(Part of my Relativistic Paladins series.)
Albatross wings quickly travel from one flashpoint to another, providing rapid triage with surgical precision. As such, wings do not often engage in prolonged missions with clear endings. They have ample opportunity to avail the makteba’s printers for repairs, so License Level advancement instead becomes a matter of renown: Pilots who endure consecutive successful sorties rapidly advance compared to those who visit the repair bay after every deployment.
Sorties are brief packages of Lancer gameplay, akin to jobs from Blood Money. Each sortie is a self-contained piece of Lancer content that can be completed in a single 3-5 hour play session. A typical sortie is composed of a single combat encounter and supporting narrative play.
With a sortie-oriented approach, Relativistic Paladins uses the following rules for renown, repairs, and advancement:
- When a pilot successfully completes a sortie, they gain renown equal to the number of sorties since their last Full Repair. Each pilot may only have a maximum of 6 renown.
- Renown scales with sorties undertaken, not sorties successfully completed. The Albatross respect those who get back into the fight after an unfortunate sortie.
- Each pilot may individually rest or Full Repair between each sortie.
- When a pilot completes a Full Repair, they may clear 6 renown to advance 1 LL.
- After a pilot successfully completes 3 sorties after a Full Repair, they receive 1 piece of Exotic Gear for each sortie they successfully complete until their next Full Repair.
Optional Rule: Partial Advancement
(Partial advancement is inspired by a combination of 13th Age’s Incremental Advances and The Long Rim’s Alternate Manna System.)
Using this rule, between each sortie, pilots may mark an amount of renown as “used” to receive an early benefit of their next License Level:
- 3 Renown: One rank of a mech license. The pilot still cannot equip frames and equipment gained from this license until they perform a Full Repair.
- 2 Renown: One rank of a talent.
- 1 Renown: One rank of a pilot trigger and one mech skill point.
A pilot may only choose each option once per License Level. Except where otherwise noted, the pilot and their mechs immediately gain the benefits of the chosen option.
Marking renown as “used” does not clear it, and maximum renown remains unchanged. Only advancing 1 LL during a Full Repair will clear renown for further advancement.