Stats

You have six stats. Each is a number that says how strong, quick, hardy, clever, steadfast, or striking you are.

A score of 10 is average.

Your stats are set when you create your character at the start of a run. Your race, your gender, and your class each add to or take from the average of 10 (see Your character). After that, they grow by use (see Raising your stats below).

Seeing your stats

Press @ to open the character screen. It shows:

• your name, race, gender, and class;
• your age, birthday, and birth sign;
• your stats in the order above, with their short names. A stat that a status effect or a disease lowers is shown lowered, in red;
• your hit points, mana (see Mana), and Defence (see Combat);
• your weight: your own, plus what you carry (see Objects and your pack), and how much you can carry (see Burden).

Looking takes no time. Press @ or Esc to close it.

Creatures have stats too, but you cannot see theirs in the game. They are on Creatures in numbers.

What they do

Stats matter in a fight (see Combat), under a load (see Burden), at a door (see Doors), and for your mana (see Mana):

• Strength helps you hit up close, adds to the damage of your blows, and draws a bow. It counts double toward how much you can carry. The stronger you are, the sooner you kick a door in and dig through a wall.
• Dexterity helps you aim a shot or a throw and dodge blows. It adds to your Defence, but less under a heavy load or in heavy armour.
• Toughness gives you hit points and makes them come back sooner. It counts toward how much you can carry, and fights off most diseases.
• Intelligence helps you find hidden things when you search (Searching) and adds to your mana. It also strengthens the spells whose ladders name it, which covers most spells’ damage.
• Willpower helps you notice hidden things in passing. It adds to your mana and makes it come back sooner, and it fights off a few diseases (brain fever). It strengthens the spells whose ladders name it: most spells’ reach, and some spells’ damage or healing.
• Presence moves shop prices in your favour, or against you if it is low. It adds to your mana, and strengthens the spells whose ladders name it: how long a blessing or a hex lasts.

Modifiers

Most rules use a stat’s modifier rather than its score: the score minus 10, halved and rounded down. The game never shows a modifier. Here they are:

Exactly which rules use the modifier and which use the score:

Example: a dwarf warrior’s stats. Thora, a level 1 dwarf warrior, starts with these scores and modifiers:

Strength	Dexterity	Toughness	Intelligence	Willpower	Presence
15 (+2)	10 (+0)	17 (+3)	9 (−1)	14 (+2)	7 (−2)

• Strength +2: +2 to hit and +2 damage with her long sword (Combat).
• Dexterity +0: her Defence gets nothing from her feet, only from her armour and shield.
• Toughness 17: 17 + 6 (dwarf) + 7 (warrior) = 30 hit points, and one back every 360 − 12 × 17 = 156 seconds. With her Strength it sets her carrying limit: 1.5 kg × (2 × 15 + 17) = 70.5 kg.
• Presence −2: shop prices are 6% against her.

Potentials

Every stat also has a potential: how far it can grow for good. The game never shows it.

• Magic items raise a stat only while you wear them, whatever the potential.
• Training gets more expensive past the potential but carries on. It never moves the potential itself (see Raising your stats).
• Only elixirs, and rarely a fresh corpse, widen the potential.

Yours are set at the start of a run. Each is the potential your race gives, rolled once. It is never below your starting score: a score above it raises the potential to match.

Stats: St Strength, Dx Dexterity, To Toughness, In Intelligence, Wi Willpower, Pr Presence.

An elixir raises its stat by 1 and the potential by 1 or 2 more (see Potions).

What changes them

Stats do not change how far you see or how quietly you walk.

For a while:

• Strong poison lowers your Strength and Dexterity by one while it lasts, for everything they do (see Status effects).
• Hunger saps them: Weak lowers your Strength and Dexterity (see Hunger).
• Diseases take points off your stats (stat damage). These come back a point a day once no disease shows (see Diseases).

For good:

• Eating the corpse of some creatures may raise a stat, as far as it can grow (see Food and corpses).
• Training may raise a stat at a new level or at dawn.
• The touch of some undead lowers a stat (Drained stats), and so may a check after deeds that cost marks.

Nothing else raises or lowers them for good.

Raising your stats

You never pick a stat to raise. Instead, your stats grow with what you do:

• Strength: fighting up close, landing criticals, blocking with a shield.
• Dexterity: dodging, parrying, shooting.
• Toughness: being hurt, felling worthy foes.
• Intelligence: reading, searching.
• Willpower: enduring, noticing, casting.
• Presence: talking, trading.

Each such use may earn the stat a training mark. A stat’s marks are kept as one running total, its pile. Marks never fade, have no limit, and count the same however many come in a day.

What earns a mark, and how likely:

Asking someone about a topic takes no time, so it trains nothing. A long action counts only when it lasts more than one turn and is not interrupted.

Every stat can be trained in more than one way. A fighter who never opens a scroll still sharpens Intelligence by exploring, searching, foraging, and disarming traps. A wizard grows stronger by wading, hauling, and struggling free of a grip. Casting a spell you know trains the stats the spell grows with (its ladders): Intelligence for most, Willpower for those that reach far, Presence for hexes and blessings that last. Some uses train two stats at once, such as disarming a trap or struggling against a hold.

The price of a point

Each stat’s next point has a price in marks: 20 + 10 × the stat’s score, up to its potential. Past the potential the price climbs quickly. The first point beyond it costs twice the plain price, the second 4 ×, the third 7 ×, then 11 ×, 16 ×, 22 ×. (With n the point past the potential, that is (2 + n × (n + 1)) / 2 times the plain price.)

Training alone never raises the potential. So a stat you live by ends a long career of sixty levels some twelve or thirteen points past its potential, at about 30. It never reaches the top by use alone. An elixir or a rare corpse that raises the potential makes every later point cheaper.

The last column, the drop, is what a stat’s pile pays back if the stat ever falls by a point: half the plain price of the point lost, never more past the potential.

The checks

Every time you gain an experience level, and once a day at 06:00 (the hour a rest until dawn ends), each stat in turn gets one check. The rule is the same for both.

• A pile under a quarter of the price is out of play: nothing happens.
• From a quarter up, the stat rises by a point with chance marks³ / (marks³ + price³). That is even odds at the price, about one in nine at half of it, and near certain at twice it.

A rise pays the price out of the pile. Whatever is left over waits for the next check, so nothing is wasted. A lucky rise from a short pile spends what there was and no more. A stat rises at most one point per check, so a great pile becomes a point a day and one a level.

The game says only “You feel stronger.” (or quicker, tougher, sharper, more resolute, more confident). The new score shows on the character screen. A rise in Toughness brings its hit point at once, and a rise at 06:00 stops a rest.

The daily check comes whether you are awake or resting, once a day at that hour and no other. Nothing decays and nothing is capped, so the only limit is the clock.

How many days the next point takes, by the marks a stat earns a day (the daily check alone; a level’s check comes on top):

The Gourmand talent doubles the marks a fresh corpse gives.

Losing marks

A few deeds take marks away instead, each from one stat, so you can lower a stat on purpose if you want to. They are: starving, fainting, carrying far too much, walking onto traps you know are there, and getting caught stealing. Bad luck alone never costs a mark: a hidden trap, a blow, a disease, or a drain takes none. Each deed takes its marks at once, or a mark with the chance shown:

The pile then goes below zero. The checks read it the same way, against the drop’s price: half the plain price of the point lost, never more past the potential.

Nothing happens while the pile is less than a quarter of that below zero. The first time a deed takes it that far, the game warns you in words: “You feel your strength wasting.”, “Your hands feel less sure.”, “You feel your health failing.”, “Your mind feels dull.”, “Your will feels brittle.”, “You feel small and unregarded.” So a warning always comes before a drop.

From there, a check lowers the stat by a point with the same odds as a rise: “You feel weaker.” (or clumsier, frailer, duller; “Your resolve wavers.”, “You feel less sure of yourself.”). The drop pays its price back toward zero, never past it.

A drop never takes a stat below 3, nor below the stat damage on it plus one. It never lowers the potential, so a point lost below the potential is won back at its plain price. Your maximum hit points and mana fall with it, but a drop never kills.

At 14, losing a point takes 75 marks of deeds (five dawns greeted Weak), and winning it back takes 150 marks of use. So there is nothing to gain by going up and down.

Drained stats

Some of the undead drink the life out of the living. When such a creature’s touch hits you and you live, you make a check of a stat, Willpower unless the creature says otherwise. You roll 2d12 plus the stat’s modifier against the drain’s difficulty, as for a disease’s check.

• If you hold: “A deathly chill passes through you.” Nothing is lost.
• If not, points come off one of your stats for good (“You feel your strength drain away!”). Your score is simply lower from then on, for everything it does.

A drain of Toughness lowers your maximum hit points. A drain of Intelligence, Willpower, or Presence lowers your maximum mana. A drain never kills you, and never takes a score below 3 (nor below what the stat damage on it needs). Resting never brings drained points back.

Your potential stays where it was, so a drained stat can grow back by training and corpses like any other. A temple’s mending gives every drained point back at once, along with any stat damage (see Services).

Talents help you hold: Unbroken soul (+4 to the check), Iron will (+2 to every Willpower check), and the paladin’s Divine grace (+2 to the check).

The creatures that drain:

How often the check holds, by its difficulty and the score of the stat it is made with:

No drain takes a score below 3, nor below one more than the stat damage on it.

See also: Combat, Skills, and Your character.