This chapter discusses how the stats work. This is all behind the scenes stuff, but it will help put the values into context. You do NOT need to read this to enjoy the story and this story is NOT a stat fest. I keep it mostly behind the scenes in the story to prevent it from becoming bogged down with math. At the same time it helps keeps things guided as to the relative strength of various individuals. Also be warned that some of this is a bit of a spoiler, understanding how everything works. You can always skip this and come back at any time, this information is just a bonus.
If you do decide to use my stat system, all I ask is credit and a link to this story. Lots of good reviews are appreciated as well if you like it.
These are the effects of a single point in each of the stats. These are based off of a normal human having in the range of 40 to 100 with a maximum stat point count of 300. When the stats get over 100, then things get a lot more wonky.
Constitution +150 HP +0.15 HP Regen/Hr +0.1 Max Speed (MpH)
Strength +50 HP +0.05 HP Regen/Hr +0.1 Max Speed (MpH) +2.2 lbs (1 kg) Max Carry Weight
Dexterity +5 SP +0.005 SP Regen/Min +0.1 Max Speed (MpH)
Endurance +15 SP +0.015 SP Regen/Min +0.1 Max Speed (MpH)
Wisdom +10 MP +0.01 MP Regen/Hr <0.0005> Best Decision %/Choice
Intelligence +10 MP +0.01 MP Regen/Hr <0.001> Learning Rate %
Charisma <0.0002> Convince %/Speech <0.0002> Attractiveness %/Person
Luck <0.0001> Chance %/Event <0.001> Crit %/Attack
Fate <0.005> Event/Day %
HP (Health Points): This is how much damage a person can take. The best way to think of HP is to compare a professional boxer to couch potato. The boxer can take a lot of hits and keep going. The couch potato will be out in a couple of punches. For certain attacks, like a sword to the back of the head, that is fatal no matter how much HP you have. People are like onions, they have layers, the deeper you go the greater the damage until it would be so high that a person would die regardless of HP.
Players feel weaker as a percentage loss of their HP. It should be noted that a player with a very high HP will have more blood than a player with low HP. These differences only become apparent at extreme differences in HP.
The base measure of blunt damage is Speed(Mph)*Strength. Strength can be changed out for the weapon and this is ignoring all cutting or other special effects. Defense is calculated my multiplying Constitution and an amour value together and subtracting that from the attack damage. A boxer who has been hit a million times won't even be hurt by a lighter tap.
HP Regen: This is set at a base of 1% per hour. Wounds take time to heal, so unless there is an ongoing condition, it is possible to recover in three to four days. Unfortunately the more serious wounds tend to come with percentage penalties that linger.
Max Speed: Four stats contribute to max speed which is separate from stamina. Constitution is your body holding together while you run, Strength allows a person to push off faster, Dexterity is about reaction time, and Endurance prevents the muscles from burning up. The fastest man in the world, Bolt, can do about 27 MpH in a hundred meter sprint. Running across water for a human being requires around 90 MpH.
Jump Height: Jumping is a combination of strength and dexterity. Getting the math to work so people were not shooting all over was very tricky. The short of it is that when the added value of strength and dexterity is one hundred, jumping height drastically scales off.
Up to 100 (Strength+Dexterity), Jumping Height=1.01^(Strength+Dexterity)
Above 100 (Strength+ Dexterity), Jumping Height=0.8+1.001^(Strenth-100)+1.001^(Dexterity-100)
So it really starts leveling off at around 2.7 feet.
Max Carry Weight: This is the weight a person can carry without an SP penalty.
SP (Stamina Points): These are consumed in a tier based structure. Take your speed in MpH and then round down to the nearest ten, substituting one for zero. Nine would round to one. Eleven to ten, twenty nine point nine to twenty and so on. Multiply that value by two and again by the MpH. That is the amount of SP consumed per minute. Carry weight in pounds would be also multiplied against this number.
5 MPH = 5 SP/Min
9 MPH = 9 SP/Min
10 MPH = 200 SP/Min
10 MPH (Over 5 lbs) = 1000 SP/Min
19 MPH = 380 SP/Min
20 MPH = 800 SP/Min
27 MPH = 1080 SP/Min
90 MPH = 16200 SP/Min OR 270 SP/Sec
SP Regen: It has a base of 0.1% per minute or 6% per hour. This means a person could recover after a seventeen hours. Again this was designed with real world limits in mind. You can't go running all day, eat a piece of bread and then keep running. Sixteen hours also indicates a person has to sleep in that time frame. This also takes into account walking long distances, sure you don't feel tired right away but you eventually will and won't recover as quickly.
MP (Mana Points): The consumption varies widely per the ability used. I will note that the MP is very low on purpose. A magic oriented character will have to prepare and work to make sure there MP remains full. This also prevents magic spam.
MP Regen: It has a base of 0.1% per hour. This means it would take about forty two days to completely replenish one's MP. This forces magic oriented characters to find ways around such limitations with skills and a high number of points into Wisdom and Intelligence.
Reaction Time (s): 0.99^((1+Percentage Change)*Dexterity)
This means you start with a base of one second and go down from there. This also means there are diminishing returns for each bit of increase. The reaction time counter is sent when an individual notices something. Let's take someone shooting a gun. We will go with a speed of 3000 ft/sec. Different guns travel faster, slower. If the gun fires at the instant you notice it then with a 0.25 reaction speed you will need to be 750 feet away to even move.
This then ties in with movement speed and when you notice the gun being aimed. This is taken to a lesser extent for arrows and thrown weapons. If I noticed someone bringing a gun up, that gives me an extra second to act which is a big deal. 1 MPH = 1.466 FPS (feet per second). So moving does make a big difference and the ability of an opponent to track a target. Matrix style dodges would require an insanely high maximum movement speed and reaction time for close quarter's combat, stat points in the hundreds, not tens.
Best Decision % / Choice: (1+Percentage Change)*Wisdom*0.0005
This means that for each choice there is a chance of making the best possible choice. There are millions of choices we make each day, not just the large ones we pay attention to. Do I rub my eyes? Do I hold back my yawn? Do I wipe my butt one more time after taking a shit? These are all the choices that are impacted. This does not include the very best decision possible, merely the best decision one can come to out of all the possibilities they can contemplate.
A person who doesn't understand anatomy can't just cut open a person and perform open heart surgery because they have a very high percentage. The knowledge just isn't there to carry them through the task. Also a person's own history and motivations will sway them to specific choices of action.
Learning Rate %: (1+Percentage Change)*Intelligence*0.001+1
Everyone learns at their own base speed of one hundred percent. This speed varies slightly from individual to individual. By increasing the learning speed concepts and tasks are grasped at a faster rate than normal. An individual could easily halve or further reduce the time it would take to learn a concept.
This is applied only to intellectual concepts. One cannot learn how to throw or catch from a book. While they can read about the best way, they still have to put it into practice in order to gain the experience needed to improve the skill.
Convince %/ Speech: (1+Percentage Change)*Charisma*0.0002
This is the ability to change a person's mind to your side per speech event. A speech event is a single sentence or collection of sentences delivered together. So over time in a conversation a person would be drawn in to your point of view.
Attractiveness %/ Person: (1+Percentage Change)*Charisma*0.0002
This is the concept of a soul mate. For each person encountered there is a slight chance of instant attraction at first sight.
Chance %/ Event: (1+Percentage Change)*Luck*0.0001
For every event there is a favorable or unfavorable outcome. Having a bullet jam in a gun aimed at you would require a tremendous amount of luck. First a bullet would have to be made improperly and then that specific bullet would have to be selected by your opponent. The bullet would have to be the first one in the chamber and then it has to jam. This merely shifts the scale in one direction rather than the other. An opponent's luck would cancel our your own and there is still randomness involved.
Even with a value of 99%, there are still events that will happen against you. Even 100% can be canceled out by a person inspecting and confirming things to remove luck as a factor. My sword was checked yesterday by a blacksmith so there is 0% chance of it breaking, so 100% would do nothing. Luck exploits the unknown to push things in your favor. The greater the unknown the more luck can influence.
Crit %/ Attack: (1+Percentage Change)*Luck*0.001
It is simply the chance that double the HP will be removed in an attack.
Event %/ Day: (1+Percentage Change)*Fate*0.005
This is the chance of something interesting happening. J
I have also included a number of examples below. I use these as a guideline for the most part and it should be noted that I do not include skill benefits in the calculations. This is merely to have an understanding of stat point distribution.
STATUS
Name A Regular Modern Soldier
Level 30
Constitution 20
Strength 35
Dexterity 20
Endurance 25
Wisdom 10
Intelligence 10
Charisma 10
Luck 5
Fate 0
STATUS
Name A Regular Modern Officer
Level 50
Constitution 25
Strength 35
Dexterity 20
Endurance 30
Wisdom 30
Intelligence 30
Charisma 20
Luck 10
Fate 0
STATUS
Name A Delta Force Operative
Level 80
Constitution 45
Strength 60
Dexterity 40
Endurance 55
Wisdom 35
Intelligence 35
Charisma 20
Luck 10
Fate 0
STATUS
Name A Regular Modern Doctor
Level 85
Constitution 20
Strength 15
Dexterity 60
Endurance 40
Wisdom 80
Intelligence 60
Charisma 25
Luck 15
Fate 0
STATUS
Name A Regular CEO
Level 70
Constitution 20
Strength 15
Dexterity 15
Endurance 15
Wisdom 40
Intelligence 50
Charisma 85
Luck 20
Fate 0
If you are a soldier, officer, delta force member, doctor, or CEO I apologize if you were offended by my stat distribution. It is merely a generalization, certain people would have higher stats than others, but I they give me a very useful baseline to work from. It should be noted that level does not indicate combat potential, only amount of stat points available.
Experience: Experience is based on an exponential curve based on the opponent's level. In my story death is required to register experience. As you can see in the table below, it makes a big difference fighting and killing higher level opponents. Credit only goes to one individual based on who did the most damage. Indirect means such as burning, suffocation, or poison count as long as there is only one degree of separation. If you light a torch on fire and then pass to torch to another person who then burns up a bunch of people, they will get credit and not you since you had two degrees of separation and they had one.
The experience needed for any level is 500*LvL. So level 17 requires 8,500 EXP. This means that at higher levels it takes much longer needed to advance up.
< -10 = 0 EXP
-10 = 1 EXP
-9 = 2 EXP
-8 = 3 EXP
-7 = 5 EXP
-6 = 8 EXP
-5 = 12 EXP
-4 = 18 EXP
-3 = 27 EXP
-2 = 41 EXP
-1 = 62 EXP
0 = 100 EXP
+1 = 150 EXP
+2 = 225 EXP
+3 = 338 EXP
+4 = 507 EXP
+5 = 761 EXP
+6 = 1142 EXP
+7 = 1713 EXP
+8 = 2570 EXP
+9 = 3855 EXP
+10 = 6000 EXP
> +10 = 6000 EXP
Quests: Quests are divided up into six levels and are the primary means of experience at the higher levels. There is a level requirement to receive specific quest ranks. The higher ranked quests are insanely difficult. Each higher rank is supposed to be one hundred times more challenging than the one previously. Only one quest from each rank can be assigned at a time and they can't be deleted once accepted. In addition a new quest is given out when the old one is completed.
RANK EXP STAT POINTS LVL UNLOCK
Easy 10 0
Medium 100 10
Hard 1000 1 20
Legendary 10000 3 30
Lifetime 100000 5 50
Impossible 1000000 10 70
Skills: Skills are divided up into four different categories. Combat skills, crafting skills, survival skills, and spiritual skills. Each skill has five levels and small percentage bonuses are given out for level 3 to 5. Leveling up skills happens at the speed of plot. I mean to say, there is no concrete way of how skills level up besides repeating the action, and even then the speed of leveling up is hidden.
The percentage bonuses tend to focus around the stat or ability affected. They are kept small since there are a lot of skills, and mastering a bunch could easily make an individual way too overpowered if the percentages are not kept at a low amount.
There are five tiers to skills. Mastering a skill may or may not unlock another skill in the chain. This mostly depends if I can think of anything reasonable as the next tier of skill. Higher tiers tend to have better skills with more active ones.
In addition to skills there are environment effects and status effects. Environment effects have to do with the location. A person in a cold environment may experience an HP penalty, or if they are in a mystical glade receive an MP Regen bonus. The levels can vary but for the most part they stay in the range of 1 to 5. Status effects are everything else. Titles, actions, disabilities, they all get lumped into this category. Titles tend to be either one level or multi-level up to an unknown amount.