The Armsman, by Selerius Acton; Edited by Xena Dragon

Hello and well met! I am writing this essay to show that there are alternatives to your typical PvP character types; the Tank Mage and the Dex Monkeys. If you are fairly bored of these fellows, then an armsman might be for you. First off this character will not be a 7x GM character, for that is a waste of time and is not attainable for the normal player anyway. So without further ado let's get started. These will be your starting skills; 50 Magery 50 Resisting spells 45 strength 10 dexterity 10 intelligence Very typical right? Also it would be good if you had a lot of money at this point too. A mule character is your typical solution to money problems, so make a second character that uses a trade skill you like. I would suggest carpentry and make wood shields for easy cash, but it's your character so do what you like. If you don't like mules then go bash bunnies for meat and be fairly poor for a long while. Your call. First day in town Your first priority when you come into being is to pick a town with training dummies. Most towns do but in case you don't know, Britain and Trinsic do have them so you should probably pick one of those towns. Buy yourself a club and a butcher knife at the local smith shop and get to work on those dummies. You want to work each weapon skill available to 25-skill level. Why? Because you will get stat points for doing this, and some tactics as well. You could bash bunnies too, but I don't think this raises your stats as well. Your call as always. While your hitting the dummies use either your anatomy or intelligence evaluation skills on anyone or anything creature that walks by. You will get a few skill points for this and hopefully for intelligence as well. Are you finished on those dummies? Good, bet that was boring huh? Now is the time to spend money. If you don't have a mule for cash, its time for you to hover around the town edges, and kill small animals. Collect the meat, feathers, and hides and sell them in town. This will give you good skill gains in combat. NOTE: use your mace weapons from now on, you are an armsman. The only other weapon skill you should use is wrestling, and not that often at that. Once you have the money required, go around town and buy the skills you need to survive in the harsh world. These skills are Anatomy, Intelligence Evaluation, Healing, and perhaps Parry as well. You might also want to buy Tactics if you haven't bunny bashed yet. This can run you 800gp to 1000gp in gold, so make sure you got the cash. Now it's time to get supplies. I would recommend buying bolts of cloth and cutting them up into bandages with scissors, a mace weapon, chain mail armor set, and a shield if you want parrying. If you can get bone armor, that is also acceptable. Also you need to get spells. I would recommend getting the 4th level spells Recall and Greater Healing ASAP. Also you need to get regents for whatever spells you are using. All in all you will spend several thousand dollars getting started this way, but at least you will be prepared. J Now its time for you to adventure. The places you want to fight first are forests and other outdoor areas. You will want to fight animals first and avoid monsters until you are stronger. After you start getting too good to fight rabbits, rats, sheep, and pigs, you will want to fight deer, cows, llamas, etc. When all the prey type animals get easy, start fighting predators such as wolves and bears. This will help you progress very quickly in mace fighting skill. If you get hurt use a bandage to heal yourself, or use the greater healing spell. If the situation gets too hot to handle, use the recall spell on a rune to transport yourself back into town. As always, whenever you see creatures or people, always use the Anatomy skill or the Intelligence Evaluation skills. Why should you use these? Anatomy gives you extra damage with your weapon at higher skill levels and also boosts the strength of your healing skill. Intelligence Evaluation helps your offensive magic to do more damage against opponents. Okay the predator animals don't give you skill anymore so what do you do? My favorite outdoor area for fighting is the forest outside the dungeon Shame. This place is not for the weak as the monster spawns here can be hellish at times. This place will raise your fighting skills very well for a time. Also you need to get your magery up a bit. If you haven't done so, start practicing magery heavily. To get to 55 skill just use forth circle spells. To get to 65, use paralyze or summon creature spells of the 5 circle. To get to 75 magery, use the spells energy bolt or invisibility. The Forest of Shame(As I like to call it) is a perfect place to practice energy bolt. You can kill monster with it and a combination of mace fighting, and you get your money back for spent reagents. Things to hunt here are orcs, rat men, trolls, ogres, orc lords, corpsers, etc. BEWARE water and air elementals, gargoyles, orc mages, and reapers! These creatures are more dangerous than most outdoors monsters, plus they use magic. When you are competent with normal monsters and can cast energy bolt regularly, then you are ready for these creatures. When all is said and done in the Forest outside Shame, you should have 80-90 fighting skills, and your magery is hopefully at least 75. Now it is time to enter Shame itself. Your opponents are the Earth Elementals of the first floor. These creatures have strong physical attacks, but no magic. One on one you will be able to take them without too much difficulty, but if they gang up on you, its time to retreat. Be warned that Player killers frequent this place a lot, so watch out for other players. Despite what people say, Earth Elemental loot is not that bad really, you get two gems, and some other junk. The gems can sell from 60 GP to 240gp depending on the gem types. (That's the sell price for both gems you get per earth elemental) Earth Elementals are also good for raising weapon skills and parrying if you choose to have that skill. Typically you can get to about 60ish skill in parry without spending too much time there. Also Earth Elementals can get you to Grandmaster status in Maces and Tactics, though it might take a while. Earth Elementals seem to be very susceptible to magic, so energy bolts and explosions work nicely on them too. When you have outgrown the Earth Elemental level area in Shame, you should be fairly well stacked in skills. Preferably you will have grandmaster Mace fighting and tactics, around 80 wrestling if you used it fairly often, 50 to 60 parrying if you used it, 75-80 magery, hopefully at least you will have worked your anatomy and evaluating intelligence skills to around 60 or so, and also 55 resisting spells. So now you're fairly tough, but you still need a lot of work in some areas. Now it is time to visit other dungeons. Each dungeon has its strengths and weaknesses. Deceit is good for raises magery and resisting spells, but is often very crowded. Destard is very dangerous and unpredictable, but the loot is very good. Hythloth has daemons, which are great for loot, resisting spells, and raising magery, but are heavily camped by Fame seeking mages, and the list goes on.