rolls according to their Experience Modifier.
• Rolls can be banked and reserved for later use, as some outlets require saving up more than a character might get at once, or even over multiple periods.

Increasing Existing Skills

• Any existing skill the character knows can be increased by spending one Roll.
  • The player rolls a d100, and adds their INT. If the result is >= the current skill value, the skill increases by 1d4+1%. Otherwise, it increases by only 1%.
• As a bonus way to improve skills, whenever a character receives a set of Experience Rolls, every skill that they fumbled since the last set of Rolls was received gets a free improvement of 1%. This is tracked on the character sheet, and does not stack; fumbling multiple times does not grant multiple bonuses.
  • This is to reflect how we learn more from our mistakes than our successes (as long as we survive them).

Increasing Characteristics

• A creature’s rolled statistics are considered their natural peak; in the base system there is no permanent improvement you can buy with Rolls.
• Instead, a character can temporarily sacrifice (or reserve) a portion of their allotment of Rolls to gain a temporary boost to a characteristic.
  • This represents them spending time on training regiments or mental exercises. Like any regiment the effects last as long as one commits to them.
  • Once the character decides to stop the regiment, the characteristic will steadily return to normal levels each time they receive their lot of Rolls.
• There is an optional rule to use rolls to permanently improve characteristics, at a steep and increasing cost.
• Every species has a maximum for each characteristic that they cannot break through no matter how much training is done, equal to the max roll possible (typically 3d6 = 18).

Increasing Passions

• Described later, Passions are similar to skills and can also be increased in the same manner as described above.
• If the Passion is negative and it makes sense, the GM may allow spending a Roll to reduce instead of increase the value.

Learning New Skills

• Professional Skills not on a character’s sheet (i.e. never learned) are not out of reach, but require a bit of leg work first.
• A character must find a suitable source of knowledge from which to learn this new skill.
  • Once found, they must spend an entire month of study and practice to grasp the fundamentals.
  • In addition to the time, this process costs 3 Experience Rolls, plus whatever in-game costs are required for any teaching, equipment, or tools required.

Training

• True to Mythras’ focus on community, one of the best ways to learn things is to be taught.
• Training allows a character to improve their skills without spending Experience Rolls.
• To do so, a character simply needs to find a willing mentor, and spend one full week in training.
• At the end of the period the skill improves by a specific grade, depending on the degree of difference between the two skill values.
  • This means a teacher with a skill of 60% teaching someone with a skill of 35% (a 25% difference) will improve the student’s skill by 1d2, while a difference of 55% would upgrade the improvement to 1d6.
• The costs for training can vary wildly based on the campaign, setting, and even location. They might accept bartering and favors, or require hard coin.
  • In material costs, a week’s training cost 1 Silver Piece for every 5% the mentor has in the skill he is training. If he also knows the Teach skill, the amount increases by an additional 1 SP for each 10% in the Teach skill.
• A valid trainer is anyone that has at least 20% more than the student in the skill being trained.
• A Teacher is any mentor that possesses the Teach skill.
  • When they finish their week of instruction, the teacher will make a Teach roll, hopefully improving the grade of the resulting improvement:
    • Critical = increases by two steps.
    • Success = increases by one step.
    • Failure = nothing happens.
    • Fumble = decreases by one step, may result in no improvement at all.
• There are some limitations:
  • Only one skill at a time may be trained, as a student needs to focus fully on their studies of the skill in question.
  • A trained skill cannot be trained again until it has been improved by using an Experience Roll.
  • Basic trainers can only tutor a single student at a time, while teachers may educate multiple students at once; to get a ballpark of how many, divide the teacher’s Teach skill by 10.
• Cults and Brotherhoods are a common source of training, as they may offer such services to certain members for reduced or no cost. Cults may also themselves be the only source of instruction in certain skills or styles, depending on the subject and setting in question.

Disease and Poison

• Very little more sinister and feared than the lurking plague or the hidden venom.
• Infinite variety and nuance to each toxin, but all are resolved in the method.
• Glossary of terms:
  • Application = the method of how the disease or poison is introduced, such as Ingestion or Contact.
  • Potency = the virulence of the disease. This is set against an appropriate skill such as Endurance or Willpower, and if the character wins they are unaffected. Otherwise the suffer the poison’s Conditions.
  • Resistance = the skill used to resist the disease. Resistance might be rolled at exposure or deferred, depending on the Onset Time and context of infection.
  • Onset Time = how long until the effects of the disease present themselves. Diseases with multiple effects might have different Onset Times.
  • Duration = how long the various conditions last.
  • Conditions = one or more special effects that afflict a character that fails their Resistance roll.
  • Antidote/Cure = any potential treatments. If empty, requires specific healing magic, such as Cure Malady.

Encumbrance

• An item’s ENC is a representation of both its mass and bulk, the higher the value the more difficult it is to carry.
• General rule of thumb is 3 ENC is equal to 1 SIZ, but there are plenty exceptions of small but heavy or light but bulky items.
• Zero ENC items are inconsequential; 20 of them add up to 1 ENC.
• Characters can carry a total ENC equal to double their STR without issue.
  • Worn clothing does not count towards this limit, but armor does.
  • If the borne ENC exceeds 2x STR = STR/DEX skills are one grade harder, movement drops by 2 meters, the character cannot sprint, and carrying the load counts as Medium activity.
  • If the borne ENC exceeds 3x STR = STR/DEX skills are two grades harder, movement drops by half, the character cannot move faster than a walk, and carrying the load counts as Strenuous activity.
• When worn as opposed to carried, armor only counts for half of its total ENC.
• There are specific rules for non-human encumbrance to avoid weird scaling issues, as well as alternative simplified rules to avoid bookkeeping.

Falling

• Another RPG classic, characters take damage when they fall.
• Damage amount depends on the distance, scaling in both damage amount and number of locations injured.
• Armor Points do not reduce falling damage.
• The SIZ of a creature affects the amount of effect a fall has on them.
• Acrobatics can be used to mitigate falling damage thanks to the magic of the dodge roll.
• Falling onto damaging surfaces (like spike pits) applies the effect to all locations damaged by the fall.
• Falling objects deal damage based on SIZ and distance of the fall.

Fatigue

• Another key mechanic of Mythras that provides a level of nuance most games ignore.
• Fatigue measures the body’s weariness as a whole, whether due to activity, disease, magic, or even blood loss.
• The primary gain comes from physical activity, through one of three levels of Effort that require a roll at the end of a certain period, with failure causing a level of Fatigue:
  • Light Effort activities place no strain on the body, and are leisurely work. After CON hours the character makes a Very Easy roll vs Athletics/Brawn/Endurance.
  • Medium Effort activities involve manual labor or sustained physical exercise. After CON minutes the character makes an Easy roll as above.
  • Strenuous Effort activities involve combat, fighting the elements, or extremely adverse conditions. After CON seconds the character makes a Standard roll as above.
• Each level of Fatigue carries penalties across skill use, movement, initiative, and Action Points.
• These penalties grow and become more and more severe and can lead to death, and levels can be gained from multiple sources.
• Fatigue recovers depending on the character’s Healing Rate, as well as the source; as stated above both asphyxiation and blood loss have different recovery rates.
• This mechanic can add more bookkeeping, so tables should tune how granularly they track this to suit their tastes, and keep common sense and practicality in mind.

Fires

• Fire bad. Fire hurt. Fire big.
• Fires deal damage and ignite things around them depending on their intensity, on a scale from 1 to 5.

Healing from Injury

• Natural healing depends on a character’s Healing Rate, which states how many Hit Points are recovered in a location depending on the severity of the injury.
  • Minor Wounds heal in days, Serious Wounds in weeks, and Major Wounds in Months.
  • This means that suffering a Serious Wound puts a massive burden on the character in terms of downtime.
• If a Healing character engages in strenuous activity, the Healing Rate is reduced by 1d3.
• Natural healing will not begin to heal a Major Wound until it has been treated with a successful Healing roll.

Magical Healing

• Magic healing is an alternative to letting time and nature take its course.
• Spells have restrictions on what level of wounds they can tackle.
• There are few magics that can reverse the trauma of a Major Wound.
• Regardless, any petty healing spell automatically stabilizes any type of wound, even if it doesn’t recover Hit Points.

Permanent Injuries

• Some Major Wounds and poisons or diseases inflict maiming injuries, such as crushed or severed limbs.
• This results in a reduction of that location’s maximum Hit Points, forever weakening the location.
  • This naturally affects the Serious and Major Wound thresholds.
• Some fun rules about losing limbs leading to potential misses due to Hit Location rolling shenanigans.

Inanimate Objects

• All inanimate objects have AP and HP, like characters. These determine resistance to damage.
• In the case of items that offer resistance to being broken (like a barred door or tied ropes), the character must succeed with a Brawn, Unarmed, or weapon attack roll.
• Using a weapon against an object with AP >= the weapon’s AP damages both the object and the weapon. Striking an anvil with an axe will likely break the axe first.

Luck Points

• Hero Points are back on the menu. These are the small sparks of fate that separate one from lowly background characters.
• Every character starts each session with a number of Luck Points according to their character sheet.
• Luck will usually be used for one of three main options, but only one Luck Point can be spent in support of a particular action; no rerolling rerolls.
  • Cheat Fate allows characters to spend a Luck Point to reroll any dice roll they make OR swap the two die of a d100 (such as turning a 91 into a 19). Characters can instead force an opponent to reroll an attack or damage roll made against them.
  • Desperate Effort allows characters to spend a Luck Point to gain an additional Action Point for a burst of desperate energy.
  • Mitigate Damage allows characters who suffer a Major Round to spend a Luck Point to reduce it to a Serious Wound. This reduces the damage received to one less than the threshold that would have inflicted the Major Wound.

Group Luck Points

• There is a party-wide pool of Luck Points, gained via personal connections formed during character creation.
• These points can be used the same as personal Luck Points, but are much more restricted and only usable when the action involves working together as a team.
  • This might be using Desperate Effort to gain an Action Point to intercede in front of a charging foe bearing down on an incapacitated ally, or Cheat Fate on a faltering result when doing a Group Roll to hold back a gate pounding with monsters.
• These points may refresh at the start of every session, or more commonly at certain parts of the story.

Passions

• Finally time to talk about these strange pseudo-skills since introducing them in the Character Creation sections.
• Passions can be used in a variety of ways:
  • To augment another skill, reflecting how the passion drives the action forward. This adds 20% of the Passion to the primary skill, as usual.
  • As an ability of its own (rolling as any other skill would be rolled), reflecting how passions can drive choices and emotional responses.
  • To oppose other passions (even held by the same character) to reflect the clashing of ideals or oaths.
  • As a static measure of commitment or loyalty to a cause, reflecting a less-abstracted frame of reference of a character’s core beliefs.
  • To resist some manipulation or magical domination, reflecting the classic heroism that a staunchly held ideal can provide. This may allow a character to substitute the Passion for Willpower in an opposed roll.
• Characters start with up to three Passions, but new ones can be developed at any time during play if the circumstances warrant it.
  • i.e. being personally betrayed by someone thought a friend might cause a “Hate X” passion to stir in some characters.
  • These “dynamic” passions are freely gained as part of the narrative, but players can also gain new passions for an Experience Roll as explained above.
• Passions increase or decrease during a game independent of Improvement and Experience Rolls.
  • This is called Deepening and Waning, and the scale of change is dependent on the circumstances and events triggering the change.

Survival

• Cold environments are awful, hot environments are awful, mountain environments are awful.
• The three dangers of hostile wilderness survival are Exposure, Starvation, and Thirst:
  • Exposure occurs when the body is not properly protected from the elements. The effect and onset depends on the Temperature, but usually is in a measure of CON hours.
  • Starvation occurs when the body is out of food. Critical starvation begins after half-CON days, and then ticks daily.
  • Dehydration begins after 4x CON hours, faster in drier or hotter conditions. It then ticks according to the Precipitation of the environment.
• Once any of these dangers “tick” over, an Endurance roll is made, suffering a level of Fatigue on a failure. This can compound, making each subsequent roll harder and harder, so care should be taken and people should just stay inside where it’s cozy.

Traps

• Humanity loves building traps for things, and they’re in this game too.
• Building traps requires either the Mechanisms or Engineering skill, depending on the scale and size.
• Costs vary accordingly, with small alarms costing in copper pieces, whereas complex death-traps cost in the order of gold.
• Traps have a Difficulty rating that is treated as its skill value when opposed.
• Despite tall tales traps are really good at killing, and hard to avoid or evade once you’ve set one off. Best thing to do is avoid triggering them all together.
• Some GM-focused descriptions and mechanics of overly-evil traps.

Visibility

• Some quick tabling of visibility ranges.
• Visibility mainly depends on the weather and time of day.
• SIZ plays a factor, with larger objects being visible from farther away.

Weather

• Weather is abstracted to some simple tables, and has three elements to it: Precipitation, Temperature, and Wind.
• Precipitation represents both how much rain falls as well as the general humidity of an area. Normally this has little effect on travel, but making the characters wet may increase their chance of Exposure.
• Temperature varies dramatically and determines whether there is a risk of Exposure. Wearing suitable clothing for the climate grants a character a grace period equal to CON hours before Exposure starts to set in.
  • Being wet shifts the Exposure Rate up by one step, and wind can do the same.
• Wind can be an annoying bother; depending on the Strength of the wind it can affect STR or DEX skills or slow movement to the point of barely being able to travel.

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