Rewards & Improvement
Adventure pays, and it pays in three kinds of coin: Coin, Glory, and Experience. Fighting bandits, uncovering plots, or merely advancing the cause of your house earns all three, and each improves a different part of your life — Coin buys, Glory ennobles, and Experience transforms. This chapter is what the rewards of the realm are worth.
Coin
Coin is the most tangible reward. It improves your purchasing power, letting you upgrade weapons and armor, acquire a new steed, and buy the services that smooth a road or save a life. Alternatively, you may invest Coin into your house — outfitting its soldiers, funding land improvements, expanding the keep. Coin comes mostly from prizes and victories, but also from payments, ransoms, and favorable business transactions.
You may spend Coin on any equipment or service, and on house and land improvements through your House's sheet.
Glory
Glory is the currency of the noble, and it is used to improve your family's fortunes. Whenever you acquire Glory as a reward, you may invest it into your house by returning to your lands — transferring it to the house, divided up or invested whole, into one or more of your house's resources. The effects of accumulated Glory are far less immediate than Coin's and may take time to realize their benefits. For Glory's uses, see your House's sheet.
Experience
Coin's benefits are obvious and short-lived; Glory always works on the house, slowly improving your family's fortunes. Experience, however, marks your personal improvement — the means to gradually increase your abilities, improve or acquire new specialties, and accumulate Destiny Points. Of the three rewards, Experience has the greatest impact on your character. You may spend earned Experience at any time.
| Improvement | Cost |
|---|---|
| Acquire a new specialty at 1B, or improve an existing specialty by +1B | 10 EXP × rank — 10 for 1B, 20 for 2B, 30 for 3B, and so on |
| Raise an ability by one rank | 10 EXP to reach rank 3; 30 EXP for each rank beyond |
| Gain a Destiny Point | 50 EXP |
Acquire or Improve a Specialty — 10 EXP × rank
Each bonus die of a specialty costs 10 × its rank in Experience: a new specialty at 1B costs 10 EXP, improving 1B to 2B costs 20, 2B to 3B costs 30, and so on. Specialty dice can never exceed your rank in the governing ability: with Fighting 3 (Axes 2B, Long Blades 3B), you could improve Axes to 3B, but you could not improve Long Blades until your Fighting reaches 4.
Improve an Ability — 10 EXP to rank 3, 30 EXP beyond
Raising an ability to rank 3 costs 10 Experience; every rank beyond costs 30. To improve Fighting 2 to Fighting 3, you spend 10 Experience; to improve Fighting 2 to Fighting 4, you spend 40 (10 + 30); to improve Fighting 2 to Fighting 5, you spend 70 (10 + 30 + 30).
Improving an ability takes time and training. For every rank you increase, you must spend 1 week training under the tutelage of a character who has at least 1 rank higher than you in the ability you want to improve. You can still improve the ability without a trainer, but the time increases to 1 + 1d6/2 weeks.
Gain a Destiny Point — 50 EXP
The most expensive aspect of improvement is the acquisition of Destiny Points. Once you acquire a Destiny Point, you may immediately invest it into a Benefit or erase a drawback (Qualities, Destiny).