Character Attributes

There are many things that make your character unique. Once you’ve figured out a character’s personality, backstory, race, and general “theme”, it’s time to give them attributes and abilities to match. Fresh characters begin at level 1 and slowly increase their capacity over time. Characters stop leveling up at level 10.

The Character Progression (Leveling Up) page has one big table of the perks that characters receive upon leveling up. This page splits those perks into different sections so that it’s a little less overwhelming.

Attributes

Six abilities provide a quick description of your character’s physical and mental characteristics. Are you muscle-bound and insightful? Brilliant and charming? Nimble and hardy? Your Attributes define these qualities — your strengths as well as your weaknesses.

You receive points to allocate in any way you want to your main attributes. The number of points you can allocate are based on your level. At level 1, you begin with 10 points, and you gain new points every level. These stats should be allocated based on RP purposes.

Your characters' attributes also affect a few other capabilities:

• Dexterity affects your movement speed, which affects initiative
• Strength and Dexterity affect what kind of weapons you can wield
• Knowledge affects your Perception
• Arcana affects your ability to cast spells
• Charisma affects your ability to influence NPCs

You can read the Character Abilities page for more information about what level of Dexterity, Strength, and Arcana you'll need to be effective in combat.

 

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Physical attributes

Strength	Physical activities that require toughness, like swimming, climbing, running a long distance, lifting something heavy
Dexterity	Physical activities that require speed or balance, like sprinting, dancing, moving in a stealthy fashion
Stamina	Used for fortitude/constitution checks against poison, frostbite, or other things that require hardiness

Mental attributes

Knowledge	Used for recalling important pieces of lore, being able to identify monsters, strategizing, or other tasks requiring wisdom or intelligence
Arcana	Used for a propensity towards magic, such as spell casting and identifying magical effects
Charisma	Used to be likable, intimidating, or inspiring, whatever best suits your character

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Points Gained Over Time

By the time you reach level 10, you will have 30 points allocated to your attributes. These points are allocated every level you get new ones. You can shift around points you have already allocated when you level up with DM approval.

Level 1	Begin with 10 points
Level 2	Gain 4 more points
Level 3	Gain 2 more points
Level 4	Gain 2 more points
Level 5	Gain 2 more points
Level 6	Gain 2 more points
Level 7	Gain 2 more points
Level 8	Gain 2 more points
Level 9	Gain 2 more points
Level 10	Gain 2 more points

 

Hit Points

Hit points (HP) are an abstraction of a character's durability. Characters do not sustain serious injuries until they are pushed to 0 hit points. Every other loss of HP wears down the character's endurance, deals durability damage to their armor, and generally causes minor wounds like bruising or fatigue.

Hit points are accumulated over time as a character levels up. Level one characters begin with 10 hit points. Commoners, peasants, and other simple humanoids generally have 10 hit points. By the time a character is level 10, they will have 60 HP total.

Level 1
Level 2	Gain 10 HP
Level 3
Level 4	Gain 10 HP
Level 5
Level 6	Gain 10 HP
Level 7
Level 8	Gain 10 HP
Level 9
Level 10	Gain 10 HP

 

Perception

Perception checks are made to notice clues, detect secret doors, spot imminent dangers, find traps, follow tracks, listen for sounds behind a closed door, or locate hidden objects. When trying to find a hidden creature, the skill is used against another creature’s Stealth check or against a DC set by the DM.

In Ilisara, Perception is boosted by your points put into Knowledge. If you have 3 Knowledge, you have +3 to Perception rolls. Perception is a skill that can be trained to provide an extra +5 bonus on Perception checks.

The Character Skills page has a full list of skills characters can train in.

 

Movement Speed

All characters and monsters have a Low, Medium, or High movement speed which is tied to the Dexterity attribute. Although there is no grid system to track movement by feet/yards, there are approximations for how far you can travel with the different movement speeds to aid in RP.

Required Dexterity	Level of Movement Speed	Approximate Distance Traveled in One Move Action
0 Dexterity	Low	20 feet
4 Dexterity	Medium	25 feet
8 Dexterity	High	30 feet

Snaring, slowing, or crippling a character reduces their movement speed by one level. A character with High movement speed who is snared, for example, will move at Medium movement speed.

Additionally, a character’s movement speed gives them an edge to initiative rolls:

• If your speed is Low, add +1 to your initiative roll
• If your speed is Medium, add +2 to your initiative roll
• If your speed is High, add +3 to your initiative roll

 

Attack and Defense

As explained in the Three Golden Rules, every creature in the Ilisara RPG can attack in combat by rolling a d20. Depending on the outcome, attacks deal no damage, some damage minus 1d4, or full damage. The basic chart for attacking a target with no Defense is:

Attack Roll	Damage
1	Critical Fail
2-10	Full Damage -1d4
11-19	Full Damage
20	Maximum Damage

Wearing armor or using a Combat Stance grants a bonus to Defense. Defense provides a chance for an attack to miss. For example, wearing a Common Heavy Armor set provides +4 Defense. This changes the outcome for those rolling an attack:

Attack Roll	Damage
1	Critical Fail
2-5	No Damage
6-14	Full Damage -1d4
15-19	Full Damage
20	Maximum Damage

The Basic Equipment page provides detailed information about different types of armor and their Defense values.

Attack Modifiers

Attack modifiers are rare. You can get attack modifiers (bonuses) through Character Passives, items, or a conditional for a caster basic attack.