Mid-level Characters
Congratulations, your character has managed to survive long enough to gain 200 points, rank 20, and as such you have now gained your first point of status and are eligible to join a Guild, Sect or School, thereby gaining the specialist teachings they will give you in return for pledging your status to them.
What is Status?
- Status is a measurement of inner strength that is recognised by spells, invocations and most importantly by the Mystics of Orin Rakatha. It is a symbolic representation of the characters influence, strength and power.
- Every towered person automatically gains their first point of Status when they reach 200 character points and they get another one for every full 100 points after that.
- Status can be sworn to another individual by way of a spoken vow in their presence. Once pledged in this way Status may only be withdrawn by speaking a retraction of this vow, again within the presence of the person to whom it is sworn. Having Status sworn to you effectively increases the amount of Status that you yourself have.
- Within the Valley Alliance Status is sworn by individuals to their Guildleaders who in turn swear the collected Status to the Tower Leader.
- Guilds take the swearing of Status very seriously as the amount of Status the Guild Leader has to ‘wield’ is a measure of their influence. This is probably the main reason why no character is permitted to be a member of more than two guilds.
- The Mystics on Orin Rakatha use Status as a method of deciding who should have a Tower (the only safe place to support civilisation). The exact amount of Status required to gain a tower is unknown. Status must be presented to the Mystics on the Central Isle at the Time of Reckoning which may occur at any point once per calendar year. In some exceptional circumstances the Mystics grant new-comers to the plane an individual audience and chance to present Status which may result in that group gaining a Tower immediately. A single individual must hold sufficient Status to claim a Tower by himself to succeed.
- It is rumoured that the real worth of Status is strongly affected by how many "Res. Chances" (i.e. Spirit Strength) the source individual has. Hence the idea of a Shadowsfall Status contract to remove Status by killing a number of people but not necessarily permanently slaying them.
How to use your status
As you character earns status you may pledge it to the Guilds of the Kern Valley Alliance in return for invocations, spells or other advanced skills not available to low level characters.
Your Primary Guild
The first decision that you must make having gained you first point of status is which Guild you wish to join. The Guild to which you swear your first point of status is known as your primary guild. A list of all the Guilds of the Kern Valley Alliance can be found here. Your choice of Primary Guild is restricted based on the character class you selected at low level. Warriors may only join a Warriors Guild as their Primary Guild, Mages must choose one of the Schools of Magic, Acolytes must dedicate themselves to a Sect and Scouts must choose one of the scouting Guilds as their Primary sponsor.
Secondary Guild
All characters may swear status to a secondary guild. This will allow you access to specialist skills not taught by your primary guild. No character may join more than two guilds including their primary guild (apart from Scouts using the Jack of All Trades skill). The amount of status sworn to your primary guild must always exceed that sworn to your secondary guild (and therefore a secondary guild cannot be joined until a character gains his third point of status at 400 points as the first two must go to your primary guild). Please note that membership to a secondary guild will not always be granted. This is usually due to in character reasons. For example the Michelines will not accept anyone into their guild who uses evil power.
So what are these advanced skills?
Every Guild offers its members access to certain skills, spells or invocations not available to individuals who have not pledged to that Guild. You may only chose skills that appear on the relevant Guild page for guild(s) that you are a member of or that appear in the common skills list available to all characters. The skills are split into several categories. At mid level you may choose from the Guild skills and Status Skills Rank 20 – 63 listed for your chosen Guild.
Guild Skills
Some skills are available to all characters as detailed in the low level rules. However certain skills are only taught to members of specific guilds. These skills require no dedicated expenditure of Status, simply that you have status sworn to a guild that teaches them. All of these skills require an expenditure of character points in order to obtain them. Descriptions for these skills can be found by clicking on the name of the skill.
Status Skills Ranks 20 - 63
Each of these skills require you to swear one point of status to the guild in order to be taught the skill. They generally also have a cost in character points and may require a cost in gests to be paid. Descriptions and costs these skills can be found in the mid level rules.
Using the Battleboard Sheet
All mid level characters should be produced using the excel Battleboard sheet available for download here. It will record your expended status and list all of the skills available to you depending on your selected Guild(s). Please read the instructions. A copy of your HQML character file should be sent to admin@heroquest-larp.co.uk so that we can keep an accurate record of all characters in the system.