Character builder guidelines

[Syn-Auron]

So you want to build a character? Well, you're most definitely going to need some guidelines, now aren't you?

Rules

These are the things that you should remember while you are creating the character sheet.
1.) If you are rude to your Approver, even once, then we are going to have some problems.
2.) Do not create an unoriginal character.
3.) Don't create a hyper-realistic character. This can and probably will fall under attempt to god-mod, and could issue a minor warn, which won't count against your total, however it will not look good if you continuously have problems with it.
4.) Don't create a character if you don't have the character slots to create a character. Do not waste our time.
5.) If you are not an Approver, that means you are not allowed to post in someone elses character sheet. (You will be issued a warn for doing this.) We do not want our members to think that they are allowed to run into other character sheets and tell people how to run their characters. It falls under rule #1 breaks.

Getting started

We have a simple and very easy to understand system that can, and probably will, be seen as very very difficult to understand. Well, this guide is to break it down for you into several different steps.

Here is a sample character sheet:

Name:
Gender: What is your characters gender?
Age: What is your characters age?
Race: What race is your character?
Religion: What is your characters religion?
Appearance: What does your character look like?
History(Optional): Tell us about your characters life if you'd like.
Hometown. Where did your character grow up in the world? Was it a small village or perhaps one of the major cities?

S.P.E.C.I.A.L Stats: These will be used to govern how much damage you can do to your opponent, how fast you can do it, and how much damage you can receive. These are also useful for making roleplaying a little more interesting. If you have high enough perception, you should be able sense damn near anything coming your way, whereas having little to no perception means you're either blind or can't sense anything. The human average for each stat is 5. So an average human would have 5 in every single stat.

Strength: How strong can you punch someone? How much can you lift? These can help you base what sort of equipment your character is going to be lugging around within reason. If you have a super high strength, you could probably lift a truck or a small bus on your own no problem, and can probably hurt your enemies with a pretty nasty punch. Low strength means you can barely lift 50 pounds, and your punches probably tickle.

Perception: This is how perceptive you are of the world around you. This also helps you to use any ranged attacks. With a high perception, you can sense anything coming at you, as well as shoot a bow accurately with low chance of missing, and dealing a very high amount of damage with it. Low perception means you can't sense things very well, and probably couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, much less do any damage.

Endurance: This is how much damage you can take. It can also increase the amount of equipment you can carry, and for how long. High endurance means you are a tower of diamond and could probably carry an extra 200 pounds along with the amount you could already carry, and you could probably carry all of that for several days without rest. Low endurance means you are like a piece of glass, you don't receive any bonuses to strength, and need breaks more often.

Craftiness: This is a bonus to your damage dealing abilities, and can help you get along much better with NPC's with lying, or just seeming like a much cooler person. If you have a high craft skill, your damage output will be much higher, and you get along great with everybody, even if you think they're worse than pigs. Low craft skill means your damage output will stay the same, and a lot of people just plain don't like you.

Inclination: This is similar to willpower. This will increase your chances of surviving extra damage, along with giving an increase to your craftiness in terms of making people like you a bit more because you seem more like a guy who can get stuff done. With a high Inclination, you can survive 5 blows from a giant hammer compared to surviving 3 originally. Also makes people like you a bit more, even if your craftiness kind of sucks. With low inclination, you are pretty much the same as you were before, only now you seem to be much lazier, and less inclined to do anything.

Agility: This affects how fast and how well you can move. With high agility, you can run pretty damn fast and could leap tall buildings in a single bound. With low agility, we are very surprised to see you're able to run, much less get a foot of the ground with a good jump.

Luck: This is the iffy stat. This one is more for your plot designers to decide whether you get the good stuff more often, or whether you got the bad stuff more often. High luck means 7/10 times you're going to get the sweet stuff and you will probably survive more dangerous stunts. Low luck means you're running some pretty big risks like a moron, and you probably will only score the good stuff 3/10 times.


Weapons: These are the weapons you have. Anything can be used as a weapon, so long as it is listed here.
Skills: These are things that include how good you are with you weapons or some supernatural abilities you've come to learn. Juggling doesn't count as a skill per say, but if you can juggle swords and attack your enemies with this juggling skill, then it is a skill.
Powers: These are things such as any magical skills you have. If you can shoot fireballs, it's a power. If you can throw a ball of fire, it's not a power, it's a skill.

Disadvantages or Flaws: What are your character's weaknesses?

Rp traits: These are more or less just cool little things that effect how your character acts on a regular basis. These are not required, and really don't have any effect on anything, similar to the history.


So there you have it. This is the character sheet. Follow this, along with the other tips that will be listed below, and you have a wonderful little character that can be tossed around the world.

Balancing out the character

This is the difficult part. Sure, you could write out your character sheet and make it super powerful, but that breaks the god-mod rule, and is very unfair. So, this is the part that everyone hates because this is where the nerfing part and questions come into play.

Ultimately, it has been decided that characters can have a set up of 63 points overall. Stats are equal to 1 point, weapons are equal to 1 point, powers range from 1(Minor), 3(moderate), 5(Major), and 10(Massive), as well as Flaws/disadvantages. Flaws and disadvantages lower your points, while the others increase them. Stats are also only allowed to be kept at a soft cap of 20 at character gen. Any higher, and things reach that unfair god-modding thing that we are trying to avoid. The basic character sheet, and this is the bare basic, would be 48 stats, 1 point of weapons, 7 points of skills, 7 points of power, and 10 points of disadvantages.

Making your character better after he's been through the CB

There are a few ways to go about doing this. One of them is through the things we call growth tokens. These are equal to 3 points of increase to stats, a new power, or an upgrade of a power, so long as the points add up.

You could also gain loot from the a plot designed by the plot designers. The loot they give you is up to them, and if you don't like it, well, you could just give it away. (You can increase your chances of getting better loot by giving a good history in the character sheet, along with having that high luck skill.)

There is also such a thing as natural growth for your skills. If you've proven that your skills with a certain weapon type are good enough, you can increase your skill with that naturally. This is very difficult to prove, however, and will probably take a lot of convincing, so chances of this are about a 20%.

One more thing, and this is a very careful thing, would be a second form of loot. If you find something on the ground, and decide that you would like to start carrying around with you, then it's yours. Let someone know, and they will add it to your character sheet. You can create your own loot, or if you pick something up from a dead guy, or manage to steal someones things, these would count as something you should let us know to add. If you abuse this, we will start to deny it, and you will be issued warns. Also, if you randomly find a laser rifle on the ground, that's a little unrealistic, so we're gonna have to say no, and remove that from your character altogether.

[Syn-Auron]

Strength

This is where we will go over how strength affects your character entirely, and what the effect of giving your character a strength of 5 would be compared to a strength of 15.

At levels 1-5, your carrying limit is 25 pounds multiplied by the stat. So, having a strength of 3 means you can only carry around 75 pounds of equipment, while a level at 1 is only 25, and at 5 it would be the human average of 125. Any stat after 5, and up to 10, will start to increase your carrying limit by 50 pounds. Any stat after 10, and up to 15, will increase your carrying limit by 100 pounds. Finally, any stat point after 15, and up to 20, will start to increase your limit by 250 pounds. If you manage to break past the soft cap through upgrading your skills, you will start carrying an extra 500 pounds per level afterwards.

Level/Pounds carried
1: 25
2: 50
3: 75
4: 100
5: 125
6: 175
7: 225
8: 275
9: 325
10: 375
11: 475
12: 575
13: 675
14: 775
15: 875
16: 1125
17: 1375
18: 1625
19: 1875
20: 2125
Each level afterwards: +500 each level.

[Syn-Auron]

Perception

This stat controls how perceptive you are of the world around you. The human average of 5 means you can basically sense things the way every one is capable of perceiving the world. Any stat lower and you start to become blind, deaf, and Anosmia(Unable to smell). After 5, however, and you start to get better.

1-4: You're losing your senses.
5: Average human perception
6-10: Your sense of sight increases very well, allowing you to see smaller things at farther distances. You can also start hearing more clearly, and your ability to smell is similar to a dogs.
11-15: Your sight is above perfect. You can see things that most superhumans can't see, and you are starting to get better at judging your opponents next attack. You're hearing at a dogs level, and your sense of smell is above the level of a dogs. You're also pretty close to having a 6th sense.
16-20: Your senses are all above super human. You can sense things that some animals are unable to sense, and you've developed a 6th sense.

[Syn-Auron]

Endurance

The Endurance is a very useful stat to have a high number in, as it will help increase how many punches to the face you can take before you fall over unconscious or dead. It also gives you a small boost to your carrying limit.

With an endurance stat of 1, you can't take much damage at all. A single punch could kill you. With a stat at 5, you can take up to 10 points before death, which still sort of sucks, but it isn't as bad.

Level:unconscious/dead:carry limit
Stat Point: HP (Knocked out)/(Dead)
1: 1/2
2: 2/4
3: 3/6
4: 4/8
5: 5/10
6: 8/16
7: 10/20
8: 13/26
9: 15/30
10: 20/40
11: 25/50
12: 30/60
13: 35/70
14: 40/80
15: 50/100
16: 60/120
17: 70/140
18: 80/160
19: 90/180
20: 100/200
21+: +20/40

Here is the list of boosts to your carrying limit.

Stat level: Boost
1: no bonus
2: no bonus
3: no bonus
4: no bonus
5: no bonus
6: +10 pounds
7: +20 pounds
8: +40 pounds
9: +60 pounds
10: +100 pounds
11: + 120 pounds
12: +150 pounds
13: + 300 pounds
14: +500 pounds
15: +700 pounds
16: +900 pounds
17: +1200 pounds
18: +1500 pounds
19: + 1800 pounds
20: +2500 pounds
20+: + extra 500 per level after 20.

[Syn-Auron]

Craftiness

This stat isn't like the rest. This one is a boost to your natural strength and perception, and is included into the damage counter. This will help you to hit your opponents for more damage than normal. This one is also more roleplay friendly, as it will help you to get along with NPC's much better either through lying, or you just look really nice to them. No one really knows, but you get treated much better than most with a lower craft skill than you. The higher your stat is, the more people love you, and the more damage you can do. The lower it is, the less people like you (And start to hate you), and the less damage you can do.

[Syn-Auron]

Inclination

Inclination. This is a stat based off of your desire to do something greater. It's also a stat that will help you stand up after you should have been unconscious by now. Say you have an endurance of 5, and you get hit with a hammer that would originally knock you out. With an inclination of 6 or higher, you would be able to survive that hammer attack now. This also boosts your craft skill, which will make you seem much cooler, even if you aren't very crafty. If your inclination is 4 or lower, then you lose bonuses, and are stuck at a very weak level.

*= damage taken before you're unconscious

Stat Points +to HP Before you pass out.
1 1*
2 3*
3 5*
4 10*
5 Dependent on Endurance
6 +1
7 +2
8 +3
9 +5
10 +10
11 +13
12 +16
13 +19
14 +22
15 +25
16 +30
17 +35
18 +40
19 +45
20 +50
21+ +10 each level.

[Syn-Auron]

Agility

This stat is all about how fast you can move, and how well you can dodge. The average person shouldn't be able to dodge a bullet, however, they can dodge most thrown objects relatively well. A high agility means you should be able to run just about as fast as a cheetah and should be able to dodge bullets if you know they are there. With low agility, we're surprised you could keep up with a turtle, and if someone throws a balloon at you, you probably won't be able to dodge it.

Every level of agility increases your max run speed by 5 points. This means that people who have 1 point are only going to be running at 5 mph, while people with 20 points will be running at 100 mph.

This stat does not effect whether your attack is going to hit or not though, as things like that are effected by what the other person chooses to allow to hit. However, if someone has 5 points in agility, and are dodging everything you throw at them, that would be breaking the god-modding rule, and we don't like that very much.

[Syn-Auron]

Luck

This stat point has no real effect on anything combat wise or roleplay wise. This is a stat that will give the plot designers an idea of how lucky you are when it comes to finding cool things. With a luck of 20, you are always going to find the good loot, and it will be something that fits your character better. Say your character is an archer, then the loot with a high luck stat would be something similar to an archer. If you have lower luck stat, say 1 through 4, then your chances of finding that super cool loot is lost. If you are a swordman, and your luck is a 4, then you will probably find a wand or a staff, and that wand or staff won't be very useful.

That said, even with a high luck stat, the plot designer still has the right to give your swordsman the dumpy little wand instead of excaliber.


(If you are constantly receiving bad items from the plot designers, report it, and the Admins or the Elites will move in and figure out what is going on. We want to keep things fair, so even with a luck of 5, you should find that super good loot once in a while.)

[Syn-Auron]

Weapons, Powers, and Skills! OH MY!!!

Yep, here is where we will explain the idea behind these three sections.

Other sites may call these in a group, like advantages or loadouts. We like to separate them, because that is what gives us such a high balance point. It keeps things a little nicer. That said, they pretty are the loadouts and advantages. Weapons are not restricted very heavily, while the powers and skills are. Powers and skills are unnatural, and weird, and can come from a very wild and extreme imagination. If these aren't careful monitored, someone could accidentally walk into the world with the ability to shoot napalm diarrhea out of their ass, and this power could burn someone dead in three seconds. That is not something we want. Now, if you said that your character could shoot napalm diarrhea out of their ass, and the power was heavily restricted, then we might think about letting it loose. We will explain the things that you might want to include in the description of your power. (The Napalm diarrhea is not allowed to be used. Sorry. It's an inside joke.)

Weapons!

Yes, weapons. We do still need to talk about these, because some people might come in with a weapon that has magical powers. So, weapons. We all know what they are, and some of us know how to use them.

A basic list of weapons:
Sword
Hammer
Bow
Wand
Staff
gun (Heavily restricted)

Weapons are pretty relaxed. We don't really care what you decide to bring into this world, as long as it isn't a one shot kill type of weapon. If you can kill someone by smashing their head with a stick that has no properties to it other than being a stick, then that is on your stats. If you can one shot kill someone with 1 strength and 1 craftiness stat, and it's because your weapon can do unreal damage, then we are going to have a problem with that. So, in this short little burst of info, we will talk about what is allowed, and what isn't.

So, if you have a sword that does absolutely nothing but cut, slash, and stab, then that's going to be worth 1 point. Plain, simple, easy. If you have a sword that can shoot fire, that power needs to be written in the powers section to keep things easier for our Approvers to moderate.

Powers!

Powers are broken down into 4 separate categories. Minor, moderate, major, and massive. If your power to shoot a fireball is relatively weak, and can't be shot very far, and takes forever to be used again, then it's going to be a minor. However, if your fire ball can be shot out and travels at high speeds, hits for massive damage, and can travel 100 meters, then we are going to have to say no. We don't want you to nerf your powers to death, but we want you to play fair.  

Here is the list of things you should include in your powers description.

Name: How much damage can it do? How far can it travel? How long until you can use it after you've used it? Is there a limit to how many times you can use it? (Last one is optional, but it can help.)

Here is an example:

Fireball: The fireball can be shot from johns sword. It deals 3 damage to the opponent if it hits. It travels about 5 meters before exploding, causing a meter of the area around it to burst into flames, dealing a 1 point of damage to anyone around them. If you are hit by the fire ball directly, it causes a burn which lowers agility by 2 points. The power can be used once every 3 posts.

Now, that power is pretty weak, and actually might pass for a minor. Minors are good. Now, watch what happens when I tweak a few of the numbers.

Fireball: The fireball can be shot from johns sword. It deals 5 damage to the opponent if it hits. It travels about 20 meters before exploding, causing a meter of the area around it to burst into flames, dealing a 2 point of damage to anyone around them. If you are hit by the fire ball directly, it causes a burn which lowers agility by 2 points. The power can be used once every 2 posts.

This power is now considered a major. The higher damage out put, and how often you can use it makes this a little bit close to being too powerful. Along with the increase in distance, that pushes its limits.

Here is a fireball that will make some of us very angry if we see it the first time through.

Fire ball: The fireball deals 5 damage, and can travel for 50 meters. He can use it as often as he likes. If used with his charge ability, it can deal 10 damage, and can be used twice per post.

See that? That's overpowered, and very non-specific. We like to see things explained relatively well, because that stops us from bringing your character back in for a second review. Usually a second review also comes with a god-mod warn, along with your character needing to be watched over more heavily. That is something you do not want. Do not try to slip by us with an overpowered character, and try to be a little more descriptive. It's nice.

Skills

Skills are a little more different than powers. These ones are more based on what your character can do without the aid of magic. Things like playing a piano really well, or doing backflips. Those are skills. Now, those aren't skills that will take away from your points, unless they are extreme skills like doing backflips for martial arts attacks, or your ability to play the piano does damage.

Now, skills are split up into 4 different categories as well. These are novice, adept, master, and grand master. These are usually meant for your skill level in doing things like playing the piano, and doing backflips, but they are mainly included in your level with a sword. If you are adept with a sword, that adds an extra 3 damage to the amount of damage you will be dealing with that sword. The damage formula will be explained lower, so you'll understand how to do include this part later.

In shorter terms, if the skill can help you deal more damage than normally, it's going to effect your points. If it has no effect on your damage or even combat, then we usually won't include it unless it involves some form of survival skill. Cooking, navigating, and other similar skills will be included into the the point count.

Damage and how it is dealt

So, damage is the thing that most people want to know how to deal like professionals, right? Well, remember when we mentioned novice, adept, master, and grand master? Those will come into play here.

The way damage is dealt is a very calculated formula that is used to keep you from killing people in a single swing at lower levels, while still being able to damage people at decent strength. So, the way things work is like this:

Melee
1.) add strength and Craftiness stats together. If you have, let's say 7 strength, and 7 craftiness skill, you end up with 14 points.
2.) Add your weapon skill, which is numbered like this:
novice=1
adept=3
master=5
grandmaster=10

So let's say you are a master with swords, and you are fighting with a sword. So, the number is now 19.

3.) Divide this number by 2. If your number ends up being odd, round down. So, 19 divided by 2 is 9.5, rounded up makes 9

4.) The damage chart for this is simple.

1-5= Minor damage
6-10=Moderate damage
11-15=Major damage
16-20= Massive damage
If you manage to break 20, every 5 levels past will be worth an extra massive.

5.) With a damage count at 9, you will deal 3 damage to the guy foolish enough to stand in your way.


Ranged

Ranged damage is a little different. If you choose to use a crossbow, bow, or gun, these will all use ranged damage.

1.) Take your perception, take your craftiness skill, add them together, this time divide by 2 now. So, if you have a perception of 10, and a craftiness skill of 8, you should have 18/2 which will leave you with 9.

2.) Add in the weapon skill, let's say you are adept with a crossbow, which will bring your total to 12.

3.) Find your mark on the damage chart for ranged damage:

1-5: minor
6-10: Moderate
11-15: Major
16-20: Massive
Every 5 levels past equals a massive.

Yes, the chart is copied, but it's just easier to do this because there is no reason to fix what isn't broken.

4.) With your points totally 12, you'll be dealing out a major.


So, with the formula being (str+Cra+wpn skill)/2 for melee, and the formula being (Per+Cra)/2+wpn skill for ranged, it is obvious you'll be able to deal different damage based on what you fight with.

[Syn-Auron]

Disadvantages

The disadvantages are a very hated part of the character creation process. Everyone has flaws. Whether these flaws are physically unable to do something a regular human is able to do, or the flaw increases the amount of damage you receive from certain attacks, they are a way to keep characters in check.

While this site is not going to push combat as heavily as some sites, we do not rank personality flaws as disadvantages very often unless they have some heavier effect in combat. We aren't going to push you to kill each other just yet, however, we do want you to bare in mind that we expect you to be ready to fight, and your disadvantages must be damaging in some way to your ability to fight.

This is a half decent list of disadvantages to build off of:

Elemental damage increase
Stunned
Physical damage increase
Debuffing stats

Now while some of those are a little more straight forward, there are ways to make these work in a different favor for yourself. That said, keep your disadvantage a possible disadvantage.

Elemental damage increase

These are the ones that tend to be a little more ignored based on what element you try to say your character is weak against. If it's something like water, then you are likely going to get a minor disadvantage, and it won't bring your points down to balance very quickly. Saying your character gets hit by water damage, and it only does minor damage originally, but your weakness says it's increased a severity, making it a moderate, then we will mark it a minor and move on. If your disadvantage increases water damage by 2 severities, making the damage a major instead, then we will name it a moderate. That said, if you choose an element like fire, and increase it's damage by a severity, then it will be considered a major.

The values of elemental damage increases are based off of which elements you are more likely to run across. These can, and will change over time based off of the players choices in what magic they prefer to use.

Stunned

These ones can be worth much more based off of how they are triggered. Being stunned means you can't do anything for so many posts whether because you have a fear of something, or you have some sort of character flaw that triggers once every few rounds.

Physical damage increase

Physical damage increase is a little easier to score big points on because they will always be a likely thing to happen. If your character has a weakness to piercing damage, which includes getting stabbed, or hit by an arrow, and it is increased a severity, it will be a major. Same goes for slashing and blunt damage.

Debuffing stats

These are a little more self-explanatory. They are usually counted as a moderate unless they aren't really useful, or they go above and beyond.


(Remember, disadvantages take away from your point total, while everything else adds to it.)

[Syn-Auron]

Conclusion

So, now you know how to build a character. Great. There are a few more things I would like to touch on before we get into the actual character creation.

1.) Once your character is dead, he is dead. One day, someone will create a character with revival magic, or we will add an NPC who can revive if you would like. That will come in later.

2.) Your character can receive it's very own amount of money to be used to spend on several things in the world. To do this, you will add that into the Weapons area. The item you should add to the weapons is what we call a pouch. The money that your character uses is silver. Your character can receive a weekly income based off the size of its pouch.

You can choose these sizes:
a.) a tiny pouch which will be filled weekly with 50 silver, or 200 monthly. (Worth 1 point)
b.) A small pouch which will be filled weekly with 100 silver, or 400 monthly. (Worth 3 points)
c.) A big pouch which will be filled weekly with 200 silver, or 800 monthly. (Worth 5 points)
d.) A massive pouch, which will be filled weekly with 500 silver, or 2000 monthly. (Worth 10 points)

These can be helpful if you would like to purchase new weapons, or pretty much anything. If you plan on buying something, make a topic in the main trading city, and when a plot designer accepts your post, continue to ask for the item. 1 silver is worth 1 american dollar, and you need to search for the item you plan on purchasing over the internet, link it in a quote bubble, and then wait for the plot designer to approve it or not. Once they are finished, they will forward this information to an approver who will move you character back to reopened characters, and then you will talk to them about anything else that you planned on adding in during the period of time it is back open.

3.) You can also include any armor that may decrease the amount of damage you receive, however these items may be counted a little higher depending on how much damage they remove. If you have a full set of armor, don't split it into separate categories. Include everything together. If you try to get away with separating things, you will end up losing more points in the long run.

4.) There are a few powers that are not allowed. These powers are:

Invincibility
Immortality through self-ressurection
immunity to any damage types
Attacks that are undodgable or cannot be resisted
Attacks that can permanently remove any character from the world with one hit
Any attack that might effect our world.

If you are caught trying to add these, you risk an automatic denial of your character. Reason for this would be simple. You didn't read our character builder fully, and you should go back and read it.

5.) If you reach 3 denials in a row, you will receive a warn. It's as simple as that. After 5 denials, you will be banned for a month. If the system is difficult to understand, ask questions. That is what the Ask the Approvers section is for.

6.) We don't allow massive or grandmaster skills at character build level. You can get these by receiving a special Growth token through a plot. We call this a Platinum Token. One Platinum Token is good for up to 5 points of growth. These are found in plots that are secret plots that you will have to be lucky to get by posting in the correct area.

(More will be added as questions are asked in the Ask the Approvers )

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