Experience Level

Experience Level

  The Star Frontiers rules sets (Alpha Dawn Basic and Expanded Rules Sets, Zebulon’s Guide rules) assume that a referee will be starting his campaign with relatively inexperienced PCs just beginning their careers on the Frontier.  While this was adequate when the Star Frontiers game was released, it provided little direction for longtime players and for referees designing experienced NPCs for their players to interact with.


  However, like its TSR relative, the original D&D game, Star Frontiers needs a system for measuring PC, NPC, and “monster” (i.e., animal or alien) strengths. In the D&D/AD&D system, this was accomplished by the interlocking systems of experience points, class levels, and monster hit dice (with other refinements not related to this discussion). Star Frontiers provided for experience points as a means of improving characters, but provided no counterparts to the other “legs” of the D&D/AD&D system when designing NPCs and encounters. This was partly due to systemic differences between Star Frontiers and AD&D (i.e., no XPs awarded for killing opponents or looting treasure) and differences between the fantasy and sci-fi genres themselves. Nonetheless, there is no reason why a consistent XP/NPC design system can’t be added to the Star Frontiers rules framework. Table 4. Character Tiers is such a system.

Table 4. Character Tiers

 Character Level  Experience Points EquivalentsStarting Money 
 Initial Character

 Creation

400 XPs to be used for

abilities, skills, & racial

abilities

Use normal AD/Zeb’s

creation methods

AD/Zeb’s method
 Beginner 400-460 XPs 0-60 XPs or 0-4

adventures completed

1d100 + 250 credits
 Intermediate 461-520 XPs 61-120 XPs or 4-8

adventures

2d100 + 1000 credits
 Advanced 521-580 XPs 121-180 XPs or 8-12

adventures

3d100 + 2000 credits
 Veteran 581+ total XPs 181+ XPs or 12+

adventures

4d100 + 3000 credits

  Referees starting a group of characters at a campaign level higher than Initial Character Creation can either use the 400 base XP used for ability scores or ignore it, requiring the players to roll for their actual ability scores. Any XP above 400 listed at each level (as indicated in the “equivalents” column) is the amount used for improving the ability scores, racial abilities, and learning skills.

  Beginning funds for characters is up to the individual referee, of course, but starting money guidelines are provided in the character creation table.

  Once your referee has informed you at what level of a campaign you’re starting at, you can then move on to picking a profession and skills. Skill costs in SF2000 are a combination of the AD and Zeb’s system with skill progression being slightly easier than in both systems due to the large volume of skills. See Table 5. Skill Costs for skill costs.
Table 5. Skill Costs
 Skill Level

XP Cost
(within PSAs)

XP Cost
(outside PSAs)
 1 1 2
 2 2 4
 3 3 6
 4 4 8
 5 5 10
 6 6 12