Attributes

Attributes are the physical, mental and magical characteristics of a character in Ascendant. There are fourteen different attributes in all. Depending on the desires of the player on the path they wish their character to take, some of the attributes may not carry as much importance as the others.

Attribute Score
When desiging a character, they first start out at a base level determined by the race that the player chose for the character. From there, they can improve those scores by spending the starting experience points that the game master has alloted to them.

Strength (STR)
A character’s strength measures their capacity for lifting and carrying, as well as the kind of damage they are capable of doing with melee weapons. The Strength table shows what a characters positives or negatives they may have a certain level of strength. Once a strength level of 20 is surpassed, the bonuses it extends to the character become fixed per level.

Dexterity (DEX)
A character’s dexterity represents their fine manipulation and hand-eye coordination ability. Dexterity affects all weapon skills, and therefore how well you can hit, as well as fine manipulation tasks such as lock picking.

Agility (AGL)
A character’s agility represents his speed on foot, balance and ability to land from a fall. It directly affects the Defense statistic (DEF), which is rolled against the attacking enemy (more explained in the combat section of the book). It is the basis for skills like acrobatics.

Constitution (CON)
Constitution is a character’s overall level of health. Characters with high constitution are less susceptible to diseases and poison, and are more likely to survive fatal injuries, and recover from wounds faster.

Endurance (END)
A character’s

A Note on Physical Attributes
A GM should take note that it is encouraged to allow players to raise physical attributes via means other than spending XP. The reason for this is a representation of the fact that physical capabilities in the real world are much easier to alter than one’s mental faculties. Characters that spend time to try and train their bodies should be allowed to raise their physical attributes up to six points maximum for each attribute via means other than spending XP.

If this is done, have the player make sure to keep track of this on their character sheet. The ease at which a player can increase their attributes is up to the GM, but it is advised to use the XP cost to raise the attribute as a meter for how much effort it takes to increase that specific attribute (with CON being the hardest).

Charisma(CHA)
A characters Charisma is a representation of their natural personal magnetism. As such, having a higher charisma makes it easier to influence other people in non-threatening ways through persuasion or seduction. Some races have CHA with a number and a second number in parenthesis. This is a special rule explained on their page in the next chapter. These two numbers are increased or decreased in unison when the player raises or lowers the attribute.

Presence(PRS)
Presence represents a character’s natural ability to command the attention of others around them. Characters with high presence are more easily able to command large groups of soldiers, or intimidate others into doing their bidding.

Intelligence(INT)
Intelligence is the character’s cognative ability. Characters that are intelligent are much more easily able to understand complex concepts, and as such is the basis for many higher thought skills such as alchemy.

Memory(MEM)
Memory is a character's ability to remember past events or certain facts. All knowledge skills are based off of this attribute, and the number of skills you can have is limited to the number of points in memory you have at the time. If something should ever temporarily reduce your memory below the numbers of skills you have, your character must also temporarily forget the skills he has the least ranks in of the skills that remain. If the drop is permanent, so is the loss!

Wits(WIT)
Wits are the characters ability to think on his feet. Wits affects a character’s ability to bluff, and can also be used as the base attribute to roll with for intelligence or memory based skills that the character does not know (though obviously with increased negative modifiers)

Aria
Aria is a characters raw connection to the fabric of the universe. It is the basis for all magical abilities. Unlike other attributes, this attribute starts at zero for all characters unless otherwise stated. The player may only choose to initially put points into Aria during character creation. This is because unless a character actually has a connection to the fabric they cannot just choose to suddenly be able to.

Despite this, it is still possible for a character to be “Connected” by a powerful mystic, giving them a single point of Aria for free. This is at the GM’s discretion however, and would likely involve some role-play or even a side adventure as part of a campaign.

Soul
Soul represents a character’s strength of spirit. Soul is important for rolls involving magical defense. Soul also becomes your "physical" attributes if your character is in a spirit form. This makes characters with high soul potentially more powerful when traveling in planes other than the material.

Conviction(CNV)
<p class="MsoNormal">Conviction is a character’s strength of will. Much like endurance, this stat can be temporarily drained, but to add into a character’s Aria score for the purpose of casting spells. Conviction is also used when any other reasons to test a characters willpower is called, and is very important in determining if a character can survive receiving a fatal wound.

Fate
The fourteenth attribute in the game - Fate is an enigmatic attribute, representing the will of the cosmos for this character to succeed at something higher. It offers some distinct advantages, despite the fact that no skills are based on it. It can be very powerful if used correctly, but is subjective to the GM’s decisions. They may disallow the use of this attribute in their campaign. Fate always starts at 0 much like Aria; but unlike Aria, it can always be increased after character creation.

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<p class="MsoNormal">If the character has Fate higher than 0, the player may choose to re-roll one failed task of any kind that is deemed agreeable by the GM. Namely, an attempt at some impossible or epic task and not something mundane you wished turned out differently. In this instance if the character’s Fate score happens to be very high, higher than the original base attribute affecting your roll, the player can also choose to use Fate as the base attribute on the roll instead. In this case the GM should set up any failure in the new role to end disastrously. This reinforces the nature of what’s being allowed by the role: either ultimate success or tragic failure.

<p class="MsoNormal">The player may also choose to have their character permanently lose points in Fate to automatically succeed at something of a similar nature to above. The most useful application of this is to avoid death or serious, permanent injury to the character, such as losing a limb. Also, the GM should consider the idea of a high Fate character sacrificing all of their points in Fate to reduce the difficulty of some truly impossible feat to increase the likelihood of success. The GM should also include harsh penalties for this due to the nature of what’s being attempted, and should include character death as a possibility. This can lead to rather inspirational feats of heroism that end in a pyrrhic victory. This represents a character’s ultimate fate to succeed in a task regardless of anything else, including death.

Attribute Costs
Impoving your attributes by a point costs EXP, as shown below:



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