Jason emerged from the tunnel and was assaulted by two sounds simultaneously. The first was an insistent trilling sound, like a toddler playing on the high end of a keyboard. It repeated at least half a dozen times, and Jason looked around desperately for the source. The second sound was Gracie screaming at him.
{Jason, you’re okay. What happened? Did you succeed?}
“Nice to hear you,” Jason replied. “Someone could have told me what happened to those who failed. Seems to me that mission was a little more dangerous than just dying in a game.”
There was silence on the other end for a few seconds before Gracie spoke tentatively. {Conor didn’t tell you? I never saw it. I just run the operations here and don’t talk much with corporate, but Conor told me about a guy in a different division of our department who spent 36 hours in there before they pulled the plug on him. Scrambled his brain pretty good. I hear he is still in a coma in the hospital.}
A shiver went down Jason’s spine at what could have been. “Pulled the plug?”
{Yeah. You aren’t supposed to do it, but all the research they had on the puzzle was that you had 36 minutes to solve it, so after a day and a half, they figured something must be wrong, and they disconnected him from the game. You know how on your computer, when you eject a flash drive, you are supposed to allow the computer to end all operations first? Same thing with this. You need to go to sleep or die in the game, so your brain can disconnect from the virtual world, or you won’t reconnect appropriately in the real one.} She paused again. {Conor should have told you this. If he didn’t, when we are through all this, I will shoot him again.}
The reminder that her brother-in-law was shot brought him back to the seriousness of the situation, and he understood he wasn’t the only one taking risks he didn’t sign up for. “Well, I’m out now, and I have the item. What’s the plan?”
{So you have it? Wow, first try. I would have guessed that was impossible. Well, first, we need to get you safe. Where are you?}
Jason didn’t hear anything for a while and assumed Gracie was looking at a map or zooming out from his location. As far as he could tell, he was on the back side of the mountain. He was still at a considerable elevation and could see a vast forest several miles away and hundreds of feet down. Between him and the trees was a path snaking through foothills filled with large boulders, pine trees, and deep-walled canyons.
{Looks like you’ve got a considerable hike before you can get to a transportation node.} Another pause. {And you are in a PvP zone, so you need to get moving.} Another pause. {%&#@, and you are only level 1, we need to get you somewhere safe fast.}
Jason wasn’t sure why one of her words was garbled, but he understood her intention. “Where to?”
{I don’t know yet, just run.}
“Come on, Snowy, let’s get out of here,” Jason said without looking back and took off at a sprint down the trail.
{Who’s Snowy?}
“My wolf. I assume she followed me . . .” Now he did look back and was startled to see a small husky chasing him down the trail. “Snowy?” The dog barked in confirmation and kept running up to and then past her master as Jason slowed down to contemplate the change in the animal. He could worry about that later. Instead, he focused on racing his dog down the trail, his massive orc legs eating up the ground impressively. Snowy was up to the challenge, and the two made it almost a mile before Gracie spoke up.
{That should be far enough. You have an excellent sightline back up the trail, which is downwind. Plus, the rising sun should highlight the route above, reducing the chance that someone could sneak up on you.}
“Who’s going to sneak up on me? There was no one else in that cavern. At least no one else who will wake up in their basement relatively sane.”
{I don’t have time to explain the difference between SIMs and MIMs to you right now. Just understand that you now have the most valuable item in the game, and people will be coming. In your current state, you will be killed by a level 5 newbie. But I doubt anyone less than level 15 will come for you. We need to hurry. Pull up your inventory screen.}
Jason had gotten better at it and flashed his eyes up in his head to yank down the familiar view and block out the rocky surroundings.
{Okay, I will try to explain this quickly. You’ve taken over an NPC, which, by the way, is impossible. NPCs are not built like Player Characters, so the game has sent you back to level one to try and fix as many issues as possible. The orc you took over didn’t have any experience points. He was just set to level 15, but it looks like the game gave you 50,000 for passing the last stage. The good news is that it vaults you right to level 7. The bad news is that it still isn’t enough. Technically you aren’t allowed to enter a PvP zone until you get to level 10.}
Jason was pretty sure PvP stood for “Player vs. Player,” where you could kill other people. It made sense to protect the newbies by restricting access.
{But before leveling up, we need to set up your character. You are an orc shaman.}
“I want to be a paladin. A human paladin.”
{That’s nice, but you are an orc shaman. I can’t change that. Don’t worry; you are a kick-ass orc shaman. It also looks like you are a divine shaman. That isn’t supposed to be possible. Why not? We are breaking every other rule tonight.}
“What does it mean that I am divine?”
{It means you follow a god. Shamans are supposed to follow spirits, not gods, and the designers thought that giving them access to the divine, or demonic, would make them too powerful, which they were right. All other characters can follow a higher power, but PC Shamans can’t. When building NPCs, though, you are given more leeway. You have six Intelligence, meaning you have -6 to all your intelligence skills—one of those skills is Known Spells. As a shaman, you get a bonus spell at character creation and then every five levels, but that wouldn’t be enough spells for a level 15 boss character to be challenging, so the designer of this module made him follow a god that would give him additional spells to make him more formidable. Trust me; it will make sense later. But for now, you need to pick a god.}
“Man does not choose God. God chooses man.”
{&*%$$ %$#@%$, why did I know you would say that? Let’s start with your alignment first.}
“Lawful Good.”
{Gee, that’s original. Sorry, not going to work in this game. There are no laws, and there is no good and evil.}
“There is always good and evil. What I saw back in that room was evil.”
{We aren’t going to fight about this,} Gracie insisted. {Your 3x3 grid of Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil is gone. It has been replaced by a 3x3x3 Rubik’s cube of wonder. Along one axis, you have Honest, Pragmatic, and Guile. Along the second is Ordered, Balanced, and Chaotic. And the last is Traditional, Liberal, and Progressive. And I already know what you are going-}
“Honest. Ordered. Traditional.”
Gracie sighed audibly through the headset. {You are going to be the most fun player ever, aren’t you?} Jason couldn’t quite hear what she muttered next, which was probably a good thing, but she returned quickly at full volume. {Let’s look through the list here . . . Oh, sure enough, here is a god only available to Paladins. . . . Oh, this is a good one. How about a god who strives for racial equality where her followers try to deflower as many virginal elf maidens as possible to fill the world with half-elves?}
“What kind of game is this?”
{Any kind you want it to be, my naïve orc friend. . . Oh, here is the same type of god only for half-orcs. . . . I can see none of these are going to work for your playing style. That’s okay; you are of no use to our German hosts until you make it to level 10, so you will need to complete a few more modules anyway. I have the perfect one for you to choose a new . . . uh, I mean, for a god to choose you.
{It looks like your character has backed up far enough for you to rechoose your spirit realm as well. This orc was an arctic shaman, but that won’t be much use for you in typical modules. The most common are fire and necromancy, but you don’t have the Intelligence for the first, and I’m never going to get you to cast a Death hex, so that probably isn’t good either. How about a stone shaman? They are good and defensive. Practically a paladin.}
Jason let Gracie manipulate his character sheet, trusting her to make good decisions, but he was ready to speak up when needed.
{Let’s leave the spells for now; we can take care of them after we do the levels. Oh, a shaman also gets a spirit animal at creation, but it looks like you already have one. A winter wolf. That’s not impossible at all. Usually, you would get a bat or a mole. Does your puppy have a name?}
“Snowy.”
{You’ve got to be &%#@$%! me. How about Blizzard or Icetooth or Frostbite? Snowy isn’t going to strike fear into too many people’s hearts.}
“No, I will let her teeth do that. Snowy was the name my son gave to his stuffed snowcat.”
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Gracie sighed. {Snowy it is.}
“She used to be much bigger,” Jason said, remembering how the wolf’s back had been as high as his waist before. Now her head barely made it to his knee.
{You used to be level 15. Your familiar levels up with you and will become more powerful as you do. Already a level one winter wolf is just about better than a level 15 anything else, so don’t complain. And your name?}
“Jace Thorne.”
{You don’t think it is too close to your real name?}
“No. Most people think it is a play on Jason Borne and don’t even know my real last name.”
{Well, you are working for a secret division of the US government to take down international criminals, so the super spy angle works well here too.
{Now we are on to the fun stuff. Your six primary abilities are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Spirit. You are probably familiar with the first five. Spirit measures your character’s strength in magic. Based on your ability score, you will gain points to spend on skills associated with that ability. For every five levels, you can increase one of your abilities by one to a maximum of 20. At character creation, you set these abilities based on a point buy system where you have 25 points to spend. A typical starting character has 14s for four stats, with one at a 13 and one at a 15. Then, depending on the race they picked, they get plusses and minuses to those stats. Here are your stats:
[STR: 21, DEX: 14, CON:20, INT: 6, WIS:12, SPR: 16]
[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AL9nZEUF-uVXv3fLVXgyIbBlAHErKhtCk8KMKgT_73Dm2h6Ezfg0npwWvksBxBsRz5Ie2uUP9FWLQKgwgQ-zq7BL419lMeZRcpoJE4xiuqvEXsnL4LMSaBQR-xQZzOVi9AlD13GC4LrD_ZMCI82FQ13ebgee=w1009-h538-no?authuser=1]
{These are, of course, impossible. You can’t go above 18 at character creations. Going that high costs 16 points of your 25, so no one ever does it. There is no point buy value for abilities above 18, but if there were, I would say your point buy is over 60.}
“Why is the orc that high? Shouldn’t the NPCs be built on the same rules as the players?”
{In theory, yes. But it doesn’t work that way for a couple of reasons. The first is complexity. You can customize your characters to the nth degree, and if you are building a module with 20-30 NPCs for characters to fight, and you spent only a fourth as much time on each of them as you would a Player Character, you are talking about hours and hours of fine-tuning that no one will ever see. If you want your bad guy to have a lot of hit points, you could give him half a dozen specific feats and a few spells, then program a script to have him cast those spells and choose specific armor in particular situations. Or, you can just give him 20 Constitution.
{The second problem is that most PCs get their high stats by loading up on dozens of magical items. Even a level 7 character will have magic on every part of his body with several magical weapons. To make NPCs good at fighting, you could equip them with tons of magic equipment, but that would break the game because you would get too much valuable loot from each NPC you killed. Or, you can just give them 21 Strength.}
“Makes sense.”
{Good, back to your character. I’m not going to bore you with the math behind it, but based on your ability scores, you get points to spend on your skills at each level. Each ability has four skills associated with it. Also, you get to set your key abilities, and this ability will produce an extra point per level and determine what feats you can take. As a shaman, you must always have Spirit selected as one of your key abilities. What do you want your other to be?}
“Strength,” Jace said without thinking.
{Shocker. You can change it at level five, but I’m guessing you won’t. You are up to level 7, but because you will be adding a point to an ability at level five, which will change the number of points you get per level, they want you level up five levels at a time, but since you are going to take your ability upgrade in Spirit. . .}
“I am?”
{You are. No discussion. You can’t take it in Strength or Constitution; they are already at 20+. You are a shaman whether you want to be or not, and you will take it in Spirit. I’m the $%#&#$ expert here. Trust me.}
{So, for Strength, this is what it looks like:}
[Strength: 21. Points to spend: 17]
[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AL9nZEUkVvPRVcpRIxpQgZyedlD1kaPywFnF-5WkEvOnmIXSGSW4QgOvcESZdD_4DwWJyzU3tNe7jXsqHJnNGEtSffN8Wkzb5IgoDg-NzdfSETMCCYf_BErlw6ESJPrNik1fyFw-HPH3lpbfTK4rFFgcLGhd=w1009-h119-no?authuser=1]
{For each of the skills, the first number is your base score, which comes from how far above your score is from 12; however, once you get above 18, each additional number counts for two, so for Strength, you have a base of 12. The next number is a Special, which is where the game keeps track of bonuses from feats and your class and race. The third number is where the game records how many points you allocate from your levels. And the last number is the total. You can only put one point per level into each skill, so I recommend seven in Melee and Damage, raising those to 19, and the other three in Athletic.}
“What is Carry, and why do I have five special points in it?”
{Carry is the most useless skill in the game. It lets you lift heavy things and throw heavy things. Maybe if you were a monk and wanted to throw people around. Orcs get a bonus to carry, apparently. I don’t know, I’ve never built an orc before, but I promise you, you already have the highest carry score I’ve ever seen. So you agree with my suggestion?}
“Make it so, Number One.”
{I am not Riker, and you are not Picard. Anyway, on to Dexterity. A score of 14 is actually reasonable.}
[Dexterity: 14. Points to spend: 2]
[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AL9nZEXu5kgy918IZRUBv4gIXh45aNUVm51Cu5K648WePEOfkvIf651Qi_aE5JJXHJ67wUbkNzn9cR99MeVTlCPvmAuUQM8d-RmqE5YkhOB2eKv4A1AGwCD8AM5GHb1mz5KgvqQxj99Z3aosBuBPa7yw91h9=w1009-h119-no?authuser=1]
{Not a lot to talk about here. You won’t be using these skills very often. I recommend putting your two points in Dodge. It is useful for avoiding fireball attacks, but you probably won’t be dodging normal attacks.}
“Okay.”
{For Constitution, we have more to decide.}
[Constitution: 20. Points to spend: 9]
[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AL9nZEVTbZRWSYKL6t35w4tJnDKy4LvOaJaUjwY6vMJVjxSAxg8heSiN49zwK2F1fcW4HhnzKtvdFdh832GselM85_jEfSWfNV0kvXtRHWDQwR9XpKlwJ8fJ8P9lkUf290mdLZGEuZKmQRQzerIMzoAs3gAs=w1009-h119-no?authuser=1]
{These are all good options for you. Resist adds to your saving throw against acid, poison, cold, and a few others, as well as the all-important Death Saving throw. As a stone shaman, you already get a +5 to this, and it looks like you have some other bonus . . . let me see . . . oh, you are wearing a belt that gives you +4. This is pretty high already, and maybe we can leave it alone. Hit Points are obviously valuable. Every normal size character gets a base of 6 per level. Halflings, gnomes, goblins, and other smaller creatures get less. Giants get more. Putting a point here is worth ten hit points by the time you get to level 10. Of course, attacks can do massive damage, so it gets eaten away quickly. D/R stands for Damage Reduction, reducing the amount of damage you take with each hit. You are already at 10, so if anyone does 10 points or less in an attack against you, you take no damage. Armor affects what kind of protection you can wear and your armor class. Pieces of armor require a certain score here. The biggest normal armor out there requires a score of 10 here, which you already have. I would put 7 in Hit Points and the other 2 in Damage Reduction.}
“Sounds good.”
{Now for the bad news, Intelligence.}
[Intelligence: 6. Points to spend: 1]
[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AL9nZEWyE9hX5e1GKZndKA2IwbTDlEU_IeXwBFdDF0ofN_1DEYIckD7zEHIRyreod-JqECZgkxWYhPzwunAyqb3sGCkBzAcjnWD-mwYD9aQMp3jObeAWOtTR9HRzPRq-L7jVc7s41kmGVYB_PG7OXzxRGTM2=w1009-h119-no?authuser=1]
{The only highlight here is that because you can see in the dark, you get a racial bonus of +5 to Perception. Everything else is bad. Regardless how low your ability score is, you always get at least one point every five levels, and I would put it in Spell Damage since you are taking a -6 to all spell damage you do. There are better ways for a shaman to increase spell difficulty, and you will never know many spells.}
Jason said nothing, understanding his character wasn’t going to be a mage any time soon.
{Wisdom is also pretty straightforward.}
[Wisdom: 12. Points to spend: 1]
[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AL9nZEW3D5X-_oZn0gxuyKAJ2gPOP9a8vS3IUeuxVxbPM-a07n6wjXEeo_2WHjZ5qF_GbgtCNu79lpB5EHRVcq9bXn_0KAf2oaaHZiKDWRdPSjyDrOtA0paNS-wZeqkyg57ClYrGeKzWnW4Y9iX7j4Abs4Q1=w1009-h119-no?authuser=1]
{Everyone needs Magic Defense, and if you aren’t a priest or a craftsman, everyone puts their extra points there.}
“Are the # of Spells here cumulative with Intelligence?”
{Yes. If you put the point there, you would know -5 spells. It prevents a priest or paladin who wants to cast a lot of spells from needing to bump up their Intelligence.}
“Sure, put it in Magic Defense.” Jason watched how Gracie expertly moved around the character sheet and figured he could do this himself pretty soon. He knew he could manipulate things in his inventory by looking at them and figured the same was true here.
{Lastly, Spirit. As a shaman, this should be the most important. We must do up to level 5 first; then raise your score to 17 and do the last two levels. The upshot is that you will have 12 points to spend.}
[Spirit: 17. Points to spend: 12]
[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/pw/AL9nZEXu-WsSz4WflZ25Sap0YzDavyFdn_Z-C7OWSCuMkMzXuWm5H64u6Tg1lovr-9hTfpu-KyajKoCaecZVhBtu6AIn1upCxyikVQ-v7WhXOwrYY1pSW1WEyaeknJMis00W2fvdDZi6rWphY-mtXSItoGY9=w1009-h119-no?authuser=1]
{You have a base of 5 for all of these. Mana Generation is how much mana you generate each round. You get a +5 bonus for being a shaman and another +5 conditional bonus if you are in direct contact or proximity to stone. Mana Pool is how much mana you can have at any one time. This number is multiplied by your level. Everyone gets a base bonus of 5, and you get an additional +5 for being a shaman. Spell Damage and Magic Defense are cumulative with Intelligence and Wisdom skills. I would put seven in Mana Pool and the remaining five in Magic Defense.}
“You don’t think I should put something in Spell Damage since I’m only at 0 now once you add it to my Intelligence score?”
{Not yet. You don’t know any spells that do damage. All the spells I have in mind for you are defensive. Eventually, when you know a few that do damage, we can take a feat to address that.}
“Understood. Go ahead.”
{Great. And that was the world’s greatest segue to feats. There are hundreds to choose from. Usually, you can only take feats associated with your two key abilities. You must take feats related to your primary ability or class-specific feats on the odd levels. In your case, that is Spirit and shaman feats. You get four by level seven. I recommend Extra Spell, Mana Surge, Stone Armor, and Totem Reach +2.}
“Sure, I guess. I’d love to look at all the feats to know how to fit them with my play style, but I understand we are short on time. Can you tell me what they do?”
{I have built many paladins, and if your play style is consistent with them, then you can trust me here. Extra Spell is somewhat obvious. You get a bonus spell at creation and then at level 5. Without this, you would only know two spells. Now you know three. Mana Surge gives you yet another +5 to Mana Generation. Stone Armor is specific to stone shamans and gives you +5 to Armor. And Totem Reach increases your totem range by +2. Two more feats will raise it to +5 and then to +10, which I highly recommend for the future.}
“Dare I ask what a totem is?”
{You may dare, but I will get to it later. We need your Strength feats. Unfortunately, as a shaman, your only weapon proficiency is 2-handed blunt weapons, allowing you to wield a staff. We will have to waste a feat for Weapon Proficiency: 2-Handed Bladed Weapons, so you don’t get a -10 penalty when you swing the amazing halberd you have. Lucky for us, this will also work with the 2-handed sword you will undoubtedly want. A paladin or fighter would get this proficiency for free. Then we have to waste another feat to give you Critical Focus, which martial characters also get for free. Without this, you can’t do critical combat strikes. For the third and last Strength feat, I recommend Critical Stun. This will allow you to stun your opponent when you do a critical strike instead of just double damage, which a tactical fighter like you will appreciate.}
“Sounds good. Now we can move on to-”