The androgynous person stared at the screen and then back to Spencer a couple times. He then opened an interface and hit a button. This activated a call feature available to players. Spencer looked confused at the person across from him.
"Yes hello sir, I am here with one of the patients and have some weird readings." The other side of the call could not be heard by Spencer but it clicked that this wasn't a part of the game. The person across from him was a player. "Okay sir, I will wait."
Suddenly Al's phone rang in his hand. He swiped away the call and input a couple of commands before he appeared next to Spencer's disembodied soul. "Hi Drexel, what seems to be the issue?"
The man visibly jumped and took up a reverent tone and showed Al the stat page. Al whistled as he exhaled and looked at his cousin.
"What is it?" Spencer didn't liked being scrutinized. He already felt naked with no body.
"Cousin you hit the jack pot." Al smiled and turned back to Drexel, "These stats are approved Drex, you may continue, I will be monitoring."
Drexel bowed again before the floating screen image of Al disappeared.
"Let us continue." Drexel motioned towards a mirror on the wall.
"One second." Spencer stopped the man before continuing. "You're a player?"
"Of course." Drexel replied nonchalantly. "All of the patients we are working with have been assigned a moderator to assist them, this is a one time use avatar assigned to all moderators assisting in the character creation."
"Why did you call a supervisor?" Spencer's mind was running a mile a minute after what his cousin had said.
"Oh that?" Drexel shrugged, "Your stats are high and you are the first of your bloodline in the game to appear."
"Can you elaborate?"
"Sure, have a look." Drexel just stood there staring at Spencer.
"Uhm," Spencer's disembodied soul did a 360 before returning to stare at Drexel. "How?"
"Oh, you have never played a VR game before have you?" After a bob that could be interpreted as a nod from Spencer, Drexel continued. "Just like when you logged in just think character sheet and it should show up. You can change size and opacity with a thought as well."
Spencer took a deep breath and with surprising ease the screen popped up.
Persona name: Undecided
Player name: Spencer Jay Moyer
Bloodline: Trahlenga
Class: Undecided
LVL: 1
HP: 19
AC: 11
Unassigned Stat Points: 10
15 :Might
15 :Agility
13 :Vitality
15 :Endurance
10 :Judgement
10 :Perception
10 :Wit
07 :Charm
Arcane: 10
Arcane traditions:
0: Abjuration
0: Conjuration
0: Divination
0: Enchantment
0 :Evocation
0 :Illusion
0 :Necromancy
0 :Transmutation
Skills: 10
Skills
0 :Acrobatics(agi)
0 :Animal Control(jud)
0 :Arcane(wit)
0 :Athletics(mig)
0 :Deception(cha)
0 :Insight(jud)
0 :Intimidation(cha)
0 :Investigation(per)
0 :Medical(jud)
0 :Nature(wit)
0 :Persuasion(cha)
0 :Stealth(agi)
0 :Survival(jud)
Class Skills: None
Bloodline Skills:
-Rapid Healing: (innate) heal 1 hp every 5 seconds in or out of combat
"So what does this all mean?" Spencer shifted his gaze back to the man.
"Oh!" A sudden realization swept over Drexel, "You're a true noob."
Spencer nodded in reply, again just bobbing up and down once.
"Stats are ability and skill modifiers. You have really high stats for a beginner. This is unique because it comes from a direct full body scan of you as a person. With these stats you had to be some secret agent of special forces badass."
"The later." Spencer nonchalantly interrupted. Drexel stopped and stared for a second as the statement collided his brain cells.
"Fair enough." Drexel blinked hard before continuing. "The big thing is that bloodline skill of yours is a huge game changer. Your stats are going to make you harder to hit and most monsters and even players don't do more than 5 to 6 points of damage at the beginning which means in the middle of combat you will always be healing any damage you take."
"Sounds useful." Spencer reread his bloodline skill. "What are these other numbers?"
"Oh you have 10 unused stat points you can assign to what ever stats fit your class or wherever you want to put them." Drexel came up next to Spencer's screen and explained each stat and what it was used for before pointing at Arcane. "This is how many and how strong your magic types are, each of these is a school. If you add a point into one that is how many spells you have in that type and the power of said spell. If you take a magic class you get more each level. You can chose what to assign those two by opening a school and clicking on one of the many spells and adding a point. say you want a single level 9 fire ball, you can open the evocation school and search thru the index and choose fireball and click the plus icon and spend all of the points you have on that 1 spell."
"But I have 10 points, why couldn't I have a level 10 spell?"
"Two main reasons." Drexel held up two fingers, "One is you have to spend 1 point to buy the spell school and then buy up your points. So any level one spell cost 2 points. Second reason is unless you are playing a magic class you can not have a 10 strength spell. This incentivizes the players who want to fight with magic to take levels in a magic caster class."
"Wouldn't a player just keep earning Arcane points and spending them on magic?"
"Great question but again that isn't possible." Drexel smiled at the intelligence of the disembodied man floating next to him. "You can only earn Arcane points if you have levels in a caster class and are completing a caster mission or ritual for experience points."
"Ritual?" Spencer asked suspiciously.
"Yes, healing and summoning are considered rituals." Drexel continued to explain. "Now skill points are just improvements on what you can actually accomplish physically. There are two components to Skills in game, your out of game knowledge in the form of muscle memory and your in game skill boost which makes it easier to accomplish. The system uses the mix of those two to optimize your movements together."
"That is kinda cool." Spencer replied. The two continued talking for a bit about the system interface and how it worked before Drexel finally had to interject.
"I am sorry apparently we are the only duo not finished with character creation. Lets get you into a body." Drexel motioned for the soul to float in front of the mirror. A prompt popped up in front of Spencer.
BEGIN CHARACTER CREATION? YES/NO
Spencer clicked yes and another pop up appeared.
CUSTOM/PREDESIGNED/LOOK-A-LIKE
"What do they mean by look a like?" Spencer asked Drexel.
"Oh its simple, Custom is make it whatever you want, Predesigned are unchangeable characters designed by the game, and Look a like will look like you do in the real world."
"Which do you think is the best?"
"Look a like, it has the advantage that you will be your exact match to your body and wont take some weird relearning of body mechanics. Custom can lead to complications if a short person makes a tall character their body is not ready to control the limbs and there is some interference and movement can become sluggish. Predesigned you look like one of the developers. Nobody says it but the predesigned character faces are the devs faces."
"Look a like it is." Spencer liked the idea of a smooth experience more than the need to look cool. He mentally clicked the button and the mirror flashed bright white. Temporarily blinding him and causing Spencer to blink a dozen times and shake his head to get rid of the spots in his vision. After it cleared he finally looked at himself. "Wow, they were not joking when they called it look a like."
Spencer looked just like he did that morning in the mirror when he put on the suit except for one glaring difference. His hair was dark gray, almost metallic and his skin was an earthy teal. another difference was when he opened his mouth his lower canines stuck up in front of his upper teeth just enough to be visibly noticeable.
"Wow so players with Trahl bloodlines even get the tusks." Drexel mused.
"What is so special about my bloodline?" Spencer turned his mostly naked figure towards Drexel.
"Its an monster race which is pretty rare, An advanced race of monsters that are only currently legend but are slotted for the sixth expansion."
"What expansion are we in currently?" Spencer looked at the mirror again.
"First expansion just came out." Drexel replied as he stepped up behind him. "Now to chose your characters class and occupation. One dictates your skill and the other is how you make money. There are the usual occupations you can think of, blacksmith, weaponsmith, guard, horse tamer, basically any medieval job you can think of. They also give you an extensive list. Then there is class which you can take a level in any you want but you have to finish a class mission and that will dictate what is the best path in the class for you thru the system interface."
"So how do I chose a class?" Spencer was starting to get excited with the mention of a mission.
"Open your CS and click on Undecided and a list of classes should pop up."
Spencer did as he was told and what looked like a wheel popped up in front of him with a chart. There were four rows with three columns each. The first row was green boxes, the second row was yellow boxes, the third row was red boxes and the fourth row was blue boxes. Each box had the name of a class and a weapon or item next to it.
"So what's with the colors?"
"Oh those denote playstyle." Drexel replied, "I forget you are new to all of this. The green boxes are your three tank classes, Guardian, Paladin, and Monk. The yellow boxes are your weapon DPS classes, Assassin, Scout, and Warrior. The red boxes are your Recovery and support classes, Healer, Bard, and cleric. The blue boxes are your arcane classes, Druid, Sorcerer, and Wizard."
"They all seem kind of the same."
"Yeah but each has a different balance to it. If you look at the boxes they are aligned specifically the left column is the peak version of the class. So Guardian takes the most damage, Warrior deals the most weapon damage, Healer heals the most for their ally, and Sorcerer deals the most magic damage. That's in column one. Column two is your middle of the field classes. They have other things other than their primary role they can excel at. The Paladin is great at buffing himself and his allies while fighting, the Scout splits its abilities between a combat fighter and a tracking role, the Cleric can buff and heal and fight but non of them are a primary role which makes them unique, and Druids can make medicine and call on nature to fight for them as well as some cool spells. The final column are the oddballs. Some question why they are in those rolls. Monk if played right could excel at damage rather than deflection, Assassin is a class that excels at traps, subterfuge and killing out of combat or killing without having to pull aggro to start combat, Bards excel at buffing their allies and are terrible healers, and Wizards have a unique magic system where they have to spend their arcane points again every morning. Even if they don't use the spell but they can also reallocate their spell points to other spells making them more versatile and their spells hit harder than a sorcerer but require you to spend casting time to use them rather than the sorcerer and druids instant casting."
"That is a lot of information to take in at once." Spencer stared at the man in front of him with a blank stare.
"We can go over them more in depth if you want?"
"No need I made my selection." Spencer clicked his choice and closed his Interface. "What's next?"