Project Apocalypse

Character Generation Rules
Based on a system by Timothy J. Lanza
Original Game & Draft by Brian Peterson, aka Hahn
Modified by "Dragonmaster" Lou Arruda ( Drgnmstr@Netspace.org )

The All-Important Concept

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. Also, you'll need to choose a kingdom from which your character will hail from. The above list of kingdoms should be a guide to where you should be from.

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.

  1. Occupation/Profession
  2. Appearance/Mannerisms
  3. Personality/Demeanor
  4. Motivations/Goals
  5. Background/Hometown

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.

Notes: In Project Apocolypse, the world (eventually) proves to be a biazarre mix of technology and magic. Therefore androids are an acceptable occupation (Though they would have special restrictions. See me if you want to play an android). As for hometowns, feel free to provide a name for your hometown that seems to fit the kingdom you hail from. If you choose to be from the capital city of a kingdom, you're stuck as I'll be naming those (they play important roles and stuff).

Stats, Skills, 'n Stuff

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.

First, allocate your six attributes. This is very important, as it will decide your starting statistics, and how quickly your statistics increase as your character achieves experience levels. There are six attributes to think about:

Muscle - Your character's physical strength and muscle mass It affects the statistics Attack Power and HP. Basically, your ability to hurt people and break things.

Stamina - Your character's health, fortitude, endurance, and vigor. Affects Defense Power, HP, and Magic Defense.

Intelligence - Your character's intellect, perceptiveness, and capacity to learn new things. Intelligence affects how fast your character achieves experience and skill levels.

Talent - A character's affinity for special skills and abilities. It affects MP, Wisdom, and Magic Defense. Higher Talent basically makes your special skills and magic more effective.

Dexterity - Your character's hand-eye coordination, and ability to do crafty, applied tasks with his hands. It affects your Hit%, making your attacks hit more often and increasing the chance of the treasured Critical Hit.

Agility - Your character's wits, reactions, and reflexes. It affects your Dodge Rate and Reaction, making your battle actions quicker and enemy attacks less accurate.

You have 90 points to distribute between these six attributes. You must spend at least 10 points on each attribute, and cannot have an attribute over 20. So, if you wanted all attributes to be equal, they would each be 15.

After deciding your attributes' values, you must decide the orientation of your character between combat, skilled, and rounded. Choose one from the table below:

Combat Oriented Character (ie Hiro)
Base # of attacks: 2
Weapons/Armor: Best (based on your concept)
No. of Skill Groups: 2

Rounded Character (ie Ronfar)
Base # of attacks: 1
Weapons/Armor: Good (again, depends on your concept)
No. of Technique Groups: 3

Skill Oriented Character (ie Lemina)
Base # of attacks: 1
Weapons/Armor: Poor (wands, butter knives, bathrobes, etc.)
No. of Tehnicuqe Groups: 4

Magic and Mayhem

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 may choose as many as your character orientation allows.

Below is a list of some common technique groups that I have devised a system for. 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. However, you may also consider using this original technique as a special or limit skill (more on that later).

Elemental Techniques

These are you general face-stomping combat spells, like Lemina's Ice and Fire. Gravity Magic is unique in that it is a "neutral" elemental as none of the other elementals have either critcal strength or weakness to gravity. However, certain enemies in the game will have critcal weakness to gravity, for reasons that I will not reveal here...

Thunder Magic
Water Magic
Fire Magic
Air Magic
Earth Magic
Light Magic
Darkness Magic
Plant Magic
Ice Magic
Gravity Magic

Blessings/Curses

These techniques affect the characteristics, status, and hit points of characters.

Health Blessings
Assist Blessings (Helps characters in combat)
Blight Curses (Makes status attacks, like Mute, Blind, Stone, etc.)
Soul Blessings (Cures status attacks, like Mute, Blind, Stone, etc.)

Weapon Techniques

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.

Marksmanship (Cool stuff you can do with guns and bows)
Blade (Swords only, and sorry, no Poe Sword)
Claw (Melee weapons that are strapped to the arms like claws and such.)
Karate (Unarmed combat maneuvers, like Jean, but different)
Mace (Big, heavy, sharp crushing weapons)
Throwing Weapons (Ranged weapons like boomerangs)
Whip (Deals with whips and other entangling weapons.)
Mallet (Blunt smashing weapons. A personal favorite.)

Uncommon Techniques

These spells are ones that are not very common. They can be taken freely, and have no special requirements.

Song (Combat magic based on sound.)
Spellcraft (Spells that enhance other magics.)
Trickery (Tricky, dextrous battle manuvers.)
Chaos (Unpredictable forces, kinda like Ronfar's chance.)

Rare and "Exotic" Techniques

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.

Chronology (Manipulates the flow of time in combat.)
Mind (Centers on controlling and manipulating the enemies.)
Leadership (Inspiring and bolstering comrades combat abilities.)
Tactic (Battle strategy and combat placement.)

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.

Special Skills

They work like PS4's skills in that they don't drain SP, however, they do have limited uses. Also SP-restoring items do not work with them. Generally they are more powerful than techniques though. You may choose to have your special weapon skill implemented here if you would like. If you have another idea about what you would want to use here, let me know. All the above groups are fair game to be modified, and there are special groups such as "True Magic" (for the mages of Savanti) and "Android" (for androids).

These can be levelled up to get more casts and more spells via MXP.

Summoning Crests

Throughout the game you will find crests that you can use to summon Spirits of the Founders, the ancient beings that the people of Mirzha believe created their world. These crests summon Founders tied to the following elements: Fire, Water/Ice, Thunder, Plant, Darkness, Light, Wind, Earth, and Holy. They can only be used a limited amount of times in battle, and they do cost MP (based on their level). They can be levelled up by wearing them in battle, and every three levels you have a choice of either adding another chance to cast the spell or upgrading to a more powerful spell (though you'd only be able to cast it once until you level it up more).

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.

Dragonmaster Lou

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