Post by Trippy Hare on Sept 24, 2006 13:30:32 GMT -5
So you managed to get yourself together and settle in, huh? Don't get too comfy sunshine, the fun's about to start! Here's a quick rundown of the six Attributes, which are: Strength(STR), Dexterity(DEX), Stamina(STAM), Sanity(SAN), Spirit(SPI), and Wisdom(WIS). Remember seeing those on your Gladiator's bio? well, there's a reason for that. Those Attribute points you got when creating your character need to go in here, divided up between all six. No new character can have above an 8 in any single Attribute, unless you PM me with a damn good reason!
The lists only go to 12 for each one, but they can go higher. Keep in mind, each Attribute has an important effect on how your character takes damage, deals damage, or avoids damage...so don't dump all the points you get into Strength and leave yourself with a 1 for Stamina. Being ungodly strong does you no good if you bleed to death from a papercut. Keep in mind: you MUST have at least 1 point in EVERY Attribute.
Strength - How muscular your character is. The stronger the character, the heavier weapons and equipment they can carry and the more damage they do in physical combat.
1: You can carry your own weight, but barely. Basic paper or cloth is all you can carry.
2: You're frail, but not useless. Wood is the toughest material you can carry.
3: You're far from ripped. leathers are the heaviest material you can use.
4: You are a little weaker than the average Joe. Bone is the toughest thing you can use.
5: You're as strong as your peers. Hardened leather is the heaviest material you can carry.
6: You're a little more buff than your fellows. Copper is the heaviest material you can use.
7: You're stacked. Bronze is the heaviest material you can carry.
8: You've got some nice musculature. Brass is the heaviest material at your disposal.
9: You're goddamned big. Iron plate is nothing to you.
10: Lordy you're a big guy! You could cover your entire body in Steel and not think twice.
11: People cower at the sight of you. No material is too heavy. Brass bends in your hands.
12: You could juggle Sumo wrestlers for a living. You brush your teeth with Iron ore.
Stamina - How healthy your character is. The higher a character's Stamina, the more hit points they have.
1: You're a sickly individual. Sneezing may result in your untimely demise.
2: You're not physically fit. A savage backhand or two will floor you.
3: You need to get out in the sun more! A well placed booting will send you sprawling.
4: You're not quite as healthy as most folks, so be careful out there!
5: You're of average constitution. You can take a pummeling, just not well.
6: You've healthier than the typical guy, but not by a lot.
7: You've got a bit of fortitude. A severe beating will hurt, but you'll probably live.
8: You've got some thick skin. Soaking damage is a regular part of your day.
9: You could eat glass for breakfast. Granted, it'd be no picnic later, but you still could.
10: You could eat glass for breakfast and sell your excrement as sculpture.
11: You win fights by letting your opponents break their knuckles against your face.
12: You laugh at anything short of of a meteor that has it in for you...and you blow a raspberry at the meteor.
Dexterity - How well your character moves. The greater the Dexterity, the better that character can hit on an attack, as well as how well the character can block attacks.
1: You stab yourself in the eye with a spoon when trying to tie your shoes.
2: You're notoriously clumsy.
3: Occasionally you can hit a barn with an arrow.
4: You're not the best shot in town, but you do all right.
5: You have the agility of, well, everyone else.
6: You're a bit more careful than the general public.
7: You're a pretty good shot.
8: You're damn agile, you squirrelly bastard!
9: You can dodge arrows. Almost.
10: You can juggle a dozen live cats.
11: That are on fire.
12: With your toes.
Sanity - How levelheaded your character is. The more Sanity, the less likely your character will panic. Sanity is consumed to cast some spells. If a spell costs Sanity to cast, the amount of Sanity required will be listed under the spell's info in the Grimoirum.
1: The sight of blood makes you vomit, scream like a little girl, and pass out.
2: You tend to get queasy at the sight of blood, but sometimes you don't hurl.
3: You're easy to spook, and thus the target of many practical jokes.
4: You're a little more panicky than most people.
5: You can handle yourself about as well as everybody else.
6: You're a bit tougher to phase than most people.
7: You hold up well under pressure.
8: You can think pretty clearly in unusual circumstances.
9: It takes something pretty wacky to spook you.
10: You enjoy the sounds of arrows whistling past your head.
11: You're so composed you could pick daisies on the battlefield.
12: Frank Sinatra has a poster of you on his bedroom wall, that's how cool you are.
Spirit - Your character's knowledge of the arcane. The higher the Spirit, the better accuracy your spells have and the more damage they do.
1: When neighborhood children step on a crack, your back breaks.
2: Whenever somebody says "Damn it," you turn into a newt.
3: You dabble in magic, but you can't control or aim your spells very well.
4: You have less magic than normal folks, which makes you very nervous on Halloween.
5: You can do the same amount of mystical mumbo-jumbo as everybody else.
6: You're a little more talented at magic than normal people, but that ain't saying much.
7: You're fairly good at being occult.
8: People look at you funny.
9: You see dead people.
10: You talk to dead people.
11: When you sneeze, it rains in Tokyo... which isn't even in the game.
12: You rain fire and brimstone on your enemies from the safety and comfort of the Soft & Fluffy Sofa Dimension.
Wisdom - Your character's intelligence. The smarter they are, the more Actions they can perform per turn, and the higher their spell resistance. Wisdom also determines the turn order in combats, characters with higher wisdom take their turn first. This includes enemies!
1: Dead trees are smarter than you. You get 1 Basic Action per turn.
2: Living trees can engage you in a decent battle of wits. You get 1 Action.
3: You're not stupid, you're advanced! You get 2 Actions.
4: You're a touch stupider than most of the people you know. 2 Actions.
5: You're about as smart as everyone else. 3 Actions.
6: You're considered sophisticated in your tiny farm town. 3 Actions.
7: You've got a decent head on your shoulders. 4 Actions.
8: You can hold your own in a debate. 4 Basic Actions.
9: You're smart, you're fun, and doggone it, people like you! 4 Actions.
10: You are a brilliant strategist. 5 Actions.
11: Your name is whispered with reverence in libraries and academies. 5 Actions.
12: Your name, and likeness, are carved above libraries and academies. 6 Actions.
Leveling up Attributes
Since all Attributes affect gameplay, it is important that you choose carefully when increasing one, or more, of them. Every additional point placed in Stamina, for example, gives your character another 2 HP. We'll get into HP a little later, so don't worry about it for now. The most important thing to remember for now is that the price you must pay in Honor Points or Glory Points (don't worry, I'll explain those too) will increase. Below is a chart, showing the cost in total Renown (which is your Honor Points and Glory Points added together) to increase an Attribute:
From 1 to 2: 7 points
2 to 3: 14
3 to 4: 25
4 to 5: 40
5 to 6: 60
6 to 7: 95
7 to 8: 130
8 to 9: 270
9 to 10: 450
10 to 11: 680
11 to 12: 1250
12 and higher: an additional 2000 Renown per point added
As you can see, the more points you want in an Attribute, the more it's going to cost you. Keep in mind, the price in points is not how many total points you need, but how many additional points you need. Once you have spent Honor or Glory, the amount you spend is subtracted from your total. So if you have 11 Honor and 3 Glory (14 Renown) and spend 11 to boost an Attribute to 2, (3 Renown remaining) you need 19 more points to boost an Attribute from 2 to 3 (22 Renown).
Now we'll look at each Attribute more closely, to give you an idea of what it's used for. Every Attribute has some function in combat, so it is in your best intetrest not to dump all of your Renown/Honor/Glory into any single Attribute at the expense of others.
Strength
Strength is about more than just muscles. It does not so much determine how hard you hit something, but how effectively. Your character does not need to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in order to deal a lot of damage, s/he only needs to know how and where best to strike an enemy. Strength also determines how hard a char can pull back a bowstring, throw a javelin, or toss a shot-put. Though the penetration of all these weapons is specified (take a look at Week Four for more on that), the amount of damage done depends on Strength. Here's an example:
We'll see exactly how Strength affects damage in Week Five. Suffice to say for now that higher Strength lets you wear better armor, carry a bigger weapon, and do more damage with anything that isn't a spell.
Dexterity
Dexterity is how well you move, how precise you aim, how well you swing a weapon, and how skilled you are at reading your opponent's swings in order to block them. You have to have a Shield, or certain skills, to be able to block. Dexterity also determines how well you aim with a ranged weapon.
Dexterity has no impact on damage, only on your chances of hitting a target. High Dex with low Strength will allow you to hit a target often, but you will not do much damage. High Strength and low Dex will make you miss a target more often, but do more damage when you actually hit it. It is recommended that you keep your Strength and Dex fairly even.
Stamina
Stamina determines how healthy and robust you are, and how much of a beating you can take without dying. Each point of Stamina gives you 3 HP, and allows you to take an additional point of damage before you risk getting Stunned (see Week Two). Additionally, your Stamina affects how severely you are injured by Poison conditions. The higher your Stamina, the less damage you take as a result of poison.
Sanity
Sanity is how well you cope with the horrors of battle, and how quickly you react in a given situation. High sanity allows you to dodge an attack, which completely negates any result of the attack. In other words, if you Dodge successfuly, it's like the attack never happened at all. Certain spells cost Sanity to cast. After casting these spells, your ability to dodge or react in combat will be lessened. If your Sanity ever drops below 1 as an effect of a spell or ability, your character becomes temporarily Insane. Insanity lasts for 1 day for every negative point that Sanity drops to plus one...so if a char's sanity drops to -1, they are Insane for 2 days (1 for the -1 Sanity, plus 1 extra). Every IC post in the Colosseum counts as 1 day (we'll cover IC posts more later).
Insane characters are unable to react to anything: they cannot dodge or attempt to block incoming attacks, nor can they resist spells. In addition, whatever the last action of that char was when they went Insane, they will continue to do until they are knocked out, stunned, killed, or no longer insane. For example:
Sanity replenishes up to your char's Attribute total, at the rate of 1 Sanity per day. So if you use 2 Sanity to cast a spell, in two days, your Sanity is back to normal.
Spirit
Spirit is spent to cast most spells, and also determines the 'aim' of a spell. Casting a spell depletes a character's Spirit, which in turn makes it more difficult to aim the spell correctly. For example:
This means, simply put, that the more spells you cast or the more powerful each spell, the less likely you are to hit what you were going for. In other words, Spirit is the Dexterity of magic: the more Spirit you have, the better your odds of getting a hit. The spell you choose determines how much, if any, damage is dealt. Spirit also replenishes daily, but at the rate of 2 Spirit per day (post). That means that, in our example above, Billy's Spirit will replenish back to normal in his next IC post.
Wisdom
Wisdom determines how many Actions you get in a post. Although we'll cover Actions more later, for now, it is enough to know that each Action is equal to one paragraph of an IC post. You do not have to use all your available Actions in every post. Actions reset after every IC post made. For example:
Wisdom also affects spell resistance, which allows for a charatcer to dodge the spell altogether (so that it never hits). A character with a high Wisdom, then, is difficult to hit with Magic, although if they are hit with a spell, they take the full damage or full effect of it.
That's it for the basics, Private. We won't be getting into damage for a while yet, which is where Attributes again come in handy. You've got what you need to know right now, which ought to be enough to allow you to build a character. Good hustle, Private! Maybe there's hope for you yet. Better turn in nice and early, we ain't done yet!
The lists only go to 12 for each one, but they can go higher. Keep in mind, each Attribute has an important effect on how your character takes damage, deals damage, or avoids damage...so don't dump all the points you get into Strength and leave yourself with a 1 for Stamina. Being ungodly strong does you no good if you bleed to death from a papercut. Keep in mind: you MUST have at least 1 point in EVERY Attribute.
Strength - How muscular your character is. The stronger the character, the heavier weapons and equipment they can carry and the more damage they do in physical combat.
1: You can carry your own weight, but barely. Basic paper or cloth is all you can carry.
2: You're frail, but not useless. Wood is the toughest material you can carry.
3: You're far from ripped. leathers are the heaviest material you can use.
4: You are a little weaker than the average Joe. Bone is the toughest thing you can use.
5: You're as strong as your peers. Hardened leather is the heaviest material you can carry.
6: You're a little more buff than your fellows. Copper is the heaviest material you can use.
7: You're stacked. Bronze is the heaviest material you can carry.
8: You've got some nice musculature. Brass is the heaviest material at your disposal.
9: You're goddamned big. Iron plate is nothing to you.
10: Lordy you're a big guy! You could cover your entire body in Steel and not think twice.
11: People cower at the sight of you. No material is too heavy. Brass bends in your hands.
12: You could juggle Sumo wrestlers for a living. You brush your teeth with Iron ore.
Stamina - How healthy your character is. The higher a character's Stamina, the more hit points they have.
1: You're a sickly individual. Sneezing may result in your untimely demise.
2: You're not physically fit. A savage backhand or two will floor you.
3: You need to get out in the sun more! A well placed booting will send you sprawling.
4: You're not quite as healthy as most folks, so be careful out there!
5: You're of average constitution. You can take a pummeling, just not well.
6: You've healthier than the typical guy, but not by a lot.
7: You've got a bit of fortitude. A severe beating will hurt, but you'll probably live.
8: You've got some thick skin. Soaking damage is a regular part of your day.
9: You could eat glass for breakfast. Granted, it'd be no picnic later, but you still could.
10: You could eat glass for breakfast and sell your excrement as sculpture.
11: You win fights by letting your opponents break their knuckles against your face.
12: You laugh at anything short of of a meteor that has it in for you...and you blow a raspberry at the meteor.
Dexterity - How well your character moves. The greater the Dexterity, the better that character can hit on an attack, as well as how well the character can block attacks.
1: You stab yourself in the eye with a spoon when trying to tie your shoes.
2: You're notoriously clumsy.
3: Occasionally you can hit a barn with an arrow.
4: You're not the best shot in town, but you do all right.
5: You have the agility of, well, everyone else.
6: You're a bit more careful than the general public.
7: You're a pretty good shot.
8: You're damn agile, you squirrelly bastard!
9: You can dodge arrows. Almost.
10: You can juggle a dozen live cats.
11: That are on fire.
12: With your toes.
Sanity - How levelheaded your character is. The more Sanity, the less likely your character will panic. Sanity is consumed to cast some spells. If a spell costs Sanity to cast, the amount of Sanity required will be listed under the spell's info in the Grimoirum.
1: The sight of blood makes you vomit, scream like a little girl, and pass out.
2: You tend to get queasy at the sight of blood, but sometimes you don't hurl.
3: You're easy to spook, and thus the target of many practical jokes.
4: You're a little more panicky than most people.
5: You can handle yourself about as well as everybody else.
6: You're a bit tougher to phase than most people.
7: You hold up well under pressure.
8: You can think pretty clearly in unusual circumstances.
9: It takes something pretty wacky to spook you.
10: You enjoy the sounds of arrows whistling past your head.
11: You're so composed you could pick daisies on the battlefield.
12: Frank Sinatra has a poster of you on his bedroom wall, that's how cool you are.
Spirit - Your character's knowledge of the arcane. The higher the Spirit, the better accuracy your spells have and the more damage they do.
1: When neighborhood children step on a crack, your back breaks.
2: Whenever somebody says "Damn it," you turn into a newt.
3: You dabble in magic, but you can't control or aim your spells very well.
4: You have less magic than normal folks, which makes you very nervous on Halloween.
5: You can do the same amount of mystical mumbo-jumbo as everybody else.
6: You're a little more talented at magic than normal people, but that ain't saying much.
7: You're fairly good at being occult.
8: People look at you funny.
9: You see dead people.
10: You talk to dead people.
11: When you sneeze, it rains in Tokyo... which isn't even in the game.
12: You rain fire and brimstone on your enemies from the safety and comfort of the Soft & Fluffy Sofa Dimension.
Wisdom - Your character's intelligence. The smarter they are, the more Actions they can perform per turn, and the higher their spell resistance. Wisdom also determines the turn order in combats, characters with higher wisdom take their turn first. This includes enemies!
1: Dead trees are smarter than you. You get 1 Basic Action per turn.
2: Living trees can engage you in a decent battle of wits. You get 1 Action.
3: You're not stupid, you're advanced! You get 2 Actions.
4: You're a touch stupider than most of the people you know. 2 Actions.
5: You're about as smart as everyone else. 3 Actions.
6: You're considered sophisticated in your tiny farm town. 3 Actions.
7: You've got a decent head on your shoulders. 4 Actions.
8: You can hold your own in a debate. 4 Basic Actions.
9: You're smart, you're fun, and doggone it, people like you! 4 Actions.
10: You are a brilliant strategist. 5 Actions.
11: Your name is whispered with reverence in libraries and academies. 5 Actions.
12: Your name, and likeness, are carved above libraries and academies. 6 Actions.
Leveling up Attributes
Since all Attributes affect gameplay, it is important that you choose carefully when increasing one, or more, of them. Every additional point placed in Stamina, for example, gives your character another 2 HP. We'll get into HP a little later, so don't worry about it for now. The most important thing to remember for now is that the price you must pay in Honor Points or Glory Points (don't worry, I'll explain those too) will increase. Below is a chart, showing the cost in total Renown (which is your Honor Points and Glory Points added together) to increase an Attribute:
From 1 to 2: 7 points
2 to 3: 14
3 to 4: 25
4 to 5: 40
5 to 6: 60
6 to 7: 95
7 to 8: 130
8 to 9: 270
9 to 10: 450
10 to 11: 680
11 to 12: 1250
12 and higher: an additional 2000 Renown per point added
As you can see, the more points you want in an Attribute, the more it's going to cost you. Keep in mind, the price in points is not how many total points you need, but how many additional points you need. Once you have spent Honor or Glory, the amount you spend is subtracted from your total. So if you have 11 Honor and 3 Glory (14 Renown) and spend 11 to boost an Attribute to 2, (3 Renown remaining) you need 19 more points to boost an Attribute from 2 to 3 (22 Renown).
Now we'll look at each Attribute more closely, to give you an idea of what it's used for. Every Attribute has some function in combat, so it is in your best intetrest not to dump all of your Renown/Honor/Glory into any single Attribute at the expense of others.
Strength
Strength is about more than just muscles. It does not so much determine how hard you hit something, but how effectively. Your character does not need to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in order to deal a lot of damage, s/he only needs to know how and where best to strike an enemy. Strength also determines how hard a char can pull back a bowstring, throw a javelin, or toss a shot-put. Though the penetration of all these weapons is specified (take a look at Week Four for more on that), the amount of damage done depends on Strength. Here's an example:
Billy has a Strength of 3. He fires an arrow at Joey. The arrow will penetrate anything weaker than Brass armor, so it easily punches through Joey's leather armor. Since Billy is pretty weak, the arrow does little damage. Joey has a Strength of 9, and fires an arrow back at Billy. It easily goes through Billy's armor, and because of how hard Joey was able to throw it, does a great deal more damage than Billy's arrow.
We'll see exactly how Strength affects damage in Week Five. Suffice to say for now that higher Strength lets you wear better armor, carry a bigger weapon, and do more damage with anything that isn't a spell.
Dexterity
Dexterity is how well you move, how precise you aim, how well you swing a weapon, and how skilled you are at reading your opponent's swings in order to block them. You have to have a Shield, or certain skills, to be able to block. Dexterity also determines how well you aim with a ranged weapon.
Dexterity has no impact on damage, only on your chances of hitting a target. High Dex with low Strength will allow you to hit a target often, but you will not do much damage. High Strength and low Dex will make you miss a target more often, but do more damage when you actually hit it. It is recommended that you keep your Strength and Dex fairly even.
Stamina
Stamina determines how healthy and robust you are, and how much of a beating you can take without dying. Each point of Stamina gives you 3 HP, and allows you to take an additional point of damage before you risk getting Stunned (see Week Two). Additionally, your Stamina affects how severely you are injured by Poison conditions. The higher your Stamina, the less damage you take as a result of poison.
Sanity
Sanity is how well you cope with the horrors of battle, and how quickly you react in a given situation. High sanity allows you to dodge an attack, which completely negates any result of the attack. In other words, if you Dodge successfuly, it's like the attack never happened at all. Certain spells cost Sanity to cast. After casting these spells, your ability to dodge or react in combat will be lessened. If your Sanity ever drops below 1 as an effect of a spell or ability, your character becomes temporarily Insane. Insanity lasts for 1 day for every negative point that Sanity drops to plus one...so if a char's sanity drops to -1, they are Insane for 2 days (1 for the -1 Sanity, plus 1 extra). Every IC post in the Colosseum counts as 1 day (we'll cover IC posts more later).
Insane characters are unable to react to anything: they cannot dodge or attempt to block incoming attacks, nor can they resist spells. In addition, whatever the last action of that char was when they went Insane, they will continue to do until they are knocked out, stunned, killed, or no longer insane. For example:
Billy gets hit with the spell "Go Crazy", which makes him lose 1 Sanity whenever he takes 1 damage. He then gets hit in the head and takes 6 damage, so he loses 6 Sanity. Billy only had 4 Sanity, so he is now Insane for 3 days. The last thing he did before going Insane was attack the squirrel that cast Go Crazy on him. Since he is Insane, he must attack the squirrel until he is stunned, knocked out, killed, or 3 days have passed. The squirrel bites Billy's leg off. Billy cannot heal himself or even tend his wounds, as he must continue attacking the squirrel. He kills the squirrel, but isn't stunned, knocked out, or killed. For the next 3 days, he will continue to attack the squirrel's body, since his Insanity will not wear off for 3 days.
Sanity replenishes up to your char's Attribute total, at the rate of 1 Sanity per day. So if you use 2 Sanity to cast a spell, in two days, your Sanity is back to normal.
Spirit
Spirit is spent to cast most spells, and also determines the 'aim' of a spell. Casting a spell depletes a character's Spirit, which in turn makes it more difficult to aim the spell correctly. For example:
Billy has 6 Spirit, and wants to cast the spell "OUCH". OUCH deals 1 damage per Spirit, and costs 2 Spirit to cast. Billy spends the 2 Spirit to cast OUCH, but needs 5 Spirit to hit his target. OUCH does 6 damage, but misses Billy's target, hitting the ground behind it instead.
This means, simply put, that the more spells you cast or the more powerful each spell, the less likely you are to hit what you were going for. In other words, Spirit is the Dexterity of magic: the more Spirit you have, the better your odds of getting a hit. The spell you choose determines how much, if any, damage is dealt. Spirit also replenishes daily, but at the rate of 2 Spirit per day (post). That means that, in our example above, Billy's Spirit will replenish back to normal in his next IC post.
Wisdom
Wisdom determines how many Actions you get in a post. Although we'll cover Actions more later, for now, it is enough to know that each Action is equal to one paragraph of an IC post. You do not have to use all your available Actions in every post. Actions reset after every IC post made. For example:
Billy has 5 Wisdom, so he gets 3 Actions per post. He uses 2. The next time Billy posts, he will have access to 3, since his Wisdom entitles him to 3 Actions per post. He does not 'save' his one unused action from one post to another.
Wisdom also affects spell resistance, which allows for a charatcer to dodge the spell altogether (so that it never hits). A character with a high Wisdom, then, is difficult to hit with Magic, although if they are hit with a spell, they take the full damage or full effect of it.
That's it for the basics, Private. We won't be getting into damage for a while yet, which is where Attributes again come in handy. You've got what you need to know right now, which ought to be enough to allow you to build a character. Good hustle, Private! Maybe there's hope for you yet. Better turn in nice and early, we ain't done yet!