Character: Overview

   In a role-playing game, the Player creates a fictional character. The Player then develops this character by deciding how they will live their lives. To make things interesting, the Player will typically decide that their character will go exploring and adventuring with others. Along the way, they will gain skills, learn information, collect items and gain wealth. Although the success of the character mostly depends on the decisions made, there is always the element of chance. By breaking down the character’s various attributes, skills and knowledge into numeric form, the Player can track the progress of their character. This also allows for the use of dice as a random factor. To keep things as simple as possible, Phoenix Gaming RPG uses a percentile system throughout.

The attributes used to represent human knowledge and experiences divide into two main Categories: Physical and Mental. Related to Physical is Physical Damage Capacity (PDC). Related to Mental are Awareness and Influence. These make up the five main attributes.

The Categories divide into three Disciplines each:
   Physical divides into Attack, Defense, and Training.
   Physical also has three sub-attributes: Strength, Agility, and Health.
   Mental divides into Intellect, Knowledge, and Spheres of Influence (SoI).

Each of the Disciplines can have many skills learned under each:
   Attack has 22 skills that each relate to a weapon form.
   Defense has only six: dodge, parry, bracers, shield, disarm, and counter-attack.
   Training, Intellect and Knowledge have a much broader scope to learn.
   SoI has only five: Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Ice.

The numbers assigned to each of these attributes represent the percentage of effectiveness in that area. The range in which these values fall also affects what the character can do with that skill.

The skill level of an attribute ranges from 10 to 140. The reason for this range is as follows:

A roll of 5 or less always succeeds despite any penalties or lack of knowledge. This is called a critical roll. Since the skill level represents a percentage, having a skill of less than 10 would be little better than not having the skill at all.

Regardless of any bonuses, rolling 96 or higher is always a failure. So having a skill of 100 is not useful – since 5 points of that would not be effective during a normal roll. However, there are half-checks. The GO will request a half-check (HC) when the character is attempting something difficult or unusual. A half-check means the Player must roll less than half of their skill level. If a skill could only go up to 100, then the most a half-check could be is 50. So when a skill reaches over 90, the Players add the remaining points to half-checks. Half of 90 is 45. Since the most a roll can be and still succeed is 95, the most the extra points can be is 50 (45 + 50 = 95). This means the maximum a skill can be is 90 + 50, which equals 140. Also, 10% of the points above 90 indicate how much above 90 a normal skill check can be and still be successful. This means that with a skill of 90+30 (120), the player can roll 93 and still succeed. Similarly, with a skill of 90+50 (140), the Player can roll 95 and still succeed.

Although the Player records skills above 90 with the remaining points next to a plus sign (+) for convenience, when calculating the percentage of a skill level used with a bonus or penalty, the Player uses the complete skill value. So with a skill of 90+20, the Player calculates the percentage from 110.

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