Classes/Skills/Perks/Traits

What’s a Class?

A class is a category a person/creature/monster/other can be given by the system that brings with it Skills, Perks, and sometimes Traits. Classes come in tiers, the tiers seen so far are Inferior, Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary, and Unique. Classes can be merged with other classes, classes can be locked away, removed, swapped, and under the right conditions, can be traded.

The “rock-paper-scissors” thinking of Class A always winning against Class B in a fight doesn’t apply within the world, no one class is superior to another, how you use it, how your opponent uses their class, and environmental factors all play into who would win in a fight.

The main character in Sylver Seeker has 3 classes as of writing this.

Koschei, Necromancer, and Swamp Lord. Classes come in roughly two types, combat, and crafting. Combat classes gain experience and levels from killing things, whereas crafting classes gain experience from crafting things that help someone with a combat class to kill things.

What constitutes “killing” is arguable, the system doesn’t count creating 100 golems and then destroying them the same as finding 100 golems in the wild and killing them. There are rules within the system that are set in stone, but for the most part it’s more correct to imagine an all knowing dungeon master of sorts looking down on you, and knowing when you’re trying to cheat or cheese the system.

Crafting classes encompass anything from farming, mining, gardening, cooking, cleaning, alchemy, enchanting, teaching, studying, trading, the rule of thumb is any sort of action that doesn’t bring direct harm to a creature can be a source of experience for a relevant crafting class.

What is experience?

Experience is when an action taken by a person/monster/creature in possession of a class that benefits it. The system treats everything as a zero-sum game, for one person to benefit, another must lose.

Between monsters/creatures it’s as simple as one creature killing another and eating it, and effectively the same for people with combat classes.

Killing something below your total level is a waste of time and effort, the amount of experience gained by a class is negligible, but, depending on the methods used to kill the thing, it may be a good source of experience for a combat oriented skill.

Crafting classes gain experience from the creature or transformation of materials/items/information/anything that further down the line aids a combat class with killing something. It’s relatively direct with something like a Blacksmith or Armoursmith, the items they create are used in the actual process of killing something.

With a class further away from killing, the experience gained is lesser, and therefore the class is significantly harder to level up. For example, a painting made by someone with an Artist class may give someone with a Warrior inspiration or motivation, but the amount the painting aided the Warrior in killing something is several magnitudes less than how much his armour and sword aided him.

As a result of this a lot of “lesser” crafting classes appear to level up over time, as opposed to through the creation of items.

Lola is an example of a crafting class that gains experience through the creation of items that are directly responsible for killing things, enchanted weapons, tools used by high level craftsmen who make high tier weapons and armour, in a hypothetical world where Lola was removed, the number of things killed in the world would be noticeably lesser, and because of that she gains levels at a very fast pace despite never fighting anything herself.

Miscellaneous:

Putting this here because it didn’t look right all the way at the bottom. List of facts about Sylver that aren’t system related, but are relevant to what he’s able to do.

The facts aren’t in any particular order.

• He has two sets of spines, multiple “hearts” of various shapes and sizes, and at the time of writing this, aside from his appearance there is absolutely nothing human inside him.
• His “real” body that houses his mana core is covered by a second much larger body.
• His eyes have been pitch black, like a bird’s, since the moment he took over Ciege’s body. His skin is pale, to the point it’s often white like snow, and gray/silver hair depending on the light. His fingernails are more often than not black due to his magic.
• His blood is dark purple, and the consistency of cold honey.
• His robe is directly connected to him at the shoulder and back area, it’s an extension of him, and he often uses it like an extra limb to move around.
• There are slits along his palms where he has a long modified blood vessel he uses like a needle to inject his blood into things for magic purposes.
• He has one rune on him that allows him to summon magical C4 Lola made for him, and a waystone that allows him and anyone he’s in physical contact with to teleport into Tuli, and then teleport back to where he teleported into Tuli from.
• There are long strings inside his bloodvessels that Morana gave him, they stitch cuts closed, and if he’s dismembered the strings pull him back together.
• He’s fully capable of shedding his skin and going full undead skeleton, but doesn’t do it because he needs to talk and work with living people, and while undead women are attracted to him as both a living and an undead, living women are mostly attracted only to living men.
• Sylver hates mammals, dislikes fish and insects, but loves reptiles, and has a fondness for arachnids.
• He doesn’t like being near children because he has an irrational fear of accidentally sneezing and hurting or killing them.
• He carries around several decks of playing cards, and in the Ibis the only person who has beaten him in any card game was Aether.
• Sylver is tone deaf.
• If he stops eating and breathing his skin will deteriorate, and his hair will fall out, but aside from that nothing else would happen.

Classes:

[Koschei (Unique)]

Neither living nor undead. Your life is bound to a silver needle, your

greatest strength, as well as your greatest weakness.

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+10CON

+10INT

+10WIS

+Trait: [Living Undead]

+Trait: [Deathless]

[Necromancer (Rare)]

*Req: Mana Perception

*Req: Mana Manipulation

*Req: Raise an undead (Any)

*Req: Negative Affinity

Few have the ability required to pull the dead back from the abyss.

But with your strength of will, strength of mind, and strength of soul,

you have managed it.

*Command the forces of darkness and bend the dead to your will.

+10Int

+10Wis

+Trait: [Undead Domination]

+Trait: [Deathly Aura]

[Swamp Lord (Rare)]

Requirement: Undead

Requirement: Earth Affinity

Requirement: Water Affinity

Requirement: Negative Energy Affinity

–The meeting of life-giving water, and death swallowing earth,

a fitting place for a being that is neither alive nor dead.

–Harness the power of the wetlands

+25 Con

+25 INT

+50 WIS

+Trait: Advanced Water Manipulation

+Trait: Advanced Earth Manipulation

+Trait: Poison Immunity

+Trait: Chloromancy

Skills, Perks, Traits, isn’t it the same?

The main difference between skills, and perks, and traits, is that Skills can gain experience directly, whereas perks and traits cannot.

The similarities between skills, perks, and traits is that they all can merge with compatible skills/perks/traits, and they can evolve into better variants of themselves.

The difference between a perk and a trait is that traits are typically internal, and something a person/creature is born with, it’s part of their nature, like the colour of their hair, or how many legs they have. Perks can be turned off or on, but traits are always active.

The rule of thumb is that for two skills to merge they must be of the same tier and level, but in Sylver’s case his Koschei class supersedes this rule and often merges skills and perks without them being compatible, or on the same tier or level.

The higher a skill tier is, the more experience is required to raise its level.

At the time of writing this, Sylver has the following Skills, Perks, and Traits.

Bold is what is written from the system in the story.

Italics is explanation/flavour text for the skill/effect/perk/trait.

SKILLS:

[Undead Mastery – VIII – S-tier]

Skill level can be increased by raising undead. (Repeat raising of the same undead will not increase skill level)

*Quality dependent on the corpse.

*Quality dependent on the soul.

I – Turn a corpse into an undead.

This is one of Sylver’s “main” skills. Any time he uses his magic to create a shade, zombie, or simply make a corpse move around, any experience gained from those actions is absorbed by this skill.

The limitations of his magic, and of this skill, is that he cannot raise undead from a distance, he requires direct contact in one form or another, whether through his blood, or more recently through black smoky fog/vapour he either breaths out of his mouth or through the holes in his hands.

Undead raised quickly have a limited lifespan, they’re weaker and slower than an undead would be if he sat down and properly worked on it, but to make up for that they are also very cheap in terms of mana.

II – All undead under your control have +35% to all stats.

III – Upon death all undead will return 40% of mana through [Dying Breath]

Any time an undead is “killed” which is to say it’s damaged to the point a shade no longer has enough power to retain its form, or a zombie is hit hard enough to dislodge Sylver’s mana out of it, 40% of the mana he had used to raise the shade or zombie returns to him, provided the defeated undead is within a reasonable distance.

IV – Duplicated shades will have 45% of the original’s stats.

Shades under his control can be “split,” into two halves, four quarters, eight eighths, and so on, the limiting factor for how much a shade can be split up is how much HP it has.

V – Cost of raising humanoid undead decreased by 50%.

VI – At the cost of reducing HP to 0, the creature that delivered the most recent attack will receive a defeat notification.

This effect is meant to be used for undead to trick the opponent into thinking it killed it, but Sylver mainly uses it on himself, to fake his death.

VII – Increase the range of [Greater Undead Channeling], and [Greater Undead Empowering] by 100%.

Undead Channeling allows him to use the undead under his control as a medium for his magic, in essence they act like relays, signal boosters, if Spring has his hand on something, and Sylver used Undead Channeling, it’s almost as good as Sylver having his hand on something.

Undead Empowering boosts the physical and magical abilities of undead by supplying them with mana, more mana means more strength for the shade or zombie.

VIII – All undead under your control can take on the appearance they had prior to death. *Mana cost dependent on the quality and level of the undead.

Self explanatory, but all the shades naturally look like smoky silhouettes, they’re completely black, including any clothes they wear, or weapons they wield, this effect removes that and gives them the appearance they had prior to death.

[Mirage – V – A-tier]

Skill level can be raised by using illusion magic.

*Quality of illusions dependent on caster’s ability and understanding.

I – Create visual and auditory illusions.

Basic illusion magic, think holograms and a portable loudspeaker, but can be adjusted to be bright enough to blind, or loud enough to deafen.

II – Create translucent illusions.

Synonymous with “invisibility” but not quite. It’s not good enough for him to walk around in daylight and not be seen by anyone, but if he were to stand perfectly still, it may be enough to fool people. More often than not it’s used to help illusions created on top of something to blend into the item, person, or landscape.

III – Cost of illusion magic decreased by 10%

IV – Deceive C rank or lower sensory skills/perks/traits by increasing the amount of MP per illusion to 1,000%.

Illusions are worthless if someone can sense mana and knows it’s an illusion, this is the effect that makes people flinch when an illusion of a dagger is thrown at them.

V – Create solid illusions.

Mainly used to give illusions texture, without this assuming the illusion wasn’t built on top of something someone’s hand might pass through it and they would instantly realize it’s fake. But with this they would feel the thing the illusion had created, and combined with the effect above this, it may be enough to completely trick the person touching it.

[Draining Blight – VI – B-tier]

Skill level can be increased by draining HP, MP and Stamina. (Skill level will only increase if the creature being drained is killed.)

*May not work on targets with a high enough resistance.

*May not work on targets without mana channels.

I – Create a cloud that will absorb Health, Mana, and Stamina from the target creature.

Sylver’s main source of damage that isn’t physical, he used to require direct contact with a creature to drain/steal/take it’s health, mana, and stamina, but now the skill allows him to do it at a distance, through a cloud of smoke.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

II – Absorb through solid materials. *Efficiency decreases by 50% for every centimeter of material.

Prior to this effect a thin piece of cloth or thick fur would render the skill useless, but with this Sylver can whittle down anything, no matter how armoured or thickly furred a person or creature is.

III – Channel a drained attribute into a willing creature.

Mainly used to channel health into a person or creature. A healing skill with extra steps, but because it has to go through Sylver, the end result is that very little health, mana, or stamina ends up being given to the creature in question.

IV – Drained creatures can be chained together to increase range and efficiency.

Similar to Undead Channeling, but limited to Draining Blight, most often used when there are a lot of dead/dying enemies spread out all over the place.

V – Mana can be drained from a spell or object. *Type of magic being drained must be known.

Often used to tear open enchanted armour, break a sword, and could be used to catch a spell in the air, but dodging or hiding is preferable.

VI – Absorb MP, HP, and Stamina through a mana imbued object.

Can be a dagger shoved deep into a creature, can be a vine spread out along the floor.

VII – Create a liquid rain that will absorb HP, MP, and Stamina from the target creature.

A concentrated version of Draining Blight which is in a gaseous form by default. Absorbs HP, MP, and Stamina as fast as if Sylver was touching a creature directly with his hands, but unlike a hand the liquid can be used to cover shades or other zombies in it, so anything that attacks them gets splashed by what is effectively highly corrosive magical acid.

[Black Mass – V – D-tier]

Skill level can be increased through use and conversion.

*Quantity of conversion dependent on biological material.

I – Manipulate biological matter.

The initial function of the precursor to this skill was the ability to imbue a piece of a dead body with magic and move it around without raising it as an undead. The evolved version converts dead biological matter into a pitch black inky gelatinous liquid, like a slime. The liquid is harmless on its own, but can be made to harden into spikes, blades, blunt hammers, shields, armour, and can be used as a glue when building something. Biological matter can be anything from dead human bodies, fish, plants, or even cotton, but the further away the matter is from a dead body the more of it is needed to create even 1 ml of Black Mass.

II – Empower a creature or item using manipulated biological matter.

Very similar to Undead Empowering, but limited to physical empowerment only, it can make shades and zombies faster, stronger, tougher, but unlike Undead Empowering the effect is passive and doesn’t require any mana from Sylver.

III -Increase the range of [Dead Dominion] by 50% for [Black Mass].

Dead Dominion allows control over dead matter (dead bodies, blood, dead plantlife), and since Black Mass is made of dead matter, this allows Sylver to control it from a great distance.

IV – [Petty] Souls can be infused.

A piece of Black Mass infused with a shade gives the shade inside the piece of Black Mass control over the piece. It can then be given commands that it will follow. Functionally it turns the Black Mass piece into a shade that Sylver or Spring can command.

V – [Common] Souls can be infused.

Same as above, but shades that the system registers as Common are smarter, faster, and to an extent can make their own decisions. They can be given more complicated orders. Weapons and armour made from Common infused Black Mass give whatever is wielding or wearing the Black Mass item a physical boost (if a shade has a Strength of 100, then the person holding the Black Mass sword the shade is infused in gets around +50 to their strength.)

[Mutating Override – V – F-Tier]

Skill level can be raised by overriding primal energy field.

*Quantity of MP required dependent on rate, volume, and complexity of primal energy field being overridden.

I – Mutate biological matter by overriding its primal energy field.

The Primal Energy Field is the deepest and basest part of anything, that the rest of it is built on. Everything and anything has a primal energy field. Changing it is extremely expensive mana wise, and the greater the change the more mana is required. In theory Mutating Override could be used to turn an apple into a pear, or it can be used to grow gills on a human, or turn regular bones into an alloy that’s harder than titanium, Sylver mainly uses it to “heal” and evolve his body, and sometimes uses it to help get dead bodies into the right shape before he raises them as undead.

II – Decrease the MP cost by 5%.

III – Increase range by 10%.

IV – Decrease the MP cost by 25% when overriding personal primal energy field.

V – Increase the malleability of [Black Mass] by 50%.

This effect allows Black Mass to be more receptive to change, it can be turned into a liquid that can store mana, significantly stronger armor, or into a powerful weapon with a really specific function. Something can’t be created from nothing, so every positive alteration brings with it a cost or a negative effect on the Black Mass being altered.

[Arcane Insight – IV – A-Tier]

Skill level can be increased through successful use.

I – Get relevant detailed information about the target.

Classic “Appraisal” or “Scan” skill.

II – Get notified if an A rank or lower level [Appraisal]-like skill is being used on you.

Informs Sylver if someone attempted to look at his status.

III – See the quality of the corpse and soul of a target.

IV – Increase the skill range by 600%.

Vigorous Conditioning – VI – A-Tier]

Skill level can be increased by receiving damage.

I – Increase resistance against [Positive Energy] by 25%.

II – Increase resistance against [Physical Damage] by 40%.

III – Increase Stamina Regeneration by 50%.

IV – Reduce body weight by 20%.

V – Increase resistance against [Physical Damage] by 25%.

Barely functional skill because the system struggles to quantify how much “damage” Sylver received because he’s in an odd spot in terms of what Health and Stamina means for him.

PERKS & TRAITS

Koschei Perks:

*Koschei has 11 perks listed as N/A.

Perk: Golden Egg

While in contact with the needle, increase health and stamina regeneration by 50%

While in contact with the needle, decrease effect of curses.

*While in contact with the needle, over time all negative status effects will be removed.

Perk: Hare’s Great Escape

-While in contact with the needle and below 20% health, dexterity increases by 500% for 100 seconds.

*Can only be used once every 24 hours.

In essence time slows down from Sylver’s point of view for 100 seconds.

Perk: Kindred Spirit Mitigation

-Any creature under the protection of the user, may pass on all negative effects to the user.

*Creatures within 10m of the user can pass negative effects instantly.

*May not work if the creature is further than 100m away from the user.