Ch 1: How does all this work?
Eric was sitting around a table in the bar with his new team, having them introduce themselves and their goals, and how all this “System” business works. Wildwind went first:
“My pack was taken over by the Jaggedtooth Pack. They allied with the Demon Queen, rejected their god, and attacked a pack they had no reason too. In this, they have broken three of the Sacred Ordinances, and so they deserve death. Additionally, I have no Idea what they are doing to my mate. I have yellow aspect, of Nekonashi, and I’m dirt core, Lv. 12. My class is Wild Cleric, and I specialize in dealing damage.”
He then showed his Sytem Status:
Wildwind, son of Ripsky
Lv: 12
Exp: 1300/12000
Class: Wild Cleric
Health: 580/580
Power: 110/110
Stamina: 100/100
Life: 140/140
Mana: 130/130
Contempt: 100/100
Vit: 11
Str: 11
End: 10 (12)
Grt: 11
Stm: 10
Agi: 11
Dex: 12
Eff: 10
Fth: 14
Smt: 16
Dni: 12
Rev: 12
Int: 10
Wis: 11
Foc: 12
Per: 9
Fot: 10
Cha: 10
Clv: 7
Wil: 9
Skills:
Unique:
Class:
Identify {MAX}
Cleansing Winds {5}
General:
Unarmed Combat {8}
“I use no weapons, and I wear leather armor.”
Poor Leather Armor
Block 10 damage from an attack made by a =n entity Lv. 10 or below.
“A Cleric that deals damage? Really? Don’t Clerics usually specialize in buffs?” Noah Divolagio was a scholarly mage, who was using not a dagger, but a piton, albeit a crude one.
“Don’t mages usually use wands?”
“Fair enough, I suppose. I’m Noah Divolagio, I’m a seer mage, without attack spells, but my piton can make up for that, and my foresight gives me an advantage. I’m Dirt core, Lv. 12, and my goal is to take down the Demon Queen and dispel my Chronosis so I can reunite with my family.”
Noah Divolagio
Lv: 12
Exp: 1400/12000
Class: Diviner
Health: 530/530
Power: 100/100
Stamina: 100/100
Life: 100/100
Mana: 130/130
Contempt: 100/100
Vit: 9
Str: 10
End: 9
Grt: 9
Stm: 10
Agi: 9
Dex: 10
Eff: 10
Fth: 10
Smt: 9
Dni: 12
Rev: 10
Int: 13
Wis: 14
Foc: 13
Per: 15
Fot: 10
Cha: 10
Clv: 10
Wil: 10
Skills:
Unique:
Class:
Identify {MAX}
Divination Magic {6}
General:
Small Blades (piton specialty) {3}
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Crude Oak Focus Piton (Common Spirit Grass Core)
Crude Magical Focus (+10% speed for Blue aspect actions)
Deals 50+(1.1 * Wis) Blue aspect damage when stabbing.
Eich was particularly interested in the piton focus, being an Artificer, as the implication that other weapons typically of one aspect - he was at this moment focusing on the parallels between polearms and staves - and he was talking as a rapidfire pace about what materials, inscriptions, and other such things would go into making an intelligence based spear.
“- a conversion inscription to convert Wis to Str? Then I could cut out the spirit grasse’s natural balancing conversion, but-”
“Eich!” Eric interjected, “It’s your turn.”
“Oh. Alright, here goes. I’m Eichhörnchen Chaotisch, call me Eich. I’m a Purple aspect artificer, my primary method of attack is using my luck and items to cause chaos, and I can also do crowd control. Equipment is easy for me, so come to me if you need anything enchanted. I’m Dirt core, Lv. 11, and my goal is to meet with the Demon Commandress that destroyed the town that tortured me and my mentor for years in misplaced fanaticisim to a false god.”
Eichhörnchen Chaotisch
Lv: 11
Exp: 100/11000
Class: Inconsiderate Little Git (Artificer)
Health: 530/530
Power: 100/100
Stamina: 100/100
Life: 100/100
Mana: 100/100
Contempt: 130/130
Vit: 10
Str: 9
End: 9
Grt: 9
Stm: 10
Agi: 9
Dex: 10
Eff: 10
Fth: 0
Smt: 0
Dni: 0
Rev: 0
Int: 10
Wis: 11
Foc: 9
Per: 10
Fot: 13
Cha: 12
Clv: 11
Wil: 10
Skills:
Unique:
Class:
Identify {MAX}
Artificing {10}
General:
Throw Object {20}
“I have no stat gear, but I plan to make some as soon as my class gives the relevant runes.”
Everyone stared at Eich for a second, expecting a bit more. Nothing came, so they all turned to Axle.
“Uh… I’m Axle Callahan, I’m a vampire with a voice inside my head, I’m trying to rescue my captain before his Fae patron gets bored and eats his soul. I work with rapiers, I can manipulate blood, and I’m dirt core, Lv. 11. My class is swiftblood duelist, and I’m green aspect.
Axle Callahan
Lv: 11
Exp: 100/11000
Class: Swiftblood Duelist
Health: 90
Stamina: 120
Mana: 100
Contempt: 100
Vit: 9
Str: 9
End: 8
Grt: 7
Stm: 12
Agi: 13
Dex: 14
Eff: 13
Int: 10
Wis: 11
Foc: 10
Per: 10
Fot: 10
Cha: 10
Clv: 13
Wil: 10
Skills:
Unique:
Hemokinesis (5)
Class:
Identify {MAX}
Duel {2}
General:
Bladed Weapons (Rapier Specialty) {6}
Dual Wielding {6}
Twin Hemoconduit Rapiers
60+(1.1*Agi) Slashing damage
Finally, it was Eric's turn.
“I’m Eric Raine. I want to go home. The only way to do that seems to be to kill the demon queen, so that’s what I'll do. I can summon a rifle. I look yellow, but that’s a bug, and since I can’t use any of my yellow stats, I guess I’m red.”
Eric Raine
Lv: 1
Exp: 0/1000
Class: Fated Hero
Health: 630/630
Power: 200/200
Stamina: 130/130
Life: 9990 (100)/9990 (100)
Mana: 100/100
Contempt: 100/100
Vit: 20
Str: 26
End: 25
Grt: 19
Res: 15
Agi: 13
Dex: 13
Eff: 15
Fth: 999 (0)
Smt: 999 (0)
Dni: 999 (0)
Rev: 999 (0)
Int: 7
Wis: 6
Foc: 11
Per: 9
Fot: 8
Cha: 9
Cvl: 9
Wil: 11
Skills:
Unique:
Identify {MAX}
Class:
Recursive Skillbind {2}
Summon Favored Weapon {1}
General:
Barter With Fate {1}
“My gun does 100+1.1*Str damage per round, in three round bursts.”
“BLESSED GODDESS!!!” Everyone exclaimed.
“Well,” said Eich, “That explains how you shredded that dummy. Those thing are only rated to withstand about 200 damage at once.”
“Yeah, I can see now why It’s such a big deal. Hero’s supposed to be - here made air quotes - “OP”, though, so I don’t see what the big deal is.”
Noah stepped in. “Not THAT OP!”
“Alright, enough fooling around. I need to know what these numbers mean.”
Noah got a starry look in his eyes, and pulled out a notebook.
“Alright, lets go down the list. First: Level. When you level up, you get five stat points. Each level costs One thousand times your level in Exp, and there are a few ways you can go about getting that Exp. If you have a Crafter class, you can get 1000 Exp by crafting an item equal to your level. Same with Warriors and killing things. Hybrids, such as Eich, are a little complicated. Thye get Exp by using their items to kill something, or they can get 75% by having someone else do the killing or crafting. I dobt that will be a problem though, as soon as we get a stable dimension shard we can set up a permanent workshop for him there, and Artificers really only need resources, time and a table to do their work-”
“And some quiet! Artificing is extremely dangerous. Any enchantment over Lv. 15 will violently explode if there is a reversal while I’m making the runes!”
“Good to know,” Wildwind said. “I’ll make sure to stay well outside of the blast radius.”
“Anyway. Note that if your target is lower level than you, you will earn half the Exp per level, rounded down.”
“So anything three levels lower than me or below, will give no Exp?”
“No, it goes from 100% to 50%, then to 25%, then 12.5%, then 6.25%, then 3.125%, and so on. On the other end of the spectrum, each level up from you doubles the Exp gained, so 200%, then 400%, then 800%, and so on. That’s all the things currently relevant about levels, so next: recourse pools. Using a weapon or tool, or casting a spell, always costs the recourse of its respective aspect, red for power, green for stamina, yellow for life, blue for mana, and purple for contempt. Your health, the pool that kills you if you run out of it, is the compilation of all of your pools’ maximum capacity, but is entirely independent of them otherwise. Every adult sentient has at least 500 health, as resource pools have a hard size floor of 100 each. Now, don’t mistake this as incapability to run out, you most certainly can, and it comes with consequences, but your maximum cannot go lower than 100, even if you have stats that are lower.”
“What are the consequences?”
“Running out of power causes extreme soreness,, running out of stamina causes immediate loss of consciousness, running out of life causes great despair, running out of mana causes inability to focus, and running out of contempt causes extreme bad luck. All of these effects persist until your recourse reaches maximum again, and all of them are debilitating, in their own way. Now, your Resources will naturally regenerate on their own, but you can affect the speed with your regen stat and your actions. Each regenerative action will buff its respective regeneration by fifty percent.”
Noah Paused, clearly prompting a question.
“And these actions are?”
“Stretching for power, eating for stamina, praying for life, doing something fun for mana, and being mischievous for contempt.
“Next, the stats. Each aspect has four stats: recourse, attack, defense, and regeneration. Resource stats affect how much of that aspect’s resource you have, Attack stats affect how much damage you do with that aspect’s weapons and skills, defense stats affect how much damage you can defer of that aspect, and regeneration stats affect how quickly you can regenerate that aspect’s resource. When attacking with your fists, your primary aspect is the one that gets applied, and your attack is equal to your attack stat for that aspect.”
“Isn’t that a problem for wildwind, given that he attacks with his claws?”
“We can get weapons that use the same fighting style. Now, The difference in your attack and your opponent’s defense negates that much damage outright, which isn’t a lot, but this effect can be added too, and more importantly, multiplied, by armor. Additionally, if you are wearing equipment that allows you to Block or Dodge, your difference is also counted as that percent chance to Block or Dodge. Don’t mistake these for blocking or dodging, lowercase, because they rely on skill, not luck. If you screw up your block or dodge, then you can resort to Blocking or Dodging, but you should always rely on your own skill before Equipment and Skills, it takes out the bullshit luck. Speaking of skills, let’s go over each of ours. I can see a few seconds into the future at the cost of ten mana per second.”
Wildwind could bless one stat of anyone in the party by two points at the cost of ten life per cast.
Axle could control blood, but has a spirit in his head that wants to control his body.
Eich could enchant items or artifice new ones if he had the right materials and time.
Eric could make new skills when he killed one hundred beings of his level.
Then, it was time for goals.