Example of a Build + How Dice, Skills and Challenge Ratings Work
Hello SV! So the vote above is incredibly important for the future gameplay of the game that I wanted to explain how the dice system works in disco Elysium (which is where I am taking this system from) and examples of what you'd find at each rank
First thing first is traits do 1 of 2 things. You use them for rolls, aka roll a physical instrument to ensure you deal damage and they are used as personality traits. Someone with extremely high Authority will begin approaching *all* issues with authority in mind, make your authority too high and you may start always demanding respect, extremes can be dangerous!
You always roll 2 dice. Call it 2D6 (roll 2 6-sided dice). Then add the result of your roll to your skill value and to the corresponding stat value. If the result is equal to or higher than the difficulty level, you succeeded.
So say you want to seduce someone and the difficulty is godly, you add your Suggestion skill value + your PSY attribute value, and the difference between godly (16) and that skill+attribute is the minimum you need to roll on two dice.
The Disco Elysium wiki has most of the fluff and I don't feel like copying and pasting, instead below I will give some in-game examples to help direct the players. Skills
Now one small thing that is the case here but isn't quite the case in Disco Elysium is stat caps. You can only level up your skill and attribute to level 6 each at max, meaning you can only get to 12 points when both are combined. If by happenchance you need to pass a impossible check, you'll need to find another way to buff yourself usually temporarily to meet that mark.
Now that we roughly understand how the skill system works and what each trait means via the Disco Elysium Wiki let's talk about what the builds that people are currently voting for would look like in play very roughly.
-[X] Your hate for the legion's goals
-[X] Some Urbanites of Dalaran
-[X] Intellect
-[X] 5 Intellect
-[X] 1 Psyche
-[X] 2 Physique
-[X] 4 Motorics
+SHIVERS
+PERCEPTION
+CONCEPTUALIZATION
+LOGIC
+REACTION SPEED
Intellect is the attributes for the next six skills. It just means how smart you are to be simple, the more important part is the skills themselves and how they individually will impact your gameplay.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: 5
You've spent tens of thousands of years watching this world and it shows. You could discuss the fine points and random facts about Azeroth for days if you were able to get anyone to pay attention for that long, no matter where you are you rarely mix up common knowledge of the area even if you haven't been there for years. Even more niche information is made clear to your mind, but you do struggle to remember niche information from outside your home region, what is the name of that wild god again?
RHETORIC: 5
Debate, arguments and most importantly of all from a fae/spirit-like entity such as yourself, nitpicking! You can spot fallacies easily and point out information people leave out. You could make a quite decent politician and put many human nobles to shame by disproving most of their arguments, but this might not make you the most popular. This also makes you rigid, it will be hard to justify changing your own mind once you get going.
DRAMA: 5
The world is a stage, and you are an actor performing. You can lie and concoct wonderful stories whilst seeing through the false antics of others easily unless they are truly masterful at their act. You are somewhat prone to hysterics and dragging out the truth a bit much at times as well as going on random ramblings about sometimes not important matters, but damn don't people believe you until you blow it.
CONCEPTUALIZATION: 6
Even as an otherworldly spirit you have no trouble delving into world concepts from religious schisms to the unique architectural styles between the kingdoms. You are easily able to make fresh associations and understand the world in a creative light. Most importantly you can add your own contributions to the world, finding it easier than most to add a new flare to the world and refine an idea or a concept into a completely new concept all together. Perhaps you can think up a new form of government and societal living whilst you save the world? Just don't let your inner flare draw too much attention.
VISUAL CALCULUS: 5
You have seen so much of the world that you find it easy to create virtual models of the world in your mind eye. You can gaze upon a field and clearly understand how many warriors crossed these lands and how quickly you can trace an arrow back to the position where it was shot. Visual Calculus forces the world to reveal its secrets to you and is very useful in understanding the more rigid requirements of arcane and orderly forms of magic. The issue is you have a habit of being so absorbed by your mind that you don't notice the incoming punch.
The power of your mind, emotional intellect and your ability to handle stress and hard encounters.
You have 1 Mental HP, you can take 1 Mental hit before suffering massively and risking death.
INLAND EMPIRE: 1
You are void of imagination. The world is what it is, you gain no hidden insight of things that can't be seen, and enigmatic riddles aren't logically. What is in front of you is the world, nothing else exists.
EMPATHY: 1
You are an ungainly beast unable to talk to anyone without upsetting them, even your own hero may be insulted by some of the things you say.
AUTHORITY: 1
You have no authority, your peers disrespect you, the elements of Azeroth makes fun of you and you are unable to assert your dominance over even the most Trivial people. Even the most paranoid and superstitious peasant would doubt whatever you say even in your full manifested form. You will struggle to force the hero to do anything they don't want to do unless they are equally as spineless.
SUGGESTION: 1
You've been alone for tens of thousands of years, and you'll likely be alone for tens of thousands of years afterwards. You have trouble building relationships with anyone who even developing the mildest of friendships. You have difficulty gaining any kind of rapport with anyone, even the animals or other spirits of this land.
ESPRIT DE CORPS: 1
Azeroth is a land riddled with others like you, wordless watchers from all aspects of reality. Even more powerful spirit that range from the wisp of an oak tree to creatures that borderline the strength of gods being aspects of entire elemental forces. You share no relation with them, you don't understand the subtle signals of the spirits of Azeroth, and you are under no obligation to take a bullet for the soul of this land. This works both ways and you've never been able to understand the discreet remarks the spirits make to each other to protect themselves, each other and the world.
Your body is a tool, it's time to use it and crush those around you and mold the world with your powerful hands… if you have them.
You have 2HP. You can take 2 hits before suffering massively and risking death.
PAIN THRESHOLD: 2
Your life isn't painful. Living comes to you as it does to every other creature, but even subtle pain distracts you and moderate pain takes all your attention. Heartache and loneliness clings to you and you can barely resist the bitter throbs of pain they cause; a chilly winter or hot summer distracts you and forces you to more suitable environments. You have a low pain threshold, avoid things that hurt because for you they'll hurt for a long time and you can't resist them, even a slap from a teenager will make you whine and complain.
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: 2
Well, when you do manifest you are stronger than a wisp and you may be able to beat a goblin in a fist fight. At least you're strong enough to open doors and chests and ruffle around the environment, it gives you a way to interact with the world even if you can't really apply yourself that greatly to the realm around us.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: 2
You have no desire to indulge and enjoy, no wish to dive into ponds of power and enjoy the pleasure of enhancing yourself with drugs when you manifest or uncontrollable aspects of magic when you are in your spiritual form. This means the taint of fel will never interest you but also means you have never quite felt the urge to enhance yourself with magic, blessings or any number of other possible enhancements. You also don't see much point in applying yourself sexually like some spirits do, the odd desires of mortals in that affair are far from your mind and overall understanding.
SHIVERS: 3
You've spent enough time on Azeroth to be clued in on your surroundings, sure the more subtle things will be missed on you but sometimes when things are urgent you can hear the world screaming at you. It will scream ambush or trap long before your normal senses would be able to tell you that themselves, it will cry for help when it is truly in trouble but most of the time it will be silent, whispers just a bit too far out of reach. The world speaks to you, and you speak to it but you're not close friends.
HALF LIGHT: 2
Some spirits let their own body control them, not their mind. With survival instincts packing they're always ready to pounce and interrogate ultra attuned to the world in their state of perpetual fear - of your own shadow, of someone else's name or scent. You? You find your survival instincts lacking and your methods are limp-wristed. Those who respect violence will not respect you.
Your senses and agility
You aren't a professional but when you are welding a weapon you find its weight comfortable in your hand. You understand simple weapons and tools intimately even as a mostly bodiless entity and this makes you much more deadly in combat than those who just throw themselves into battle body first. A blade master will still rip you apart, but orcs and footmen must respect your skill even if the average night elf would still giggle.
PERCEPTION:5
After so much time watching the world, you've become extremely good at noticing the details. All senses working at full capacity, you can notice most things that others miss sure things can sneak pass your eyes, but they must be trying quite hard to do so. You have enough perception to understand crucial parts of the world, knowing how both the magical and physical world can mesh to reveal all sorts of details but very rarely you can find yourself lost in the details if you don't keep yourself on track.
REACTION SPEED: 5
Reaction Speed is the agility of your body and mind and damn isn't your agile. Quick to act you are never found lacking in battles of melee or wit. You're always high strung and overly alert however due to having such a quick body sometimes you even act before your mind does which can cause innocent situations to turn awful.
SAVOIR FAIRE: 4
Style, flare, energy just bounces off your form! Savoir faire urges you to be better, urges you to show off and dress to impress. Everything you do you do it with bonus flare much to the cheers of your allies and glares of your foes, you are a stylish douchebag sometimes but you are damn cool, maybe not the coolest but people watch you act and you just protect yourself with an unbearable show off energy at times.
INTERFACING: 4
Interfacing for humans may mean being able to analyze how tools are used or how to steal keys off a keyring without being noticed and of course your high interfacing helps you with that, but it also helps you manifest into the physical world and in fact handle your physical body properly. You have enough skill in this field to look alive, to look real and not sluggish or incorrect, you can walk down a busy marketplace and no one will mind or think you're moving strangely. In the spirit world this also lets you interact with words and even bypass some lesser ones with your smooth moves.
You aren't fully connected to the world however, those strange machines used by dwarfs, goblins and others are beyond your understanding and a crucial part of this developing world is cut off from you.
COMPOSURE: 4
Most find it difficult to make your crack, to reveal your true emotions. After all you did see the ruination of an entire world, and the doom of thousands of places you once adored. It cracked you back then but these days you keep your composure up well enough, maybe you'll crack under the focus of the Dreadlords but keeping emotions hidden is a skill you've developed, and you know how to put up a strong front.
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Now this is a very rough "example" of what the stat sheet on the first page will look like after this vote. I hope this example also explains the stats further and makes players think and wonder at the weaknesses and strengths of going all in and all out on certain aspects. I am currently writing up what the
Would look like as well, but I didn't have the time to finish it tonight so I decided to post what *this* build would look like if this is the way we go. Any questions just ask.
PS when you look at these numbers think of characters like Arthas, Uthur, sitting at 10+ on their skill + ability. Whilst more basic entities such as bandits and peasants sitting at 2~ depending on the area. Near godly creatures are not measured well on this system at all and compared to you will almost be maxing out on entire areas and would roll more than 2 dice. At the end of the day as powerful as you get you'll still struggle against champions and be dwarfed by world impacting entities.
First thing first is traits do 1 of 2 things. You use them for rolls, aka roll a physical instrument to ensure you deal damage and they are used as personality traits. Someone with extremely high Authority will begin approaching *all* issues with authority in mind, make your authority too high and you may start always demanding respect, extremes can be dangerous!
Difficulty levels in Disco Elysium (and therefore our game) are:
Trivial : 6-7
Easy : 8-9
Medium : 10-11
Challenging : 12
Formidable : 13
Legendary : 14
Heroic : 15
Godly : 16
Impossible : 18-20
Trivial : 6-7
Easy : 8-9
Medium : 10-11
Challenging : 12
Formidable : 13
Legendary : 14
Heroic : 15
Godly : 16
Impossible : 18-20
You always roll 2 dice. Call it 2D6 (roll 2 6-sided dice). Then add the result of your roll to your skill value and to the corresponding stat value. If the result is equal to or higher than the difficulty level, you succeeded.
So say you want to seduce someone and the difficulty is godly, you add your Suggestion skill value + your PSY attribute value, and the difference between godly (16) and that skill+attribute is the minimum you need to roll on two dice.
The Disco Elysium wiki has most of the fluff and I don't feel like copying and pasting, instead below I will give some in-game examples to help direct the players. Skills
Now one small thing that is the case here but isn't quite the case in Disco Elysium is stat caps. You can only level up your skill and attribute to level 6 each at max, meaning you can only get to 12 points when both are combined. If by happenchance you need to pass a impossible check, you'll need to find another way to buff yourself usually temporarily to meet that mark.
Now that we roughly understand how the skill system works and what each trait means via the Disco Elysium Wiki let's talk about what the builds that people are currently voting for would look like in play very roughly.
Brain power
-[X] Your hate for the legion's goals
-[X] Some Urbanites of Dalaran
-[X] Intellect
-[X] 5 Intellect
-[X] 1 Psyche
-[X] 2 Physique
-[X] 4 Motorics
+SHIVERS
+PERCEPTION
+CONCEPTUALIZATION
+LOGIC
+REACTION SPEED
Intellect: 5
Intellect is the attributes for the next six skills. It just means how smart you are to be simple, the more important part is the skills themselves and how they individually will impact your gameplay.LOGIC: 6
Even challenging puzzles and riddles seem to be easy for you to understand, arcane secrets, unclear tales and inconsistencies in this world are noticed and discovered by you with much ease. You can deduce the world for what it, but you are sometimes blinded by your own brilliance and miss some more obvious clues.
ENCYCLOPEDIA: 5
RHETORIC: 5
DRAMA: 5
CONCEPTUALIZATION: 6
VISUAL CALCULUS: 5
You have seen so much of the world that you find it easy to create virtual models of the world in your mind eye. You can gaze upon a field and clearly understand how many warriors crossed these lands and how quickly you can trace an arrow back to the position where it was shot. Visual Calculus forces the world to reveal its secrets to you and is very useful in understanding the more rigid requirements of arcane and orderly forms of magic. The issue is you have a habit of being so absorbed by your mind that you don't notice the incoming punch.
Psyche: 1
The power of your mind, emotional intellect and your ability to handle stress and hard encounters.VOLITION: 1
You are barely sane. Volition is meant to urge you to be good, well adjusted and allow you to resist temptation however something has awfully gone wrong, and you are profoundly unstable and falling apart at the seams. Hopefully nothing stresses you out too much of you might find yourself at the end of something that promises oblivion on purpose.
You have 1 Mental HP, you can take 1 Mental hit before suffering massively and risking death.
INLAND EMPIRE: 1
EMPATHY: 1
AUTHORITY: 1
SUGGESTION: 1
ESPRIT DE CORPS: 1
Azeroth is a land riddled with others like you, wordless watchers from all aspects of reality. Even more powerful spirit that range from the wisp of an oak tree to creatures that borderline the strength of gods being aspects of entire elemental forces. You share no relation with them, you don't understand the subtle signals of the spirits of Azeroth, and you are under no obligation to take a bullet for the soul of this land. This works both ways and you've never been able to understand the discreet remarks the spirits make to each other to protect themselves, each other and the world.
Physique: 2
Your body is a tool, it's time to use it and crush those around you and mold the world with your powerful hands… if you have them.ENDURANCE: 2
You are fragile and weak but not completely made of glass. You can take a few hits and live to make the next day, you'll find yourself retreating often and retreating quickly from attacks and ambushes but you're tough enough to take at least a blow, you have enough endurance to be able to flee from damage if you're quick… otherwise you may find yourself ripped apart by the very fel you are trying to stop.
You have 2HP. You can take 2 hits before suffering massively and risking death.
PAIN THRESHOLD: 2
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT: 2
ELECTROCHEMISTRY: 2
SHIVERS: 3
HALF LIGHT: 2
Motorics: 4
Your senses and agilityHAND/EYE COORDINATION: 4
Ready? Aim and fire.
You aren't a professional but when you are welding a weapon you find its weight comfortable in your hand. You understand simple weapons and tools intimately even as a mostly bodiless entity and this makes you much more deadly in combat than those who just throw themselves into battle body first. A blade master will still rip you apart, but orcs and footmen must respect your skill even if the average night elf would still giggle.
PERCEPTION:5
REACTION SPEED: 5
SAVOIR FAIRE: 4
INTERFACING: 4
You aren't fully connected to the world however, those strange machines used by dwarfs, goblins and others are beyond your understanding and a crucial part of this developing world is cut off from you.
COMPOSURE: 4
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Now this is a very rough "example" of what the stat sheet on the first page will look like after this vote. I hope this example also explains the stats further and makes players think and wonder at the weaknesses and strengths of going all in and all out on certain aspects. I am currently writing up what the
Manipulator
Would look like as well, but I didn't have the time to finish it tonight so I decided to post what *this* build would look like if this is the way we go. Any questions just ask.
PS when you look at these numbers think of characters like Arthas, Uthur, sitting at 10+ on their skill + ability. Whilst more basic entities such as bandits and peasants sitting at 2~ depending on the area. Near godly creatures are not measured well on this system at all and compared to you will almost be maxing out on entire areas and would roll more than 2 dice. At the end of the day as powerful as you get you'll still struggle against champions and be dwarfed by world impacting entities.
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. Empathy one for the win but the same spirit will be able to learn complex spells and maybe even understand the nature of the plague much quicker than most and this is before mid-game improvements.
