This document explains the character creation suite. The character creation suite is 3 rooms laid out in the following manner :: .----. | | | | Gender/Description room `-++-' || .-++-. | | | | Race selection room `-++-' || .-++-. | | | | Guild selection room `----' Often, the first thing you should decide on when creating a new character is its primary guild membership. Your choice will have a strong influence on the role you are going to play in the RetroMUD universe, as each guild emphasizes different aspects of the game, i.e. combat, magic or service skills. You cannot change your primary guild except through reincarnation ( HELP REINCARNATION ), but later on you will be able to enhance your skills with those of secondary and tertiary guilds, whose availability also depend on your choice of a primary guild. ( HELP CHOICES ) Each guild allows an unique set of skills and spells to be used, and although certain abilities are common to several guilds, many others are only available to the highest initiates of a guild and through choosing secondary and tertiary guilds accordingly as you gain even more experience. More at a glance information about guild abilities can be found online at http://www.retromud.org, and if you didn't do it already you might want to read the hints in ( HELP GETTING STARTED ). ********************************************************** Using the guild room :: 1) Visit the guild room and determine a guild that you wish to play. Use the 'list' command to see all available primary guilds with a short description. 2) Use the 'info' command to receive detailed information about each guild you are interested in. 3) Use the 'select' command to choose your guild once you decide on a profession you like. You can always re-'select' a new guild while in the guild room. 4) Use the 'help guilds' command and its available subtopics once you have chosen a guild to learn more about the background of your chosen profession and helpful hints on getting started and available powers. 5) Proceed to the race room, using the 'mesh' command to find a race that matches well with the criteria of your chosen guild. ( HELP RACEROOM ) 6) If you find a race you particularly like, and its a bad match for the guild you chose, you can always come back and change again. ************************************************************* What does all the guild information mean? :: 1) Description: An overview of the guild's philosophy, its intentions and goals in the RetroMUD universe and some typical character traits. This should give you an idea of what direction to take, roleplaying-wise. 2) School of Magic: Two types of magic exist on RetroMUD, hermetical and spiritual magic. Every guild is either non-magical, solely relying on skills, or using hermetic or spiritual magic. As each race has a different prowess in using hermetic/spiritual magic, this is important to know when considering a well matching race. 3) Alignment: Some guilds only accept players of a certain alignment, refusing service to all others. Although any race can be of any alignment, some suffer penalties for being good or evil, so think twice before creating that devil paladin. ( HELP ALIGNMENT ) 4) Hermetic/Spiritual Bulk: Maximum level of bulk members of the guild are allowed to wear before suffering penalties in the respective area of magic. Non-magical guilds may ignore this unless taking a magic-using secondary or tertiary guild. Bulk restrictions do exist for certain skills, but they are independent of the restriction listed here. ( HELP BULK ) 5) Guild Abilities: Primary guilds consist of 20 levels, secondary guilds have 14, and all guilds chosen as a tertiary may be increased to level 9. As you advance in guild levels, an increasing number of skills and spells will become available for you to train and study. You can list all spells of a guild with the 'list spells all' command in the training/study room. ( HELP LIST ) The level number of an ability is the minimum level you need to reach in the guild before you can train it. 6) Bonuses/Restrictions: In addition to unlocking new abilities, sometimes a restriction or bonus comes into effect when reaching a level. Most commonly you will be forbidden to use certain weapon or armor types. 7) Stat Potential: When advancing a guild level, any of the statistics listed here may increase by a relative amount that is determined by the prefixed scale and random chance. ( HELP GUILD BONUS, HELP SCALES ) The higher up a prefix is in the relative scale, the larger the stat increase will be, although the absolute amount of points gained is randomized within these bounds. 8) Point Max Potential: Your maximum amount of hit points (hp), spell points (sp) and endurance points (ep) also increase with each guild level randomly within bounds determined by the scale prefixes. 9) Regen Potential: Analogous to the increases in point maximums, regeneration of hp/sp/ep is also improved by leveling up according to the scales of the guild listed here. 10) Category Potential: In addition to incrementing several physical statistics, you may also get bonuses on the skill/spell categories listed here. Again, the (slightly different) scale prefixes tell you roughly how much bonus to expect. See ( HELP SCHOOLS OF MAGIC ) and the help pages of specific spells to find out which category a spell belongs to, or when looking up a skill, use ( HELP SCHOOLS OF SKILL ) and the skill's help page. 11) Criteria: This is a short summary of the importance of certain statistics for this guild. The higher the prefix, the more emphasis is put onto the statistic, as every skill/spell's potential is affected by a certain skill or stat. Although you can get by with mediocre stats, it will certainly impose limits to your power when choosing a race that does not improve the important stats very well. While this can help, it is generally not as critical as some other factors, like alignment or hermetic/spiritual maximums. 12) Race Suggestions: Some races are better suited for certain guilds than others, as their natural statistic improvement complements the criteria of the guild. Unless you know what you're doing, you should pick one of the races listed as a good match by the 'mesh' command, or just pick "Human" as they are an all around average race with no special quirks you'd have to worry about. Don't let this suggestion keep you from choosing a race you like, though; Chances are you'll get along just fine in most cases, and after all, it's all about having fun. |