Ogre:CharacterCodex:Attributes
Contents
Character Attributes
Your character capabilities are represented by skills. All skills works the same way except for some special skills that every character automatically have when created. Those essentials skills are called attributes. There are four types of skill attributes used to describe your character: Ability, Resistance, Perception and Movement. There also are some attributes that are not skill.
Non-Skill Attributes
Description
Description encompasses information about your character that does no have any influence on the game mechanics, but makes your character more real. This information is your character eye color, hair color, height, weight or any other distinctive traits unique to your character.
Race
In some settings, your character is not necessarily a human. In fantasy settings, many races exist like Elves, Dwarves or Halflings. In a future environment, you might play a mutant, a robot or even an alien life form from outer space. Your race has an effect on all your other attributes. (See Races)
Size
This is the size category of your race. The size categories are from the smallest to the largest: Fine, Diminutive, Tiny, Small, Medium, Large, Huge, Gigantic and Colossal. Smaller races are generally harder to hit in combat and are better at skills that ask for a small size. Larger races are easier to hit, but harder to hurt and there size can be an advantage in some situation. (See Combat) The following table gives the height and width range for a size category.
| Size | Height | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Fine | 0"-6" | 0-1/8 lb. |
| Diminutive | 6"-12" | 1/8-1 lb. |
| Tiny | 1'-2' | 1-8 lb. |
| Small | 2'-4' | 8 – 60 lb. |
| Medium | 4'-8' | 60-500 lb. |
| Large | 9'-16' | 500 lb.-2 tons |
| Huge | 16'-32' | 2-16 tons |
| Gigantic | 32'-64' | 16-125 tons |
| Colossal | 64'+ | 125 tons+ |
Age
Age does not have an influence on your skills except if you are particularly young or old. Most character starts as a fully developed young adult with no modifier for its age. Each race has a lifespan unit that represents how fast this race gets old. When under the age of maturity, you received a cumulative -1 age penalty for each 2 lifespan units. When over your lifespan, you received a cumulative -1 age penalty per lifespan unit. For example, a human is mature at 15 years old. If your character is 12 years old, you suffer an age penalty of -2. The average lifespan of a human is 75 years. An 80 years old character would have a -5 age penalty.
Ability
Abilities represent broad capabilities of your character. They have influence on all other skills. (See Skills section)
Physical Ability
Strength
Strength measures your muscle and physical power. This ability is especially important for fighter type character because it helps them prevail in combat. Strength also limits the amount of equipment your character can carry.
Dexterity
Your Dexterity measures your hand-eye coordination, agility, reflexes, balance and reaction time. This ability is the most important for subterfuge skill, but it's also high on the list if you typically wear light/medium armor or no armor at all, and for anyone who wants to be a skilled archer.
Constitution
Constitution represents your health, stamina and endurance. When you are hit in combat, you first lose hit points. When all hit points are lost, damage makes you lost constitution points.
Mental Ability
Intelligence
Your intelligence determines how well you learn and reasons. This is also useful for character that wants to have a lot of knowledge in diverse domain.
Wisdom
Wisdom describes your willpower, common sense, perception, and intuition. While Intelligence represents one's ability to analyze information, Wisdom represents being in tune with and aware of one's surroundings.
Charisma
Charisma measures your force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead, and physical attractiveness. This ability represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting. Charisma allows you to influence other and avoid being influenced by others.
Resistance
Resistance represents your ability to defend yourself against specific types of attack. You never check for a resistance. Resistances are used as the DC of an opponent that tries an offensive action against you.
Physical Resistance
Stability
Stability is your ability to stay in place and resist force that want to make you move. This allows you to defend against move and grappling attack for example.
Defense
Your Defense represents how hard it is for opponents to land a solid, damaging blow on you. It’s the DC of the attack roll that an opponent needs to achieve to hit you. It allows avoiding other danger like traps or lessening damage made by area attack.
Fortitude
Fortitude is your ability to stand up to physical punishment or attacks against your vitality and health. It allows you to resist against poison, disease and infection.
Mental Resistance
Wit
Wit is your ability sees an opponent move in advance avoiding its maneuver. This allow you to defend against disarm and feint attack for example.
Judgment
Judgment is your ability to discern the real from the fake and to know when your feelings are wrong and not helpful. Judgment is used as a defense against some traps, illusion, intimidation and fear.
Will
Will allows you to defend against mental influence.
Perception
Perception skills describe a character ability to be aware of its surrounding. There is two ways of using your perception. You can use your perception as a normal skill when you are actively searching for something. You can also use your perception as a Resistance when an opponent tries to do something without you noticing what is going on. Your perception resistance is your appropriate perception skill ranks + 10.
Movement
Movement skills represent how fast you can move and with which agility. But the skill value is not enough to describe how well you move, you must also check for your maneuverability given by your race. There are 5 levels of maneuverability. From the best to the worse there are: Perfect, Good, Average, Poor and Clumsy. (See Movement section for more details)
