Crossfire Playbook - Chapter 2

# About Characters

## Character Attributes

Each player interacts in the Crossfire world through the persona of a character. In turn, the interaction between the character and the game world is mediated by the ``attributes'' of the character. After all, the player is not going to play him/herself! In Crossfire we chose to parameterize the acceptable limits of player behavior via the values of the character attributes which, in turn, help to determine the success of any action taken by the player. There are no limits per se on what you can attempt to do with your character; rather, the attributes of a character indicate the certain ``natural'' talents and inclinations. Two concepts which are relevant to Crossfire character attributes are ``stats'' and ``class''.

## 2.1.1. Character Stats

Character statistics (or ``stats'' for short) can be divided into two types: primary and secondary. What's the difference between them? Secondary stats are calculated from a number of things including the primary stats. But the reverse isn't true, secondary stats never have any influence on the primary stats. In playing the game, the player may find that either of these kinds of stats may be changed for better or worse. In general, the primary stats change much less often than the secondary stats. Equipment, magic, and death are just three examples of the many things which can alter the values of the character stats. The current values of both the primary and secondary stats may be viewed in the stat window. Four important secondary stats - food, grace, hitpoints and mana also appear again in the stat-bar window.

#### Primary stats

The seven primary stats are:

- Strength (``STR'') - a measure of the physical strength.
- Dexterity (``DEX'') -measures physical agility and speed.
- Constitution (``CON'') - measures physical health and toughness.
- Intelligence (``INT'') - measures ability to learn skills and incantations.
- Wisdom (``WIS'') - measures the ability to learn/use divine magic .
- Power (``POW'') - measures magical/spiritual potential.
- Charisma (``CHA'') - measures social and leadership abilities.

Primary stats have a ``natural'' range between 0 and ~20. The actual upper limit on each primary stat is set by the chosen character class (see character classes.) You can raise your primary stats by drinking potions up to your class natural limit.

There are plenty of items which give you bonuses to your stats even beyond your class limit - swords, armour and rings to name the most important. You can also read scrolls or cast spells (incantations or prayers) to temporarily raise your stats. The ultimate maximum value is 30, and the player class doesn't matter here. Some quantitative effects of the primary stats are summarized in the table below. The top row in the column header specifies a particular bonus (i.e. `HpB`, `MgB`, `AcB`, `DmB`, etc.) while the second row in the header indicates the stat which is used to calculate the value of that column. Where no stat appears, one of several stats may be used to calculate that value. See later parts of the text (particularly section statistics calculation) for further details.

Stat | HpB | MgB¹ | AcB | DmB | Thac0 | Max Carry | Speed | %learn² | Buy/Sell
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---
| (CON) |  | (DEX) | (STR) | (STR) | (STR) | (DEX) |  | (CHA)

Selected primary stat bonuses/penalties.

¹ Either POW or WIS can be used to calculate MgB (magic bonus).
² Percentage for learning either skills (INT), incantations (INT) or prayers (WIS).

#### Secondary stats

The secondary stats are :

- score - The total accumulated experience of the character. `score` is increased as a reward for appropriate player action and may decrease as a result of a magical attack or character death (see section death for more about death). The `score` starts at a value of 0.

- level - A rating of overall ability whose value is determined from the `score`. As the `level` of the character increases, the character becomes able to succeed at more difficult tasks. `level` starts at a value of 0 and may range up beyond 100. The value of the stat which appears in the stat window is sometimes known as the overall `level`. See section experience for more details.

- hit points`("Hp")` - Measures of how much damage the player can take before dying. Hit points are determined from the player `level` and are influenced by the value of the character CON (see section statistics calculation). `Hp` value may range between 1 to beyond 500 and higher values indicate a greater ability to withstand punishment.

- mana`("Sp")` - Measures of how much ``fuel'' the player has for casting incantations. Mana is calculated from the character `level` and the value of the character POW (see section statistics calculation). Mana values can range between 1 to beyond 500. Higher values indicate greater amounts of mana.

- grace`("Gr")` - How favored the character is by the gods. In game terms, how much divine magic a character can cast. Character `level`, WIS and POW effect what the value of grace is (see section statistics calculation). During play, grace values may exceed the character maximum; grace can take on large positive and negative values. Positive values indicate favor by the gods.

- weapon class `("Wc")` - How skilled the characters melee/missile attack is. Lower values indicate a more potent, skilled attack. Current weapon, user `level` and STR are some things which effect the value of `Wc`. The value of `Wc` may range between 25 and -72. See section statistics calculation for a more detailed explanation of weapon class. See section combat to see how `Wc` works in attacking.

- damage `("Dam")` - How much damage a melee/missile attack by the character will inflict. Higher values indicate a greater amount of damage will be inflicted with each attack. See section statistics calculation for a calculation of the character `Dam`.

- armour class `("Ac`") - How protected the character is from being hit by any attack. Lower values are better. `Ac` is based on the character class table character classes and is modified by the DEX (`AcB` column in table primary stat effects) and current armour worn. For characters that cannot wear armour, `Ac` improves as their level increases (see section statistics calculation).

- armour `("Arm") - How much damage will be subtracted from successful hits made upon the character. This value ranges between 0 to 99%. Current armour worn primarily determines `Arm` value.

  `
- speed - How fast the player may move. The value of `speed` may range between nearly 0 (``very slow'') to higher than 5 (``lightning fast''). Base `speed` is determined from the DEX and modified downward proportionally by the amount of weight carried which exceeds the `Max Carry` limit (table primary stat effects). The armour worn also sets the upper limit on `speed` (see the spoiler for these limits).

- weapon speed - Appears in parentheses after the `speed` in the stat window. This quantity is how many attacks the player may make per unit of time. Higher values indicate faster attack speed. Current weapon and user DEX effect the value of weapon speed. See section statistics calculation for a calculation of weapon speed.

- food - How full the character's stomach is. Ranges between 0 (starving) and 999 (satiated). At a value of 0 the character begins to die. Some magic can speed up or slow down the character digestion. Healing wounds will speed up digestion too.

## Character Classes

Much like the older ``paper and pencil'' role-playing games Crossfire has adopted the idea of character ``class''. Each class is meant to be a template of a particular ``style'' of play; therefore each choice of class modifies both the starting values and sets the natural upper limit on the primary stats. Important note: character class is chosen at the time a character is created and can't be changed later on.

Type |  | Str | Dex | Con | Int | Wis | Pow | Cha | Special
--- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | ---

Table 2.2 Crossfire character classes

The table shows the various available character classes with the natural stat limits for each. Under the ``special'' column several bits of information are included. ```Ac`'' indicates the base armour class for the character; ``damage'' indicates the base `Dam` value. Some character classes have special attack abilities and certain vulnerabilities, protections from, and immunities to various attacktypes. Read section combat for more information about what effect these can have.

Generally, the titles of the character classes speak for themselves. But you can get a better idea of the potential of a class by checking out a few things. Take a look at the starting equipment (table starting equipment) and, if you are using Crossfire compiled with the skills system, checkout the starting skills for those classes your interested in (table starting skills).

Type | Starting Equipment
--- | ---

Table 2.3 Starting equipment by character class.

Character Class | Additional Skills¹
--- | ---

Table 2.4 Starting skills.

¹ All character classes start with the skills `melee weapons`, `find traps`, `use magic item`, `literacy`, and `disarm traps`.

Finally, here are some notes concerning a couple of the more ``exotic'' classes:

Fireborn
Attacks: fire, physical
Protections: immune: fire, poison; vulnerable: ghosthit, drain, cold
Special: fly, no armour, no weapons. `Ac` 0
Fireborns are fire spirits. They're closely in tune with magic and learn all types of magic easily. Being fire spirits, they are immune to fire and poison, and vulnerable to cold. They are vulnerable to ghosthit and drain because being mostly non-physical, anything which strikes directly at the spirit hits them harder.

Monk
Attacks: physical
Protections: none
Special: no weapons.
Monks are members of various martial arts orders. They have devoted themselves to a life of contemplation and revelation though physical fighting! Their life-long secret vows keep them from using all hand-held melee weapons, but in return they are allowed to learn secret techniques of meditation.

Quetzalcoatl
Attacks: physical
Protections: immune: fire; vulnerable: paralyze, poison, cold
Special: no armour, `Ac` 5
Quetzalcoatls are an odd mixture of magic and combat abilities. They are born knowing the spell of burning hands (heh, its their ``dragon breath''). But because of their low natural intelligence/wisdom, they have a very hard time learning new spells. All the same, they may become potent wizards/priests as they have the highest power bonus, and they will typically have a large amount of mana and a fair amount of grace. Quetzalcoatls can be very devastating fighters at low level. A combination of their low natural `Ac` and high base damage tend to make mincemeat out of low-level monsters. However, at mid-level, they really begin to have problems because they cannot use armour.

Wraith
Attacks: cold, physical
Protections: immune: drain, ghosthit; protected: physical, cold; vulnerable: fire
Special: `Ac` 6
The Wraith is a creature of the undead. These characters represent revenging spirits come back to life to work their unholy will on the living. Their undead nature makes them immune to life-damaging forces and their etherealness protects them from physical harm. Like all undead, they succumb to fire readily.

## Generating a character

When you start up Crossfire , you will be asked for a character name followed by a password. If you are playing for the first time, type any name you like; this will be your character name for the rest of the life of that character. Next, type in any password. Remember!: you will need to type the same password again to play that character again! One more note: its not a good idea to use ``real'' passwords to your computer accounts! Doing so may make your system vulnerable to unscrupulous Crossfire server administrators.

Your next step will be to generate random (primary) stats for your character. You aren't limited to the number of times you can roll your stats - so have fun. Notice that the stats are always arranged that the STR stat has the highest value, the CHA stat has the lowest. You may re-arrange the order of these values when you decide that you have rolled some decent stats. Two points: you can never roll a character with better stats than an average of straight 15's, and you can't roll higher than 18 in a stat.

When you roll your character, the stats displayed are the stats you will get as a human (which are unmodified). When satisfied, you can step through a number of classes, each with special bonuses in stats.

Table 2.2 shows how your basic stats will be changed by choosing a different class. The difference between the natural stat limit and 20 indicates the bonus/penalty assigned to rolled primary stats. For example, a barbarian has a maximum strength which is 4 higher than 20-that means he will begin with an additional 4 points added to his strength roll. On the other hand, a barbarian can never get above 14 in intelligence. This means that your rolled character will have 6 less in intelligence if you choose that class. It also means that you can't be a barbarian if you roll less than 7 in intelligence; the poor barbarian would have had a stat below 1.

#### Selecting a character

While each class has its particular strengths and weaknesses, in summary its just a fact that some classes are easier to play than others.

For beginning players, the ``simple fighter'' characters are the easiest to play successfully. The Dwarf, Human, and Warrior are among good earlier choices. As you gain experience with using Crossfire you may wish to branch out into other ``fighter'' characters such as the Thief or Elf, or try your hand at playing ``spellcaster'' characters like the Wizard, Mage, Cleric or Priest. The ``exotic'' classes (e.g. Fireborn, Monk, Quetzalcoatl, and Wraith) are the hardest classes to master.

One more note: If you are using the default game (compiled with the skills system), you will probably find any character class that has a low natural INT (for example, the Barbarian class) will have a fairly difficult time at higher levels. Skills, and most importantly, spells, will be more difficult learn. Plan to spend a lot of loot on grimores, prayer books and skill scrolls.

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