Winter Phase

[Cearnach]

The Winter Phase includes character maintenance. Please do the following:

1. Experience Checks
Characters spend some of the winter reflecting back over the year that has gone by. This process is simulated using an “experience roll.” Throughout game play during the game’s summer season, potential improvements are recorded as an increase in the checked skill, passion, or trait value (see “Obtaining Experience”).
The experience roll process is the same whether you seek to increase a skill, a passion, or a trait. Attributes (STR, DEX, etc.) cannot be increased this way. Roll d20 once foeach experience check you have on your character sheet.

If the number rolled is greater than the current value, then the character learned from experience and adds 1 point to that value. If the value is already at 20 or greater, a roll of 20 still boosts it by 1 point.

Thus, a character with a checked Proud trait of 24 who received a 20 on the experience check roll would increase his Proud statistic to 25.
The process is repeated for every critical success you had. Each skill gets only one check per year, but any number of skills may be checked.

Each character should also test that Passion and that Trait their character relied on the most in the course of the game.

2. Aging
Age your character by one year. If your character is 35 or older, roll on the chart on page 107 in the rulebook (109 of the pdf).

3. Training and Practice.
During this step, you may choose to do any one of the following three things:
1. Gain 1d6+1 Points in Skills (To Max 15): Roll 1d6+1 for the number of points available to you to improve your skills. Any combination of one or more skills or combat skills may be improved, but you may not improve a Non-Knightly skill in this way, and no skill may be raised to higher than 15.

2. Gain 1 Point in a Skill (To Max 20): You may increase any one skill by 1 point, to a maximum value of 20. Skills can go beyond 20 only by means of experience or Glory.

3. Improve an Attribute, Trait, or Passion: You may raise or lower any one attribute, trait, or passion value by 1 point. (Keep in mind that altering a trait this always also alters the value of the opposite trait as well.) Several restrictions apply: No trait can be increased to over 19, and passions cannot be increased over 20. No attribute can be raised higher than its maximum cultural value (see “Character Generation”). A character’s SIZ may not be increased after he reaches age 21; further, a character cannot increase any other attribute (STR, DEX, CON, or APP) after he reaches age 35.

4. Compute Glory
Glory from Play: Any Glory you chose not to invest in-game.

Glory from Unique Honors
The following characters benefit from these unique honors.
Giles de Braose receives 700 Glory from marrying the celebrity Marie de France
Geoffrey de Tournemine receives 500 Glory for marrying the Earl's daughter Nichole d'Aubigny
Geoffrey de Tournemine recives 350 Glory for becoming an Earl
Geoffrey de Tournemine, Giles de Braose, Robert Whitehands, and Andre l'Ecrivain receive 100 Glory each for becoming Officers of the King.


Annual Glory
Each person with a Passion or Trait of 16 or higher earns Glory equal to that Passion or Trait.
Meeting the Religious or Chivalric bonus Requirements earns a character 100 extra glory.

Characters who own a manor earn 20 passive glory.
Characters who own a castle earn 75 passive glory.
Characters who run a barony earn 20 passive glory.
Characters who run an Earldom earn 50 passive glory.
Characters who have endowed an Abbey earn 75 passive glory. Folks dig the Church, and they dig that you dig the Church.




5. Glory Bonuses
The final step of the Winter Phase is to add any bonus points gained from high Glory to the character’s attributes.
A bonus point is gained whenever your total Glory exceeds 1,000 points, and for every additional 1,000 points thereafter. (For example, a knight’s Glory might increase from 1,800 to 3,010 in an extraordinary year, yielding 2 bonus points for that year.)

Bonus points must be spent now, as soon as they become available. Each point may be applied directly to an attribute, trait, passion, skill, or combat skill, increasing that statistic by 1 point. Only two restrictions apply to this increase: No character may increase his attributes beyond
their racial maximums, and no character past age 21 can increase his SIZ stat.