Hisa's Garden Character Creation

Hisa's Garden
Hisa's Garden Classes

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.

Characters

Jumonji Kazoe (WHITE★ASH) Human Barbarian/Gladiator/Blade Evoker
Kanzaki Rebecca (Semiramis-Hime!) | Dark Elf/Vampire Dark Sorceror/Demonologist/Artificer
Miyata Miyuki (Saikyo_Suneiku) | Lamia/Dark Lamia Alchemist/Bard/Witch/Enchantress/Priestess/Puppeteer
Takashi Moriko (Solvisi) | Pixie-Blood Sorcerer/Witch/Evoker/Abjurist
Nagato Shinji (Princess Momiji of the Blue Moon Garden) | Human Rhapsode
Nishimura Kohaku (AMBER♥HEART) Human Revenant/Dullahan Bard/Bravo/Gladiator/Soul Knight

Basic Creation

Name
You're from a school in Amahara but there can be a token foreigner. Naturally, all members of the Altima Archaeology Club know each other. Whether you use it at all in other contexts is entirely up to you.

In-Game Name
This can be anything, including numbers and special characters so long as it doesn't contain anything filtered. Within virtual reality, any magic involving a person's name will turn up this name.

Background
You were a high school student in Amahara. It is important to define who you were and where you came from, even though one has left that life behind.

Motivator
Each character has one or more unique plot hooks or Motivators that will be unique to them. If a liminal race is selected, then dealing with the realities of your new existence would be (one of) your motivators. If you have no strong preferences or if you resolve your existing hooks, then the GM will assign more.

Examples:

• You struggle to deal with the extremely real drawbacks of your chosen race.
• You are the founder and president of the Altima Archaeology Club so you're the natural leader.
• You are the heir of some great guild.
• You have a skill from your previous life that turns out incredibly useful in the new world.
• You are the designated shounenko.

Hobbies
Pick a hobby.

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 levels. 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.

Talents

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. It is important for fighting, tolerance of builds with high skill floors, negotiating dangerous environments or any task that requires speed, precision, timing, or failing that, sheer perseverence. 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 the difficulty threshold 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.

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.

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

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.

Focused Effect
Focus actions tend to be more (sometimes much more) effective but slower than Reflexive ones.

Liminal Race Unlock
Minimum Focus 4.

Starting Levels
Having high Focus starts you off at a higher level. That said, everyone will gain levels and those lower down gain them faster so everyone will inevitably draw more or less even at some point.
●: 25+
●●: 35+
●●●: 40+
●●●●: 45+
●●●●●: 50+
●●●●●●: 55+
●●●●●●●: 60+

Reflexes (Reactive Skills)

Reflexes are your ability to act and 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

Initiative
Perception and Reflexes are used to determine initiative when it is contested.

Passive Defense
Perception and Reflexes are used to determine passive defences.

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 don't need to roll for issues and questions pertaining to Altima as 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.

Initiative
Perception and Reflexes are used to determine initiative when it is contested.

Passive Defense
Perception and Reflexes are used to determine passive defences.

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.

Bonuses
tbd

Classes

For the purposes of Hisa's Garden, characters gain one point to distribute amongst Classes for each 5 in-game levels their character has. Fluffwise, your level distribution can be anything you like and need not multiples of five, though many Classes have those as break points. The exact effects of your classes should be discussed with the GM. Altima classes were numerous but specific in their nature as it was understood that each character would have many of them. The main limitations are that each has to be consistent and distinct and that tier 2 and 3 classes with more exotic abilities must come from somewhere.

Every character has at least one race selected at character creation. Selecting or gaining any race, even at 0 levels, results in the avatar reflecting that appearance and invokes full racial disadvantages if any.

Gear

Gear adds dice or soak, probably with penalties if it's underleveled.

System

This system will inevitably be fudged around as balance is found.

Initiative/Turn Order

• Init: d(Perception) based on Reflexes. In the beginning, this only applies between

• Those declaring actions based on active talents (Focus, Knowledge or Charisma) declare first. *Anyone that doesn't will be reacting with reactive talents (Reflexes, Perception or Manipulation).
• NPCs will ordinarily declare their Focus actions first.

• Everyone else can respond with reactive talents.
• Abort: d(Perception) based on Reflexes against some threshold. You must have a Reflex action available and will lose the Focus action.
• Round ends when everyone is out of actions.

Combat

In general most of the best magic has a vocal component and is always Focus. Sometimes they automatically telegraph as well. Physical actions have a bit more leeway. For special triggers like forcing a save when hitting with a Reflexive attack, dropping dots or whatever, it is important to have a Class feature for it.

Active Defense: Using Focus on a defensive action (block, dodge or parry) and trusting that it will be relevant when everything resolves. This allows defending others as well as use of defensive magic.

Reflexive Defense: Using Reflexes on a defensive action (block, dodge or parry). This is more or less always going to be a personal defense thing.

Passive Defense: Active when using no Focus action at all. Reflexes becomes the passive defense (possibly with a minus) that decreases per attack received.

Dodge: Avoid an attack by not being in the way. Requires space and some attacks are very hard to dodge.

Acrobatics: Avoid an attack by getting way out of the way. Has more requirements to execute (like Class or magic) but is the only way to defend against, say, a poison cloud.

Parry: Put whatever is in your hand in the way of the attack. Not always applicable.

Block: A better parry that requires a barrier, shield or something.

Focus Attack: Most of the strongest attacks.

Reflexive Attack: Weaker but quicker. May force a save for foes attempting a Focus action.