In Fallen Empire, you can spend your available character points at (almost) any time during the game.
This rule allows you to start a new game with entirely new characters within one minute of sitting down at the table.
Spending character points is also revealing more about your character in the fiction. Think of the spending of character points as a reveal moment. This is when the other characters find out that you actually trained something for years, or that you are stronger than you look, or that what they thought is a simple-minded barbarian is actually a quiet but thoughtful big guy.
You can spend character points at any time on anything as listed on the character sheet, including abilities, traits, additional stress boxes and more.
There are two exceptions to this rule:
If an important roll is coming up and you want to spend character points to increase the ability being tested or to acquire a trait that will affect it, or to get additional boxes in stress or harm to have more of a buffer - no matter what, you have to do it before you roll the dice. Once the dice are rolled, the roll with all its consequences is resolved with whatever your character sheet said at the moment you rolled the dice.
Your character also must be alive to advance any ability, trait, etc. - once he is dead, you can no longer change anything about him. You can, however, use remaining character points to transfer points into his soul - see Souls > Upon Death.
Almost all features that can be improved with character points follow the same progression:
| nth advance | cost in character points |
|---|---|
| 1 | 1 |
| 2 | 3 |
| 3 | 6 |
| 4 | 10 |
| 5 | 15 |
You always advance everything one step at a time, starting from the lowest.
If you want to buy two traits for your character, you first buy the first trait, which costs 1 character point. Then you buy the second trait, which costs an additional 3 character points.
The four character Abilities can be raised to a maximum value of 5, following the general advancement table.
Note that for the three mundane abilities, everyone gets one point for free which is already marked on the character sheet. That means spending 1 character point raises these abilities to a value of 2 dice.
You can also buy details for each ability, which while more narrow are also considerably cheaper, especially towards the higher end of ability values. See Abilities.
| path | cost |
|---|---|
| 1st | 1 |
| 2nd | 2 |
| 3rd | 3 |
| 4th | 4 |
| 5th | 5 |
| 6th | 6 |
| 7th | 7 |
| 8th | 8 |
| 9th | 9 |
| 10th | 10 |
For magic, characters start with zero, indicating no magical ability. Here you start buying from the first point, at a cost of 1 character point.
Instead of details, in the magical ability, you can buy Magic Paths, representing types of magic your character is able to use. These is the exception to the advancement table. The 1st path a character learns is 1 point, the 2nd is 2, the 3rd is 3 and so on, increasing by 1 each time. There is a total of 10 paths a character can learn (even if the character sheet only has space for 6). See Magic Paths for more details.
Traits do not have values or levels, but the number of traits your character has matters. You pay for each trait according to the advancement table. So your first trait costs 1 character point, your 2nd trait 3 character points, etc.
Focus on a few traits that really define your character.
Each of these start with a number of free boxes - 5 for stress, 2 for mana burnout and 3 for equipment - and you can spend character points according to the advancement table for additional boxes.
In each case, you pay only for the additional boxes, starting at 1 character point. The starting boxes are free and, unlike abilities, do not count towards advancement costs.
You want your character to start with 5 equipment boxes. You get 3 boxes for free, so you need to buy an additional 2 boxes. Following the advancement table, this will cost you 1 + 3 = 4 character points.
If you want your character to be tougher than normal, you can purchase additional splits (see Adaptive Bars) following the advancement table.
Unlike stress, mana burnout and equipment, you do not add boxes at the end. Instead, you choose one of the existing boxes and draw a vertical line down its middle, turning it into two boxes. You can freely choose if you want to split lesser, moderate or severe harm.
Your choice matters because when your character suffers damage, the damage does not always start from the left (at lesser harm), but can be immediately moderate or severe. Splitting one of the lesser harm boxes does you no good in these cases, while splitting one of the moderate boxes does not delay the onset of the -1 die penalty from accumulated lesser harm.
See Consequences > Damage & Harm for details.
You can also add up to two allies to your character. These work different from other parts of character advancement. Allies do not cost character points. Instead, for each ally you add, you also gain one enemy. See Allies & Enemies for details.
You cannot purchase coins with character points.
Character points are gained at the completion of adventures. The GM decides how many character points are gained, with all characters in the party gaining the same amount of character points per session.
Give each character one character point per session that the adventure lasted, plus two points if they completed the adventure successfully. You can give one point for the adventure if it was a partial success.
A bonus character point can be given when the characters accomplish major milestones in a campaign.