Between editing a long work of fiction and trying to learn a new framework in the hopes of a new gig, it’s been a while. Also, I’ve been kind of hooked on Rimworld, and very soon, the next FF14 expansion drops. But I have a few hours where I’m not feeling pressured to do something more productive, so I can, hopefully, finally finish this!

So it looks like I left off last time having learned I can learn a single ‘dialect’, which may be ‘wheezes, faints, and roars’. Where does that leave me now? Trying to finish this, that’s where! Lemme see…I am to “look up the value of [my] statistics on the appropriate statistic letter tables”, which is a sentence that someone wrote, looked over, nodded approvingly at, and set into print at a time when doing so was not nearly as trivial a task as it is today.

Strength Gage

There is a “Strength Gage (sic)” table. It has no letters. Well, I mean, it is written in letters, and some numbers, but how that makes it a “statistic letter table” is beyond my feeble intellect. Anyway, going back to the first part of this, I have a Strength of 17. I am normal on hitting doors, normal on carriable weight, I can throw a rope with a grappling hook 105 feet, which is, I must note, a pretty darn specific thing to call out, and lastly, I have a “Sweeping Capacity” of 2, which I guess is useful for when I need to clean out the bar in order to get a place to sleep for the night, or something.

It’s worth nothing… I mean, noting… that the “+” in this chart, e.g., “+1 to hit doors” is written by hand. This implies the author used a fairly cheap typewriter that left out several keys. This was, believe it or not, pretty common in Ye History Times. Some would not have a “1”, requiring you to use a lower-case “l”. Why? Typewriters were fairly complex mechanical devices, and the fewer keys you could get away with, the cheaper it was.

So, that’s the “Strength Gage” done with. No, wait, I need to include this introduction: “This table integrates functions of Strength into divisions of effort by available energy.” That’s a pretty pretentious way to say “Look up the modifiers for your strength based on which range of numbers it falls into”. 

Dexterity Gage (And More!)

Alright, the Dexterity “Gage” has letters! I think, to use the letters, I need to go look up my class, which was Mercenary, or perhaps Warrior. After far too much page-flipping, I use table “C”, which means, with a Dex of 20, I am “Normal”. That was an awful lot of work for no game effect.

With a Reflexes of 17, and using Column B, I have an AMC of -1, but a Cineplex of +2.

Constitution Gage has no letters. Constitution Gage needs no letters. Like most of my abilities, it’s 17, which means (hang on!): Fatigue Rate Swings 7, Fatigue Rate Running 5, Speed 5, Healing Die 1-3, Hit Point Modifier +1, Carriable Weight 125, and SITL 3. Phew! (You add Carriable Weight from Strength and Con together.)

Intelligence

If I Had Any, I Wouldn’t Be Doing This

My cat, Rocket, is sitting on my copy of Spawn of Fashan. I think he’s trying to protect me. Oh, now he’s left. His butt probably felt insulted by what was beneath it.

My Intelligence is (wait for it….) 17, and I use Column A, giving me “Normal”

A game that prides itself on how much “individuality” it gives characters should not use bell-curve mechanics that flatten the majority of rolled values into a single “Normal” range. True, the ranges on some of the other “Letter Columns” are narrower, but it’s still an endemic problem throughout the rules. Well, I mean, the rules themselves are one giant endemic problem, so this is a sub-problem.

Charisma: You guessed it, 17, Column A, “Normal”. See what I mean?

Courage: As a mercenary, I get an E ticket… er… Table for this. My Courage is not 17! No, it is 16, and on Column E (there is no Column D, oddly. Well, it would be odd for any other game. Missing, illogical, and/or contradictory rules are the norm, here.), a score of 16 is…

Wait for it….

Hang on….

Normal.

The last thing I need to calculate is my Radiation Roll modifier. After much searching, I found “The Radiation Chart”, and this is the first line:

“Here is an introduction to a table that is not here.”

And… we’re done, folks. That’s my limit.