Night-Haunted Hogwarts: End-of-Session Procedure & Character Advancement

End-of-Session Procedure & Character Advancement

When the party finishes their expedition and returns to town, run through the following procedure:

1. Clear all injuries and conditions.

2. Check to see if anyone meets the requirements to advance to the next Rank.

3. Go through the House Points checklist and distribute Points. When awarding House Points the Referee should announce the awards in a dramatic voice.

 

Increasing Rank

When a character has completed the requirements, they move to the next Rank. 

 

0 - Novice

You are ready to go on an expedition. 

 

1 - Apprentice

You have survived at least one expedition and returned with something to show for it.

• Choose +1 Strength or +1 Luck

 

2 - Journeyman

You have survived at least three successful expeditions as an Apprentice. 

An expedition is considered successful if anyone in your party earned House points.

• Choose +1 Strength or +1 Luck

 

3 - Auror

You have survived at least five successful expeditions as a Journeyman. 

An expedition is considered successful if you earned House points.

• Choose +1 Strength or +1 Luck

 

4 - Warlock

You have performed a great service for your House, clan, or another institution capable of granting you the title.

• +1 Strength

• Receive a gift from the institution that honored you. If no other option presents itself, choose an item from your Clan’s starting equipment.

 

5 - Master 

You have reached Master rank in at least one skill and have completed a Masterwork. 

A Masterwork is a major goal, worthy of a powerful wizard, which you must propose.

• +1 Luck

• You no longer suffer a penalty for Wordless magic.
  

 

Keep a record of your successful expeditions.

Note that you do not necessarily need to reach Rank 3 before becoming a Warlock or a Master. Should an extraordinary character skip one or more ranks, they gain the benefits of their new rank but not of the ones that they skipped. For example a character who jumps straight from Rank 2 to Rank 5 will gain the benefits of Master (+1 Luck, no penalty for wordless Magic, count as rank 5 for Reputation and the Presence of the Dark Lord) but not those of Auror or Warlock. The benefits of any skipped ranks can be gained retroactively as the character meets them.

Reputation: As they advance through the Ranks, characters may be treated differently by people they encounter. To see if someone has heard of your exploits, roll your level or lower on a d6.

 

Earning Points & Improving Skills

Earning Points

When you fail a Skill test, put 1 point into it.

 

Additionally, at the end of each expedition go through the following checklist, awarding points if the conditions were met:

• Defeated a powerful enemy – 5 points for Gryffindor!

• Nobody died or got left behind – 5 points for Gryffindor!

• Recovered a great treasure – 5 points for Slytherin!

• Outwitted an enemy – 5 points for Slytherin!

• Discovered a secret of the castle – 5 points for Ravenclaw!

• Documented a new spell, creature, or magical phenomenon – 5 points for Ravenclaw!

• Helped someone in need – 5 points for Hufflepuff!

• Made a new friend – 5 points for Hufflepuff!

 

You may distribute these points amongst your skills any way you choose.

 

Cost to Improve Skills

• Untrained -> Basic: 10

• Basic -> Advanced: 20

• Advanced -> Expert: 40

• Expert -> Master: 100

 

Retirement

You may choose to retire your character at any time while in Town.

A retired character has an X-in-6 chance of being able to provide assistance with something 1/downtime, where X is the retired character’s rank.

 

Stuck in the Dungeon

If the party has not returned to town by the end of the session, the Referee may ask each player to test their Luck. Characters who fail the test must choose to either gain a Scar or lose one of their items.

Design Notes: the level up system cribs heavily from The One Ring RPG’s method in its design. However, the choices here were all reverse-engineered from the house points thing in Harry Potter. There needed to be some way for somebody to announce “10 points for Gryffindor!” and have that be mechanically relevant.

The points values themselves are extrapolated from TOR 2e - not the specific numbers required to advance, but the number of sessions required in which you earn 10 points. Unlike TOR, however, points aren’t earned automatically. In general I prefer XP to be tied to some kind of concrete goal (such as GP for XP in older editions of D&D). It’s not ideal in every game - I’ve run a Pathfinder campaign where I just asked the players at the end of each session “what do you think, did you guys level up here?” and it was lots of fun - but for an open exploration type of game I think it’s useful to have a goal. What I’m hoping for here is that a mixed group of characters will have different, competing goals for how to level up. I’ve tried to make each house’s goals map onto different ways people naturally approach exploring a dungeon. It’s another bit of inter-group tension inspired by the fact that characters in Harry Potter are constantly sniping and bickering with each other, although in practice I don’t expect people will actually engage in PvP (which I find to be incredibly irritating - one of the reasons that I rarely set limits on how long people can spend on out-of-character table-talk and planning). More likely it will push players to try and hit as many checklist items as possible, which I think is fine. Of course you can also form a party from a single house and it will function like a single-class D&D party - Team Gryffindor are fighters, Slytherins are rogues, Ravenclaw are magic-users, and Hufflepuffs are clerics or bards.

The Retirement option is there for when players end up with a character that they’re tired of, whether because they have too many debilitating scars but haven’t died, feel like the character’s story has run its course, or just because it’s a game with 24 character playbooks and they’d like to try another one out.

The Stuck in the Dungeon rule evolved from something on Jeff Rients’ old blog. The original was a table, which is funnier and more exciting. Frankly though I didn’t want to waste the real-estate, and as injuries all clear as soon as you get back to town (to prevent players with irregular attendance from needing to figure out if their character is still hurt when they come back) there really aren’t many options besides “lose an item” or “gain a scar”