THROUGH DARK AND TWIST [FORUM RPG']

You may choose one of four base classes:

Warrior: High POW. Medium INT and CON. Low AGI. +1 Armour.
Mage: High INT. Medium AGI and CON. Low POW. +1 Spell.
Rogue: High AGI. Medium AGI and POW. Low CON. +1 Lockpick.
Farmer: High CON. Medium AGI and POW. Low INT. +1 Food.

Eventually, as you gain levels, you will be able to promote to one of two hidden new classes. These will be based on how you've built your hero.

There are four stats:
CON - this denotes your defence, health and resistances against physical ailments.
POW - this denotes your strength, damage output and physical ability.
INT - this denotes your intelligence, magic and non-physical resistances.
AGI - this denotes your speed, acrobatic performance and luck.

Your class denotes your base stats, and you may add 5 points into any of those stats to customise your build.

Every time you level up you will gain 2 points to put into these stats and build your character. Experience will be based on damage done to enemies (each point of damage will be +1 EXP), so it benefits you to attack instead of standing back and letting others do all the heavy work.

You may start with one of the following skills, based on your class. Mages may pick two skills.

Warrior
Slash - A fast slash. Deals more damage based on your AGI.
Shield Bash - A protective stance that baits the enemy to attack you. If they do you will deal damage based on your CON.
Stab - A powerful attack that is based on your POW.
Critical Strike - An attack that does low damage but has a chance at dealing double damage based on your INT.

Mage
Wind Spin - Wind-based damage that hits all enemies. Based on AGI stat.
Fire Bloom - Fire-based damage that deals heavy damage. Based on POW stat.
Healing Dew - Water-based healing. Based on INT stat.
Protective Dust - Earth-based protection against ailments and damage. Based on CON stat.

Rogue
Shadow Strike - Low damage, chance to blind based on AGI.
Sweet Spot - Low damage, can maim a foe based on INT.
Slash Hack - A slashing attack based on POW.
Block Stab - Strike back for double damage if enemy attacks. Based on CON.

Farmer
Fumble Flail - Variance damage based on POW and dice roll.
Tumble Weed - Dodges all attacks for this turn, based on AGI.
Infuriate - Increases ally's attack for a turn, based on INT.
Slake - Heal self/ally, based on CON.

You may start the game with one type of food, one piece of armour and one memento. Warriors may pick two pieces of armour. Farmers may pick two pieces of food.

Food
- Cheese and Bread (+5HP)
- Wine (+3HP, 2 uses)
- Jerky (+3HP, Guts)

Armour
- Leather Bracer (+1 CON, +1 POW)
- Boots (+1 CON, +1 AGI)
- Kneepads (+1 CON, +1 INT)
- Padded Tunic (+2 CON)

Memento
- Silver Coin
- Leather Sheath
- Wooden Pendant
- Silver Ring
- Diary Page
- Leather Pouch
- Lock of Hair
- Carved Doll

Weapons
You do not start with weapons - they will be found through your journey. As such it will very much be based on what you find. You may end up wielding some strange weapons indeed - from chair legs to chain whips to monster limbs.

To join tell me the following:

Name: Name of your character
Class: The class they are
Stat changes: Where you spend your 5 points
Skill/s: Which skill/s they have
Items: Their starting items.

Phobia/s: (Must have one)
Description: Even just a basic one.
Image: If you have one. Not a necessity.

You will be shown maps that you can explore. You will have a certain amount of turns overall to find your way out of the area you find yourself in, but there will be ways to increase that amount. This means you need to balance thorough exploration with moving through the dungeon. Don't explore enough and you might miss out on finding items to help you with your quest. Explore too much and you might find yourself failing the quest.

A turn will consist of one action per person. Most turns will be based on either exploring or combat. For the most part I'll be pretty lenient with what you can do - interacting with people or items in specific ways. There will be some limitations, but for the most part I'll allow almost any actions and react to them.

Exploration
- inspect: interact with different parts of the map
- heal: use items to heal
- move: go to the next map area
- rest: uses 4 turns to fully heal all party members. -1 food each.
- special: some maps may have special options like shopping or talking to NPCs.


Combat
- skill: use one of your skills
- heal: use an item to heal
- escape: move back one room. You will get two turns to recuperate (so you cannot sleep) but the enemy will chase you. Running too much can get you cornered and may cause you to fail in your mission.Y

Win/Lose Conditions
You will win the game if you manage to escape before the end of the allotted turns.
You will lose if you do not manage to escape before the end of the allotted turns, or if all of you DIED.

DIED is the loss of all of your LIFE during combat (and in some cases, outside of it). Each player will start with 3 LIFE. If you lose all LIFE you will have DIED.

There are some ways to gain more LIFE, and even a few ways to restore one who has DIED, but they are few and far between. You will lose one LIFE if your HP hits 0. At that point you will be removed from combat.

If everyone falls in a battle they will be transported back to the start of the dungeon and randomly lose armour, weapons and items. There will also be a 4-turn penalty applied, though all HP and MP will be restored and ailments will be removed.

Status Effects
There will be a series of status effects (ailments and buffs) during the game which affect different aspects of your character. I'll be adding them to the list as we come across them, but here are a few basic ones.

Buffs
Guts - If your HP hits 0 within the next 2 turns you will heal +1 HP

Ailments
Blind - Enemy chance to hit greatly reduced for 1 turn. (D6 roll by GM. 1/2 = hit. 3-6 = miss)
Maim - Reduces enemy ability. -2 Random Stat (D4 roll by GM)

Inventory Limits
There are limitations to your inventory space. You may hold up to 16 items. Food and consumable items will stack. Weapons, different treasures and armour will not. There are ways to increase your inventory space, however it is expected that you share amongst yourselves so that no one person has everything.

Keep in mind that you can only use the items that are in your own personal inventory. This means giving just one person all the food is a bad idea.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if one person is KO'd in battle then all their inventory is inaccessible until after the battle. If someone DIES, then some of their inventory will be randomly removed (amount is D6 roll, picked at random). You may pick up what is left from their corpse, however.

Passive Skills
Interaction may require the use of passive skills such as lockpicking, deciphering and the like. The success of these skills will be based on what your class is expected to know - dealing with animals, for example, is something Farmers will excel at, but they'd be terrible at reading ancient languages.

For the most part these skills will be based on where they fall under the different stat types - the higher the base stat for a class, the more likely they are to succeed and the lower the base stat, the less likely they will succeed.

I will determine successes through dice rolls. If a passive falls under a high stat (for example, lockpicking for a Rogue) then they will get two tries per turn for that skill. If they fail the first and succeed the second, then it will count as a success. However, depending on the skill some classes may not be able to ever succeed - if this is the case, I will let you know after one try at the skill.