RPG/Other Rules

Sample Difficulties

Your characters at MSF High will be doing more than simply fighting each other. Over the course of the school day, various non-combat challenges will present themselves, and your characters must find a way to overcome these situations. While roleplaying will play a large part in how your character handles these challenges, there will invariably come a time when you must roll to determine whether or not your character succeeds at an action. When the possibility of your character successfully completing a task comes into play, the GM will present you with a either a stat or a combination of stat and skill to roll, and will set a difficulty that they may or may not tell you in advance. After a roll is made, the GM compares your result to the difficulty they have set. Getting that difficulty or higher is a success, with a larger result meaning a greater degree of success. In many cases, you also gain some additional benefit for every 5 you rolled over the difficulty. Some action descriptions will tell you what you get, while other times the GM may determine if this applies and what bonuses you get. Here is a sampling of the sort of difficulties one might be expected to face in the course of a day:

Stat/Skill	Simple(1-4)	Easy(5-8)	Moderate (9-12)	Hard(13-16)	Very Hard (17+)
Strength	Unzip your backpack.	Carry a backpack stuffed with books.	Push a sleeping dark elf out of the hallway.	Kick down a wooden door.	Lift a car single-handedly.
Defense	Take a hit from a wiffle ball without taking damage.	Hold your breath for 30 seconds.	Stay awake for 36 hours straight.	Beat a troll at a game of mercy.	Survive a starship crash unscathed.
Agility	Walk up a regular staircase.	Make your way across a set of monkey bars.	Jump between two buildings a single car length apart.	Squeeze through a dog door without getting stuck.	Leap through both a car's windows, taking a friend out.
Accuracy	Find the sun's position in the sky.	Find an empty seat in a crowded lunchroom.	Tell by smell if someone has recently been here.	Hear your friend's voice in a crowded, darkened theater.	Find the single grain of rice hidden in a haystack.
Intelligence	Realize that fire is, indeed, hot.	Determine that the demon has an ulterior motive.	Point out the logical flaws in another's argument.	Point out logical flaws in your own argument.	Discover a once-hidden universal philosophical truth.
Personality	Ask someone their name without cursing at them.	Make friends with a fairy.	Draw attention to yourself at a large gathering.	Overcome a warrior Angel's hatred of Legion.	Convince Professor Riley to give you an extension.
Gym	Dribble a basketball.	Climb the rope.	Climb the rope while carrying a 50-pound weight.	Figure out how to catch one of Kim's spiked dodgeballs.	Neat Miss Kim's time on her newest obstacle course.
Martial Arts	Draw a katana from its sheath.	Assume a proper meditative pose.	Tell a martial artist and their style from their stance.	Remove the bells from a dummy without noise.	Develop a stance to counter Sensei Hwang's own.
Science	Recall the chemical formula for water.	Identify a reaction between acids and bases.	Determine the chemical makeup of a compound.	Develop a new scientific theory.	Disprove a known theory, like gravity or relativity.
Magic	Identify the element of a fireball spell.	Understand basic elemental combinations.	Read magical runes without reference.	Tell what spell was cast from the noise it made alone.	Write and perform your own BioWarp spells.
Music	Tap your foot to the rhythm of a song.	Play the cowbell part to a song.	Sing the solo of a song without messing up.	Beatbox without sounding like a fool.	Compose a popular song that utilizes the vuvuzela.
History	Recall what the teacher was just speaking about.	Give the date of a major battle in the Legion war.	Name the entire procession of Elven royalty.	Memorize every planet's date of first contact.	Figure out Prof. Darkrider's actual age.
Math	Add single-digit numbers together.	Do single-digit multiplication in your head.	Do complex geometrical problems.	Understand theoretical calculus.	Do BioWarp jump calculations with a slide ruler.
Art	Write your own signature.	Sketch up a picture of something you are looking at.	Draw a detailed picture of a scene from memory.	Sculpt a perfect replica of a doppelganger.	Forge an exact copy of a popular masterpiece.
Home Ec.	Find the on switch of a stove.	Prepare a simple rice dish.	Prepare a meal for a group of vegan students.	Clean up after an ogre's workout.	Find a way to make black licorice taste good.
Language	Grasp sarcasm when used in your native language.	Remember the Elven standard greeting.	Speak a language you know without an accent.	Understand a language you've never heard before.	Create a coded language only your friends will read.

Exhaustion and HP/MP Regain

HP and MP are both needed to keep a student’s body and mind functioning properly. Both of them slowly replenish themselves, but casting magic and fighting tend to take a quick toll on a student. A student who has a current HP rating between 0 and the negative of their defense score is physically exhausted. They’re too worn out to take more than one move action per round, cannot attack or defend, and are lucky if they can even stand. If their hit points go below -def, they’re knocked unconscious, and cannot move, see or hear(though they might dream), with their MP reduced instantly to 0 when their HP is reduced to this state. In a similar fashion, characters must also keep tabs on their MP. A character with an MP between 0 and the negative of their intelligence score is mentally exhausted and cannot concentrate. They cannot cast spells or otherwise spend MP, and all their rolls suffer a -2 penalty. If their MP drops below -int, they're unconscious and their HP drops to 0 when their MP is reduced to this state. A character who is unconscious regains their Defense in HP and their Intelligence in MP every four hours they spend unconscious and cannot awaken until both have reached 1 or higher, so if your numbers are too far down in the negatives, it’s likely that your magical self-repair abilities will take effect before you regain everything. If the character is being cared for by at least one other character, the time required to regain HP and MP in this fashion drops to 2 hours. A conscious character regains their defense plus their threat level in HP and their Intelligence plus their threat level in MP every 4 hours if they are conscious. If the character is not engaged in strenuous activity, that time lowers to 2 hours. If the character is not engaged in strenuous activity and has another character caring for them, which requires a minimum of four hand actions from the caring character every 5 minutes, the time to recharge lowers to 1 hour. Some characters also have abilities that allow them to regain HP or MP faster.

Magical Self-repair

Every night, a student’s body rejuvenates itself and purges any unwanted changes. This process is instant and happens halfway through their sleep cycle. Most students sleep 8 hours a night, so their repair occurs at the end of the fourth hour. This means that not only does your character regain their full HP and MP and the use of any daily special abilities, but any physical or mental transformations that they do not subconsciously desire are also reversed. A character who stays awake for more than a day remains drained, but gets the same benefits as normal when he finally does go to sleep. A character who sleeps more than once a day does not restore more than once.

How do you know whether a character “really” wants their transformations? It’s up to you, the player, to act as the subconscious mind of the student.

Threat Levels

The GM needs to know about how powerful you are if he wants to throw anything at you. To give him a good estimation, you should keep track of your “threat level”. To determine your threat level, add up your total number of racial levels and the number of facet levels you are currently using, as well as any enhancements to your threat level from advantages or disadvantages. Do not count any facet levels that you have purchased, but are not accessing at the time.

Allowance

On the first day of each week, a student will find an amount of money equal to five dollars times their threat level when best-equipped in the top drawer of their dresser. This is considered to be a gift from Sakura, though it's rarely enough for a player to get the items they desire. Most characters will wish to obtain a job or other means of gaining money.

Hazards

Someone hitting you with something else isn’t the only thing you have to worry about. Hazards are created by the environment, crafty enemies, and the GM’s sadistic streak to make sure you’re on your toes. These can be applied in the middle of a fight, but hazards can happen anywhere, at any time.

Falling: This one's pretty bad, since once you realize it's happening there's not much you can do about it, and the more time you have to think about it the worse it's going to hurt. You need to worry about this if you fall 20 feet or more. For every 20 feet you fall, you take 1d8 damage. Therefore, falling 100 feet will deal 5cd8 damage. This damage can be cut in half if you're landing on something soft(or using someone to break your fall) or doubled if you land on something less pleasant than ground normally is. Now, having things fall on you is another story altogether. The damage it deals then depends on the size. Objects with a size rating smaller than your own deal Xcd4 damage, where X is the number of feet fallen divided by 20 and rounded down. Objects your size or one size larger deal Xcd6 damage, objects two sizes larger deal Xcd8, ones three sizes larger deal Xcd10, and objects four sizes larger or bigger (unless they’re ridiculously large) deal Xcd12 damage. Luckily, the farther things are falling, the more of a chance your character might have to get out of its way. If you're able to dodge away from a falling object, if nothing is controlling where it's heading, it's usually considered an agility oppose to do so, as though it were a spell, with the difficulty equal to 5 plus the object's size modifier minus the number of feet it fell divided by 20, rounded down. If someone is throwing it at you, that's considered an attack by them and is subject to normal attack and defense rules. By the way, hitting the ground from a height of 20 feet or more is going to count as your move action for the next round, unless you happen to pass anything you can hit on the way down. Similarly, someone who notices a falling object in that round it has to fall can spend a dodge action and make a nonskilled Agility roll. A roll of 7 or more dodges the falling object. As a side note, due to air resistance, heights above 500 feet count as 500 feet for falling damage. Objects four sizes smaller than you deal no falling damage. The GM may also deem that an object is too light and creates too much friction to deal any damage as it falls. A bag of feathers from orbit will NOT kill an enemy army.

Fire: If a character walks into a fire, they take 2+d10 damage every round they spend there. If the GM’s feeling playful, he can decide that your clothes will catch on fire on a roll of 4 on a d4. Certain spells or abilities may also cause a character to catch fire. If you yourself are on fire, you must make an Agility roll of 7 and spend all your move actions and your hand actions rolling to put yourself out. It's not required that you do so, and a student who doesn't bother to put themselves out can be rather intimidating to opponents, but it's probably a good idea that you make time to do so as quickly as possible. You can also extinguish flames by jumping into water or another smothering substance or using a spell that has the same effect. It’s also fairly likely that you’ll spend your speak action screaming in pain if you're on fire.

Ice: If the ground’s slippery, you must make an agility roll every turn you move in order to stay up. This roll’s difficulty is usually 5, but the GM can adjust it up or down as circumstances apply. If you fail, you’re down on the ground and must spend a hand action and all your move action getting up. This can happen over and over, and it doesn’t get any less annoying the umpteenth time.

Sight/Hearing obstructions: Not being able to see makes doing most stuff really hard. Normal combat rules assume that the characters can use their senses to tell where the each other are. If this isn’t the case, things get harder. To this extent, you can apply a penalty to all rolls made by characters that cannot see(or hear or smell, depending on what sense they use to navigate). This penalty can range from -1(light fog, static, nasty smell) to -10(total darkness, vacuum), and when it applies to light, it’s cancelled in part or whole out by certain abilities, like the Redeemed ability “dark-everything”.

Terrain: Terrain can have a number of effects in combat. The most common is that rough terrain may take up extra feet of move to get through. For instance, rocky uneven terrain may be considered rough terrain and eat up half of a characters movement unless they can hover or fly over it.

Poison/Disease: Poisons are a particularly nasty way to deal damage to an opponent, and their creation and application will be detailed in a future book. Diseases are less often a worry in Mahou City than they are elsewhere in the galaxy, but students aren't completely immune to them. Future supplements will detail more specific diseases, but for now, whenever a wild animal deals a crit to your character and that damage penetrates your soak, roll your defense. On a 1, your character becomes infected with some disease. Roll a d6, which may explode, to determine the severity of the disease. The severity of the disease is also the difficulty to reduce that severity by 2 with a Science/Intelligence roll and six hand actions spent helping to heal the disease. Such a check can only be taken once every three hours. Success reduces the disease's severity by 3. A critical failure raises it by 3. At the beginning of each encounter, a diseased character rolls their defense against the disease's severity, and takes a penalty for that encounter equal to the amount by which they lost the check, if they did not succeed. Every 5 points of HP the character takes in healing reduces the severity of the disease by 1, but only for the duration of the encounter. Once a disease's severity is reduced to 0, it has been cured.

Quicksand: Perhaps the worst hazardous terrain one can encounter, quicksand takes an Accuracy roll to spot that varies depending on the size of the quicksand pit, the terrain it's in, and any other factors that limit visibility. It cuts movement down to half speed and if an Agility roll of difficulty 7 is not made, the character sinks a third of their height down. If the character falls under the muck they are considered drowning. A successful Agility roll can bring a character back up a third of their height. Note that for exceptionally large characters, there is a good chance they will sink only partially before hitting solid ground. While they will still have the motion penalty, they stand no risk of drowning.

Drowning: If your character stays under water for an extended amount of time, you must start making drown checks. After three minutes, you must make a nonskilled defense roll of 5. Every round after that, you must make the roll again. If you fail, you take 20 HP of damage. If you’re reduced to 0 HP this way, you’ve drowned. Note that some characters are immune to drowning.

Moving Things

Aside from the gear you have on you, you may need to move other things. For the purposes of moving things, a character’s size affects this amount. If a character is small or smaller, their small number is subtracted from their strength. For large or larger characters, their large number is added to the strength score. Here is how you can affect these objects:

Carrying: A character can carry their strength squared in pounds. This is the weight that they can carry while still moving their normal speed. A character can choose to carry more, up to twice the normal load, but to do so causes your character’s movement rate to drop by 2 feet per movement action, to a minimum of 1.

Example: A size Small3 fairy with a strength of 6 (6 str – 3 size = 3) can carry 9 pounds (3 squared) without affecting its move speed. It can carry up to 18 pounds if it allows its movement to be cut in half.

Characters can help each other when carrying objects, and this works differently from normal assistance rolls. In this case, their total carrying ability is added together, and speed is only cut if the weight of the object being carried is greater than the combined carrying capacity of all characters. The GM may deem that only a limited number of characters may carry an object, depending on how massive it is and how many places there are to grab.

Pushing/Dragging: A character can push or drag an object that weighs up to four times their strength squared. Pushing an object makes it move at one-quarter your character’s normal movement. Multiple characters may assist with a push, but the speed the object is pushed is always one-quarter the lowest speed in the group.

Throwing: You can throw things that weigh up to your carrying capacity. The distance you can throw them is equal your strength score squared divided by the weight of the object in pounds. Objects under half a pound count as half a pound; anything higher is rounded up to the next nearest pound. Throwing a character works differently; see the Grapple section of the Combat page for details.

Example: A medium character with a strength of 8 can throw a 1-pound object 64 feet. They can throw a half-pound object 128 feet, and they can throw a 2-pound object 32 feet.

Miscellaneous Movement

Swimming: It counts as moving yourself, so we need to take care of it. When moving through water, your swim speed is equal to one half your normal move speed, rounded up. This is before any modifiers for carrying, which affect your speed the same way. You can move any direction in the water, but if you go under, you start to suffer the effects of drowning.

Currents: At times, the water you’re in isn’t still. The GM may deem that water is flowing. If this is the case, your character will move automatically while in the water. This movement does not count against your swim, though you will have to expend extra move if you’re swimming against the current. You move five feet per round if in steadily moving water, and ten feet if in rapidly flowing currents. Flying characters may have the same problems with strong air currents.

Climbing: It’s like walking, only up. While climbing gear can make it much easier, climbing up a 60 degree or steeper incline takes a while longer. Like with swimming, you will move half your normal movement rate, rounded up. Flying characters need not worry themselves with climbing rules, most of the time. Totally unfair.

Crawling: If moving while fallen, your move speed halved, rounded up. Unlike climbing, there's no risk of falling, and flying offers no advantage.

Hiding: You don’t always want to be seen, and hiding can keep something far more powerful than you from beating the crap out of you. In order to hide, you must first declare to the GM how you plan to hide. Usually this means taking cover behind something or staying out of an enemy’s range of sight, but in either case, you should make a martial arts/agility roll to find a good place to hide, whereas your opponent should make a nonskilled accuracy roll to try and spot you. Subtract your size modifier from the roll. The GM should give bonuses to you if you’ve chosen a particularly good hiding spot or the opponent isn’t actively looking for you, and give bonuses to the seeker if they saw you duck behind cover or you’ve chosen a particularly bad spot to hide in.

Sneaking: This works pretty much the same as hiding, only you start to move after you hide. Every time you move while hiding, you must make a martial arts/agility roll, with a penalty equal to -1 per 5 move actions spent during the movement. Subtract your size modifier from the result. That result is the difficulty for someone else to spot you.

Tracking: You may wish to follow someone you can't directly see at times, and doing so is referred to as tracking. Tracking can be made as a Home Ec/Intelligence roll or a Math/Accuracy roll. If the target you were tracking was sneaking, the base difficulty to track them is equal to their sneak roll, otherwise the base difficulty is 3, with the target's size modifier subtracted from that difficulty. When tracking a group, the base difficulty is that of the lowest difficulty to track, with a -1 to that difficulty for each additional person in the group. The base difficulty can be further modified by time, adding +1 to the roll for each hour that has passed since they've moved through the area, though this difficulty increase is limited to +3 if the target is being tracked through an area that is not trafficked, +5 if it is lightly trafficked, +7 if it is moderately trafficked, and +9 if it is heavily trafficked. Moving through a river or other moving surface adds +4 to the difficulty, while moving through an area that would leave more obvious prints, like mud or snow, subtracts -4 from the difficulty. The GM may decide that other conditions, such as weather, the targets leaving some kind of a trail, or the like may further add to or subtract from the difficulty.

Riding Things: It’s usually easier on you to let something else do the moving for you, so choosing to ride on another creature is a good idea. To ride a creature, it has to be at least one size larger than you. You then do not use any of your own move actions, though you can't use your movement to kick either. If the thing you’re riding is intelligent, like an ogre or some such, then they decide where to go, but if you’re riding an untamed or unfriendly animal without the Rideable ability, you need to make a non-skilled personality roll. A roll of 6 or better means that you direct the animal, whereas a roll of less than that means that it decides where it wants to go. The roll should be given penalties or bonuses, based on the GM’s discretion, depending on whether the creature wants to be ridden, is trained to handle a rider, or whether or not it likes you.

Getting Up: If you're ever knocked down, such as by a hazard, spell, or accurate critical, you have a -2 penalty to passive defenses and hand action rolls. Getting up takes a minimum of 4 move actions, though rough terrain and other conditions can make this more difficult. The rougher the terrain or the less friction a character can grasp, the more feet it costs to get up. If the cost to get up costs more movement than the character has, then it takes all of their movement and a hand action to get up. Terrains that are particularly flummoxing, such as ice and oil slicks, automatically take all of a character's movement. However, at the GM's discretion, characters with Hover or a similar ability may lessen the movement cost needed to get up due to terrain, though it can never be brought below 4 actions. If the GM considers it appropriate, character may spend hand actions to help another get up, reducing their move action cost to get up by 2 actions for each hand action applied.

Kip Up: If you are knocked down and not in a situation that would require you to use all of your movement to get up, you may attempt to get up quickly with this maneuver. To attempt, roll your Martial Arts skill with Agility with a difficulty of 5. If you fail, you lose all of your movement for the round and remain prone. If you succeed, you can rise by spending 6 move actions, with every 5 over the difficulty reducing that cost by 1, to a minimum of 1 action. If circumstances exist to make getting up more challenging, such as rough terrain or spell effects, the difficulty of the kip up maneuver increases proportionately to how these conditions increase the normal cost of getting up.

Sizes

Not everyone’s the same size. That’s true not only on most planets throughout the galaxy, but even more so here in MSF High. For most races, unless you are exceptionally short or tall, your size is “medium”, or between four and eight feet tall. Because it’s the height range most races fit into, we base the size system on medium creatures. Creatures with their largest dimension(measured head to toe, or tail, or whatever) smaller than 4’ are one of the Small sizes, and creatures with their largest dimension greater than 8’ are one of the Large sizes. What size they are exactly depends on that largest dimension. Look at your character’s height(unless you’re really long, like a snake, then take that measurement) and compare it to the first row of the height chart on the next page.

If the creature or object in question is smaller or larger than the chart goes, there’s an easy pattern to follow when determining something’s size. Multiply the maximum height of the previous size by 1.5 to get the next larger size, if it is over medium. If the size is less than medium, take half of the previous size’s minimum size.

Example: Small4’s minimum size is three inches. Therefore, Small5’s minimum size would be one and a half inches. A two-inch insect would be a Small5 creature.

Your character’s size matters when trying to get through doorways, obviously, but it also makes a crucial difference in combat. It’s harder to hit something smaller to you, but damage will be proportionally greater. Likewise, larger creatures will be easier to hit, but the damage you do will be lessened. When two creatures with different sizes attack each other, the attack roll and damage dealt are modified according to the size chart on the previous page. To use this chart, find the attacker’s size on the left side of the chart, and find the defender’s size on the top side of the chart. The point where their row and column meet shows the difference in attack and damage. This modifier cannot lower damage under 1, but other modifiers can.

Example: A size small3 Fairy is attacking a medium Human. He looks on the chart where size3 and medium meet and sees that it says “A+3 D-6”. When he attacks, he adds three to his attack roll, but subtracts six from his damage.

If the attacker or defender is larger or smaller than the chart shows, there is an easy way to determine the bonuses or penalties to attack and damage. Find the difference in size between the two characters. If one of the characters is medium, the difference is simply the size number of the creature. If one is a large size and the other is small, simply add the two size numbers. If both are large or both are small, subtract the smaller size number from the larger one. This will leave you with a positive number. The larger creature subtracts this number from their attack and adds double that to their damage, and, conversely, the smaller creature adds that number to their attack and subtracts double that number from their damage.

In addition, as noted in the combat section of the rules, being a different size than your opponent can affect grappling. There are other advantages and disadvantages to being oddly sized, but they tend to balance out one way or another. If you want a character with a size other than medium, you must purchase the Advantage “Odd-sized,” though there are spells that give the same effect temporarily.

Being a different size makes certain things easier or harder than it would be for a medium character. To simplify this, if your character is large or larger, they have a "size modifier" equal to the positive value of their large size. Large counts as +1 for this. If they are small or smaller, they have a size modifier equal to the negative value their small size, with small counting as -1. Though this is described as a bonus for large characters and a penalty for small characters, please note that depending on where these modifiers are applied, it can be beneficial or detrimental to have either a bonus or a penalty. Many actions and abilities are described as being subject to either size modifier or inverse size modifier. For example, lifting or throwing is an action that has the size modifier applied, as it is easier for larger creatures, but hiding is a roll that has the target's inverse size modifier applied to it, making larger creatures easier to see but smaller creatures harder to see. Defense-based oppose rolls are subject to the size modifier, but Agility-based oppose rolls are subject to the inverse size modifier. The amount a character moves by spending a move action and the range of their melee weapons are affected by size modifier, but neither can be dropped below one foot. In cases where a pair of creatures both of non-medium size compete against each other when the modifier or its inverse are applied, each character applies their modifier to their own roll. Make sure that size modifiers are only applied once to any given roll. If a character applied their inverse size modifier to a hide roll, make sure not to apply it again when another character rolls to spot them.