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Key Character Sheet

Basics

Current Stats

The current HP, VP, MP, and Status Condition of the character since the game was last played. These are only listed for player characters and recurring bosses, and are only placed here above the maximum stats given below so that I don't have to scroll down to see them.

Also listed here will be the character's blood alcohol level, which has a minimum value of 0.00 and a maximum of 1.00. Each day, every time the character uses an alcoholic item, a number dependent on the item is added to their blood alcohol level; whenever they sleep for the night, their blood alcohol level resets to 0.00. If at any point the level reaches a value of 0.08 or higher, the character becomes drunk for the remainder of the day, and will be hung over upon awakening the next day. If a drunk character continues to consume alcohol and the level reaches 0.20 or higher, they will attain alcohol poisoning in addition to drunkenness, but this will still wear off after a night of sleep. If the level reaches 1.00, the character dies (HP is set to 0), and if revived from this by any means other than sleeping for the night, the level will be set to 0.99. A character's alcohol tolerance is equal to 9 minus their Weight (with a minimum result of 1); this tolerance number is multiplied by the alcohol content of the item to determine how much the consumer's blood alcohol level increases. (Alcohol content will usually be in multiples of 0.01.)

If the character is a laguz or has a similar shapeshifting ability, or any other ability that needs its own meter, the meter value(s) will be noted beneath the blood alcohol level.

If the character is currently addicted to a substance, then at the end of the current stats will be listed the substance to which they are addicted, the level of the addiction (which ranges from 1 to 15), the number of addictive items that the character has consumed that day over the number required by the addiction (this minimum will range from 1 to 8), and the number of days that the character has gone cold turkey (the number required to break the addiction will be equal to the addiction's level).

Weapon Levels

As in Fire Emblem, these indicate a character's proficiency with a particular type of weapon, and a character must have a higher Weapon Level in order to wield better weapons. However, Weapon Levels only apply to melee weapons, not projectile or magic weapons (with the exception of Bows, which are projectile weapons that use a Weapon Level like melee weapons). All characters have at least the minimum Weapon Level of E in every type of weapon, but player characters are allowed to begin with one of their Weapon Levels at D. Each type of melee weapon has a Weapon Level that increases from E to A as the character uses that type of weapon. If all Weapon Levels are at E, "n/a" will be written here to indicate that no Weapon Levels exceed the minimum; if any are above E, they will be indicated, followed by "Other: E" to indicate that all weapons not listed are at E-level. For player characters, following the weapon level will be a fraction showing how many use points the character has in that Weapon Level over how many are necessary to reach the next level.

Support Levels

Here should be listed the characters with whom this character has built support, the support level with each character, and the number of support points acquired toward the next level as a fraction over the number necessary. "n/a" will be written if the character has not built any support with anyone, but "n/a" will also be written after a character's name but followed with a fraction of support points if the two characters have earned some support points but have not yet made it to C-level. Player characters normally start with no support levels, but if two player characters (or a player character and a non-player character) are connected through their backstories, they may start with a support level of some kind; pairs of non-player characters may have support levels with one another, but do not earn support points in-game. If a support level has just been broken, "(broken)" will be written after the lower level.

Inventory

The items that the character is currently carrying. One player character can carry up to 10, and the 10 slots will be listed here, even if they are empty.

Combat Stats

Arpeggio's combat system is based on Paper Mario's, which was built around simplification of traditional RPG mechanics. As such, things like speed, accuracy, and critical hits have been completely eliminated, although Arpeggio does add a few more stats to Paper Mario's set, creating some conceptual variety to allow for a wider range of character types. Leveling up only increases HP and FP-type stats; offense and defense stats are increased at specific points in the game determined by the Maestro, making them comparable to Mario finding a new Hammer or pair of Boots, or to one of his partners receiving an upgrade.

Field Stats

Field stats are completely separate from battle stats, and a character's power in battle has no effect on their performance in the field and vice versa. Unlike combat stats, which increase throughout the game either by way of leveling up or receiving special permanent increases, field stats never change. (This is true for player characters, NPCs, and enemies, although a boss may have different field stats if rematched with a different sheet). For any kind of character, each field stat ranges from 1 to 9, with absolutely no exceptions. As a result of both of these rules, it is possible for a player character to begin the game with one or more field stats maxed out at 9, which can allow a player to feel more powerful despite being stuck with an Attack of 1. That said, for a player to determine the field stats of their character, they are given 30 points to spend among the six stats: Strength, Hand-Eye, Platform, Knowledge, Clever, and Charisma. Due to the 1 to 9 scale, each stat must have at least 1 point put into it, but can have no more than 9. The Weight field stat is separate from this system: it still ranges from 1 to 9, but no points are spent on it, because a higher Weight is not necessarily better (nor worse), so in that case the player just picks the number. However, characters may also have a "unique field ability," indicated as the "Unique" stat; this "stat" does not have a numerical value, but rather gives a description of the ability (explained further below). If a player wants their character to have a Unique ability, then they must spend 6 of their 30 field stat points on this, and so a character without a Unique ability gets to spend those points on the normal stats and have a slightly higher total among their values. A single character cannot have more than one Unique field ability, and for those who don't have one, "n/a" is written.

Attacks

Weapons

A list of the weapons, if any, currently carried by the character. One character can carry up to 4, and the slots will be listed as with the item inventory slots. Depending on the weapon, it may be used for a no-cost melee attack and/or in conjunction with special attacks that require VP, or it may not use the character's stats at all. Note that whichever weapon the character last used is moved to the top of the list and is cosidered to be their "equipped" weapon, like in Fire Emblem, so it is the weapon used for Weapon Triangle purposes, if the Weapon Triangle is relevant. If the player performs an unarmed physical attack, then any equipped weapons automatically become un-equipped, and if the player performs a psychic attack, they can choose to whether to unequip an equipped weapon or leave it equipped (in the rare event of an armed psychic attack, the relevant weapon must be equipped). Magical attacks require a magic weapon of some kind to be equipped, so if a magical attack is used, a magical weapon of the user's choice is equipped. If a character uses the Defend, Do Nothing, or Run Away commands, they can equip a weapon of their choice or leave everything unequipped, for defensive purposes agaisnt the Weapon Triangle. "(E)" will be written next to an equipped weapon for clarification (particularly since a weapon may occupy the first slot without being equipped).

Special Attacks

A list of the special attacks that the character is currently capable of executing, noting for each the information on damage, VP cost, Status Conditions inflicted, necessary weaponry, etc. Please note that an "attack" may be a healing ability or other such non-offensive maneuver; anything more complicated than an armed basic attack should go here. In Paper Mario terms, special attacks are most comparable to the attacks granted to Mario by some Badges, such as Power Jump, Quake Hammer, Fire Drive, etc. In the same vein, they should always cost some VP to use, unless it's something like Tattle.

Where almost any weapon can be used for an armed basic attack, in order for a weapon to be used in conjunction with a special attack, the special attack in question must be designed for this. In further restriction, special attacks may only be designed for one particular weapon subtype, such as Swords, Axes, or Lances; a special attack designed for a sword cannot be performed with a lance, although it can be performed with even the most obscure Sword-type weapon, such as a baseball bat. Nonetheless, utilization of a stronger weapon within a subtype will usually increase the damage of a special attack performed with that weapon; this is accomplished by the special attack's power involving a variable called Weapon Base Attack Power, or WBAP. Therefore, when a character increases their Weapon Level and acquires a matching high-level weapon, the character's armed special attacks will deal more damage without having a higher VP cost. On the other hand, if the necessary weapon is stolen or the character suffers from the Status Problem Disarmed, these advantages are temporarily lost, and in most cases the weapon-based special attack cannot be executed at all until the weapon is reacquired, giving some incentive for players to create unarmed special attacks. Usually, armed special attacks are only designed for melee weapons, but on rare occasions you might see one for a projectile weapon; magic weapons never get armed special attacks because they are already used to perform magical attacks (see below).

Psychic Attacks

Whereas the special attacks listed in the previous section are of the default "physical" type, here we continue the list with a separate section for all of the psychic attacks that the character knows. These differ from physical special attacks in that they're powered by the Brain Power stat instead of Attack Power, but they are still fueled from the same pool of VP. Psychic attacks will almost always cost at least some VP to perform and are almost never performed with a weapon, and all psychic attacks become temporarily disabled when a character gets Psyched Out. As a tradition carried over from Hegel's RPGs predating Arpeggio, the default psychic attacks are taken from the Mother/Earthbound series, and may be used by many common enemies despite them not being from that series; player characters can also learn these attacks, or they may make up their own psychic abilities.

Magical Attacks

Magical attacks, a.k.a. spells, are also given their own separate section in the special attack list. These are powered by the Magic Power stat, and no longer draw from VP, instead getting their own private pool of MP. In order to cast any spell, a character must have some kind of magic weapon equipped, but any magic weapon allows the character to cast all of their known spells, and what kind of magic weapon it is has no effect on how the spells turn out. Spellcasting is disabled under the Status Problem Silence, although Silenced characters can still equip magic weapons and perform armed basic attacks with them (the opposite is true under Disarming, where a magic weapon can't be used for an armed basic attack, but can still be equipped in order to cast spells). The default magical attack list is based on Fire Emblem, and player characters can learn those spells if they don't want to make up their own.

Elemental Modifiers

This lists the character's relationship to the eight different Elements present in the game system. The modifier for a given Element is limited to certain predefined options: the "--" that you see below indicates that the character is neutral to that Element, meaning such attacks just deal their normal amount of damage to the character unmodified. To create Elemental weaknesses and resistances, there are four common modifiers: a normal weakness is a "+2", meaning simply that attacks of that Element will deal +2 damage to the character (before applying defenses); a normal resistance, similarly, is "-2", reducing damage taken slightly, possibly to 0. A second-tier weakness, referred to as a "super-weakness," is a "+5", and works the same way as the others. However, the second tier of resistance is a full immunity, written as "x0", and this makes the character take no damage whatsoever from attacks of that Element.

Player characters can be neutral to all eight Elements, or, if they want to create a resistance, they must "pay" for it by creating a corresponding weakness. So if a player wants their character to have a -2 resistance to Fire, then they might give them a +2 weakness to Ice (but please note that these combinations don't have to "make sense;" players can pick whichever Elements they want without any conceptual reasoning). Similarly, a super-weakness can be taken in order to acquire an immunity, but alternately, an immunity can be bought with two regular weaknesses, or a super-weakness can be exchanged for two regular resistances. Non-player characters do not have this restriction, and so their modifiers may not balance out, with some potentially being weak or resistant to all Elements. However, in rare cases, a Maestro may agree to grant a player character an additional Elemental resistance in exchange for an unrelated impairment, or to give them an extra weakness to balance out an unrelated special attribute or ability. Either way, Elemental Modifiers are determined at character creation and can never change later in the game, much like field stats.

There exist rarer Elemental Modifiers that are not typically given to player characters, but again options can be discussed with the Maestro. These third tiers of weakness and resistance are referred to as "Instant Death" (written as "XX"), which does what it sounds like and makes attacks of that Element kill the character regardless of any damage numbers, and "absorption," which makes attacks of that Element heal the character instead of damaging them. Absorption is indicated as a modifier of either "HP", "VP", or "MP", showing which stat is to be healed by absorbed attacks; only one of the three can be chosen. The amount of HP, VP, or MP to be healed in this case is calculated as the amount of damage that the attack would have done if the character had a "--" modifier, so things like Defense Power and armor will reduce the amount healed.

For certain effects that aren't full-on attacks, Elemental Modifiers are halved. For example, if a character is Electrified, they will shock anyone who touches them for 1 Thunder-type damage; in this case, a character who has a +2 weakness to Thunder and gets shocked will take a total of 2 damage, which is the normal 1 plus half of the +2, so +1. Because we round down, this means that +5 is cut all the way down to +2, for a total damage of 3. When the damage is only 1, a resistance of -2 is ignored instead of halved, so the character still takes 1 damage, but an immunity holds and prevents any damage. Instant Death would still be Instant Death, and absorption would absorb the 1 point. Other effects that follow these rules include damage from touching characters who are Made of an Element, damage from Elemental Status Problems such as Poisoning and Burns, and passive damage taken once per turn during certain weather conditions.

Technicalities

The non-mathematical, role-playing-related details of the character. These are important, because they will determine the character's behavior, but there's not much that I need to explain. For non-player characters, Technicalities will be reduced to one section labeled "Information."

Notes

This section only appears when a character has a special attribute that doesn't quite fit into any of the previous fields, and so for a character who has no such things, this section is left off of the sheet completely. Common things that go here are noting whether or not a character is capable of flying or burrowing, whether they're Spiky or Made of an Element, whether they count as a particular classification of creature that might take extra damage from certain weapons, etc. Naturally, if a player has come up with something entirely unlike anything that you can find on this site, then it would probably need to be explained in this section. So basically, when the traditional character sheet has failed you, you'll stick any leftovers here, organized however you please.