Danger Quest

Preface

List of terms: Danger Points (DP): The equivalent of experience points used in other RPGs that are gained and used to increase the abilities of characters. Danger Rating (DR): The equivalent of the term level in other RPGs determined by the number of Danger Points a character or NPC has. Danger Maestro (DM): Plays the same role as a Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master Ability Points (AP): Points you receive to make abilities or upgrade old ones. Encounter: Usually considered combat of some sort, be it physical, magical, supernatural, or social. However it also entails situations in which any of the players skills are used. In situations that do not deal with combat, an empty room in a dungeon for example, but where the players are able to use a skill once, the DM should consider combining this with another encounter into one, that way the players dont unlock a door and level up.

Chapter 1
Character Creation The start of the good stuff! The first, and definitely most important thing about making a character in Danger Quest is knowing what KIND of character you want to play. If you have no idea what you want to do, trust us, it makes it MUCH harder. So make your concept, the role your character plays. Is he an assassin, a sniper, a mutant that can take hundreds of damage? Or is she a master of the arcane arts, or perhaps a 35th century hacker capable of making a robot with some gum and thumbtacks? Make a choice that sounds good, then run with it, but dont forget that more than anything it should be fun! Once you have a concept for your character, the next step is something we like to call character flavor. These are things about your character that can make him or her really cool, but doesnt have an effect on your characters skills or abilities. These are things like your characters race, which is usually but not always limited by the world the DM has created and the races that inhabit it. One idea could be to give your character a class if you so choose, like Paladin, Assassin, Hunter, etc. Size is determined mostly by the race you choose from your DMs world, and is as follows: Diminutive, Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge, Gargantuan, and Colossal. Diminutive: 1-2 ft. Tiny: 2-3 ft. Small: 3-5 ft. Medium: 5-8 ft. Large: 8-30 ft. Huge: 30-60 ft. Gargantuan: 60-100 ft. Colossal: 100+ ft. At this point you already know who your character is, now you just have to assign some numbers to that. First up, lets talk about base stats. Base stats are the attributes that every average human has, but while your character at the start of your adventure probably isnt a famous hero, he most likely is at least above average. Therefore, you have 10 DP to allocate to any of your starting attributes, plus any you get from being a person of course, we cant forget those. One important thing to remember about these base stats is that after you finish creating your character, they never change except through vices, which we will talk about in a little bit. To start off, there is Health. This is the attribute that determines how much damage your character can take before he is knocked unconscious and then killed. On your character sheet your character starts off with 2 DP in Health, which gives all characters a minimum of a 1d4 health die. If you wish to increase the amount of health your character gets, you can allocate points here to upgrade your health die from a 1d4 to a 1d6, 1d8, 1d10, or even 1d12, each upgrade costing an additional 2 DP. This can be especially important to think about as later on as you get more powerful, you roll the dice you originally bought with your DP to increase your health. This happens after every 25 encounters. So someone starts with a 1d6, the next time they get more health that is what they will roll. Also, at character creation you get the maximum health possible from your chosen health die. Finally, when your character reaches 0 HP, they fall unconscious and remain so until healed either through abilities, potions, or first aid type skills. The players chosen hit die determines the maximum number of damage they can take after falling unconscious before actually dying. So if your health die is a 1d8, for your character to die they must reach -8 health. Next on the list is armor class, or AC. This is the attribute that prevents enemies from dealing damage to you, and is increased past the base number with your starting DP, armor, and abilities. While many may think of this as useless to allocate DP to at character creation since you get armor later, one thing to remember is that you dont always have armor. For example, you could get captured and your captors remove your armor. Just something to think about. Then there is speed. Every turn this is the distance that you can move. For every DP allocated here, this number increases by 10 ft. Initiative is an attribute that helps determine turn order in battle. Any DP allocated here is the bonus you get at the start of every battle to your initiative roll.

Attack bonus is similar to initiative, but instead of turn order it gives bonus to rolls you make to hit enemies with different weapons or abilities. Every character starts with 2 DP in skills, that way everyone can start off with at least one or two skills with at least 1 DP in those skills. So if Jason wanted his character to be a good sniper right from the beginning, he can put, for example, 3 DP into skills and allocate all 5 of those points into using Rifles. However, Sarah wants to use a sword and shield, so she allocates 3 DP into skills and puts 2 points into using shields and the other 3 into using swords. Whereas Ryan wants to be a jack of all trades, so he puts 5 DP into skill points and puts 1 point into 7 different skills. This can also be a very important place to allocate DP as the more DP you have in a skill, the better equipment you can use, and the more abilities you get. Which brings us to abilities, which while not on the list of base stats is something to consider as you allocate your DP. For every 5 DP you have in a skill, you learn an ability associated with that skill. The first ability you learn associated with a skill is limited to 1 AP, the second ability to 2 AP, the third to 3 AP, and so on. However, if you have an ability that you really like, it doesnt have to sit there and become more worthless the more experienced you get, when you learn a new ability instead of spending those points on a whole new one, you can add them to an existing ability to upgrade it. This way you can also alter abilities that werent as cool as you were hoping they would be to actually do something you really like. Also when you achieve a total of 5 DP in all your skills combined (3 in one and 2 in another for example), your character learns a skill with 1 AP that isnt associated to any of your skills, for example, some sort of teleporting, my personal favorite. Then, when your character has a total of 10 DP in all their skills they learn an ability unrelated to their skills with 2 AP to use. Healing abilities also have a stipulation to go with them. They work with a decaying success percentage, or in other words, the first time you use a healing ability that day, it has a 100% success rate. The second time is a 90% success rate. Third is 80%, and so on, ending with a minimum of 10%. It is also possible to use ability points to have a sort of buffer before this decaying starts, for example, Joe uses enough ability points to have a buffer of 2, so he can use 3 healing abilities with a 100% success rate, and this fourth will be at 90%, fifth at 80%, and so on. See Table 1.1 for AP costs. Note about special abilities. These are abilities that dont really fit into the other categories that the DM can assign to certain races that he may or may not allow characters to be. This are things such as darkvision, or some sort of glare of death (like from a basilisk). Okay, now lets go a little more in depth about skills. At character creation, you choose the skills you want to have, with DM approval depending on how specific he/she wants you to be (swordfighting vs. longsword skill). However, you really only have to worry about having a few skills at this point. You dont have to sit there and think of every possible skill you will want, if later on there is something you wish to do that requires a skill, just add it to your list right then and there! Anyways, every 5 encounters that you use a certain skill causes that skill to increase 1 DP, although in the case of non-combat skills such as lockpicking its simply every 5 times you pick a lock. Next on the list is the vices. Vices are a very interesting way to add life to your character and some interesting roleplaying opportunities, all the while still being relevant to gameplay and combat. Upon character creation, players may choose certain personality quirks for their characters, known as vices. This could be something like gambling, or unable to harm children, or something along those lines. This is something important to keep track of, and as such DMs may want to restrict players to a 2-3 vices maximum. When a player chooses a vice, they also choose a base attribute, except for skills, to affect (Note that for health it affects the maximum health, not when the player rolls their health die). This effect comes in the form of a +1 DP bonus to that attribute. However, this is not free. Whenever the player has an opportunity to give in to their vice, such as drinking alcohol if they see some, they must do so, otherwise not only do they lose this bonus, but it actually works against them. So if your character has a vice that gives him +1 DP to attack bonus, and fails to follow through with that vice no matter what the situation is, it instead becomes -1 (so instead of a total of +3 to his attack bonus it would then become a total of +1) for 24 hours. However, every time that a character gives into a vice, after the next resting period of at least 8 hours, the vices bonus/penalty increases by 1.

Now on to something else that can be very important to the creation of your character: equipment. First well go over weapons, since that can get a little more complex than armor, most armor is pretty straightforward. So, weapons. Weapons can range from swords to axes to guns to bows to laser cannons to plasma rifles to something as simple as a piece of pipe or a stick. However, those are the easy ones. What about my character whos a lizard and has claws on his hands? What about my mage who doesnt use a sword or a bow? How does my mage do damage when all he gets for spells are ability points? Well, then we get into the beauty of the freedom of Danger Quest. A weapon doesnt have to be something you hold in your hand and use. As the DM is largely responsible for the equipment your party can/cant have or finds, he/she can help you determine how this following little bit goes. Plus, the way magic works can change based on the world the DM has created. So, a little about mages. A way to determine what kind of damage a mages spell can do is simple. A mage, instead of a sword, can have a tattoo, an amulet, a staff, a wand, even some sort of innate power (in that case the DM might not let you buy new innate powers to increase the damage of your spells, he may require you do something else), or whatever else you want it to be. Then the mages abilities would be what determines how many hexes the spell affects, or the duration of the spell, and so on. Then spells that dont do damage, like some sort of confusion or stun spell, would rely solely on abilities. Now the DM may restrict the spells to certain elements, or he may allow the player to choose the nature of the spells as he goes, or he may say 1 spell per ability, its really up to him. As for more conventional weapons like the ones listed at the beginning of the equipment section, it is much simpler, the DM is in charge of what weapons you find and/or can buy and the damages they do. The same goes for armor, however the DM may also allow your character, based on their race, to have a sort of natural armor and then you cant use armor or something along those lines. Or it could be your character is like a monk and has natural AC from knowing martial arts and how to dodge things, it really is up to you and the DM. One last thing on weapons. There are four weapon ranges: Melee, Short, Long, and Extreme. Melee range is 515 ft. Short range is 15-60 ft. Long range is 60-120 ft. Extreme range is 120+ ft. Note to DMs: While our idea is to allow players to add new skills by simply trying new things and adding them to their skill list as they go, this is your world and you can manage it as you want, so if you prefer for them to have to learn it from someone, or receive some generic DP from completing a quest first for them to allocate points into a new skill, you are free to make those changes. Note to DMs: The way you handle vices is important. If you dont address them often enough, players may feel like their character idea doesnt matter, or that their vices are worthless. However, it is also important to balance the number of vice opportunities you give your characters, or you may see a much more rapid progression of certain base attributes than you may want. It may also be a good idea to find ways to restrict the amount of times they can give in to vices at fixed locations, like a casino or a bar, that way they dont purposely return there as much as possible to increase their attributes.

Explanation of terms in Table 1.1: o DP/AP The number of DP added or the number of AP required to add particular attribute. o Movement Abilities that affect the movement of the player (super speed, teleportation, etc.) o Short Ranged Abilities that affect short ranged weapons (like melee weapons) o Medium Ranged Abilities that affect medium ranged weapons (like a short bow) o Long Ranged Abilities that affect long ranged weapons (such as long bow or laser gun)

Extreme Ranged Abilities that affect extreme ranged weapons (such as a sniper rifle or artillery cannon) o # of Hexes Abilities that affect the number of targets you can attack at once (multi-shot, whirlwind strike) o Non-combat Abilities that affect non-combat skills, such as persuasion or lock-picking o Duration Abilities that have a duration, such as flying or spells o Armor Abilities that give bonus to AC Notes on table 1.1 o Any ability that causes the player to move (without doing damage) is a move action o Melee range increased from abilities must have a valid reason, for example, adding fire to your blade that can extend, or an energy swords power being amped up to increase its range. Notes on table 1.2: o The numbers in the table is the amount of DP it takes to do that particular combination. o For HP and weapons you may only use the base dice values (+0 prices) Magic items can use the +1 to +5 bonuses o It may be a good idea for DMs to restrict what players can use/find/have due to similar DPs between different amounts of dice and bonuses (to make full use of all options versus using only about 4 different options on table). Explanation of terms in Table 1.3: o Skill boost: This can be applied to any skill, combat or otherwise. Explanation of terms in Table 1.4: o Range: special abilities that have range, such as darkvision o Death: special abilities that can cause instant death (the DM may also allow this for regular abilities) either by percentile dice or by a d20 contest using base attack bonus Note: DMs, think very carefully about allowing players access to this ability, especially without some sort of restriction like times/day, otherwise you may see D.A.S. or Death Ability Spamming

Abilities Table 1.1 DP/AP 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Movement 10 ft. 20 ft. 30 ft. 40 ft. 50 ft. 60 ft. 70 ft. Melee Ranged 5 ft. 10 ft. 15 ft. 20 ft. 25 ft. 30 ft. 35 ft. Short Ranged 10 ft. 20 ft. 30 ft. 40 ft. 50 ft. 60 ft. 70 ft. Long Ranged 20 ft. 40 ft. 60 ft. 80 ft. 100 ft. 120 ft. 140 ft. Extreme Range 30 ft. 40 ft. 50 ft. 60 ft. 70 ft. 80 ft. 90 ft. # of Hexes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 NonCombat +2 +4 +6 +8 +10 +12 +14 Duration Instant 1 round 2 rounds 3 rounds 4 rounds 5 rounds 6 rounds 7 rounds Armor +1 +2 +3 Healing Buffer 1 2 -

Damage Table 1.2 Base Dice None 1d4 1d6 1d8 1d10 1d12 2d4 2d6 2d8 2d10 2d12 3d4 3d6 3d8 3d10 3d12 +0 0 2 4 6 8 10 4 8 12 16 20 6 12 18 24 30 +1 1 3 6 9 12 15 5 10 15 20 25 7 14 21 28 35 +2 2 4 8 12 16 20 6 12 18 24 30 8 16 24 42 40 +3 3 5 10 15 20 25 7 14 21 28 35 9 18 27 46 45 +4 4 6 12 18 24 30 8 16 24 32 40 10 20 30 50 50 +5 5 7 14 21 28 35 9 18 27 36 45 11 22 33 54 55

Magic/Tech Items Table 1.3 DP/AP 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Armor +1 +2 +3 Skill Boost +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 +6 +7

Special Abilities Table 1.4 DP/AP 1 2 4 6 8 10 12 Range 60 ft. 70 ft. 80 ft. 90 ft. 100 ft. 110 ft. 120 ft. Death 10% chance d20 contest -