Player character

The **player character** is the character that serves as the player's avatar in the game world. In Sui Generis, this character is created by the player with a wide variety of customization options.

## Background

The player character starts the game appearing to be little more than a common villager, but it will not take long to discover that the player character has exceptional abilities, including the ability to use thaumaturgy. The home village of the player character is under threat due to the knowledge of mysterious others aware of the unique abilities of the player character, and he or she must head out into a hostile world, discover the dark and ominous events that are occurring, and decide whether or not to intervene, sparing the world from catastrophe.

## Character qualities

### Physique

Unlike other role-playing games, the most basic statistical qualities, typically called attributes, are tied directly to the physique the player decides on for the character. The system uses a square physique graph where one axis represents muscularity and another represents fat.

Contrary to what one may expect, a more muscular character is not automatically better than a fat or skinny one. For example, a "bodybuilder" physique, while capable of powerful swings, makes the character top heavy and prone to tipping over, until they improve their skills to handle their body's movements and weight distribution.

Fat characters are slower, as they need to use more leg strength just to move, but their mass allows them to push smaller opponents around if they can close in, and they are similarly difficult for others to move. Their enormous torso makes body armour slightly more important than other builds.

Thin characters on the other hand, are lighter and harder to hit, but loses out on power and can have difficulty controlling heavier weapons. Especially tall characters of a skinny build may lack the power to control their lanky proportions with precision, resulting in more sway to their movements.

* An early example of four male physiques
* An example showing an interface for modifying height, age, and skin tone
* An early example showing clothing affected by the physique system

### Height

The character's height can be adjusted by a slider, between very short and very tall. Height has significant effects on body weight, balance, reach, movement speed, and leverage.

A character's height also affects how easy they are to hit, as well as how easy it is to hit different parts of their body. Taller characters will want to prioritize armouring their limbs first, while short ones need to have good head and shoulder protection.

### Age

The character's age can be adjusted by a slider, between young and old. Age adjusts the maximum and minimum possible physique in different parts of a character's body and there is a noticeably difference in how the youngest and oldest character ages perform.

### Sex

A character's sex can be chosen between either male or female. The default physique of each is slightly different from the other, and like age, affects the maximum and minimum possible physique in different parts of a characters body.

Male characters tend to have a greater emphasis on upper body proportions while female characters tend to emphasize lower body proportions when adjusting physique.

### Other aspects of appearance

#### Hair

Hair in the game is animated and affected by physics, resulting in a high-quality and reasonably realistic appearance, as shown below. Hair does not have a meaningful impact on combat ability, as it is too light to affect balance.

* Some early male and female examples
* More early male and female examples
* A male in combat showing hair physics

### Character abilities

The abilities of the characters are determined by skills, which are chosen by the character and improve over time. A global limit prevents all skills from being advanced to their highest limit, but reaching that limits does not prevent further changes as skills can be gradually unlearned to free up skill points. Milestones are more specific modifiers that can be learned upon attaining a new level in a given skill, and can be unlearned by unlearning the related skill.

The character's thaumaturgic abilities are handled separately. Thaumaturgy is divided into six forms, one of which the character has innate ability in. This choice is made during character creation and cannot be changed during gameplay.