Character Loadouts and Feature Skills
Character Loadouts & Feature Skills
Overview
Few souls are brave enough to wade into battle unarmed and unarmored, and fewer still are foolish enough to do it without being either confident in their skills or their Gods! Proficiency with any type of weapon requires practice and dedication to the craft and for each combatant to find their own particular balance of weaponry, armor, and skill focus to suit their needs and goals. This configuration is known as a 'loadout'. While this provides near limitless potential, there are indeed limits.(Your imagination!)
Loadouts and Feature Skill Groups
When it comes to adventuring, it is important to decide how a character acts during conflicts. Loadouts are not the sum total of a character, but they are part of that definition. Loadouts define what skills and tools the character uses to tackle some task, from combat to crafting. A Loadout is defined by the player and treated as a set of constraints for character development and indicates what the character has practiced and trained for.
Feature Skill Groups are collections of abilities crafted for particular aspects of conflict resolution. The basic groups are Martial Skills, Martial-Arts, Wielding, Dream Weaving, and Utility Skills. Each is used in different ways, and has different costs. After character creation, additional Feature Skill Groups may be added to a loadout by paying a number of Dream Seeds equal to the Current Rank of the Loadout. Each Feature Skill Group beyond the second increases the upgrade cost of the Loadout by one Fade Seed of the type needed for the next rank.
Feature Skill Groups start with just two slots open in each, assuming no other bonuses, representing how many abilities a character may have memorized at a given time. Increasing the Loadout Rank or gaining bonuses to memorize allows a character to retain more abilities at a given time. Prepared Wielders may change their memorized abilities whenever they meditate using templates. They may also keep as many templates as they wish in their storage medium of their choice(This must be an item with the 'Record Keeping' attribute), and update those templates as often as they care to.
Few spontaneous wielders have precise control of their magic early on. This is reflected by the limited number of keywords they are able to modify in a single ability without penalty. The number of keywords an ability can use is limited to the rank of the loadout + 1, including methodologies and accents.
Each character begins play with one loadout. The base loadout consists of the following which are described in more detail below:
- Loadout Name: The name of your loadout.
- Loudout Rank: The current rank of the loadout.
- Focused Flagstone: The Flagstone upon which this loadout is based.
- Attribute Rating: Abilities created under this loadout use this attribute by default. Creating an ability tied to a different attribute costs extra.
- Primary Weapon:
- Secondary Weapon/Attack/Shield:
- Armor Type: Unarmored, Light, Medium, or Heavy
- Armor: The specific armor being worn.
- Integrated Chakras: A list of chakras whose abilities are integrated into this load out.
- Max integrated Chakras: 1 Chakra + 1 per Loadout rank.
- A number of sub-domains equal to 1 +1 per Loadout rank be integrated per chakra.
- At character generation, a character receives 2 Chakras for free, as well as the first two sub-domains in each, as part of their Rank 1 Loadout build. These do not cost additional resources. The same Chakra can be selected twice, granting four sub-domains from the selected chakra.
- Feature Skill Groups Select 1 of the following:
- Martial Skills: 1 Martial Ability Slot + 1 per Loadout rank for prepared wielders, 1 +1 Martial Keyword Modification for Spontaneous wielders. Skill based physical attacks fueled by the wielder's breath or stamina.
- Martial Arts: 1 Close-handed Wielding Slot + 1 per Loadout rank for prepared wielders, 1 +1 Close-handed Wielding Keyword Modification for Spontaneous wielders. Physical attacks fueled by mana or Fade.
- Arcane Wielding:1+ 1 Open-Handed ability slot per Loadout rank for prepared wielders, 1 +1 Open-Handed Wielding Keyword Modification for Spontaneous wielders. Mana Based magical abilities.
- Dream Weaving:1+ 1 Open-Handed ability slot per Loadout rank for prepared wielders, 1 +1 Open-Handed Wielding Keyword Modification for Spontaneous wielders. Fade Based magical abilities.
- Utility Actions: 1+ 1 Utility Slot per Loadout rank for prepared wielders, 1 +1 Utility Keyword Modification for Spontaneous wielders. The pool the ability draws from is determined by the ability. All utility actions have a base Utility Rating of D for the purposes of determining time necessary to perform the action.
- Quickdraw Slots: Quick draw slots are allocated to a container with the Quickdraw attribute, such as quivers, bandoliers, spell component pouches, and scabards. Characters gain a quick draw slot at E, C, and A ranks.
- Memory: The number of slots per feature skill that a prepared wielder may have memorized at a given time. Default is 2.
Below is an example of a base loadout at character generation with no other modifiers:
- Loadout Name: Shadowblade
- Loudout Rank: E
- Attribute Rating: Movement
- Primary Weapon Type: Piercing
- Secondary Weapon/Attack/Shield: Piercing
- Armor Type: Light
- Armor: Leather Armor
- Quickdraw Slot: Potion Belt
- Memory: 2
- Integrated Chakras: Third Eye, Heart Chakra
- Feature Skill Groups
- Martial Skills:3 Ability slots
Feature Skill Groups
When a loadout is first created, it starts with a single Feature Skill Group. A Feature Skill Group is, in part, a collection of abilities that are available to be use. Each active Feature Skill Group begins with 2 available ability slots.
There are four types of Feature Skill Groups. These are:
- Martial Skills focus on melee damage with weapons or physical attacks, relying primarily on physical acumen to deal damage and are powered by breath, stamina, or health.
- Martial Arts focuses on using mana to power magical or dream enhanced abilities by using attack actions to focus their power.
- Arcane Wielding focuses on performing abilities powered purely by mana, focusing arcane energies to alter reality.
- Dream Weaving focuses on interacting with the Dream and its residents to perform powerful abilities.
- Utility Skills focus on tool based actions that would typically occur at timescales outside of combat. Utility skills may explicitly be used, once learned, regardless of loadout provided that all criteria and requirements have been met.
Characters also receive a bonus Featured Skill Groups or ability slots to new loadouts based on the Flagstone they based the loadout upon.
- Vitality: Grants an additional Martial Arts Featured Skill for both prepared wielders, and spontaneous wielders increase the number of modifiable attribute by 1.
- Finesse: Grants an additional Martial Skill Group and adds a +1 bonus per Loadout Rank to Martial Spontaneous Wielding CRs.
- Cognition: Grants an additional Arcane Wielding Featured Skill for both prepared wielders and spontaneous wielders as well as increasing their mana efficiency by 1 rank.
- Ego: Grants an additional Dream Weavign Skill Group and grants a +1 Wielding CR bonus per Loadout Rank to Spontaneous Wielders.
Character Creation Process
Below are quick access for each step in the character creation process:
Memorize & Emulate
The memorize bonus in the Cognition Flagstone operates in one of two ways, dending on whether the Wielder is spontaneous or prepared:
Prepared: For prepared wielders, each rank of memorize increases the number of available ability slots for the indicated type (Martial, Close-Handed, Open-Handed, Utility)
Spontaneous: For spontaneous wielders, their memorize allows spontaneous wielders to temporarily memorize a ability that they witness and have the appropriate subdomains for. To determine the cost of an ability to memorize, sum the rank values of the ability rating. (e.g. A CED rated spell would have a value of 3+1+2=6). To determine the total value of abilities a character can memorize, expand the loadout and add any appropriate Flagstone bonuses. (e.g. C ranked loadout = CCC = 3+3+3 = 9.)
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