The Novice
A homebrewed Avatar Legends: The Roleplaying Game playbook.
Starting Stats
Creativity 0, Focus +1, Harmony -1, Passion +1
Demeanor Options
Naive, Excitable, Determined, Timid, Tempermental, Clingy
History
- How did you discover your aptitude for your training?
- How did you learn the rudiments of your training? Did you have a teacher, or did you teach yourself through trial and error?
- Who epitomizes the mastery of your troining to which you aspire?
- What implement of your training do you carry with you, hoping to one day unlock its full potential?
- Why are you committed to this group or purpose?
Connections
- [PC] is really powerful—I want to be just as good as them someday!
- I think [PC] sees me as a liability, someone to be protected. I’m not sure how I feel about that.
Moment of Balance
Faced with a dangerous situation, your hard work pays off in a flash of insight. Tell the GM how you defeat an enemy or overcome an obstacle by pushing your training to new heights in the heat of the moment. Choose a learning advancement from your Still Learning feature.
Principles: Discipline vs. Adventure
The Novice’s Discipline principle represents their desire to hone their training through careful practice. The Novice is keenly aware of their vulnerability and lack of experience, and might prefer to spend the day practicing than face genuine danger. They can improve their training rapidly, but might be too risk-averse for their own good.
The Adventure principle, on the other hand, represents the Novice’s eagerness to jump right into action. The higher their Adventure, the more eager they are to tackle real, thrilling challenges, no matter how limited their training is. The Novice isn’t afraid to take serious risks—and that can land them in serious trouble.
True balance comes from hands-on learning. The Novice’s Moment of Balance teaches them that hard work and fearlessness are two sides of the same coin, as their discipline and adventurous spirit both pay off in the form of a sudden new insight into their training. This Moment of Balance is special in that it not only ends the scene, but also grants you an advancecment of your choice from your Still Learning feature. The advancement you choose should play into how your character ends the scene: if you gain a new advanced technique, for example, you might describe how you character uses that technique to overcome the obstacle at hand.
Stronger Every Day
Your training is far less refined than that of your companions—but you are a quick and eager learner, and one day you’ll be just as good as they are!
Call to Adventure
When you charge headlong into danger without taking any precautions, shift your balance toward Adventure and roll with Adventure. On a 10+, hold 2. On a 7–9, hold 1. You can spend 1 hold to:
- Prevent all conditions, fatigue, and negative statuses inflicted on you by one attack or other physical harm.
- Inflict an extra 2-fatigue on someone with one of your attacks.
- Add 2 to a stance move or to push your luck, after you roll and only once per roll.
On a miss, you’re caught woefully unprepared.
Whenever you’re taken out, shift your balance twice toward Discipline.
Still Learning
You start play with no advanced techniques. When you rely on your training, make a stance move, or meaningfully incorporate your training into any other basic or playboook move that requires a roll, you take -1 to that roll. When you use your training to help a companion, you must mark an additional 1-fatigue to do so.
Whenever you roll a miss on a move that incurred a penalty from this feature, mark learning. Once per session, when you spend time training by yourself, mark learning if your Discipline is +1 or higher.
Whenever you’ve marked a total of 5-learning, erase your learning track and choose one of the following learning advancements:
- Circle a broad area of your training: Breaking, Forcing, Mending, Mobility, Sensing, Shaping, Spectacle, or Stilling. When you use your training outside of combat, if it falls within a circled area, you don’t suffer penalties from this feature.
- Circle an approach: defend & maneuver, advance & attack, or evade & observe. You don’t suffer this playbook’s -1 penalty to stance moves for circled approaches.
- Choose an advanced technique from a circled approach that’s available to your skills and training. Mark it as learned, and when you replicate it outside of combat, you don’t suffer penalties from this feature. You can take this advancement no more than three times.
- Mark one of your practiced techniques as mastered. You can take this advancement only once.
- Change playbooks. Congrats, you’re no longer a novice! You can take this advancement only if you’ve circled all three approaches and at least three broad areas of your training, and mastered one technique.
You don’t use the normal training move. Instead, when you spend time with a teacher honing your training, shift your balance toward Discipline and roll with Discipline. On a hit, you gain a learning advancement of your master’s choice; if they choose to teach you an advanced technique, they must know that technique. On a 10+, you learn the advancement with ease, and it takes as little time as possible. On a 7–9, it either takes more time than normal, or you must mark two conditions. On a miss, you mark two conditions, and you can’t mark learning or resume your training until you’re free of conditions.
The Novice’s Stronger Every Day
The Novice’s Call to Adventure encourages them to leap into the fray alongside their more skilled companions—but if they ever get taken out (regardless of whether their Adventure roll kicked in), they are harrowed by the experience and must shift their balance twice toward Discipline. Remember that you can’t lose your balance off-screen: if being taken out would cause the Novice’s balance to shift further than +3 Discipline, it stays at +3 Discipline.
The Novice’s training is weaker than average, represented by a flat -1 penalty to all moves that use their training (or an additional fatigue cost to help). Note that this only applies to the Novice’s training—that is, their bending discipline, weapons training, or technology training—not to any other skills they might have as a result of their background or adventures. If either you or the GM think that a move “meaningfully incorporates your training,” then it does, and the penalty applies.
When the Novice rolls a 6- on any move that suffers this penalty, they take note of their mistakes and strive to do better next time, represented by a mark on their learning track. They can also mark learning once per session when they “spend time honing their skills by themself”—at least a couple of uninterrupted hours—but only if their Discipline is +1 or higher.
The Novice gains an advancement when they fill out their learning track, use their Moment of Balance, or successfully train with a master using their special training move. “You don’t suffer penalties from this feature” means that you ignore the -1 penalty to rolls, and the extra fatigue to help, for using your training; you can still suffer other penalties, such as from conditions.
The more learning advancements you gain, the higher your mastery of your training, until eventually you’re no longer a novice and can change to a new playbook!
Moves
Choose two to start.
I Can Do It!
When someone openly doubts whether you’re capable of a task, become Prepared to prove them wrong.
Never Give Up
When you roll a miss with a move, shift your balance away from center to take +2 forward.
Helping Hand
When you help a companion, you can roll with Focus instead of marking fatigue. On a 10+, your help adds +2 to the roll instead of the normal +1. On a 7–9, it adds +1 as normal. On a miss, you make things worse: mark a condition and apply a -1 penalty to the roll.
Who, Me?
When you trick an NPC by downplaying your capabilities or otherwise making yourself out to be unassuming, mark Insecure to treat your roll as if it was a 12+. If Insecure is already marked, mark 2-fatigue instead.
Hey, What’s This?
Tell the GM when you want to stumble into something important or useful. The GM will tell you what it is. It probably won’t be relevant to the immediate situation.
Moves Advice
If Helping Hand is penalized by Stronger Every Day, the penalty takes the form of -1 to your Focus roll—you don’t need to mark any fatigue.
For Never Give Up, the +2 forward applies to the next roll you make, not to the miss that triggered the move.
There’s no limit to the number of times you can use Hey, What’s This? As a rule of thumb, wait until your last use of the move pays off before using it again.
Growth Question
Did you accomplish something new and significant with your training?
The Novice’s growth question is all about pushing their training to new heights. You’re the ultimate arbiter of whether something is “new and significant”—if your character is proud of their accomplishment, go ahead and mark growth.