Hisa's Garden Character Creation

Hisa's Garden

The PCs are a small school club dedicated to Altima's VRMMO experience. You actually only joined Altima fairly recently – within the past year following the quiet announcement of its impending shutdown, and in any case long after the game had gone to slumber. In that time, you've played the game for the game's sake, learning mechanics and doing quests done innumerable times before by others. You've wandered a world gone silent and walked amongst the great works of your forebears.

Basic Creation

Name:
You're from a school in Amahara but there can be a token foreigner.

Background
You're a high school student.

Plot Hook/Hobbies
Each character has a plot hook. I haven't decided whether these will be assigned or what but they will be unique per character. There may also be hobby slots to further differentiate characters.

Hook Examples:

• Founder of the club?
• Heir of a great guild?
• Useless IRL skill that turns out useful?
• Designated shounenko?

Appearance
The appearance as well as vocal tone and even body odour of your character in game. This is, in all respects, your new body. In particular, it does not have to be the same gender nor remotely similar in any way to your old body which is now but a memory, though it does necessarily reflect the character's chosen race lines. Altima was notorious for its level of character customization. When you include upper "evolved" races, there are literally hundreds of race options and combinations, up to and including "beholders".

That said, most of the blatantly inhuman races came with heavy drawbacks in return to sometimes quite niche abilities or stat caps, with some being strictly academic choices or curiosities where optimization was concerned. Aside from that, there were real psychological reasons why most players opted to simply be enhanced or beautified versions of themselves, or at least played characters that maintained their real life gender and avoided gross deviations from human norms.

Talent

Talents account for the natural aptitude and experience you have for VR games. There are six in three categories – Skills, Smarts and Socials. Skills cover your actual ability to play the core game, which is mostly about fighting computer controlled entities or other humans in a virtual reality and is important for fighting, tolerance of builds with high skill floors, negotiating dangerous environments or any task that requires speed, precision or timing. Smarts cover the perceptual and intellectual aspects of gameplay in the virtual reality of the world and are the foundations upon which savvy players can build advantage, mould situations and win battles before they are fought. Finally, Socials govern your interaction with the characters and societies and organizations of the virtual world and participation in the unavoidable community aspect of massively multiplayer gaming. These sets of paired Talents have overlap but are also very complementary. While they are often both able to accomplish something, they will do so in significantly different ways and often with very different consequences. Of particular note, only one of the two in each set can be used to actually initiate an action but the other one always wins initiative. They can be seen as "active" and "reactive" counterparts to each other.

Every rolled action in the game is based on a pool of Source dice derived from the relative resources being thrown at the problem against a difficulty modified by the Talent the action is based on. Talents can themselves be used as a pool of Source dice – but only when based off a different Talent and generally only for actions that must depend on the player's inherent qualities because very few in-game traits or skills could possibly apply. Each dot you have in a Talent reduces your difficulty threshold by 1 from 10. This threshold of (10 – talent) is what you're actually using when rolling dice. Additionally, having high levels of any Talent provides quite significant bonuses to the character, the intent being to make people with different main stats be very different people.

Regardless, rolling a 1 is always a failure and a 10 is always a success.

You start with one dot in everything and 18(?) dots to further distribute. The maximum number of dots you can have in one field is seven. Talents may drop temporarily due to damage but unlike White Wolf attributes raisable by exp, you should not expect permanent gains to be made very often.

Focus (Active Skills)

Focus is a matter of execution – it allows you to put a game plan into action with precision and timing even if you aren't a particularly precise or timely person normally - at least not without practice. When necessary, tasks requiring sheer patience and dedication also fall under Focus. One way of looking at it is as a measure of how hardcore a gamer you are. Characters approaching from the perspective of a genre veteran may well have high Focus as a result. Those with high levels of this Talent almost always log more hours than their peers.

Starting Levels
Having high Focus starts you off at a higher level. That said, everyone will eventually reach level cap and have full race and job access so this bonus eventually disappears.
●: 35+
●●: 45+
●●●: 55+
●●●●: 65+
●●●●●: 70+ (tier 3 access)
●●●●●●: 85+ (tier 3 access)
●●●●●●●: 100 (tier 3 access)

Reflexes (Reactive Skills)

Reflexes are your ability to react quickly and effectively to enemy movements and sudden danger (if you see them coming). This correlates well with skill in fast-paced traditional video games, or real life athletics or martial arts. Nevertheless, FullDive ultimately transcends the limitations imposed by the human body and some otherwise unassuming people happen to have incredibly well wired brains for this interaction. Reflex based players are flexible and unparalleled in their ability to survive unexpected situations or blind encounters if they have a class that suits their particular aptitude.

Extra Actions
Higher levels of Reflexes grants extra actions usable for physical and defensive actions.
●●●●: +1
●●●●●: +2
●●●●●●: +3
●●●●●●●: +4

Knowledge (Active Smarts)

Knowledge is the province of those who like to understand the game before playing it. Unsurprisingly, those with high levels of this Talent are often smarter (or more curious) than everyone else and usually spend a great deal of time doing research. While knowing is only half the battle and is sometimes found wanting for practical solutions, Knowledge covers a vast array of topics like encounter mechanics, build synergy, obscure locations, NPCs and items, or server politics and economics.

Altima Lore
Characters with higher levels of Knowledge have automatic successes on issues and questions pertaining to Altima but only to the way it was before the party became trapped.
●●●●: 1
●●●●●: 2
●●●●●●: 3
●●●●●●●: 4

Build Synergy
Those with high Knowledge are presumed to have better build synergy. Added dice when combining classes?

Perception (Reactive Smarts)

Perception is the ability to quickly and accurately perceive even amidst complex or distracting situations and is especially effective if the character also knows what they are looking for. This is of remarkable importance in combat since there's no defending against an attack that you do not see coming. While fairly passive in nature, a character with high situational awareness can mitigate damage or avoid dangerous situations entirely.

Mitigation
Whenever on the receiving end of damage without any other action, just the fact that you see it coming lets you to mitigate most types of damage somewhat.(???)

Charisma (Active Socials)

Charisma is your ability to make an impression, draw a reaction, to be popular and welcome or hated and reviled with particular animosity – your mileage may vary. You can use it to fit in or to stand out though more often than not it will only bring the tsun out of the tsundere at first. This is obviously a very important talent for those who want to be visible leaders in some capacity – perhaps even more important than the smarts to actually do things yourself, so long as you have clever allies. Finally, Charisma governs a person's deeper reserve of abstract will, which is part of what makes them compelling people.

Fate
High Charisma gives you Fate.
●●●●●: 1
●●●●●●: 2
●●●●●●●: 3

Manipulation (Reactive Socials)

Manipulation is your ability to get what you want out of social interactions; where Charisma governs the amplitude of reaction, Manipulation allows you to sway opinion one way or another. You can find out the intentions of others while hiding your own, withhold information, deceive, and bring out either the tsun or the dere from a tsundere as you prefer. People with high Manipulation have a sharp air about them that can seem scary to bystanders even if the person is essentially good. It even has combat utility in niche areas, such as for manipulating aggro from enemies in combat or certain rare classes.

Classes

The level cap of Altima was 100. These levels were composed of the sum of the Races and Jobs taken for the character, collectively known as Classes. Because even the longest Class progressions were 20 levels, a level capped character had at least five classes - usually more.

For the purposes of Hisa's Garden, characters gain one dot to distribute amongst Classes for each 5 levels. Fluffwise, your level distribution need not be in multiples of five (though it might well be). The exact effects of your classes should be dicussed with the GM.

Every character has at least one race which is usually selected at character creation but there are some exceptions such as Vampire. Selecting any race, even at 0 levels, results in the avatar reflecting that appearance and invokes

Human-like Races
Reasonably human-like races are usually 5 levels or less but sometimes a few more for those races like dwarves that have abilities, including active ones like Stone Sense. A character who chooses a generic human with no subraces will have 0 race Class levels.

Alternative Races
These are races that are far removed from humanity, at least in essence if not appearance. They average 15 levels and generally include abilities that are obviously superhuman. Inhuman race levels tend to grant good to fantastic stat gains at the expense of serious drawbacks. Racial disadvantages kick in even with no levels taken, so optimized builds rarely dip into alternative races casually.

Advanced Races
These are often upgades of Alternative Races though sometimes they can come off basic races as well - if there is a race-specific promotion or job such as Priestess of Liolith for dark elves, then those count as Advanced Races as well. In some cases, Advanced Race promotions mitigate the problematic traits of the previous tier, making them no brainers. It was common, for example for players to power level through 10 levels of Vampire as quickly as possible to access one of its promotions.

Basic Jobs

Support Jobs

Advanced Jobs