Balancing and Reskinning
Encounter balance
The balancing loop in @Missing file: score each character 1–5 on Health and 1–5 on combined pools (plus a tenth of combined bonuses), sum for Party Power, multiply by the difficulty you want, and spend the result as Threat Points on monsters — each rank has a Threat value. It works because both sides reduce to the same currencies: hits you can take and abilities you can fire. Anything you build that inflates those without touching the score — free healing, cost-refunding gear — is invisible to the balancer and will drift your table's fights easier. When you add such content, aim it at story utility, not combat throughput.
Reskinning to a setting
The order that works:
- Pick your pools. All three, or drop one. This decides which feat and equipment folders you keep.
- Write species and archetypes to pattern. Species: +1 stat, +1 free General Feat (Humans: +3 feats). Archetypes: the bonus shapes in @Missing file are the menu — rename freely, re-budget carefully.
- Replace the example world files — characters, locations, lore, factions, and a game start that opens inside a real place with real stakes.
- Trim the catalogs to your genre and add the handful of setting-specific feats and gear your concept demands, priced by the conventions in this manual.
- Leave the GM instructions alone unless your setting changes procedure. They encode the system's table behavior — dice discipline, damage handling, XP pacing — and they transfer intact to any skin.
The test
Before shipping, build one character at F-Rank and one encounter at Normal difficulty entirely from your content. Where you had to improvise a number, a budget chapter above has the answer; where you had to invent a rule, reconsider — the engine almost certainly already has a lever for it.