Mythic Warfare

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Character creation help

Creating a character is simple. Creating the best adventuring party possible is somewhat more difficult. This article will cover the mechanics of making a character, descriptions of character qualities, and tips on how to survive.

How to create a character

To create a character you must follow these three steps:

1. Name the character
2. Choose a class
3. Choose skills

Naming the character

To name a character, type any name you wish into the Character name box at the top of the page. You may also click on the suggestion link beside the box to have a random name generated. Feel free to click the suggestion link several times, or edit the suggestions as you see fit. Once chosen, names cannot be changed.

Choosing a class

Once you are satisfied with the character's name, you must select a class. Near the top of the page, just to the right of the character's initial attributes, there will be one or more buttons with class names on them such as Grunt or Yeoman. Click any one of these buttons to choose your class. The class of a character will determine almost everything about him or her, such as the number of hit points and spell points gained per level, and how difficult the various initial skill levels will be to attain. It is important to know that not every character will have the same choices. Which classes are available depend on race, alignment, and most importantly, initial attributes. Like a name, the class of a character is permanent.

Choosing skills

After selecting your class, the final details of your character are created. These include your hit points, spell points, and skill points. The available skill points are displayed in the top center area of the screen, where the class buttons were previously located. Many characters will not start with any skill points, while many others will have one or two points but be unable to learn any skills. This is because all skills require at least two skill points to learn, and some classes require at least three skill points to learn a new skill. If you don't see any skill choices listed, don't worry! This is normal, and this character must make his or her way in the world without any specialized training. There are various ways to get more skill points, such as missions and random events. And of course the most reliable way to gain skill points is to advance in levels. Every level, new skill points are awarded.

If you are lucky enough to have skill options available, you will see buttons listed below the total skill points, just as the class buttons were listed previously. To learn a skill, simply click the button corresponding to the skill you wish to learn. The number of skill points spent to learn the skill varies. For example a fighter with four skill points has quite a few options such as attack for a cost of 2 skill points, or tank for a cost of 3 skill points. Note that in rare cases you will have enough skill points to learn two or more skills.

Overview of character data

As you have seen, creating a character is a very simple process. But what do all these numbers mean? And how do you know what each class and skill will do?

Initial characteristics

Each recruit is defined by a number of characteristics: race, gender, alignment, and attributes.

Race: Race in itself is unimportant, although it affects almost every other aspect of the character. Each race has its own bonuses and penalties to initial attributes, prefered alignments, and eligible classes. Some skill costs are also affected by race. In addition, party members who match the party leader's race take up less party space, enabling larger parties, while members of other races can have substantial space penalties.

Gender: Male characters have significantly higher strength attributes than female characters. Female characters receive a discount to the amount of party space they take up, enabling larger parties.

Alignment: Alignment describes the underlying moral and ethical beliefs of the character, and is comprised of two words. The first word will be lawful, neutral, or chaotic. Lawful characters have greater respect for rules and authority. They will be able to organize larger adventuring parties and will contribute more toward clan gold. Chaotic characters, as expected, are the opposite. They do not respect authority or work as well in large groups, and they tend to keep their gold for their own uses. The second word is good, neutral, or evil. This reflects a character's outlook on life and the nature of the universe. Note that characters who are neutral in both categories are simply listed as neutral. Alignment has two other important functions. First is party creation. Characters with alignment's closely aligned with the party leader get party space discounts, enabling larger parties. Conversely characters of opposing alignments will not work well together and party space will quickly be exceeded, meaning your adventuring groups must be small and therefore vulnerable. Secondly, as with race, alignment will help determine which class options are available.

Attributes: There are six attributes that describe a character. These may all be increased as you see fit with skill points as your characters gain levels. However the starting levels will help determine what class choices are available. A brief description of each attribute follows:

Strength: Physical strength. Strength directly affects your ability to hit and damage opponents with melee weapons. It also determines carrying capacity and sets encumberance levels. For example, a character carrying equipment exceeding 1/3 his carrying capacity will receive a -1 penalty to his defense score. As the weight carried continues to climb, the penalties to all combat statistics get more and more severe. Most weapons also have a minimum strength requirement, and characters under this threshold will receive penalties to attack speed.
Dexterity: A measure of speed, reflex, and agility. Dexterity directly affects your defense and speed ratings. Characters with high dexterity will find it easier to attack multiple times per turn. It will also, together with strength, determine your base chance to flee from an encounter. This can be critical, as many fights are, by design, unwinnable and you must learn to recognize when to flee. Dexterity is probably the single most relevant attribute to determine survivability.
Constitution: Health and stature. The most important function of constitution is in determining hit points, or the measure of a character's ability to sustain damage. The higher the constitution, the more hit points you will have, and the more damage you can suffer before death. Although hit points are largely random, as your characters gain levels you will see a definate trend in that those with higher constitutions will have more hit points than those of the same class with a lower score. Constitution also affects your ability to shrug off poison and other physical conditions.
Intelligence: Knowledge and intellect. Intelligence may be, in the long run, the single-most important attribute for every class. The reason for this is that it is the primary determinant of skill points received when gaining levels. You will notice that even first level characters are heavily influenced by intelligence; those with a low score will rarely have many skill points while high-intelligence individuals will usually have more. Intelligence also plays a major role in calculating the number of spell points received every level for most spellcasting classes.
Willpower: Concentration and mental fortitude. Willpower effects the ability of a character to resist a number of harmful effects such as spells cast by enemies. It modifies skills such as tank, with characters with higher willpower scores more willing to stand and take damage while shielding party members. It also is a major determinant of spell points per level, primarily for classes such as cleric or paladin.
Charisma: A combination of physical beauty and strength of personality. Characters with a high charisma will be your party leaders by definition, and prime candidates for leadership skills. They will also take up less party space, enabling larger groups to function well together. Charismatic characters spend less money when you recruit new clan members and will thus tend to be your wealthiest characters. Charisma can also affect spell points for a few classes such as shaman or mystic.

Classes

Classes will not be described in detail, as more are being added periodically and some are so rare that most players will never see one. Furthermore, part of the fun of Mythic Warfare is in exploring the various possiblilies and learning from experience. Suffice to say, some classes are more common than others, and all classes have unique sets of skills that they excel at. For example, everyone can learn the various crafting skills, but only for yeoman do they all have an initial cost of two skill points. Any character with spell points can learn any of the 18 magic schools, but clerics will find that magic: life has a base cost of two skill points while for wizards it has a base cost of 8 skill points.

Although you will find that some classes seem to be inherently superior to others, remember that all classes have at least one area where they have no equals. For example, while fighters have more hit points and generally have superior combat skills compared to grunts, grunts have much cheaper tank and toughness skills. These combine to make them ideal for becoming your party tanks, allowing them to bear the brunt of enemy attacks, and with a high toughness rating, bear them easily. Trial and error is the best way to learn about the various classes, and the forums also provide a place to discuss your thoughts and strategies.

Skills

Like classes, skills will not be described in detail. This is primarily due to the ever-changing landscape of the game and partly due to the desire for players to explore and find strategies that they find most suitable to their particular playing style. However, skill basics are important to learn.

Every class can learn any skill, although the cost in skill points can vary dramatically from class to class. There are exceptions to this rule, the most notable being that only characters with spell points may learn the various magic skills. Exceptions aside, this allows for extremely diverse character choices. For example you might have two 8th level fighters who look nothing alike. One may be specialized in two-handed axes and damage skills, while the other is a martial arts master with a focus on attack speed and defensive skills. Yet another may hardly have combat skills at all, but be a party leader with high leadership skills and perhaps a focus in armor smithing to keep your equipment in good repair. The possibilities for the hybrid classes such as magi or shaman are even greater, as they may dabble in many magic schools, focus on just one or two, or forgo magic training entirely to pursue combat skills.

The initial skill point cost for any given skill is determined by your class. For example, all grunts can learn level one of the tank skill for two skill points; all clerics can learn magic: life for two skill points. Note that the minimum cost for any initial skill, for any class, is at least two skill points. However, when you learn a new skill something very important happens: you develop and aptitude rating for this skill. This hidden score will remain fixed for all time for this skill and character. It will act as a multiplier for all future skill level costs in this skill. Some people will take very quickly to learning weapons: sword for example, while other people will find it almost impossible to progress beyond level one. There is no way to know what you'll be good at until you try it. In some cases, you'll be so good at a skill that level two will be cheaper than level one was! In fact, your aptitude can be so good that you will find you can zip up to extremely high levels in some skills for very few skill points. Conversely, some skills will be prohibitively difficult for any given character to learn, with enormous skill point costs to progress beyond the lowest levels. Again, this is a large part of the Mythic Warfare playing experience. When you recruit a new first level character, there is really no way to know whether he will be the best fire mage to ever fry a demon or if he will struggle to learn the basics of spellcasting at all. Usually it will take several levels to explore enough skills to find one or two that you excel at.

Skill categories

A few words about the types of skills may be helpful.

Combat skills: attack, parry, damage, and attack speed all directly modify your combat ratings in the applicable category regardless of weapon type. Combat oriented characters will want to spend a portion of their overall points in these areas.
Weapon skills: Each of the 12 weapon classes has its own skill to allow for weapon specialization. Combat oriented characters will find it critical to specialize if they are to attain a high degree of proficiency with a given weapon. Specilization affects all four combat ratings when using the applicable weapon with each level giving a bonus to attack, damage, and (alternately) speed or defense. Even non-combat characters may find it useful to specialize in a weapon at some point for the benefits to speed and defense.
Magic: there are 18 schools of magic, each with unique spells. It is beyond the scope of this document to discuss each magic school. Although at first level you will find some of these (such as lightning) to be far more useful than others (such as summoning), an ongoing effort is made to ensure that at higher levels all magic schools are equally valuable. The higher your skill, the cheaper the spells will be to cast.
Crafting: crafting skills such as weapon smithing or leather crafting yield two benefits. The first is that after every adventure, new equipment will be created and distributed to the group for use or sale. This can help augment party income and provide useful replacement equipment as things are broken or used up. The second and perhaps more useful feature is the ability to prevent and repair equipment damage during battle. A high level armor smith in your party, for example, will cut down tremendously on the frequency of armor breaks.
Increase attribute: you may spend skill points to increase any of your six attributes. In addition to the immediate benefits of the higher attribute, additional hit points and spell points can be gained where applicable.
Leadership: this allows for larger party sizes. When you assemble a party, you will see that the party leader has a certain amount of space available for party members. Leadership skills will increase this available space which is critical when you wish to create larger groups to undertake the more difficult adventures.
Toughness: this skill reduces the damage sustained from incoming physical attacks. Although it is not an automatic reduction, characters with high toughness skills will take substantially less damage on average from all physical hits.
Tank: tank enables a special mode of attack, tank. When tank is selected, your character will attack normally. However, he or she will also attempt to stand in front of the group and become the target for every enemy attack. How often a character succeeds at this depends on the level of the tank skill. It is absolutely critical to have characters with tanking skills (ideally many characters with high levels in tank) to defend those with fewer hit points such as your wizards. At low levels a single point in tank on one or two characters might not seem like much, but as your parties grow in size and the total number of tank points in the party increases, you will see almost every incoming attack will be directed against a tank. Accordingly, it can be very hard to get wizards and other low hit-point characters to advance beyond the initial levels because of a lack of tanks, while at higher level you have a lot more flexibility in dictating where the incoming attacks will be targeted.
Unarmed damage: this is a unique skill that changes your fist from a default d1 weapon to a d2 or higher weapon. Every level of the skill increases the base fist damage by +1 point. This may not seem too important, but every weapon class has a maximum damage multiplier. For example, spear class weapons can deliver a maximum damage of 1.5 times their base damage, regardless of strength, skills, and other modifiers. Natural weaponry class weapons, such as your fist, can deliver a maximum damage of four times (4x) the base damage. So, regardless of modifiers, the default d1 fist has a maximum damage of d4. With a single point in this skill, your d2 fist will now have a maximum damage of d8, should you have enough modifiers to push it that high. As your skill increases, your base fist damage will increase and your maximum damage will follow suit. Because a fist is weightless and has a very high attack speed, it is relatively easy for high dexterity characters to develop into martial arts masters with a combination of this skill and a specialization in weapons: natural weaponry or other skills such as attack speed. Because of the potential power of such a character (a fist can never be dropped or broken) the skill is very expensive for most classes.