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Building Character

In the beginning... : tips on generating a character

The mechanics for first generating a character for Dereth are straight forward: you select a name, appearance, personal characteristics, and a location to enter the world. Common sense can guide you through most of the choices except those about attributes and skills, and those we will talk more about right now.

Attributes are your character’s basic physical and mental abilities. All characters start with 330 points to grant these abilities, your task is to decide how to allocate these points between the six basic attributes: strength, endurance, coordination, speed, focus and self. How you allocate these should be based on what sort of character you plan to build.

High strength gives you big carrying capacity and the ability to wear heavy armor and wield heavy weapons. Front line warriors should be well endowed with strength. Mules are also usually designed strong.

Very low strength is a handicap, even for "brainy" spell casting types. A common design flaw is to build a magic caster with minimal strength. Such a character has trouble even carrying a full set of spell components, and can’t cash big trade notes at the store because the pyreals weigh too much.

Endurance is the ability to keep fighting for a long time. It provides both stamina and health points. A fighter with low hit points dies quickly from monster damage. A fighter with low stamina fights for a few seconds, then has to stop and catch his or her breath... which is not good if the monster you are facing is still alive and kicking. Magi also benefit from endurance. A Life Mage can transform stamina and health into mana to keep casting longer. And, a Mage with a lot of hit points can keep casting even when a monster has closed and is doing damage.

Good coordination helps out in all sorts of abilities. Coordination helps out in lock picking, all weapon skills, missile and melee defense, and all "craft" skills such as cooking and healing. Every point put into coordination spreads around a lot. Coordination helps out in jumping, but not running -- running is purely quickness. Coordination is the only contributor to bow skills, other weapons are half coordination, half strength -- except for the dagger which is half quickness and half coordination.

Quickness is enormously valuable in getting your character out of trouble. Everyone runs in Dereth, and for good reason, there is always a bigger, meaner fish out there. In Dereth it is fast characters, not strong characters, that get to see the world. Quickness is also a component in melee and missile defense, and a prime component for handling bows and daggers. A character with high quickness and coordination is hard for monsters to hit.

Focus is the other skill that shows up everywhere. Appraising skills and Arcane Lore are purely focus. Assessing skills, Deception, Magic Defense, Lockpicking, the four spell casting skills, and Mana Conversion are all half based on Focus. A point put in Focus goes a long way in characters who appraise, assess, research spells, cast spells, engage in crafts, or use powerful magic items (magic items have a difficulty rating, your Arcane Lore must exceed the difficulty rating to use the item).

Self has a more limited scope of things it contributes to than Focus, but it is vital to those who need those limited things. Self produces mana, if you’re going to be a spell caster who can keep on casting when the going gets rough, you need ample mana, so you will need ample Self. Self is the sole basis for Leadership and Loyalty -- skills which determine the efficiency with which you move experience from a vassal and to your liege -- nice but not necessary skills.

If you don’t plan on casting spells (the only activity which consumes mana), you may wish to move most of your Self points into Focus -- the points in Focus spread to more activities than Self points do.

 

The Franky Model: Smart Fighter (Gharun' or Sho, not Aluvian)

St 90, En 60, Co 90, Qu 20, Fo 50, Se 20

Specialize in: Racial Weapon (Gharun': Staff, Sho: Unarmed Combat), Melee Defense

Train in: Arcane Lore, Missile Defense, Mana Conversion, Healing

Add training in: Item Magic, then open to your taste

Advantages: A fighter who uses higher level magic items, throws higher level buffs, heals well, and can ID items in the field.  Has level credits available after 9th level.

Disadvantages: Slow, can't run out of trouble. Will never "top the charts" in weapon skill. Doesn't have the health to take many big damage hits without a healing pause.

Fighters are often built with 10 Focus and 10 Self.  This lets the designer maximize the Strength and Coordination attributes for maximum weapon effectiveness, and split the remainder between Quickness and Endurance.  But there are some benefits to making a fighter with high Focus, too.  A fighter with high Focus can ID items well, use high level magic items, throw high level "buff" spells, and heal even when he or she has suffered lots of damage. Because the Franky Model can ID so much, it's a great model for exploring loot, which makes it a good beginner model.  

This is also an advanced model. Specializing in the racial weapon saves six skill credits that can be used for non-fighting skills, such as Artisanship, Leadership, Lockpick or Creature magic. More on this later.

First suggestion: Don’t be deficient

In many worlds extreme characters prosper, in Dereth this is not the case. (for beginning characters, that is, see JATOing a character for times when extreme characters make sense.) For instance, many of my magi colleagues were created with very high Focus and Self and very low Strength and Endurance. They lived short lives because they couldn’t carry much and couldn’t take damage. They were very good spell casters for their level, but these improvements to their arcane abilities could not compensate for the handicaps of not being able to carry much or take much damage.

Likewise, fighters with low Focus may hit hard and long, but they have a hard time working with magic items, and knowing the value of treasure they acquire.

So design your character with minimums in mind rather than maximums -- first make sure the character can do at least what you want in all critical areas, then pile on what is left in his or her forte.

Second suggestion: don’t be afraid to retire a character

A good character is one that matches your play style, and your play style is not easy to foresee. It takes about ten hours of play to get a character to fourth or fifth level, and by the time you have played that much you should have a good feel for how the character is working out -- you will know what the character can do well, what the character has a hard time doing, and what kinds of terrain you like to play in. Work a character to forth level or so, and if you don’t like what you see developing, retire the character and try a fresh combination. Try various characters and various mixes of attributes and skills to find combinations that work well for you.

Keep in mind that if you enjoy Asheron's Call, you will ultimately be putting over one hundred hours into this game, and taking characters to 20th level, and beyond.

What kind of character to build

There are many character possibilities in Dereth, some are easy to work with, some take great finesse. Some gain experience and treasure easily, others mature slowly. Some can work well solo, others come to life only in a team environment.

Toe-to-toe fighters are the easiest to build and they advance easily in Dereth. They work well solo and contribute well to teams. If you’re new to Dereth, a fighter may be the character type to start with. As the fighter grows in experience and wealth, you can use his or her wealth (and your growing experience) to subsidize other character types, such as healers, which have a harder time gaining experience and wealth because they aren’t killing monsters directly.

A fighter will be strong and tireless (high Strength and Endurance), and not be doing too much spell casting (low Self). The other attributes -- Coordination, Speed and Focus are all good for fighters, so the remaining experience should be handed out roughly evenly between them.

A variant on the fighter is the Scout. This is a fighter who can run, and uses this speed to outdistance threats. Take your basic fighter template and move a few points from all the other attributes into Quickness and you have a Scout. Armor this person lightly, and they will travel the length and breadth of Dereth for you.

I recommend the El Badasso model as a first character. This character is very forgiving of mistakes in combat, can function well with little magic equipment, has the IDing capabiltiy and carrying capacity to fill the clan treasury easily, and can wander, so you can see much of Dereth even as a low level.

Archers are effective players in Dereth. Bows and crossbows do a lot of damage, and they can do it from a distance. Archers function well in solo mode, and they are valuable contributors to teams. Fighters and archers predominate among the highest level players in Dereth.

Bow skill requires high coordination, and missile and melee defense also require high coordination. It is easy to make an archer who dodges blows well. If you want to make an archer type character, take the basic fighter template and move a few points from each attribute into coordination. Archers can be built either as runners or as tanks. If you want a lightly armored runner type, don’t scrimp on speed. If this person is going to armor up and stand his or her ground, don’t scrimp on strength.  

Bows are more effective than Crossbows in Dereth because they are much faster.  Make a bowman as a beginning character, choose crossbowman when you're ready to overcome a challenge.

Lockpicking and the craft skills also benefit from coordination, so an archer who can lockpick or heal is economical to create.

Cottoneye Joe is a "fighting mule" model. He's designed to be taken along far enough in level to learn how to use the Portal spells, then he can support other character types very efficiently.

Spell casters take the most skill to run in Dereth. The character must be skillful at spell casting, and the player must be skillful at dealing with people because magi function much better as part of teams than they do going solo.

Spell casters benefit from high Focus and high Self, the rest of the attributes are roughly equal in value to the basic spell caster, so spread the points evenly, with perhaps a bit of emphasis on Quickness so they can run from trouble.

Focus is good for Appraising and Assessing, so spell casters tend to be good appraisers and assessors even if they aren't trained in those skills.

Chosen Won model is designed to be a "wall working", "buff mage". Use him or her where the monsters are behind walls, or where there are fighters who can stand between him or her and the monsters, and where those fighters want healing and boosts to their fighting stats. He or she works best in fellowships where the fighters will share XP.

Some combinations aren’t so good

Some combinations of skills will run at cross purposes to each other. Characters of this sort can be interesting for an experienced player to run, but they will not be using basic attribute building points in optimal fashions. The fighter -- spell caster combination, for instance. Fighters benefit from Strength and Endurance while spell casters benefit from Focus and Self -- trying to be above average in those four attributes is going to have catastrophic effects on Coordination and Quickness.

To start with (and perhaps to end with, too) pick skill combinations that are going to synergize, and your character will grow rapidly in experience and skill.

Specialty versus trained

Promoting a skill from trained to specialty gives the character an extra five points of starting skill (ten instead of five), and it gains the character a bonus on experience gained by that skill when it is used. If you want a character with great breath of skills who does lots of things, such as appraising lots of kinds of things as well as fighting with a melee weapon and a ranged weapon, don’t specialize. If you are designing a character who will engage in just a few critical activities, such as a spell caster who will cast life and creature magic, then specialize. 

The Washington Model is designed to be the ultimate wall working mage. See more about this model in JATOing Characters.

Watching the acorn grow: planning your character’s improvement

As your character goes about his or her daily activities in Dereth, they will gain experience. Some of this experience is assigned automatically, some you can allocate. For instance, when your character fights and kills a monster, the character gains experience. Part of the experience goes directly to increasing the skill of the weapon or magic used to kill the monster, and part goes into a general pool of experience points that you get to allocate.

You get to allocate those general pool points to: any attribute, health, stamina, mana, or any specialized or trained skill. You can’t allocate experience points to untrained or unusable skills. (you can, however, raise these to trained, this is covered shortly.)

Your character gains experience points for conducting any of the trained or specialized activities he or she knows. If your character is trained in appraising people, and you take the time to study the people around you (select a person and examine them with your microscope), your character gains experience.

Allocating the general pool points is how you grow your character. You can do this allocating at any time, and it’s a great activity to engage in as your character is recovering health and stamina after a hard-fought battle.

The experience points (called EP or XP, both mean the same) required to boost a characteristic grows exponentially as you boost. The first boost to a characteristic is likely to cost about 70 EP. If it does, the next boost will cost 110 EP, the next 180, and so on. The result of this is that you get the most characteristics points boosted per EP allocated by spreading the boosts around to all the attributes and skills. If you allocate all your EP to boosting just one attribute or skill, it will grow rapidly at first, but then slower and slower, and your other skills will languish.

Most skills that you use grow automatically, so be slow about allocating EP to heavily used skills such as weapon usage and appraisal skills. Attributes do not grow on their own, and neither do Run, Jump, Loyalty or Leadership. These will only go up if you manually add EP to them. Some skills you may want to grow faster than the growth that comes by growing their attributes. Health and Stamina both grow when you grow the Endurance attribute, but they may not grow fast enough to suit you. If they are not, contribute to them directly.

(Arcane Lore, by the way, grows when you successfully identify a scroll. If you want to build your Arcane Lore experience, you can do some "light reading" between battles by ID'ing a scroll. Likewise you can gain Lockpick experience by examining lockpicks, and Healing experience by examining healing kits. You gain experience this way only about every three minutes or so, and only for one scroll, lockpick, or healing kit of each level within that three minute period, and only if you are trained or specialized in the skill.)

Adding to your skill list: skill credits and the "Level 9 Build"

Each time you gain a level you gain a skill credit. (up to 10th level, after that a skill credit comes with every two levels, then less often after 20th level.). These credits are applied to promoting a skill from untrained or unusable to trained skill. This allows you to make major additions to a player’s trained repertoire as they grow in experience. For instance, you may start a spell caster who knows how to cast Life and Item magic. When this character reaches 9th level, he or she will have acquired enough skill credits (eight) to add Creature magic to their trained skills as well.

This "level 9 build" should be planned for as you start your character -- 9th Level will come up fairly quickly. But don't plan on adding a major skill after that, it will take growing to 24th level to gather another eight skill credits.

The Doc Feelgood Model is a good early character model to help you discover how you want to play Asheron's Call. This character can fight solo, and support fighters as a buff mage when part of a team. He or she can help you decide how much time and effort you want to spend supporting other characters. When you are supporting others, be sure to fellowship so you get some XP for your efforts. Because this model mixes melee and magic, you may ultimately want to replace it with characters more optimized for either magic or melee. 

Of Mules and Men

A Doc Feelgood campfire tale:

The Legend of the Mule

In the Before Days, when Dereth was being formed by the High Gods, the candidates for player types in Dereth were called by the High Gods to determine which would be worthy to exist in Dereth. The candidates were lined up for quick one-on-one interviews to be judged. In line were the Warrior, the Mage, the Farmer and the Carrier.

This particular Carrier was very traditional: strong back, weak mind, and very nervous about what he should say to the High Gods when they asked what he did.

The Warrior went in for his interview and came out seconds later smiling. As he walked by the Carrier pulled on his sleeve and asked him, "What should I tell the High Gods?"

"What do you do?" Asked the Warrior?

"I carry things." said the Carrier.

"Hmm, you’ll be quite valuable to me. Say you are a Squire and I’m sure the High Gods will see your worth."

The Carrier thanked him profusely, and it was the Mage’s turn to go in. As the Mage was being interviewed the Carrier in his nervousness forgot what the Warrior had told him, so when the Mage came out, he pulled on the Mage’s sleeve and asked him, "What should I tell the High Gods?"

"What do you do?" Asked the Mage?

"I carry things." Said the Carrier.

"Hmm, you’ll be quite valuable to me. Say you are an Apprentice and I’m sure the High Gods will see your worth."

The Carrier thanked him profusely, and it was the Farmer’s turn to go in. As the Farmer was being interviewed the Carrier once again forgot what to say, so when the Farmer came out, he pulled on the Farmer’s sleeve and asked him, "What should I tell the High Gods?"

The Farmer had a scowl on his face when he replied sharply, "What do you do?"

"I carry things." Said the Carrier.

"Then tell them you’re a Mule and stop bothering me." and he walked quickly off.

The Carrier walked in confidently and told the High Gods, "I’m a Mule, I carry things."

The High Gods chuckled, and then told him, "Thank you, Mule, we already have picked the Cow for our domestic monster. We have no need of your services."

Dejectedly, the Carrier walked out. As he was walking away, the Warrior and the Mage came up and asked, "How did it go?"

"The High Gods say I’m not needed." he told them, holding back a tear in his eye.

"Nonsense." Said the Mage and the Warrior, "The High Gods may not need you, but we certainly do. Come with us to Dereth."

And so it was that the Mule came to Dereth. He is unrecognized by the High Gods, and they will snub him on occasion, but all the player characters give him a warm welcome whenever he shows up. 

An informal specialty of Dereth is hauling. Characters have limited capacity to carry, and no capacity to store, so some characters specialize in hauling and being storage centers. Such characters could be called squires, apprentices or accomplices, but they are commonly known as mules. Good mules are designed with high strength, good speed, and appraising as their trained skills -- in addition to hauling, mules do the shopping for the low focus fighting types. Mules that specialize in appraise will grow in experience as they handle equipment. It’s not uncommon to run into 10th level mules who have reached that level without ever drawing a weapon in anger. They gain experience through appraising as they shop.

Another common mule type is the retired mage, because of their high focus, high level mages make good shoppers.

The various Magi: Front line, back line, wall worker

Magic is a complex specialty on Dereth -- too complex for a single type of character to master well. The basic planning question on mage design is: how much face-to-face combat will this character see?

The first choice in magic use is to be a front-line character, not a mage. Then this characters magic skills must be subordinate to skills needed for going toe-to-toe with a ferocious and deadly monster -- this character is a fighter who has developed some magic skills. The most universal magic skill is Item magic, which allows a character to "buff" (strengthen) weapons and armor, and to cast portal spells -- essential for moving around Dereth.  Most characters of Dereth know this much magic by the time they are 20th level, many fighters learn no more than this. A character who will learn no more than Item will start with low focus and self (something such as, 30 Focus and 10 self), and pick up Arcane Lore at 5th level and Item magic at 16th. Arcane Lore allows the fighter to use "difficult" magic items, and spell casting will consist of casting buffs on weapons and portalling.

The second choice in magic use is a magish character who specializes in supporting front line types -- using Life and Character magic to cast heal spells, armor spells and "buffs" of various sorts. This "backline" kind of character is enormously valuable to front-line characters. A good healer backing up a good toe-to-toe fighter can keep the fighter doing damage two to three times longer than the fighter can do solo. (A variant on this "back-line" mage is the "Og" mage -- named after a notorious player-killer character on Darktide server. This a fighter-type that learns Item and Creature as beginning schools, and adds War magic at 40th level, or so.)

The backline mage should be built with more Focus and Self attributes than a front-line type (roughly 50 and 50), with all other attributes in balance as well because this kind of character sees almost as much melee as a front liner.

Finally, you can create a character who is good at casting spells and poor at melee -- a "wall worker." These four-eyed, rocket-science types have lots of Focus and Self (roughly 70 and 70) so they can keep casting a long time and they can cast high level spells, but they will be poor at melee. In the wilderness they will cast spells on heroes rather than monsters (so the monsters don't chase them), and in dungeons they will cast on monsters who are behind walls. Such magi are powerful spell casters, and valuable team players, but they are limited in where they can fight and survive until they become 40th level or so.  At that point they can throw level 6 buffs on themselves, and they become quite tough. (See The Story of Washington in JATOing Characters.) 

That's about it on building first generation characters. Have fun, try different types, and keep on swinging. After you've gained some experience and wealth, check out the next section, on how to "JATO" characters.

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