Fallen Earth: QotW #2: How will stats be handled? + Bonus Question / Answers

Question 1:

How will stats be handled, and what do they each do?
For example: What advantages does having a high rifle stat have?

This requires some discussion of how our stats work, and advancement in general.

-General Advancement

Last week we talked about how advancing tradeskills works, and it brought up a whole crop of questions, so we thought it best to handle advancement in general so people have a clearer idea of the foundation on which tradeskills are built.

There are two ways players advance in Fallen Earth: through the accumulation of experience points and the accumulation of advancement points (AP).

Experience Points:

These are gained through combat, crafting, exploration, and missions. Experience points raise your level and are the most basic form of advancement in the game. A character requires a certain amount of experience points to go up a level; each time a player earns 1/10th of the experience needed to go up a level, they earn 2 AP. Each time a player goes up a level, their attributes receive a small boost. The difference between levels is very small, with APs being much more important than level advancement. Players of drastically different levels can still be competitive depending on how their APs are spent.

Advancement Points:

Advancement points are spent to raise skills, mutation skills, and attributes. They may be spent in any way the player selects, though each skill and mutation skill has two attributes that limit how high it may be raised, such as Strength and Dexterity for Melee. Those attributes must be raised for the skill to reach its maximum for the character's level. One AP will raise a skill 1 point, and 5 AP will raise an attribute 1 point (both of which are further detailed below). Characters earn 2 AP each 1/10th of a level they progress, and APs can be earned through missions in addition to the normal AP grain through experience points. Players will earn enough APs over the course of the game to max out a good number of attributes and skills, so you can be combat-effective while also being a master crafter or someone who doesn't focus just on one thing. Most characters will be able to have 3-5 attributes and 3-5 skills at the maximum level for most of the game if they so choose.

-Attributes, Skills, and Other Measures

Characters are defined by a number of different numeric values: Attributes, Skills, Mutation Skills, Tradeskills, Hit Points, Stamina, Gamma, Level, and Resistances. They do the following:

Attributes:

The basic abilities of the character. They all begin at 11 and increase 1 point per level, in addition to points gained through APs. APs can raise attributes up to 50% higher than its base value for a given level, so a 20th level character with a base Strength of 30 could have a strength of 45 if he spent 75 APs (30/2*5 APs) on raising his Strength. The attributes used in Fallen Earth are the following:

Strength:Your character's muscle power. Affects Melee and Armor Use skills. Has a minor effect on hit points. Determines weight allowance and how much gear you can carry. Affects some mutation skills.

Endurance:Your character's health and resistance to damage. Affects Athletics skill and Armor Use Skill. Greatly affects Hit Points and Stamina. Affects some mutation skills.

Coordination:Your character's ability to control his body's movements. Affects Dodge, Evade, Athletics, and Stealth skills. Affects some mutation skills.

Dexterity:Your character's control over his hand movements. Affects Rifle, Pistol, and Melee skills. Affects some mutation skills.

Intelligence:Your character's learning and problem solving ability. Establishes limits on all trade skills, along with Perception. Slightly affects Gamma. Affects some mutation skills.

Willpower:Your character's force of Will. Affects all mutation skills. Greatly affects Gamma and slightly affects Stamina.

Perception:The acuity of your character's senses. Helps see through Stealth abilities. Affects nearly every skill in the game (Rifle, Pistol, Melee, Dodge, Evade, Group Tactics, First Aid), though usually to a minor extent. Establishes limits on Tradeskills.

Charisma:Your character's interpersonal skills. Affects faction relations, prices when buying and selling from NPCs, managing NPCs and pets, etc. Affects the Group Tactics skill and some mutation skills.

Skills:

The character's learned abilities. Each skill is based on two attributes. Percentages of the full value of these attributes determine the basic level of the skill, and twice that value is the maximum level of the skill. So if Rifle is 75% Dexterity and 25% Perception, and you have a 20 in each, you have a base 20 Rifle skill and a maximum Rifle skill of 40. If your Dexterity was 30 and your Perception 20, you'd have a base 27 Rifle skill and a max of 54. Most skills are 75% of one attribute and 25% of another. The skills in Fallen Earth are as follows:

Armor Use: Allows use of advanced armors and special abilities that increase damage resistance.

Athletics: Allows use of self-affecting buffs to increase physical attributes, speed, etc.

Dodge: Reduces damage taken from pistols and rifles.

Evade: Reduces damage taken from melee weapons.

First Aid: Allows use of medical items and healing abilities.

Group Tactics: Allows use of special abilities that can increase your group's combat effectiveness.

Melee: Boosts damage when using melee weapons.

Pistol: Boosts damage when using pistols, which can be used equally well in ranged and close combat.

Rifle: Boosts damage when using rifles. Rifles can be used in close combat, but your Evade ability decreases while doing so. So rifles in close combat = bad.

Stealth: Allows characters to avoid detection and use special abilities like sneak attacks and masquerading as factions other than their own, but only for a limited time (and if you get caught, it goes real bad, real quick).

Tradeskills: Used to collect resources and make items as detailed last week. The controlling attributes for Tradeskills are 75% of Intelligence and 25% of Perception.

Mutation Skills: These go up in a similar fashion to skills, and all mutation skills are 75% of Willpower and 25% of some other attribute. As to what they all are, we'll leave that for folks to find in-game. For those who are concerned, we're not shooting for crazy fire throwing or flashy shape-shifting mutations. We're keeping mutations a bit more low-key. Think X-Files, not Justice League.

Hit Points: How much damage you can take. It's based on your Endurance and Strength.

Stamina: How much you can exert yourself. It's used to power non-mutation abilities like Sprint, Melee Smash, Gut Shot, Offensive Coordination, or Pistol Whip. It is based on Endurance and Willpower. Using weapons also drains stamina in various amounts, so a character can stab with a knife longer than they can swing a sledgehammer before needing a rest.

Gamma: Your internal reserves for powering mutation abilities. Based on Willpower and Intelligence.

Level: Overall measure of your character's power level, though not a hard and fast measurement, since characters can earn more APs than average for their level by doing certain missions.

Resistances: How resistant you are to different forms of damage, from Slashing and Bludgeoning to Radiation and Psionic. Resistances are determined through a variety of factors, including armor, mutations, and special abilities.

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Question 2:

Are there zombies?

Yes. And if anyone tells you to go to Newton, stab them in the face and save yourself a zombie bite.

And a quick bonus, some clarifications from last week's tradeskill post:

1. Players can have multiple characters, and these characters can craft simultaneously. Sure, you could have a crafting alt, but he has to earn APs to get a high tradeskill maximum, since tradeskills are limited by his Intelligence and Perception, and he has to go out into the world to find recipes and knowledges. So unless you invest a bunch of time in leveling your crafting alt, it won't be that useful.

2. When using tradeskills, your tradeskills go up and you earn experience points if you are making something that is a challenge to you. The experience points gained by crafting alone are not very high, though, compared to other activities. We expect people to be crafting while doing other things, and have worked it into our math regarding advancement. Players who just sit in a crafting facility and make things all the time are not going to advance quickly, as they are risking nothing, but they can do so if they want to. We added the experience points from crafting mechanic to better empower players who aren't into combat.

3. We'll deal with factions and what they teach in a future QotW. For now, we'll just say that each faction has skills and tradeskills they specialize in and teach knowledges for before other factions.

4. The requirement for Perception and Intelligence to max out tradeskills is minuscule, in the grand scheme of things. For example a 50th level character can have a max Intelligence and Perception of 90, which costs 300 APs. By 50th level a character will have earned at least 1000 AP, but more likely 1250-1500, so 300 APs is by no means a huge investment (and maxing out Perception is a great investment of APs, since it affects so many skills).

5. You can learn as many tradeskills as you want, but because of the time component spent developing each one, it's unlikely you'll get far in more than a handful.

ENJOY!

~Acropolis