Character Creation & Advancement

Character Creation

Creating a character is relatively straightforward, and follows the same rules for buying skills as for advancing them after an adventure.

1. Select a Race. Human is the default Race, however Elves and Dwarves are also common.

   • • Some Races have the option to buy Racial Mutations, unique skills that represent a distinct difference from humans which confer special abilities (such as being Spiritless). These Racial Mutations must be purchased with the initial points at character creation.

     • Players are allowed only a few character with Racial Mutations at a time - 1 Spiritless Character and 1 Racial Mutation character. If either of these characters die or reach 250 points the character may create a new character of the same type.

     • Example: A player manages to advance their Spiritless Elven Mage to 250+ points, they can continue to play them and create a second Spiritless character.

2. Choose a starting Alignment.

   • • Characters may start between +6 (Good) to -6 (Evil), but can develop during play to +/-12.

3. Each character begins with 20* Skill Points for starting skills.

   • • These Skill points are used to determine the power of an individual character, a 100 point character is more powerful than a 60 point character.

     • You may not have more than four characters with less than fifty points.

4. Characters also being play with Speak (Common) and one additional language or script for free (0 points). If this is not specified then it is assumed to be Script (Common) (also referred to as Literacy) but is also commonly used for native languages for non-humans such as Elves or Dwarves.

5. Each character begins play with 100groats, which may be spent on equipment before play but do not have to, any left over is retained for later use.

*Note that Racial Mutations (including the cost for being Spiritless) must be paid for with these initial 20 points.

None of your characters can interact directly or indirectly with each other - for instance, if one of your characters sold a cheap suit of armour to someone who then re-sells the armour to another of your characters, both people could be guilty of a serious breach of the rules and should be punished accordingly.

Purchasing Equipment

Characters do not need to purchase standard quality suits of Armour or Weapons which they are proficient in, for example a character with Armour 3 does not need to spend groats to buy a suit of Plated Leather or Chain mail, and one with Thrown Weapons does not need to purchase each individual Throwing Knife - it is assumed that this is either provided by their guild or they have otherwise somehow managed to acquire one without meaningfully impacting their money. This does not apply to Master Crafted, Silver, Cold Iron or otherwise non-standard equipment, nor to disposable items such as Kits and Potions, which must be purchased normally.

Characters are required to suitably phys-rep their equipment on an adventure - for example the scout may not need to buy 100+ Throwing Knives, however if the player can only bring or borrow 5 then the character only has the 5 throwing knives.

Alignment

Your characters alignment is a measure of their moral outlook on life. A character who thinks nothing of taking what they need, killing who they want and living life outside the law is considered Evil whereas a character who will help the needy, heal the infirm and protect the innocent at the cost of their life are considered Good. These are two extremes of the moral range of which the vast majority of the population would be in the middle, obeying the rules but not going out of their way to keep others within the law.

The scale of alignments ranges from minus twelve, to plus twelve. Anyone with an alignment of minus six or less is considered evil, whilst anyone with an alignment of plus six or above are good. In between good and evil is neutral. Whereas a characters alignment would not have an immediate effect, Inherent spells are based on the characters alignment and some inherent effects only apply to certain alignments. Some rare items can only be touched or wielded by people of a certain alignment. Although a characters alignment must start between minus six plus six, your characters actions can change this during an adventure beyond the normal. The table below shows the alignment range and the alignment class.

At the end of each adventure during the final mark-up you have the opportunity to discuss your alignment with the Referee, or they may raise certain moral choices made by your character, which could justify a movement towards Good or Evil. The scale and intent of such actions are important to determine whether your character deserves to be moved up or down the scale, but typically the closer your characters alignment is to an extreme (+12 or -12) the harder it is to justify moving closer and the easier it is slide back towards neutral - Killing a helpess prisoner is Evil, but probably isn't enough to move an antihero at -11  down to -12, but would probably bump a neutral hero at 0 down by a point and almost certainly cost a Good character at +12 a fall of a few points.

Alignment is relative however, and you will be given the opportunity to justify your characters choices and argue for or against a movement in their alignment in either direction.

Character Advancement

This section deals with how you can develop your character so that they are more skilful and efficient on adventures, eventually becoming a famous hero or infamous villain. You do this by acquiring more Skills or Spells for them to use. Another way of developing your character is by joining a Guild of like minded or skilled characters, which enables you to take a more active role in the political situations which arise from time to time. A lot of the fun of Live Role-playing is derived from working out how to make your character a force to be reckoned with.

Buying Skills

Skills are “bought” using Skill Points, Skill points reflect the amount of time spent training to learn the Skills. Assuming that you have just successfully completed (or simply survived) an adventure with your character, they will have earned several skill points based on the length & type of the adventure. At the end of full adventures there are also bonus skill points available for Skill Use & Role Play which are awarded amongst the players themselves in a "Circle of Mojo" as a form of Blind Vote, and the Referee may also award additional bonus points above this for exceptional gameplay.

There are many different Skill Categories from which you can choose, most of which are divided up into levels of proficiency. For instance, the Skill Category, STRENGTH ENHANCEMENT is divided up into four levels of proficiency: STRENGTH ENHANCEMENT I, II, III and IV. Each individual level of proficiency is called a Skill. In nearly all cases, when learning a Skill from a Skill Category, you must learn the individual levels in ascending order, learning the lowest level of proficiency first.

Each Skill is allocated a cost in Skill Points, there is no Gold or currency cost to learning standard skills. Many of the Skill Categories have relatively long names and, because they can be a bit of a mouthful when in constant use, have been given abbreviated names. For Example, Physical Enhancement is commonly referred to as BODY.

Skill and Spell Groups

Skills are divided into skill groups, such as Body building or Combat, and are further divided into three different grades; Minor, Moderate and Major. Moderate skills are typically highlighted in YELLOW or ORANGE and Major skills in GREEN.

• Racial Skills

  • • These represent Super or Inhuman abilities, such as the immense strength of a Troll or the Spiritless nature of most Elves, Dwarves and Fae folk.

    • These skills must typically be purchased at character creation, but some may be improved upon at later point thresholds (typically 50 point increments).

• Body Building

  • • Increased Strength, Dexterity or Hit Points

• Combat

  • • Weapon and Armour skills

• Recognition

  • • The ability to recognise creatures, diagnose wounds or investigate magic

• Crafting

  • • Crafting equipment, potions or minor magical items

• Resistances

  • • Immunity to Poisons, Diseases, Spells and even the Elements themselves.

• Spells

  • • Spells are divided into individual spell lists based on a theme or application, each granted by a Dragon and in line with their powers, there are 2 types of magic:

    • Spiritual Magic granted by the 3 Dragons of Good, Neutral and Evil.

    • Focussed Magic granted by the 6 Elemental Dragons of Earth, Air, Fire, Ice, Water and pure Magic (Force).

• Magic Skills

  • • The ability to use Scrolls, alter the basic properties of spells such as increasing their range or number of targets. 

• General Skills

  • • A variety of skills which do not fall into the other categories, such as languages, literacy and numeracy, map reading, research skills and more.

Restricted & Secret Skills

Any skill listed on the main skill trees are freely available to learn by any character, however some may be illegal or restricted in the world of Lesia and could lead to arrest or legal trouble without appropriate licenses if they are caught using them. It is assumed that if you wish to learn the skill your character can find an appropriate teacher without getting into trouble.

Note that some skills do have specific requirements to meet in order to learn them, for example learning some languages require knowledge of other languages first such as needing to learn Elven before Ancient Elven. Some players also use Roleplay skills to represent personal cyphers or codes unique to them - learning these would require being taught or justifying how the code has been cracked.

There are some unique and rare abilities outside of the main lists - these are practically unique and almost impossible to replicate, requiring either magical rituals or esoteric training which only a few creatures or beings of power can provide. These are occasionally granted as rewards for dangerous adventures, typically at the conclusion of a prolonged plotline or series of adventures, and cannot be taught to other characters unless they expressly state they can be.

The Battleboarders

These are the people who keep all the records on all the Player Characters that are currently active. Once you have decided which Skills you wish to buy, you must inform a Battleboarder. All transactions your character is involved in, includes the learning of Skills, must be recorded with an official Battleboarder. If your character’s record does not show that you have learnt a Skill, you haven’t learnt it. There is always an official Battleboard of your character available on site when you are doing adventures, and during the week you should be able to contact the Battleboarders either by E-mail or Messaging.