Munchkins and Dragons/Miscellaneous/Avia's Guide to Adventuring/V1

<tabber>Intro=Hello, readers! This is a guide to how to be the best you can be as an adventurer! As anyone would know, the goal of adventuring is to become the strongest you can be.. And not die.

But how do you become the strongest you can possibly be? Well, that's what this guide is for!

So, let us begin, shall we?

From what I've gathered, there are many classes you can choose from. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, but it's best for you to choose your class based on how good you are at the six main attributes, which I will be labeling as Strength, Wisdom, Intelligence, Charisma, Dexterity, and Constitution.

Strength is obviously how strong you are, Charisma is how good you are at convincing others, Dexterity is how dexterous you are, Constitution is how tough you are, Intelligence is how smart you are, and Wisdom is how wise you are.

Now, do not confuse Intelligence with Wisdom, my fellow adventurers. Intelligence is your ability to process information and analyze:Wisdom is how much you know, and draw fine conclusions from. Intellegence will help you with science, wisdom will help you sense someone's motive. So, if you don't know which one you're better at, ask yourself:"Am I good at analyzing things in a logical manner, or am I just wise enough to know these things?" The former is intelligence. The latter is wisdom.

The best class for you is dependent on these six statistics, as each class relies on a different set of skills. If you're having trouble finding out how your statstics fare, then go to the section about statistics-That's the next one.

There are nine known classes-Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Rogue, Druid, Bard, Ranger, Paladin, and Monk. Some of them have sub-classes as well:Fighter has the subclasses of Warrior and Barbarian, while Mage has sub-classes of Wizard, and Sorcerer. Paladin is a special class-It combines some of the abilities of the Fighter and Cleric:But you can't CHOOSE to be a Paladin-At least not to my knowledge. Paladins are chosen by their deities, so.. I won't be going over them here. If you happen to be a Paladin, though, there should be some information on the matter in later parts of the guide.

If you have more strength than anything else, your best bet is to study to be a fighter-Doubly so if dexterity or constitution is second. Which KIND of fighter? Well, there really isn't that much of a choice. A barbarian is just that-Barbaric:A class of low intelligence, but VERY high strength. They're the only class that can't read. So.. It's not like you can "choose" to be a Barbarian:You just ARE one. ...And if that's the case, you might not even be able to read this guide in the first place, so.. Well, I have nothing to say to you then. Not like you'd know what it is anyway if you can't read. A Paladin is what happens if you're a Warrior, but serve one of the main deities-But it must be a Lawful one, and YOU must be Lawful. Else, no Paladin for you. And even then, you have to be specifically CHOSEN. So, don't expect to actually become one. Stick with being a Fighter until you're chosen to be a Paladin.

If you have more intelligence than anything else, a Wizard is your best class-Their spell-casting abilities are entirely dependent on your intelligence-Seeing as spells are cast based on your knowledge of them. You might think that a Wizard is the same thing as a Sorcerer, but this is not the case. A Wizard can know any number of spells, but must STUDY the spells, every time they want to use them, minus the simplest one, known as "read magic"-Thus, the actual number they can cast within a short timespan is lower than that of a Sorcerer. However, a Sorcerer can only KNOW a certain number of spells based on each level, and cannot switch-Likely because they value raw magical power, rather than actually studying. Not only that, a Sorcerer's spell-casting abilities depend on Charisma, not Intelligence, so that means if your main stat isn't Charisma, Sorcerer isn't your class. (Likewise, if your main stat isn't Intelligence, Wizard isn't your class.)

If you have more dexterity than anything else, and have nice Intelligence and Wisdom, perhaps a Rogue would best suit you.. Don't worry, you don't have to steal from your party to be a Rogue. In fact.. Don't steal from your party-If they catch you, you'll probably get kicked out. A Rogue's main purpose is actually to search for traps, open locked doors, and to do stealth operations-Not just steal everything:Though that does seem to be the common thing they do..

Don't have the intelligence or wisdom, being stronger instead? Then you should probably be a Ranger. They're like fighters, but fight using ranged weapons, rather than melee combat.

Have high Charisma, and some intelligence? Perhaps you should be a Bard:They have spells similar to, but not as powerful as, a Mage, and is essentially your jack-of-all-trades. One thing about their spells, is that their power depends on Charisma, not Intelligence, which is why Bard is best for charismatic people to have. This is because unlike Mages, these spells are entirely based on charms and illusions, not studying the nature of magic. The Bard is often a supporting role, and their music will encourage their allies.

As a result, they're often going to be the leader of the party. Not that intelligent, or Bards aren't your thing? Don't worry, you can also try to be a Sorcerer, which is like a Wizard, but dependent on your Charisma rather than Intelligence, with more overall spells, but you'll only know a certain number at a time.

Is it Wisdom that you have most of? Well, as long as you're willing to follow through to a deity (hey, they're powerful, and I speak from experience-They are real.), a Cleric is probably your best bet. They mainly have healing spells, and the ability to turn away, or, if they're experienced enough, even DESTROY the undead.

Druid is also a fine class, having spells related to nature, and also being determined by Wisdom. Wisdom is an important state, doubly so here, because the number of spells they can cast per day is in fact also dependent on this manner-Meaning your power is in fact more proportional to the square of your wisdom, if we were to give it a number-And, as I will show you in the next part, about statistics and combat, it is in fact possible to do this-And not just with Wisdom, but with ALL of the stats. So if you're having trouble trying to find out just exactly what they are in relation to one another, and judging what class you should choose because of that, look there. When I start becoming an adventurer myself, I'll study these statistics MUCH more closely, and my findings might just revolutionize adventuring strategy! A Monk is also a fine choice, if you have good strength and dexterity-Wisdom determines how powerful your offensive and defensive abilities are.

If it's Constitution that you have the most of, then there really isn't much to go off of. You should probably choose your class based on your SECOND-highest attribute:But fighters and offensive roles are probably better for you if you have high constitution, and if you don't, you're best NOT to have a fighting role, unless you have high enough Strength to make up for it.

Finished choosing your class? Well, there should be further information on strategy for your specific class-Go to the section of your class when it appears.

Below a certain amount of Wisdom, spells cannot be cast at all. I will be denoting the minimal amount as 0. Strangely, this also happens to fit the average wisdom along a large population, if we take into consideration methods of checking relative wisdom. From this, we also learn that the adventurers' average is higher. Beyond that, there is +1 (the adventurers' average), +2, +3, and, very rarely, +4-And each one adds a bonus spell of that level to the base number that can be cast-Added to the ones before them. They appear to form a normal distrubtion.

Mages also gain bonus spells in the same manner based off of Intelligence. However, there are some flaws with this system. First off, it's apparent that wisdom actually has a chance of increasing on its own a total of three times, based on age. This doesn't appear to make any sense-The probabilities appear to be exactly 1 in 2 per event happening, which is a massive coincidence. Not only that, that's only using the spells:In other ways, the wisdom gain happens, even when an extra spell is NOT added-Implying that it's slightly more continuous than that. And it turns out, it's exactly twice as continuous. One half of a value in the old system is the lowest possible unit, and that is the amount that is added upon reaching the specific age.

Remember when I said a +4 was very rare? It's only natural to around 1 in 210 commoners, if we renormalize everything to remove the effects of racial bonuses (which I'll speak of later on) This is a MASSIVE jump from +3, which happens around 1 in 24 times for commoners-Far beyond what you should expect for a normal distribution, being a change by a factor of more than 8. This probably means that the low end of +4 is the maximum. So, let's sort a new system, shall we?

We'll start with 0 as the normal, commoner average. The scale goes all the way up to 8, and it must go down at least to -4, because there have been cases where spellcasting was impossible even after the third age event without any penalties. It likely goes down to -7, which would make "-4" just as rare as "+4" to commoners, and absurdly rare to adventurers. But, in many cases, like the bonus spell casting, what matters is what happens when you cut that value in half, rounding down. So, let's call this new value the "effective value". The effective value is functionally identical to the old system.

But wait.. Negative wisdom? That doesn't even make any sense, does it? Everyone has some wisdom-Not being wise just means you don't have a lot. After all, you still know common sense, and THAT requires some wisdom, does it not? Let's make the commoner average 10. Now, the scale goes from 3 to 18. But, let's keep the effective value the same-"0" seems to be quite important. So now, to calculate effective value, after rounding down, you subtract 5.
Got all that? Good, now we can move on.

[The guide will continue soon..]