Quickstart: Fighter

The Quickstarts are a (very) small subset of the full game rules. Everything you need to know to get started is in the Quickstart - there's more, a lot more, to the game than the basics, but if the full set is daunting (believe me, I know), this should be a lot less to ingest and still gets you a feel for what to expect and how to play.

You'll need a character. For a quick start, Human is the easiest case and Soldier is probably the most common Background. Fighters come in a few different flavors; the classic sword and shield armored knight is a Champion. Champion, as a class, is gifted with Long Weapon, Medium Shield, and Battle Armor free of charge. You have 10 points of Body. For other skills, we're reduced to spending Skill Points, and you'll learn pretty fast that there are never enough of the damn things. This is a simple-to-play Champion build - we'll list out the skills and costs and then explain what those things do and why you might want them.

Skill Name	Skill Point Cost
Focus + 2	30
Energy (12)	10
Deflect	2
Weapon Ward	2
Parry	4

When you step into melee, you and your opponent will both be carrying weapons. Yours is a Long Sword - up to four feet long and arguably the best available melee weapon there is. The bad guy is likely to be carrying a Medium Something, sword or claw or whatever. When he swings at you, he'll call some number and some flavor, to let you know how much damage you get if he connects. If he does, you subtract that number from your armor and carry on. Similarly, when you swing your Long Sword, you'll have to let your opponent know how much damage he should take if you hit him. Since offense is easier to explain, we'll start there.

Your Long Sword, like all Long Swords, swings 2 points of damage all by itself. If you just picked one up and went to work, you'd call "2 Normal" every time you swing. (All weapons swing "normal" unless there's a reason to swing something different - if a given weapon swings something different, it'll be noted on the tag.) Your Champion has some weapons training, though, and this is reflected by the Focus skill we bought. Each point of Focus adds one to your weapon swings. Since we have two points, we'll be calling "4 Normal" with any Long Sword we can lay hands on. When you hit your enemy, he'll subtract 4 from his armor total. When that runs out, he'll start subtracting it from his body total. When that runs out, he's down and you can frisk him for loose change.

Sadly, he'll be hitting you at the same time, trying to do the same thing to you. You might recall that your Champion entered game with Battle Armor; here's what that means: When you get hit, you take whatever number your opponent handed you and subtract that from the number your armor gives you - Battle Armor withstands a fairly impressive 50 points before your tender skin is exposed to abuse. You can, and frequently will, just slug it out until only one of you is left standing. Early on, a lot of fights will be weighted in your favor. Your basic, run-of-the-mill goblin can withstand 25 points of damage before he drops, and swings 2 points of damage at you. You, on the other hand, can take 60 points of damage between your armor and your body, and cause 4 points of damage every time you hit him. You can take over twice as much damage and inflict exactly twice as much damage.

Sometimes, that bad guy will call something instead of his usual "2 Normal". Characters, including monsters, have a variety of offensive skills they can use to accelerate your demise. Since you certainly don't want that, you're equipped with a small array of defensive skills - Deflect, Weapon Ward, and Parry. If you're hit by something scary that has a number in it - the goblin suddenly spikes from 2 Normal to 7 Normal, you can call "Deflect" and cancel the strike. If he goes after your sword or your shield, you can call "Weapon Ward" - this stops any attack that aims to directly deprive you of your arms. If he has something uglier than spike damage, you can escalate to Parry - this stops any attack that's delivered by a weapon (as opposed to a packet). Deflect and Weapon Ward cost 2 Energy every time you use them. Parry costs 4. You have a pool of 12 and you can spend it among Deflect, Weapon Ward, and Parry in any way that seems advisable under the circumstances.

And that'll get you through random haters stomping through town looking for your loot. That's not the core of the game, although it does happen. The core of the game is the module, which is shorthand for a limited-scope adventure that doesn't usually happen in the main town area. Modules are always led by Marshals, and usually consist of 6-10 players grouped up to do... something. Modules can be a very dense topic, so we'll start with a simple one:

Some citizen rushes into the tavern, complaining that bandits are ransacking his farm and begging for help. He can't afford mercenaries, but if you'll help him you're free to keep whatever those bandits have on them. Since you weren't busy and can definitely use some coin and spoils to sell for more coin, you and some other like-minded individuals decide to go teach some bandits why banditing is a low-percentage profession. Some of those like-minded individuals carry weapons, like yours. Some carry a weapon in each hand, instead of a sword and shield. Some carry magic and you'll probably have at least one Rogue along. (Some days it seems like everyone's a Rogue.)

When you're out on a module, every character has a role to play. Mages can heal or rain out damaging spells at their enemies. They also die if something stands next to them and just thinks harsh thoughts. Rogues are more like cruise missiles than they are like fighters; they excel at slipping away and inflicting horrible damage, but they're not great once they're exposed. Your job, as a Champion, is to keep the bad guys from killing your softer, squishier party members. You're allowed, of course, even encouraged, to take your long sword and do as much damage as you can, but your party mates aren't expecting you to be the engine of destruction. They're trusting you to keep the killers alive long enough to do the killing they were hired for. Your fellow fighters are counting on you to protect their flanks. If your killers are good at their jobs, you won't have to guard them very long. If you're good at your job, you buy them all the time they need to turn bad guys into piles of treasure.

So you set off. Your marshal explains the situation to you - where you're going, what there is to see and note about the environment, and what the NPC's you see are representing. Here, we already know it's a pack of bandits; your marshal may give you some extra information, like their races and equipment, so you can make some decisions about target priority and such. He'll call "lay on", and then the fight starts. You and your fellow warriors take up the front; your second rank hides behind you because damage is scary, and then people start hitting each other, just like the goblin in town. Unlike the goblin in town, though, neither you nor your opponent are alone. You (hopefully) have healers behind you keeping you on your feet. You have people helping with everything. You probably can't kill six bandits all by your onesies but you don't have to - remember, you just have to keep people from inflicting abuse on your friends.

A typical module will have between three and five related encounters. After the last foe is defeated, your marshal will tell you the outcome, deliver treasure, and then you can go back to town and engage in the worst part of larping - treasure splits. Those are out of scope for a quickstart, just be aware that there are some greedy f'ing people out there and treasure splits are a depressing, awful ordeal. Wherever possible, we always recommend joining or forming a group that works together commonly and doesn't fight about treasure.