Attributes

## Overview:

Attributes are the fundamental parameters that define a character's effectiveness of abilities in-game, and will be able to be increased during gameplay by performing actions that concern or demand use of that attribute (e.g. Lifting heavy objects or wielding heavy weapons increases the strength attribute). Attributes tend to have a direct effect on skills - for example increasing strength offers boosts to base melee & unarmed damage.

## List of Attributes:

**The main attributes of Athleticism, Vitality, Fortitude, Wisdom, Personality, and Coordination branch into several different stats that in turn affect gameplay in a number of ways.**

### ATHLETICISM:

**The main stat tree that determines how physically fit a character is. Branches into the attributes Strength, Agility, and Endurance.**

Strength: How physically strong the player character is. This attribute will affect things like any type of melee and unarmed damage, lifting heavy objects, wearing heavy armor or using heavy equipment, holding a grapple and escaping one, and wielding heavy melee and ranged weapons. Will also affect how quickly and efficiently a character can open doors or containers with force. This attribute plays a large role in hand-to-hand combat and manipulating objects or enemies with ease. Strength is divided into two categories: **Upper body strength and Lower body strength.** Upper body strength increases climbing speed, shove knockback distance, and melee weapon damage, while lower body strength increases jump height when loaded down with weight, kick knockback distance, movement speed while carrying a heavy load, and movement speed while carrying heavy items in hands. A combination of the two determines maximum carry weight, and rate of stamina drain from holding heavy items in hands. Generally, strength is increased by engaging in melee combat (with higher xp gained the heavier the weapon is), using heavy firearms, and lifting heavy objects. Strength lowers during a sedentary gameplay style (not fighting or not lifting heavy objects).

**Every action that increases strength (incomplete list):** Swinging a weapon increases upper body strength a tiny bit. Swinging heavier weapons increases upper body strength a larger amount. Swinging weapons also includes using bashing attacks with ranged weapons. More strength gains are acquired by actually striking an enemy, otherwise swinging a weapon into the air will hardly raise the attribute at all. Wielding guns in the machine gun class such as LMGs or in the heavy guns class such as a minigun will continuously increase strength XP slowly over time. The act of attempting to kick down a door will increase lower body strength XP, but successfully kicking down a door yields greater XP. Grappling an opponent or attempting to escape a grapple increases upper body strength continuously while in action. Lifting heavy, bulky items increases strength XP continuously for the length of time the item is being carried. Carrying an overloaded bag or moving while overloaded with weight will increase lower body strength by great amounts continuously, but is dangerous and risks injury. Stomping on enemies increases lower body strength slightly. Shoving enemies increases upper body strength slightly. Climbing ladders or other obstacles increases upper body strength by great amounts but quickly drains stamina. Jumping increases lower-body strength slightly each jump. Kicking enemies increases lower body strength slightly. Fighting unarmed will net large upper body strength gains. Wearing armor pieces in the **heavy class** will increase lower body strength in extremely miniscule amounts but continuously as long as the armor piece is equipped, however wearing a full set will turn the strength gains into exponential increases. Opening a container with force or destroying it will increase strength, depending on what way it was destroyed: stomping the container increases lower body strength while most other attacks increases upper body strength.

Agility: How nimble the player character is. Affects speed and distance of dodges, as well as success of starting a grapple. Also affects sprint speed.

Endurance: A stat that can improve. Governs how much **stamina** the character can expend before collapsing and/or passing out. At higher levels, a player character's **cardio** will be significantly conditioned and allows them to run, sprint, and swing weapons for a longer period of time. Endurance is raised simply by running and **sprinting** often.

**Every action that increases endurance (incomplete list):** Any kind of running will very slowly increase endurance XP continuously. Sprinting will increase endurance XP much faster than running. Swinging any weapon or bashing with firearms will increase endurance by small amounts each time. Endurance gains from any combat-related action (swinging a melee weapon, shoving, kicking) are increased exponentially in relation to how close the character's stamina is from being completely expended - the lower the character's stamina is, the greater the endurance gain. Jumping will increase endurance slightly each time.

### VITALITY:

**The main stat tree that determines a character's physical well-being, resistances, and ability to recover and stay healthy. Branches into the attributes Constitution, Resilience, and Tolerance.**

Constitution: The physical make-up of the player character's body. Governs how much vitality points the character will have and how much damage they can take before dying. Generally how much punishment a character can receive. Higher constitution means a greater pool of Vitality Points. At higher levels, Constitution, along with Tolerance, raises the maximum amount of damage taken before the negative condition of **pain** occurs or another negative condition appears. Eating heathy foods raises constitution, but eating unhealthy foods lowers it. Additionally, getting healthy amounts of consistent sleep raises Constitution. Constitution is also affected by other attributes - raising values in any of the Athleticism attributes will slowly raise Constitution, too.

Resilience: The healing abilities of a character. In general, this attribute defines how fast and effectively a character recovers from injuries, illnesses, and other negative conditions. Uniquely but not strangely, this attribute only increases from receiving injuries and contracting sicknesses. Successfully healing from an injury or illness will raise this stat, but the more injuries or sicknesses are present at one given time, the less **stat XP** is gained. This means that fully recovering from a single negative health condition will net greater XP than fully recovering from 3 at the same time. This is one of the more difficult attributes to raise, due to there only being one way to gain **stat XP**. At higher levels, injuries are healed from faster, and illnesses to go away faster. Most importantly, however, the regeneration powers of the player character allows vitality points to naturally be replenished over time faster, and also higher resilience raises the max vitality points that are naturally regenerated. Additionally, higher resilience values increase how many vitality points are recovered from resting and sleeping.

Tolerance: Has to do with how much the player character can resist being damaged and is split into three different branches such as **Toughness** (resistance to getting injuries caused by physical damage), **Immunity** (resistance to disease/illness/injuries/negative health conditions), and **Threshold** (resistance to pain). The higher a character's Toughness value is, the lower the chances are for a character to receive an injury or serious wound when taking damage. The higher the Immunity value, the lower the chance is for a character to contract a disease or illness from a risky situation or disease-causing damaging attack. The higher the Threshold value is, the more damage can be taken before a **pain** health status appears.

### FORTITUDE:

**The main stat tree that determines a character's ability to persevere in difficult situations. Branches into the attributes Willpower, Energy, and Mettle.**

Willpower: How strong the player character's staying power is - willpower is how the character deals with physical strain for a prolonged period of time, before giving in. Will govern actions like the difficulty of escaping a grapple, the maximum time an an enemy can be held in a grapple, as well as holding back closed doors and slowing the enemy grapple success meter. Also will raise the breaking point in **mental stress** of a character as well as the chance of coming out on top during near-death experiences. Doing the above mentioned things as well as other things that require withstanding extreme physical suffering will raise the Willpower stat. At higher levels, Willpower can get the player character out of nasty and risky situations. Fighting while injured or otherwise in bad health, carrying heavy backpacks or items, and doing actions that require stamina until it is completely depleted or almost depleted, will net large increases in **stat XP**. A player character staying awake when their energy level condition is depleted will also gain **stat XP**.

Energy/Tenacity/Nerve: Will govern the player character's energy level condition and requirements for sleep. At higher levels, it will allow a character to function for hours and perhaps even days longer before they become fatigued and/or ill, gain the negative condition of **sleep deprivation**, and finally become **exhausted**, where the character will collapse on the spot and **pass out**. Energy level condition should not be confused with stamina, represented in the HUD as the pool of immediately available energy used for combat and sprinting. Energy level has more to do with the time elapsed before the character begins getting tired and needing sleep. Energy/Tenacity is raised by staying awake for longer periods of time. However, the Energy/Tenacity stat has an inverse relationship with the Constitution stat - sleeping less raises Energy/Tenacity, but raising Constitution requires consistent amounts of sleep. Eating healthier foods will also increase Energy Level Condition, but also **stat XP** for the Energy stat.

Mettle: The character's strength in facing hardships - their ability to cope with mental and spiritual stress. At higher levels, the maximum value of **morale** is increased, stays higher and more stable, and **mental stress** stays lower. Mettle defines the character's ability to weather the doom and gloom of the crisis plaguing the city of \_\_\_\_\_. A high Mettle stat will also affect things such as slowing morale decay when the PC is **hungry** or **thirsty**.

Morale is mostly raised by talking to optimistic NPCs, reading books, and playing games. It is lowered when choosing pessimistic dialogue options and witnessing friendly survivors die, with a direct relationship between more morale loss and the gruesomeness of the death.

### WISDOM:

**The main stat tree that determines the sum of the character's cognitive abilities. Branches into the attributes Intelligence, Perception, and Ingenuity/Enterprise** - Wisdom is increased by many of the interactions in the world. Experiencing new and different things during gameplay will increase Wisdom attributes. Completing quests is a sure way to increase wisdom stat XP.

Intelligence: Governs the brainpower of a character. Affects how much **skill XP** is gained from reading books, as well as the speed at which they are read. Higher intelligence increases **total XP** gain towards the next level. Intelligence is raised by reading books or other materials, as well as performing strategic maneuvers in combat and finding creative ways to dispatch enemies. The intelligence stat also influences the rate of skill XP gain for many different skills.

Perception: Determines the strength of the character's senses and ability to detect danger. With a high perception, sounds and sights that are easily missed are given auditory and visual cues on the HUD and mini-map. Raising perception makes these cues appear more strongly/noticeably and frequently. These cues can still be turned off in the Immersion settings menu, if preferred. Otherwise a high perception will allow the player character to detect easily missed loot or other useful resources, sometimes with pop-up cues. An extremely high perception will unlock a free perk that will give the character the tactical ability to slow time for a short moment when in combat. Perception is a difficult stat to raise, because stat XP is only gained from reading some books and for spending stat points into this attribute.

Enterprise: A character's cleverness and resourcefulness. Crafting benefits are increased and resource needs reduced as a result of a high enterprise value. Enterprise is raised by crafting - crafting any item nets **stat XP**, but crafting more difficult recipes raises stat XP by larger amounts. It is also raised by finding clever ways to defeat enemies. Higher levels of Enterprise will allow for faster crafting, more effective crafts, and the requirement of less materials for crafting.

### PERSONALITY:

**The main stat tree that concerns any and all interactions with people. Branches into the attributes Charisma, Leadership, Diplomacy**

Charisma: The charisma stat has many effects on all conversations and shop transactions and at higher levels, allows for reduced prices at shops and makes it easier to persuade, intimidate, or otherwise steer a conversation in the player character's desired direction. With a higher Charisma value, defusing of hostile situations becomes easier, gaining trust and making allies becomes easier, and gaining a better reputation at survivor hubs happens faster.

### COORDINATION:

**The main stat tree that determines efficient movement of the body. Branches into the attributes Dexterity, Reflexes**

Dexterity: Will determine how fast the character can do fine-motor unit tasks such as reloading, drawing a weapon, loading a magazine, moving loot, etc. Will also affect other things like amount of finesse with knives and other small weapons.

Reflexes: How fast a character can react to their surroundings.

## Notes:

* Athleticism was chosen over Fitness for the stat tree title.
* Mettle was chosen over Grit for the attribute title.