Character creation is the most important part of any RPG from the players’ perspective, and that is no different in LUNAR: Armageddon. One difference is that each player will eventually create at least two characters – one for Part 1 and one for Part 2. Things get a little complicated due to the Part 1 characters starting at level 5 and the Part 2 characters starting at level 1. Finally, the rules we’re using for this RPG allow players to customize their characters somewhat at every level. Oh, and we also have the fairly rich and complicated magic creation system.
Therefore, we’ll start off with non-statistics part of character creation first. After that, we’ll provide all the rules that do involve your character’s statistics. These rules will be for a level 1 character, but the modifications to bring your character to level 5. Finally, magic will be touched upon at the end.
The first step in creating a character is to develop a strong, original concept. Are you going to play a noble, just warrior, a crafty treasure hunter, or an intelligent, studious wizard? You need to think about this for a while if you want a good playing experience later. Try to come up with something interesting, unique, and non-stereotypical. For Part 1, your character will be hailing from the Earth in the year 3005 AD and the game will be starting off at a military base. While this should not restrict how you create your character (hopefully), please keep this in mind. For Part 2, your character will be a native-born resident of Lunar and anything that fits on Lunar and that’s appropriate for adventuring is fine.
Respond with a complete description to these five aspects of your character. Think about these well, don’t just search for a quick answer. The more this character reflects your personal thought, the more fun you will have when playing.
Once you have that written down in words, think it over, and think you could confidently play this person and enjoy it, you can move down to the second section.
Flame me if you will, but I’m gonna stress this again: Don’t do this part until you’ve done Section 1 completely and thoroughly. Doing Section 2 will be a lot easier and more enjoyable if you have a strong concept for these stats to reflect.
Those of you familiar with the MGS rules will recognize this as determining whether your character is combat-oriented, balanced, or magic-oriented. Guess what? This system also makes this distinction using the same classes, but it only affects your armor selection (weapon selection will be discussed later). This does give you a lot of flexibility, however. You can be primarily a magic user while still using heavy armor or vice versa. However, there are pros and cons to this as armor in this game boosts HP and MP. Combat-armor gives the greatest HP boost but no MP boost. Magic-oriented armor gives the smallest HP boost but the largest MP boost. Balanced armor is somewhere in the middle, obviously.
Weapon class is a new feature of this system. Weapons can boost Attack Power and/or Magic Power, and the class determine how much of each they boost. As a player, you get 6 points to split between Attack and Magic boost, with a minimum of 1 point. So the ultimate Attack boosting weapon would have 5 points for Attack and 1 for Magic (note: if you’re going to be relying primarily on weapon spells like Hiro’s Blade Magic, you can put all your points into Attack and still be able to Poe Sword the crap out of all that oppose you – weapon skills are purely Attack based in this system). Similarly, the ultimate Magic booster would have 5 for Magic and 1 for attack. Pretty straight-forward, I hope…
Ah, here’s the hard part – where you figure out how to allocate your stat points to create your character. Anyway, here are your base statistics:
| Strength (STR) | Affects your character’s physical power and how much damage he/she can do with weapons. |
| Magic (MAG) | Your character’s magical ability, strength of your magical attacks, and ability to learn new spells. |
| Vitality (VIT) | Toughness, resistance to physical trauma, and amount of damage you can take (AKA HP). |
| Spirit (SPR) | Your character’s force of will and inner store of magical energy (AKA MP). |
| Agility (AGI) | Your character’s speed, quickness, accuracy, and evasion. |
From these stats I can derive your other important stats:
I think they’ pretty much self-explanatory, but if you have any questions feel free to ask.
At level 1, all players will have 3 points in each of the base statistics. In addition, they will have 25 points you can allocate among any of the base stats so long as none of them are greater than 15.
To create a level 5 character, I will request you create a level 1 character as specified above and send me a copy of its base stats. Next add 2 points to each of your level 1 base stats. Finally, you’ll have 12 points you can allocate across your stats as you see fit with the limit that you can’t add more than 8 points to any individual statistic. If this confuses you, no worries – you can grab me on IM or IRC to help you out.
Once you have attributes and your character orientation, you must choose some technique and skill groups that reflect your character’s special abilities, talents, or training. You are only limited by your Max Magic Levels and your Magic Experience (MXP).
“Max Magic Levels” puts an upper cap on how many powerful spells you can have. Each particular spell has a certain level associated with it with the maximum level being 6. Therefore, if you have a Max Magic Level of 3, you can have 3 level 1 spells, a level 1 and a level 2 spell, or a single level 3 spell. In addition, a level 1 character can only have a maximum of 3 spells and they all must be level 1. Level 5 characters are only limited by their MAXM statistic.
In order to partially get around the MAXM limit, you can clone a spell. This means you can take an existing spell and change its element without it counting against your MAXM limit. It also uses only half the MXP to acquire the spell.
MXP itself is a concept that’s very familiar to LUNAR IRC RPG players. However, its implementation in this system is different. Instead of gaining MXP after every battle, each player gains MXP with each level up. They can then spend their individual MXP pools to level up or acquire new spells.
Unfortunately, the complexities of the MXP system used here are too many to list here. Therefore, I recommend you just select a handful of spell groups in order of preference and then seek me out on IRC or IM to actually create your spells.
Below is a list of some common technique groups that I have devised a system for within the framework of the overall game system we’re using. Many of them may be familiar to MGS players, but they are modified for this system. Additionally, the old “every spell group has 3 levels of spells and 5 total spells with a max level of 30” does not exist anymore – some spell groups may have more spells than others. However, since you are not locked into any particular spell groups at the beginning of the game, this is not a concern in this system. Also, if you have an idea for a tech. group that you want your character to have, by all means, submit it with your character and I’ll do my best to use it, provided it’ not too insane.
These are you general face-stomping combat spells, like Lemina’s Ice and Fire. Gravity and Acid Magic are unique in that they are “neutral” elements as none of the other elements have either critical strength or weakness to them. However, certain enemies in the game will have critical weakness to them for reasons that I will not reveal here…
These techniques affect the characteristics, status, and hit points of characters.
Spells associated with a certain weapon or group of weapons, like Hiro’s Blade magic. Like the other characters, you do not need to have a Weapon Technique to use a weapon. These are just techniques centered around a weapon. If you have another idea, tell me and I will see what I can do.
These spells are ones that are not very common. They can be taken freely, and have no special requirements.
These types of spells are only found in the hands of great wizards and generals. They may only be taken with a good background reason as to why.
This list is short and by no means should be a restriction. You may browse it over when deciding your character’s skills, but don’t hesitate to send me ideas for new skills that would work better with your character than these.
A minor point, but all players will start with 200S that they can use to purchase items, equipment, etc.
To help give you an idea on what a proper character sheet should look like, here are three sample character sheets:
Once you’ve decided skills, you should be done! Email me a neat, tidy reply and I’ll get back to you with a final draft character info sheet and instructions on when we’ll play, etc.