Guide to the Arcane Realm

Stats

Stats

A common form of identification for most urban and suburban citizens are personal statistics. A statistic (or stat) serves to represent a particular aspect of an individual. Stats serve to help communities to determine what skills someone might be good at, what job someone is suited for, what class adventurers could be, etc.

History

During the Golden Age of Adventure, city-states, towns and villages became places where tasks were posted for traveling adventurers to take on quests for hire. With more and more individuals and groups of varying quality taking on these tasks, civilizations had to calculate how well they would do at various different tasks. They established the base attributes that adventurers are judged by their natural, in-born characteristics: Strength, Vitality, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Agility and Charisma. Later even non-combat related jobs, would be held to similar parameters to determine relative skill.

Most adventurers came together in groups often referred to as a party to work together on a specific shared goal. Those individuals would often have different level of skill in certain areas like stealth or magic power that gives them a unique role in the group. These archetypes became popular enough to become the equivalent to careers for adventurers, later called classes.

Soon the military of empires were held up to these statistics,  along with stats specific to combat derived from them. Regiments were developed to increase certain stats over time and those naturally gifted in certain areas were usually put into special roles in combat, similar to adventure classes. These roles were expanded by increasing technology and spellcraft during the Ghulat Wars. After their end and the construction of guilds, individual statistics came back into popular use again with even more derived stats tailored for service jobs, and modern combat. With the revival of adventuring based careers,  stats have implemented to try and  help those find the roles best suited to their abilities and find new avenues as well.

Attributes

An attribute describes to what extent a being   possesses natural, in-born physical and mental characteristics shared with  others. They are the governing force behind derived stats, often used in specific fields . Although they can be fixed to a certain range, a person can train to gain more of a particular attribute. Of course by the same idea, if you don't use it, you lose it!

Strength

This is the stat that determines how strong a being is. This is usually broken down into two levels: how much a creature can lift/carry/push/pull, and how much force they can put into a physical blow.  An individual's physical strength is determined by two factors; the cross-sectional area of muscle fibers recruited to generate force and the intensity of the recruitment. Not only muscules but bone density, tendon and ligament strength and toughness, and joint function comprise effective strength. Outside of battle, strength is useful for tasks where one needs to exert on a physical object like lifting a load or pushing a cart and also determines the maximum amount of weight someone can carry.

Endurance

This stat that determines the ability of an organism to exert itself and remain active for a long period of time, as well as its ability to resist, withstand, recover from, and have immunity to trauma, wounds, or fatigue.  

This includes muscular endurance, the ability of a muscle group to continually generate a force over a sustained period of time. Also includes cardiovascular endurance, the body's ability to deliver oxygen and nutrients needed for physical activity. This aspect also includes removing waste products to allow a  being being to recover from poisons, illnesses, and other things which attack the body.