Your character is a tabletop sheet. If you have played a d20 game you already know most of this; if you have not, everything on it is explained below and nothing is hidden from you.
Race and background are the two you cannot change later. Everything else on the sheet moves.
| Race | one of nine, fixed at creation. See Races |
| Background | one of thirteen, fixed at creation. See Backgrounds |
| Abilities | Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma |
| Hit points | your class's hit die and your Constitution |
| Armour class | what you are wearing, and how hard you are to hit |
| Proficiency | the things you were trained for, added to the rolls that use them |
| Skills | the d20 skills, plus professions and meta-skills. See Stats, Skills & Professions |
| Alignment | good/evil and lawful/chaotic, both earned rather than declared |
| Standing | what people think of you, per faction and per town |
| Faith | which power you follow, if any, and how far |
| Stress | what a hard month does to you, and it is readable by anyone who looks properly |
You can be examined. Another player can look at you and learn some of this, more if they are good at looking. What they get depends on their skill and your gear, and there is no way to be invisible to it. Only harder to read.
You do not stay Lawful Good by ticking a box at creation. Alignment moves toward what you actually do, and titles accumulate from it, including the ones you did not want. Rob enough people and the world starts calling you something; it is not a punishment screen, it is a record.
Two clocks run at once. Your character level comes from experience, and your individual skills come from using them. A character who fights levels up; a character who fights with a hammer gets better with a hammer. There is no skill cap on the free tier.
Death is a setback, not an ending. Every character carries a contract that brings them back, and the fee is a real cost in coin rather than a lost character.
Lose the fight and there is nothing to decide. A side that is beaten outright leaves its dead on the ground: they are looted by the winners and they go back to the graveyard. You cannot refuse to respawn in order to keep your body off the table.
Win it, or get out of it, and then you choose. Take the return, or hold and wait for somebody to raise you where you fell.
Taking the return costs you:
Holding costs you something else. Your body stays where it fell and anyone can walk up to it. You cannot play that character while you wait, and you can give up and take the return whenever you like.
Only a Cleric or a Bishop can raise the dead. Nobody else in the world has it, at any level, by any means. How long you can be held for depends on what they are able to cast, and it is not forever.
One mode is different. Hardcore characters do not come back. It is opt-in, and nothing about ordinary play works that way.
You can hold more than one sheet, and sheets are not sold at any price. You earn them by levelling.
So you are always one character short of your next hand, and the one you are working on is the one that unlocks it. Running several characters to 15 and stopping does not work. Only one part-levelled character counts toward the ladder at a time.
A subscription raises the ceiling and hands you nothing. A free account that levels two characters holds more sheets than a paying one that levels none. See Membership & Store.
Your character: Races · Backgrounds · Classes · Stats, Skills & Professions · Items
Always: Mortmain · Start Here · Reference