Rules & Ranks - Summer 2025

Hello Eldritch Community!

Post Event VI, we've got some rules updates for you, and a little update about character Ranks that we hope you'll enjoy.

---

Rules Clarifications

First up, some rules clarifications we need to make. These have already been applied in the Player's Guide.

Rounding

This is mostly a reminder, since we have made this clarification before, particularly in our Discord, but unless otherwise stated, our rules follow true rounding (i.e. 1.4 and above rounds to 1, 1.5 and above rounds to 2). We have now given this it's own callout at the beginning of the Skills section of the Player's Guide.

Stacking Reductions

Unless otherwise noted, if skills that grant percentage reductions can be stacked (i.e. they do not explicitly say they can’t be stacked), they are applied successively, not by adding them together. For example, a 50% and a 25% discount would be applied by first reducing the total by 50%, then by reducing the new total by 25%. Not by reducing the total by 75%.

One Strike Per Second

This was previously stated as more of a recommendation to help "strive for cinematic", and it was explained in detail to our NPC volunteers during orientations, but now it's a codified rule. You must wait one second between strikes against an opponent, character or NPC. In group combat, all of the opponents of a single target must also wait one second between strikes made on that target. Conversely, the target of an attack only has to take one strike per second, even if they are being hit by multiple opponents at the same time. The purpose of this is for both safety and ease of remembering the strikes one takes.

No Thrusting With Cored Weapons

This is another rule that was often stated by staff, but we realized it was never written down in the Player's Guide. Never strike by thrusting the point of your cored weapon at an opponent, not even with two-handed weapons (such as spears) which in real life, may have been meant for thrusting. A cored weapon is any foam LARP weapon that has a hard core inside of it; most weapons larger than throwing knives have cores. Non-core weapons, such as small knives, can safely be used to mime stabbing or to be thrown.

Two-handed weapons, like spears and halberds, can be used to strike with controlled swings or firm taps to the side of your opponent, like you would with a one-handed weapon.

Cleave

We learned that there was some miscommunication and confusion around the Cleave call and the damage it provides. We have clarified the Player's Guide to say, "Cleave attacks go through any Armor Value on the target, doing damage as if the target has no AV from worn armor or Tough. Cleave does not go through shields. Some armor can negate one or more Cleaves, but the wearer must still count the damage from the strike against their AV. A proper Resist call can negate both the Cleave and its damage."

As an example, Steel Plate Armor says, "8 Material Value. Adds 8 points to total Armor Value. Gain +2 Resist skill uses per event. May negate all Cleave effects while material value remains." This means that you could use two Resist calls to negate two Cleave calls, and the damage that would come with them (or you could use the Resists to negate other calls if you wanted to). However, any other Cleave calls beyond that, you can ignore the call itself but you cannot ignore the normal damage to your AV that comes with the strike against your body.

Magister Skill: Scribe

We realized that the Veteran skill, Scrivener, was slightly better than it's Magister counterpart, Scribe.

Magister: Scribe - "May copy one lore prop that you have opened and own per event. Cannot copy Syllabi."

Veteran: Scrivener - "You may copy 1 lore prop that you have opened per event. Cannot copy Syllabi."

The Magister ability required that the Magister owned the lore that was being copied, while the Veteran ability did not. We have removed the owned requirement on Scribe, making Scribe and Scrivener the same in all but name.

---

Character Ranks

As we near the end of Eldritch, we recognize that not all of our rules and mechanics are scaling as well as we originally intended them to. One such mechanic we'd like to help scale up is the character Rank system; while it was intentional that ranking up your character is expensive, we see that a high percentage of the characters in the game haven't ranked up very much or at all. And today, new characters start at Rank 0 (or 1 if they're a Veteran), which feels more and more unfair as we near the end of the game.

To that end, we're bumping all Rank 0 characters up to Rank 1, and Veteran characters up to Rank 2. New characters will automatically start at Rank 1 (or Veterans at Rank 2). The Player's Guide has been updated to reflect that.

Some questions we think you might have:

Can I get an Influence refund on a previous rank up I paid for?

We're only going to offer refunds for characters who submitted a rank up at Event 6. If you submitted for a rank up at Event 6, you have two options:

1. Get a refund of Influence at Event 7 or;

2. Put the Influence towards your next Rank up and pay for the difference at check in at Event 7.

We'd prefer not to keep track of your banked Influence beyond that time, so if you can't afford to pay for another rank at check in at Event 7, we'll give you the refund option.

Whichever you choose, either send us an email at contact@eldritchlarp.com, or wait for us to reach out to you before the next event.

I made my skill purchases based on whether or not I thought I could rank up; can I make changes?

Yes, we'll happily help you make changes to your character sheet based on this update. We prefer this not be treated as a full character rewrite opportunity, but we want to make sure you're happy with your character. Just shoot us an email at contact@eldritchlarp.com, and we'll help get you sorted.

If you have more questions about this, please feel free to ask them in our Discord!

Team Eldritch