Level

In The Nexus Framework, Level is a broad measure of a character’s overall capability, representing accumulated experience, learning, and personal growth. It serves as a pacing tool for campaigns built with the Framework, helping designers and Game Masters define how quickly characters gain access to more powerful abilities, higher-tier traits, and more demanding challenges.

At its core, Level exists to mark stages of advancement—whether that means unlocking new Tiers of Traits, improving attributes, or broadening a character’s influence in the world.

As characters adventure and gain experience, they grow in skill, talent, and influence. Each new level represents both the lessons learned and the personal growth achieved along the way. Leveling up is a steady process rather than a sudden leap; each stage brings new opportunities to refine existing abilities or discover new ones.

Every time a character gains a level, they may distribute six points as they please among their attribute values. No single attribute may receive more than four points.

Every time a character gains a level, they may add two points to both their maximum health and their maximum stamina.

Whenever a character goes up a level, they will select and add one General Trait to their character. Alternately, they may select a trait from any Specialist pool to which they have access, including the Combat Trait pool.

At every odd-numbered level, the character also gain a a Skill Trait. And at levels 4, 6, 10 and 12, they also gain an Ancestry trait.

A character can only select a trait within or below their tier. At character creation, characters are Initiate-tier. At levels 2 through 7, they are Adept-tier. At levels 8 through 13, they are Master tier. And at levels 14 and 15, they are Paragon tier. Each pool of traits is split into tiers, and includes a mention of the minimum levels required.

Experience Points (XP) represent a character’s accumulated growth through adventure, challenge, and personal development. Characters earn XP for overcoming obstacles, achieving goals, and meaningful roleplay. When enough XP has been gained, the character advances to the next Level.

Each game built with The Nexus Framework determines its own rate of XP gain and the amount required for advancement, allowing designers to tailor progression speed to the tone and style of their setting. However, to make the game designer's life easier, presented below are three systems that can serve as a basis to judge your own system.

It's assumed that during an adventure, your character will be contributing in a meaningful way all during the adventure—even if you are not directly acting in a scene, your character is probably still doing something helpful.

This is the simplest system available: At the end of each session, award each character 10 XP for every hour the session lasted. You can decide how you want to measure partial hours.

This system breaks the awarding of XP into two steps. The first is referred to as the base value, and is set based on the conditions of the adventure. The base value starts at zero, and will range from zero to ten.

• If the party faced no real opposition in the adventure, don't increase the base value.
• If the party outclassed their opposition—but not so much as to render the opposition meaningless—increase the base value by one.
• If the party and the opposition were approximately equal, increase the base value by two.
• If the opposition was measurably superior to the party, increase the base value by three.

• If the adventure affected only the party—or not even the party—don't increase the base value.
• If the adventure affected a small group—such as a company, village, or band of travellers—increase the base value by one.
• If the adventure affected a moderate group—such as a large corporation, a town, or a medieval city—increase the base value by two.
• If the adventure affected a large group—such as a kingdom, a modern metropolis, or a rural state or small country—increase the base value by three.
• If the adventure affected every person that the party is likely to encounter in their life, increase the base value by four.

• If the party faces no real losses as a result of the adventure, don't increase the base value.
• If the party faces temporary non-fatal losses—such as the loss of wealth or property—increase the base value by one.
• If the party faces permanent non-fatal losses—such as the death or alienation of a significant ally, the destruction of a safe haven, or the permanent loss of access to a major resource—increase the base value by two.
• If the party's lives are on the line, increase the base value by three.

At the end of the session, consider each of the following conditions *for each character*, and award an amount of XP equal to the base value for each condition met.

• If the character actively participated, award them one base value.
• If the character worked as part of the team, award them one base value.
• If the player at least attempted to portray their character, award them one base value.
• If the player solved a major problem or was involved in a combat, award them one base value.
• If the player added to the lore of the game world during play, award them one base value.

For the party as a whole, consider the two following points:

• If a story arc ended, award each character one base value.
• If the story arc ended in a victory for the party, award each character one additional base value.

With this system, a character might gain as much as 70 XP in a single session, but is more likely to earn 20 to 30.

With this system, each creature, hazard or skill challenge that the party must deal with carries its own XP award. The amount of the award depends on the difficulty of the encounter, as described in the table below.