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Evolved LevelsGoing Beyond Racial Levels in Arcana Evolved0
By Monte Cook
Well, yes. But there's more to it than that. One wholly new aspect of the game is the idea of evolved levels. Remember that part of what fuels Arcana Evolved is that dragons have returned to the setting. Dragons in the Diamond Throne setting are masters of magical physical manipulation of creatures. They created the horrible dramojh, for example. Well, they bring these magical skills with them when their return and offer them to their allies. With the help of the dragons, any character can "evolve." That's the story/flavor behind it. Mechanically, evolved levels are like racial levels in Arcana Unearthed, except that everyone has access to evolved levels, even humans, and each race has their own path of evolved levels -- an evolved litorian isn't going to be like an evolved spryte or an evolved verrik. Evolved levels, like racial levels, come in three-level blocks. Races with racial levels must take their racial levels before they can take evolved levels, thus effectively making evolved levels, for those races, racial levels 4, 5 and 6. And they're balanced as such. The first level of the dracha's evolved levels is more powerful than a human's, for example, because it will be, minimum, the 4th level the dracha takes, as opposed to potentially, the 1st. In Arcana Unearthed, racial levels were there to make a race more like itself. Thus, a litorian taking racial levels became more litorianish. The racial level focused on the things that litorians do well and exemplified their existing traits. It was also a way to reverse engineer the core d20 idea of ECLs so that everyone could start as a 1st-level character. Evolved levels take that idea a step farther. To use a comic book example, if Batman exemplifies everything a human can be, physically, then Captain America (with the help of the Super Soldier Serum) takes that a step farther. Captain America, in Arcana Evolved terms, has evolved levels. He's gone beyond what someone could do normally, surpassing the usual limits. Remember that at the core of evolved levels lies dragon magic. So an evolved litorian grows really big and muscular, its teeth get bigger. It's like a dire litorian now (to use an only slightly accurate metaphor). Because they are supernatural in nature, evolved levels offer abilities I would never have given as racial levels. The 6th-level litorian (that's three racial levels, three evolved levels) gets the pounce ability like a lion, making a charge ending with a full attack. A mojh with all six levels has, among other advantages, a whopping +4 natural armor bonus. Balancing racial and evolved levels is difficult. They've got to offer things that class levels don't offer (like physical changes -- bonuses to ability scores, natural armor, natural attacks, etc.), but they've got to be at least as good as class levels, if not a slight bit better. Why better? Because they come in smaller blocks, so you're effectively asking a character to take levels away from his class to take them. You're asking the unfettered to delay getting his next sneak attack bonus die. You're asking the magister to delay her next increase in spell ability (unless the racial or evolved class offers +1 level of spellcasting ability), and so on. In effect, each group of racial or evolved levels is like a class that you, as the game designer, know will always be a part of a multiclass. And multiclassing, while it has its advantages, sometimes risks reducing a character's raw power. The concept of magical evolution isn't limited only to player character races, however. There's also a template to add to any creature, making it into an evolved version of itself. Plus, in an upcoming player's companion book called Transcendence, Mike Mearls takes some of the evolution concepts even a step farther and does all kinds of interesting things with it. But I'll let him tell you about that sometime. Related Products
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Monte Cook's Arcana Evolved |