A Guide to Class Levels

Merchants - Nobles - Priests - Rangers - Scholars - Sorcerers - Thieves - Warriors - Changing Primary Classes

While the Experience & Advancement page provides good criteria for reaching the next level of each Class, it's also useful to have a description of what the levels in each Class generally mean in world terms (rather than system terms). Note that these descriptions do not refer to skills characters automatically have at each level, they are merely intended to provide a general idea of how good characters are likely to be at what they do.

Merchants

Level One: You have a small concern - a wagon, a prostitute, or a forge for example.
Level Two: You have a modest concern - several wagons, a few prostitutes, a smithy.
Level Three: You have a reasonable concern - a few caravans of wagons, a brothel, an armour and weapons emporium.
Level Four: You have a grand concern - a trade route, the best brothel in town, a contract to supply weapons and armour for the High Guard.
Level Five: You own the sort of people who own trade routes, armouries or brothels.

Nobles

This works slightly differently, given that it’s possible to be either a Noble who's the head of their own Family or a Noble who's a member of a larger and more established Family. Thus each level has two entries, the first for Family members and the second for Family heads.
Level One Family Member: You are a minor scion of your Family. You're 'one of us', but very few of 'us' particularly care about you, or indeed know who you are.
Level One Family Head: Your Family and lands are either tiny and poor, or completely untrustworthy and very low down the pecking order.
Level Two Family Member: You are known within your own Family, but are probably not one of the faces-about-town - at least, not purely on the strength of your Family name.
Level Two Family Head: Your Family and lands aren't the smallest fish in the pond, but neither are they anything special. Alternatively, your Family is only just beginning to gain or regain the trust and friendship of the other noble Families.
Level Three Family Member: You are one of the bigger players in your Family, and probably well known about town as one of the De Whatevers.
Level Three Family Head: Your Family is well known, your lands are large. Whether your Family is well liked and your lands well tended is another matter entirely...
Level Four Family Member: If you aren't one of the major members of your Family - direct bloodline, heir, etc. - you're probably one of the powers behind the major members. Even without a personal title you may well have private holdings (although they will not give you income without corresponding levels of Merchant or ranks of Wealth).
Level Four Family Head: Your Family is big. Really big. Either old, rich, well-respected or all three. It’s hard to find someone in the White City who hasn’t heard of this noble Family.
Level Five: You’re one of the bigshots, regardless of Family. There are only a few Level Five Noble PCs and NPCs about; partly because of the essentially pyramidal nature of a hierarchical feudal peerage system, but mostly because they keep having each other assassinated.

Priests

Bear in mind that activities such as leading a service, providing blessings, giving Last Rites to the dead etc. have absolutely no metaphysical effect unless you have ranks of Rites corresponding to what you want to do. Levels in your Priest class express your potential and experience rather than your ability.
Level One: Acolyte. You get sweeping-up-behind-the-altar and calming-the-sacrificial-goat duties when you visit your home temple, if you have one. Otherwise, as far as your God's concerned, you're one small step above lay worshippers. And geese. Unless geese are sacred to your God. In which case, you’re probably below geese.
Level Two: You're knowledgeable enough to represent the temple in public, and probably have some pretty cool robes if your god is into that sort of thing.
Level Three: You have the robes with the spangly bits on, and probably a staff, or some sort of ceremonial weapon at least. If you make enough noise in the right circumstances, it's possible your god might even notice you. You can lead small services.
Level Four: You could lead a big service in a major temple in a city where your God is widely worshipped. Almost everyone in the temple knows who you are and gullible laypeople probably think that getting on your good side is tantamount to approval from the God.
Level Five: Even if your God doesn't talk to you, they probably listen when you talk. However, attracting a God's notice in this way isn't always a comfortable thing - expect divine commands at really inconvenient opportunities. You can pull rank on almost anyone within the temple.

Rangers

The below descriptions refer to a Ranger with Survival: Woodland - use your imagination about equivalent skill at surviving in other environments.
Level One: You've slept outdoors once or twice. You can tell the difference between a tree and a badger.
Level Two: You're perfectly comfortable sleeping on the forest floor and probably have some rudimentary tracking skills.
Level Three: You can always rely on your own ability to hunt for food or go walking without getting lost. In fact, you probably guide people through the forest for a living - or you could if you wanted to.
Level Four: You're more comfortable up a tree than in a bed. Your knowledge of your chosen area of countryside is encyclopaedic. Rabbits and other game animals have as much chance against you as they would against a water pistol full of myxamatoses.
Level Five: It's entirely possible you could play forty-forty with a minor Old Power in their home forest and win.

Scholars

Level One: You're more educated than the plebeiate. You may well be a student at a college or under a private teacher.
Level Two: You can probably read and write in at least one other language. You are well versed in your field of choice.
Level Three: You know enough to discourse at great length and with great pedantry on your chosen subject. Alternatively, if your study embraces several disciplines, you can hold your own with minor academics from most fields.
Level Four: If you don't already hold a teaching position at a college, they may well be trying to hire you. A modest collection of arcane and rare tomes, or access to someone else's, is a must for most characters at this level.
Level Five: You eat That Which Man Was Not Meant To Know for breakfast.

Sorcerers

Level One: Sorcerer’s apprentice, minus the bad Disney adaptation. If you aren't apprenticed to someone in particular then you're "Clearly mad... and rubbish".
Level Two: Respectable wizard-about-town.
Level Three: You are an advanced mage and might even think of taking on an apprentice of your own.
Level Four: The arcane sits up and begs when you walk into the room.
Level Five: Medea- or Gandalf-level arcane ability.

Thieves

Level One: You're a bit sneaky, having maybe picked a few pockets or pulled the old is-this-your-dog-madam con. You're about able to make a living from what you do.
Level Two: You could probably make a better living out of your shady activities than most could in a "real" job.
Level Three: Job titles include Low Guard officer, high-class call girl, or the cat burglar who knows a way in and out of every house in one particular neighbourhood.
Level Four: Forget the neighbourhood, you know a way in and out of every house in the city. Be you thief, thug or whore, there's only room for a few more like you in the town.
Level Five: If you're not King Eric, he's probably got a price on your head. Depending on your preference, either everyone in the shady underworld knows who you are or nobody does.

Warriors

Level One: The pointy bit of the sword goes in the other guy.
Level Two: The pointy bit of the sword goes in the other guy repeatedly and the pointy bit of the other guy's sword doesn't go in you.
Level Three: The pointy bit of the sword goes in the other guy, after a one-two attack, marching parry sequence in prime and camte guards, and final balestre with fleche.
Level Four: Even if the blunt bit of the sword goes in the other guy, he still falls over.
Level Five: The pointy bit of the sword goes in the war god...

Changing a Primary Class

Firstly, have some levels in your new primary class.
Secondly, you need to convince the Head GM/ larpo that your character has recently been acting much more like a member of the new class primary class than the old one.
Thirdly, pay 10xp.
You cannot get more than 5 levels of secondary classes by any means. if you want a primary class change that would violate this, you have to lose levels from your new secondary class until it fits. You will lose the relevant skills (unless you could have them through another class you possess).

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This page last updated: 18th July

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