Characters in Magicosm have a set of attributes that describe the basic nature
of their character. These attributes will have long term effects on what
the character is good (or bad) at, so choose carefully. We'll try to warn
you during the character creation process if you've chosen attribute values
that are so low that your character will be prohibited from doing something
in the future, or if you've chosen values that will make you especially good
at some things.
The basic character attributes fall into three categories : Physical attributes, Mental attributes and secondary attributes. Physical attributes are associated with the character's body ; mental attributes are associated with the character's mind. Some special abilities will allow transfering a mind from one body to another or disembodying a
mind ; in these cases, the character gets the physical attributes of the
current body.
Physical Attributes
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Strength
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Increases melee damage and offsets wieldiness penalties for heavy
weapons.
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Agility
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Increases chance to hit with melee and missile weapons. Gives
bonuses to dodge.
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Dexterity
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Bonuses for some thieving skills such as picking pockets,
removing traps, etc. Also required for some mage skills and spells.
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Constitution
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Resistance to disease and damage.
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Mental attributes :
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Willpower
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Resistance to mind control and pain.
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Intelligence
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Bonus for learning knowledge from books, spellcasting, most
research, etc.
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Faith
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Measure of the strength of your spiritual link to the gods and the
supernatural.
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Charisma
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The influence one exerts over the weaker minded (i.e. non-player
controlled) denizens of Magicosm by sheer force of personality. Charisma also
affects the efficacy of some mind affecting spells and skills, even on
player characters.
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Perception
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How aware you are of the world around you. It determines how
well you detect feints by your opponent, how well you can "size up" an
opponent, etc.
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Attribute values range from one to one hundred. Fifty is an average value
for a human. All of your attributes will start at the average value for
your race, and you will have a pool of bonus points to increase your
attributes. Notice that it costs more from your pool to increase an
attribute that is already high, i.e. going from 50 to 51 is going to cost
much less than going from 99 to 100. Notice also that you can decrease
attributes to gain more points in your pool. There is a law of diminishing
returns, as you decrease the attribute further and further you will get
fewer and fewer points for it. Don't leave any points in your pool ; the
pool is only good for increasing your attributes.
The values that you specify here are the base attribute values. Your
attributes will improve over time, but never to better than 50 % over your
base attribute value (refered to as your peak attribute value), unless you
obtain magic to improve your attributes. Note that virtually no magic item
except for earrings improves your attributes.
Magicosm uses a skill web to determine how good your character is at virtually
everything. This skill web is a huge list of skills that your character can
have, and many of the skills depend on other skills. For example, your
skill in "long sword" may depend on your "swordsmanship" skill, which in
turn depends on your "melee weapon" skill, which in turn depends on your
"strength". Note that strength, one of your attributes, is counting as a
skill here. All of your attributes form the "roots" of this skill tree.
Every skill you have is, at some level, based on one or more of your
attributes, and your attributes depend on no other skill. Even though your
attributes are based on no other skill, using some skills will improve your
attributes towards their peak value.
There are also some secondary attributes. These typically represent values
that have some maximum when you're at full normal health, and which diminish
as they're used up. Then, when you rest or otherwise recuperate, these
values come back up to their maximum. These secondary attributes are as
follows :
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Hit points
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The amount of damage a character can absorb. This secondary
attribute is based on your constitution and can be increased by developing
certain skills.
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Stamina
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The amount of work your character can do before he gets tired.
This secondary attribute is based on your strength and can be increased by
developing certain skills. This will determine how many times you can swing
a sword or how far you can sprint before you
collapse.
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Power
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The amount of mana your character has available to do magic. This
secondary attribute is based on your willpower and either your faith or your
intelligence, whichever is higher. Power can be increased by developing
certain skills. Note that power refers only to your character's inherent
mana (see
this
for a further description of
magic). Characters may also have other banks of mana. For some character
races this inherent mana type is Faery mana, for most it is Natural mana.
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You can double click on your attribute to see specifically how it will
affect your character's abilities. For example, double clicking on strength
will show the damage bonus and wieldiness offset for your character's
current strength.
Every point in your attributes counts. For some attributes, changes that
you make now will not appear to affect your bonuses and penalties. For
example, the bonuses between a 50 and a 51 strength may not be apparent now.
As your character advances small differences in starting attributes become
more important. If you want to bump all your stats down by one point to
increase your agility over the threshold to give yourself another point of
bonus to dodge, go ahead. However, at some point in your character's career
that one point that you took off of each other stat _will_ affect you.
Consider yourself warned.
If you make a mistake in assigning your attribute values, don't be too
concerned. There are ways that you can "refocus" your character as time
goes on, and iron out the mistakes you might have made during character
creation.
