Leveling

Leveling uses a unified level up table. The Level system ensures your combat capabilities are up to snuff; you do not need to worry if you put enough skill points into your defensive skills and weapons skills for your GM’s style, or overloaded them trivializing any combat the GM may use.

Leveling and Building a character are basically the same, and consist of the same steps:

  1. Choose Race and Class
    1. Choose primary power source
    2. Choose class trained skills
  2. Choose Starting Abilities
  3. Follow the level up table.

Choose Race and Class

The first step is choose the Race and Class.

Any race can play any class equally well, so there’s no disadvantage to being a gnome soldier, just as there’s no advantage to being an orc soldier. Choose the race which has the flavor, skills, or secondary effects you like best. Each race provides a rank in at least 2 skills.

The class you choose will determine your primary role in combat. Defenders grab the focus of enemies, Leaders buff the party, Controllers debuff the enemy and can more easily handle swarms, and Strikers are adept at dealing large amounts of damage to a single target. Each class dabbles in secondary roles as well.

Power sources

You class’s power source represents whatever force you tap into to fuel your class’s abilities. After you have chosen your class, you need to decide what your character’s primary power source is. Each class has 3 power sources to choose from. The primary power source you choose will be determine which powers you are guarenteed to perform well at, as well as influence which secondary role you’ll tend to favor. The other two power sources become secondary power sources.

Class Skills

Your class also privides some skills that you get automatically. If your race has already given you a rank in one, you simply gain the next rank. (This is intentionally not like skill points where you have to pay an increasing cost.) Then you will be given a list of skills and told how many to pick. Again, you gain 1 additional rank in each skill you pick even if your race has already done so.

Starting Ability Scores

All stats start at 1. You then get 4 points to place where you like, with no one ability being higher than 3. Your classes power sources work like skills, in that they have an associated ability. The higher the ablity associated with a power source, the easier it is to hit and be effective with powers that use that source.

Gaining Additional Skills

Each level, the character gets a certain number of skill points. Skill points can be stored up from level to level. Heroic tier characters get 2 skill point; Paragon get 4, and heroic get 6. When a character levels up, they can spend the skill points. Each rank costs it’s number in skill points. Eg: 1st rank costs 1, second rank costs 2, and so on. A skill cannot go beyond 5.

Level up Table

The level up table is separated into 3 tiers: heroic, paragon, and epic. Each tier is about 10 levels. Moving from one tier to the next is marked by a large increase in capabilities and awesomeness.

At various points, the level up table will boost primary power source, a secondary power source of player’s choice, feat of a player’s choice, defenses (in some way), choice of at-will, choice of encounter, choice of daily, and eventually upgrading there-of.

Lvl SP (total) At-Wills (Upgrades) Encounters (Upgrades) Dailies (Upgrades) Text
1 2 2(0) 1(0) 0(0) Class skills, Class defense bonus, 1st at-will, 2nd at-will, 1st encounter, 1st rank in primary power source, 1st rank in secondary power source
2 4 2(0) 1(0) 1(0) 1st Daily
3 6 2(0) 2(0) 1(0) 2nd Encounter
4 8 3(0) 2(0) 1(0) 3rd At-will
5 10 3(0) 2(0) 1(0) 1st feat
6 12 3(0) 2(0) 1(0) 2nd rank in primary power source
7 14 3(0) 2(0) 2(0) 2nd Daily
8 16 3(0) 2(0) 2(0) 2nd rank-up for secondary power source
9 18 3(1) 2(0) 2(0) upgrade an at-will.
10 20 3(1) 2(0) 2(0) Paragon defense (all defenses rank up), Paragon stats (all ability scores go up by one), 2nd feat
11 24 3(2) 2(0) 2(0) Upgrade an at-will
12 28 3(2) 2(0) 2(0) 3rd rank in primary power source
13 32 3(2) 2(1) 2(0) Upgrade an encounter
14 36 3(2) 2(1) 2(0) 3rd rank in secondary power source
15 40 3(2) 2(1) 2(0) 3rd feat, max ranks in a skill increases to 5.
16 44 3(3) 2(1) 2(0) Upgrade an at-will
17 48 3(3) 2(1) 2(1) Upgrade a daily
18 52 3(3) 2(1) 2(1) 4th rank in primary power source
19 56 3(4) 2(1) 2(1) upgrade an at-will
20 60 3(4) 2(1) 2(1) Epic defenses (all defenses go up one rank), Epic stats (all ability scores go up by one), 4th feat
21 66 3(4) 2(1) 2(1) 4th rank in secondary power source
22 72 3(5) 2(1) 2(1) upgrade an at-will
23 78 3(5) 2(1) 2(1) …
24 84 3(5) 2(1) 2(1) 5th rank in primary power source
25 90 3(5) 2(1) 2(1) 5th feat
26 96 3(5) 2(1) 2(1) 5th rank in secondary power source
27 102 3(5) 2(2) 2(1) upgrade an encounter
28 108 3(5) 2(2) 2(1) …
29 114 3(5) 2(2) 2(2) upgrade a daily
30 120 3(5) 2(2) 2(2) 6th feat, God-like defenses (all defenses go up one rank), God-like stats (all ability scores go up by one)

Retraining

At each level you may retrain a feat, a power, an upgrade, or a skill. A feat can be retrained to any feat you meet the requirements for as long as the feat you are giving up is not a requirement for anything else. If you retrain a power, the new power must have at least as many upgrades as the number of upgrades you have selected for the power you are giving up. The newly selected power will be upgraded the same number of times as the power you give up. To retrain an upgrade, choose a power of the same type (at-will, encounter, daily) that has an avaialble upgrade. Give up an upgrade on a power of the same type, and gain the new one. To retrain a skill, give up any number of ranks in that skill. You gain SP equal to the number of SP needed to reach that rank (1 gets 1 SP, 2 gets 3 SP, 3 gets 6 SP, 4 gets 10 SP, and 5 gets 15 SP). You may then spend or save that SP as you like.