Mostly utilitarian FAQ for the build-OCD crowd [WIP~]

Overview

Ever got frustrated planning a run of c~so-called~RPG because you find available data on recruitable characters and actual utility of skills; class features and equipment unsatisfactory? Here’s to you – and I’m the victim all the same~! …and when you have your perfect bulid planned out in advance, you can finally sit back, enjoy the story unfolding and watch your dude(s) kicking ass and chewing bubblegum with the satisfaction of scenario well rehearsed.My key motivation for making this guide is in part celebration of coming back to life after an excessive period of festering depression, hopelessness and hardships conga line, part convincing myself that it’s for real and at least some the complacency lays in the dust of the road. I feel the sorta need to activise *me* some more – baby steps – and perhaps begin constructing some presence on the Interwebz as I long planned.To be frank, herein be, in order of importance, the general break of missions, at which points in time do you get which party members, listing of their starting stats and equipment, overwiev and suggestions regarding skill raising and choice of equipment, pointers on stratagems and some game mechanics. Also probably out of control storyteller type ranting and headcanon.[Art used without permission, please poke me if that’s very un-okay by you and Imma take it down; do my own. We cool…?][I repeat – dis be a WIP project. Please contact me should you have any inquiries or points to make. Cheers (:]

Opening notes and assorted advice

• Enemies’ HP and HP only is increased on “Hard” to 150% of the values in “Normal” difficulty.
• Amount of XP received for each mission seems only to be dependent on the # of enemies slain
  and whether you suffered casualties (downed investigators don’t count, only KIA do).
• “Hard” mode seems the intended way of getting the second set of achievements for exceeding 1100 “mission score” points for each, not to mention it’s more challenging; fairer to the gribblies.
• I believe the count of enemies in a given mission doesn’t actually differ. At least for the first one.

• DEXterity influences critical chance in addition to AP pool being derived from it and INTelligence.

Party members introduction

• The good Professor. Your average New Englander – the snoop around secrets that mankind shouldn’t know, shoot some gribbly star-bastards; cadavera aqua forti dissolvendi, nec aliquid retinendi, read a book; get institutionalized – save the day – kind of a guy, complete with “Magical Vaguely-Oriental Person +40% to lore” schtick that’s apparently strictly obligatory for the job:
  

• Mr Green, the overall rough person by trade, Brightmeer’s muscle; joins by the second mission:
• Ms Gold, the psychiatrist and Tarantinian female figure; joins by the third mission:
• One “Captain Hill” is, nominally, the team leader, at least in the martial sense.
  A no-nonsense Brit officer that takes surprisingly well to the weirdness undreamt of unfolding before his eyes and remains relatively unfazed – even if not altogether chipper – over the course of events. Quite possibly his stalwart psyche was the chief reason he was singled out by MI-47 for Inquisitor Professor Brightmeer’s entourage.

  Given the increasingly common dream sequences and high initial willPOWer, he seems a natural candidate for later-game sorcerous-support right after the Professor himself.
  

• Sid “Samwise” Brown: Claims to be a combat engineer and to actually dislike potatoes; that much is untrue. A somewhat unremarkable, but dependable patsy to The Ringbearr… Cpt. Hill.
  In service with the King’s Own Little Folks’ Auxilia – an outfit hailing well from ye olden days and later revived after a fashion by recognition of Ratling sharpshooters, scouts and pioneers as a discrete and comparatively appreciated specialization out of abhuman troops as utilized occasionally by Imperial Guard since The God Emperor’s of Mankind Great Crusade.:
  

• A typical Tommy. They come in many a different personal name, in fact. Who’da thunk it~?
  Replacement ones are available for $175 at Staff Sargent’s if you manage to misplace the initial.
  Caveat emptor: the straw-volunteers you can recruit in this manner come entirely unequipped!
  What the ♥♥♥♥’s a Tommy, then? DYI dummy you can slap any loadout on and pick the skillset:
  

  The next one you get may be preferable if you intend to utilize a machine rifle on him, as he has 5% higher associated skill and another 5% is shifted from rifle marksmanship to hand-to-hand.
  Still, it seems ever so slightly pointless going to such lengths to trade $195 in all (counting the bayonet and two dressings you won’t be taking off the original one’s corpse) for the equivalent of 50 XP (125 XP if you count the additional HTH skill). Obviously in any other game I’d…greatly lower or alter my sexual standards to get just a single COLLECTIBLE – y’knowatchamsayin’ – skillpoint but this does slightly derail the whole “outfitting the party” thing and seems, frankly, inelegant, bringing to mind some of the most moronic and time-consuming exploits ever, like laboriously grinding EXP in Fallout by repeatedly pickpocketing an item back and forth, forever~
  Will you ever forgive me all the hours of the incestous bad touch, Morlis…? I WAS YOUNG~

  Some specimens I came across. Double bummer because if you get the auspiciously named “W. Lewis” you simply daren’t not outfit him with dual machine-rifles, now. And the War gotta be slowing down if Herbert here has to scour No Man’s Land for corpses:

  

Interlude the first – Quartermaster’s store after 1st mission

On skills, eXPerience points and upgrade suggestions

The game utilizes a d100 AKA percentile system for determining success. As a direct consequence, skill levels range from 0-99% that stands for – frankly – a chance of success before external modifiers are applied. Or so do I believe – I’m not one to go decompiling stuff exactly ;p

Further, the way of upgrading skills is a point buy system with increasing XP per skillpoint ratio.
First point in the discrete skill (or knowledge, as the single case where you kickstart a point-buy skill from zero is Mythos lore) costs 100 XP. Then the thresholds are as follows:

• 02-10% costing 2 XP each
• 11-20% costing 4 XP each
• 21-30% costing 8 XP each
• 31-40% costing 10 XP each
• 41-50% costing 15 XP each
• 51-60% costing 20 XP each
• 61-70% costing 25 XP each
• 71-80% costing 50 XP each
• 81-90% costing 60 XP each
• 91-99% costing (?) XP each

There are exactly three skills constituting an exception to this. Instead, they have 33% increments; first costing 100 XP, the second 50 XP and third 120 XP. These are, in listed order:
gasmask training, first aid and expertise in…umm…field psychiatry~

• Professor Brightmeer’s DEXterity score by one (185 XP) – the “bang” you are going to get for that is 2 AP more than ever after for any single character. That’s how maladjusted the fellow was. But being that pistols seem to have good accuracy for AP cost, he quickly evolves into a formidable gunslinger, none the less. I suspect that INTelligence stat may have some impact on the skill-growth-through-practice rate. Being that the purple item on his head, superficially resembling a turban, is probably his engorged brain, you’d do well to furnish him with private Tommy’s battle bowler right away in the trenches when you begin. [To initiate swapping items look for the box icon.]
• Each of major characters’ main weapon skill to the threshold of 70% where it becomes relatively impractial to purchase further skillpoints. Don’t worry, now that they’re hitting things, they’re going to grind to max levels in no time. Anyway, until the operation’s conclusion. Probably~
• Firstly, I concentrate on handguns for Professor and Cpt.Hill; rifle marksmanship and after topping at 70%, artillery spotting for Paddy. Our generic faceless Tommy ain’t possibly getting any upgrades this time around, sorry Tommy; we gun’ tell your wife you did your part.
  Hang in there, on the barb’d wire, in the meantime.

When you can affort some more training next time around, it should be intensive protective gear drills for everybody, first and foremost. I’d also suggest upgrading first aid to the second threshold, at least. We can also pop some more XP into Prof’s gymnastics catching-up and by increasing his HP by one (for a hundred XP) and his STRength (230 XP at this point), making him last one turn longer unassisted when downed and enjoy some more of the good ole’ haemorrhagin’ overall. Also, the new aquisition, Mr Green needs a tiny bit’o polishing of his scattergun and clobberin’ expertise. Now may also be the time to finally show some love to poor Tommy and train him to utilize his tools o’trade by heart. Namely, Tommy is going to be our second marksman – in anaticipation of elephant guns – and close-quarters stabbifier. [That *is* a real job where I come from, I *assure* y’all…] Should we ever get another one, they could be put on machine-rifle duty right away. Foreshadowing yay. But we won’t.

I suppose Ms Gold [What the hell *is* this, Reservoir Dogs…?] can take up either pistol, the occult, a machine rifle or hand-to-hand in addition to her shotgun. And it seems the options here are already arranged from the best-advised, huh. Honestly though, not so sure about that yet.