Flagstones

Introduction to Flagstones

Flagstones

Flagstones are broad stroke characterizations of a character's attributes broken up into Vitality, Finesse, Cognition, and Ego. Vitality covers basics of physical health, wellness, beauty, strength and endurance. Finesse focuses on speed, fluidity, and accuracy of movement, from big movements like dance or acrobatics to fine movements like picking locks and cutting purses. Cognition focuses on a characters ability to focus and think clearly, learn, reason, remember, comprehend and understand. Lastly, Ego refers to a characters innate sense of self, confidence, willpower, self-discipline, empathy towards others, and how those elements tend to impact others.

Flagstones can be viewed as containers with a limited capacity. Upgrading a Flagstone increases the capacity, both in terms of how much it can hold, and how powerful those things may be. Upgrading a Flagstone costs fades seeds equal in number and rank to the new rank of the Flagstone. Each Flagstone can contain a number of bonuses equal to the Flagstone rank +1, for a total of 7 at S rank.

When creating a character, distribute 6 rank increases among any number of Flagstone, with no more than 3 per Flagstone. Humans receive 10 ranks with a maximum of 4 in any Flagstone. These ranks do not grant any bonuses directly. They simply indicate the potential capacity of the new character. Flagstones may be upgraded later to increase the number and power of bonuses. When a character acquires the first rank in any Flagstone, they also gain 1 free bonus within that category at E rank. These ranks are free and do not require the cost in Fade seeds be paid.

At character generation, the GM will assign a number of Fade Seeds as the starting value for play. The default recommended value is 1 C rated Fade Seed. Players may then upgrade as they see fit by converting those Fade Seeds to the appropriate resource needed to meet the requirements at the rates given here: Dream Seeds.

When upgrading an S ranked Flagstone, each additional Rank increases the cost in fade seeds, cumulatively, by 1. So, for example, going from S ranked (+6) to S+1 would cost 7 S ranked fade seeds. Increasing the rank of the Flagstone does not increase the rank of all bonuses contained within. There is no maximum rank that may be acquired this way, though for rating purposes they are noted as S+ followed by the number of ranks above S. This does tend to become cost prohibitive, but nothing is stopping you from bending reality to your will.

Flagstone Bonuses

Flagstone bonuses are individual innate perks that are related to a particular Flagstone. Each Flagstone bonus rank may be increased using dream seeds. Acquiring a new bonus requires that there is an available slot for the relevant Flagstone, and costs 1E ranked dream seed. Upgrading a Flagstone costs dream seeds equal in number and rank to the new rank of the bonus. For example, going from rank B to rank A would cost 5 A ranked dream seeds. Individual bonuses may not be increased to a rank greater than that of the Flagstone they belong to. There is no maximum rank that may be acquired this way, though for rating purposes they are noted as S+ followed by the number of ranks above S.

Bonus Types

Starting Flagstone Rules Brief:

Ranks for Flagstones given at Character creation do not have any other associated cost, and must be spent.
Starting ranks for Humans: 10
Starting ranks for Non-humans: 6
Bonuses that apply to base reserved keywords (i.e. Strike, Defend, etc) apply only to non-ability based actions.
If a particular methodology overrides a reserved keyword, bonuses for the containing sub-domain are used to determing action bonuses rather than those applied to the reserved keywords.