Age Of Dragons: Advancement And Downtime
Age Of Dragons: Main Page -> Advancement And Downtime
Contents
Character Progression and Lifepaths
Character progression in Age of Dragons is linked to the character's Lifepath. As a dragon grows older, or has life experiences, his Experience Rating increases.
With Age Comes Power
As a Dragon gets older, he gains Puissance. For each full century that passes, he gains +1 Puissance, as detailed in the character generation chapter.
A starting character (aged between 100-199 years) has a Puissance of just 4, or even less if he follows multiple lifepaths.
When that same character reaches the grand old age of 1000, his Puissance will be 13, so long as he hasn't gone for more than one Lifepath.
Note that in-game, time passes at a fairly slow rate: while the GM might narrate that a day, week or even month has passed during a game session, it is not usual for him to wind the clock forward a matter of years.
Instead, between stories the GM will decide how far forward the timeline moves. This is called downtime.
How fast the GM moves forward downtime is up to him. The default assumption is that each story will last 2-3 sessions, and at the end of each story there will be 25-100 years of downtime passing. This isn't set in stone, of course.
Gathering Resources
Getting older is not the only way to gain power.
Player characters, by their nature, are protagonists in the story and often live through tumultuous events, great dangers and special circumstances. Their dangerous lives are not without rewards, however, and it is likely that they will acquire Resources.
In a way, many players might regard Resources as the only true measure of long term success for their characters. This is their reward for hard work in-game, and the only substantial advantage that they can pass as legacy to proteges or offspring.
How they gain these resources is a matter of in-game story, but it should never be eithout effort. For GM's looking for a rule of thumb, it is suggested that they aim to let each player gain about 1 to 3 points of Resource per game session played, with higher cost Resources taking multiple game sessions to achieve.
Acquiring Lifepaths
Generally, adopting a new Lifepath can be handled during Downtime. At any stage a player can decide to "spend" 1 point of Puissance to permanently gain a Lifepath.
Generally a character can't change lifepath during a story - its assumed that it takes at least a year or two to adopt the new role and refocus your potential.
Note that some Lifepaths have certain prerequisites that must be met before a dragon can change to it. If age is a requirement, the dragon might meet the prerequisite as downtime passes. If particular actions are necessary, the dragon will generally take those actions during game-time.
Once a Lifepath has been gained, its a lifelong commitment. No dragon can choose to abandon a Lifepath he has begun, and he will have to live with the knowledge that the decision to broaden his focus will forever cost him some of the puissance he might have gained through specialisations. Nevertheless, its rare for a dragon (or a player) to have the discipline to follow a single lifepath through the course of a whole millennium. It should be presumed that any player characters or NPCs that do are exceptional rather than the norm: hence the sheer power and impressiveness of the maximum Puissance powers for each Lifepath.
Senescence
Senescence for dragons happens very different than for mortals.
A dragon will remain at full health until his thousandth year. In fact, thanks to gaining Puissance he will usually grow more powerful till that time.
After that, old age will strike suddenly and irreversibly. Every D6 years afterwards, he will lose -1 from Soma, Sophis and Pneuma.
When any sphere rating reaches zero, he dies of old age.
A dragon that dies of old age in this way transmutes physically into stone - akin to pale grey marble but with a slight translucent quality. Dragons call this the sleep of stone. The statue is no more or less resilient than a marble statue, and if broken apart is made of the same stone all the way through. No dragon ever returns from the sleep of stone, and the stone has no especial magical qualities, though certain macabre dragons and mortals might seek to acquire such statues for their own collections.
Note that dragons that die from any cause other than senescence do not enter the sleep of stone, instead rotting away as any other organic creature might.
