Chapter 5: Game Mechanics
“Let’s walk through these class attributes one by one,” the faerie girl said, brushing a lock of emerald hair from her eyes as she snapped her fingers, casting the sub-menu from Lexi’s limited field of vision into a giant window hanging in mid-air.
Class Attributes
Level 1
Experience Points (XP)
0
Hit Points (HP)
20 (+5/hr)
Spell Points (SP)
5 (+1/hr)
Attack Points (AP)
10+2
Defense Points (DP)
10+3
Mind-Break Points (MP)
5+1 (+1/hr)
“Experience points are similar to almost any other game you’ve played. They govern your progress within your chosen class from one level to the next, with each new level achieved serving to increase each of these class attributes. Once we’ve gone through all of these class attributes, I’ll show you how to access the master XP table, but at your position now you’ll need to gain five thousand points to get to the next level.”
“How do I gain XP?” Lexi asked pointedly, folding her armored arms across her new ample breasts.
“Like in most other games,” the faerie explained, “XP are accumulated through different types of successful encounters. In Fantasy Adventure Quest, there are specifically two.”
Lexi drew the giant broadsword from her back, and grinned wickedly. “Let me guess, combat is the main method. I wonder how many XP I’d get for a cute faerie…”
Felicity pulled a face, throwing her hands up in exaggerated mock terror. “Please brave knight,” she cried through a fit of giggles. “I mean you no ill will.”
“Very well,” the futa paladin conceded, sheathing her sword. “I don’t think I could fight anyone as cute as you anyway.”
Unbidden, Lexi felt a rush of blood flow into both her face, leaving a rosy blush in its wake, and into her new futa cock — the growing bulge in her tunic causing the blush in her face to deepen all the more.
“Faerie slaying aside,” Felicity continued. “You can gain experience through achieving victory in any combat encounter, be it with a monster or another humanoid. There are three criteria to keep in mind when thinking about XP. First, even if you survive the encounter, no points are gained if the battle is lost.”
“No XP for a tactical retreat, then?”
“Just so,” Felicity nodded. “Second, the number of points gained from a given encounter is proportional to the strength of the foe. So, for humanoids, the points range in proportion to their level. And, for monsters, it depends on the specific race you’re battling.”
“Sounds pretty standard,” Lexi agreed.
“Lastly, if you end up in a party of adventurers — which I definitely recommend you do at the earliest opportunity — points will be split between all of the teammates who engaged with the foe in question.”
“Perfect, that all makes total sense. You said there were two ways to rack up XP. If combat is one, what’s the other?”
Felicity’s answer was blindingly obvious as she slowly lowered her gaze to the bulge in Lexi’s tunic, caused by her semi-hard cock.
“Oh, shit!” Lexi said, instinctively reaching down to cover the growing erection, blushing even more furiously. “I almost forgot for a minute that this is a fucking eroge. Of course there’ll be some kind of lewd component to the XP system.”
The faerie buried her face in her hands, her small breasts jiggling as she laughed hysterically at Lexi’s embarrassment over her cock’s reaction. This did nothing to stem the tide for Lexi, however. Quite the opposite, she was all but hypnotized by the faerie’s perfect breasts jiggling so tantalizingly just a few feet away. Her eyes roamed hungrily over the rest of the faerie’s lithe body, lingering on the bald pussy that suddenly looked so inviting. Lexi felt light-headed as she experienced her first full erection, her new futa cock rising to its impressive seven inches of thick fullness, tenting her tabard in the most obvious way.
“Hold on a minute,” Lexi said, a cold bucket of logic breaking lust’s spell if only for a moment. “How the fuck is my cock just flying free like this?” Turning slightly away from the faerie embarrassedly, Lexi pulled the tabard aside to peek at her crotch, seeing the massive pulsating member staring back at her. A look of amused incredulity came over the futa as she turned back to Felicity, her cock once again covered.
“What gives?” Lexi asked pointedly, looking more than a bit ridiculous trying to be serious while sporting a seriously visible erection. “I get a sword and armor, but no goddamned panties?!”
The faerie all but exploded in a gale of laughter, clutching her stomach and curling mid-air into a ball, that shook with each laugh. “F-Fantasy A-Ad-Adventure Q-Quest,” Felicity spit out through the laughter. “Is a lewd game!”
“Jesus Christ,” Lexi said, slapping her forehead. “How many times am I going to be surprised by that fucking revelation. OK, enough distraction from…this,” she gestured to her tented tunic. “You were going to tell me about the lewd method for gaining XP?”
The faerie recovered herself, her face still ruddy from the laughing fit, and nodded. “Yes, outside of combat encounters, which are won by depleting your opponent’s hit points, you can gain experience through causing a sexual partner to exhaust their reserve of mind-break points. While means through which an enemy’s hit points are diminished is fairly conventional — successful armed or unarmed hits — the depletion of mind-break points is a bit more subtle.”
“Go on,” Lexi said with her eyebrows raised in anticipation. “I can’t wait to hear this.”
“Essentially, every time you cause someone to orgasm, their mind-break points will diminish by one for each of your levels. So, as a level one paladin, you’d subtract one point from them. But, at level two, it would be two points, and so on. Now, normally a single orgasm is never enough to bring this to zero, but with if you can cause successive orgasms in your partner within a short period of time, this is possible. The resulting state, mind-break, is one where the individual loses all sense of self apart from the desire to be used sexually. Until they regain at least one point, they are capable of no rational thought or action, only sex. This makes the mind-break state rather dangerous, since it can result in a feedback loop where the state itself yields yet more orgasms, preventing the individual from regaining any points — leaving them trapped in a state of complete sexual stupor.”
“Fuuuuuck,” Lexi muttered. “So basically, I can get XP by killing bad guys, or literally fucking peoples’ brains out?”
“Pretty much,” the faerie said with a shrug and giggle.
“Got it. Looking at my stats then, I’ve got a total of six MP, since I’ve got a constitution bonus. Is that plus one per hour in the parentheses my regeneration rate?”
“Exactly,” Felicity nodded.
“Cool cool,” Lexi said. “Same goes for my hit points I’m assuming then, I regenerate five every hour?”
The faerie nodded again in agreement. “You’ll also gain more points in all of your class categories as you advance through the levels. This will increase not only the base point value with each level, but also you’ll see the regeneration rates increase with every fifth level.”
“Good deal. So, I think I get the general picture about how XP, HP, and MP work. What about the other three? Spell, attack, and defense points?”
“Attack and defense points,” the faerie replied. “Are the two key attributes you’ll see in combat. When an attacker attempts to strike an opponent, any damage inflicted depends on their attack points taken against their opponent’s defense points. The attacker’s base score is modified by any bonuses either from their strength attribute and from weapons. Likewise, the defender’s base score is similarly modified by dexterity attribute and by armor — with both attack and defense scores additionally being modified by a random factor, to prevent the game from being strictly deterministic.”
“A roll of the dice,” Lexi ventured.
“More or less,” Felicity agreed. “Therefore, in an encounter, the only way for an attacker to score hits against their opponent’s hit points is for the total attack point combination — the base combined with any modifiers and the random factor — to exceed the defender’s similarly modified total defense point pool. And, in the event of a successful hit where the attacker’s point total is greater, it is only the difference that is subtracted from the defender’s hit points.”
“Uh…that’s kind of a lot to keep in my head at once in just abstract terms,” Lexi mused. “Can you give me an example?”
“Easily,” the faerie nodded. “Let’s say that you’re attacking a goblin with ten hit points, not an uncommon encounter in Fantasy Adventure Quest, to be sure. Your base attack point value is ten, and is modified by two based on your strength. Additionally, your broadsword gives an additional five points, giving you a pre-random pool of seventeen. The random values are always between one and twenty, so let’s say that in this case you ‘rolled’ a ten. This would give you a total pool of twenty-seven attack points for this attack.”
“Makes sense,” Lexi said. “But, let’s put a pin in the point modifiers for my equipment, and circle back on that later.”
Felicity nodded in agreement, and continued with the scenario. “Your opponent, on the other hand has a base defense point score of only five, with no modifiers for his dexterity. Moreover, he wears only leather armor, which grants a single point to the defense pool. His random factor gives an equal ten points to match yours, leaving him with a total defense pool of only sixteen points. The difference, then, between your attack pool of twenty-seven and his defense pool of sixteen is eleven, which exceeds his total hit point value — leaving the goblin a corpse at your feet.”
“That’s…actually not as complicated as I was thinking it might be.”
“Good!” the faerie said with a small clap. “Since your primary equipment relates directly to combat, let’s review that first before we move on to spell points. You can pull up a list of all your equipment the same as any other menu with the command word. Give it a try.”
Get equipment!
The menu which now appeared superimposed in what Lexi now instinctively though of as her “Iron Man” AR heads up display, showing the two items with which she was currently equipped.
Item
Modifiers
Two-Handed Broadsword
+5 AP
Plate Mail
+10 DP
“Any new items you acquire will appear automatically in your equipment inventory,” Felicity explained. “So, if you find a new weapon, piece of armor, or any other item, you can always check the inventory to see if it’s giving you any attribute modifiers.”
“Huh,” Lexi said, rocking back slightly on her heels. “That’s actually pretty handy. Good to know that my armor has a pretty decent rating, despite it being totally lewd.”
The faerie laughed along with Lexi. “Yes, the system is a bit more forgiving for feminine armor stats, to allow for the look and feel of the game to maintain a healthy level of eroticism among both players and non-player characters.”
“That reminds me,” Lexi interjected. “How many other PCs are there in the game right now? Is there any way for me to know if someone I’ve met is a PC and not just an NPC?”
“That’s a good question,” the faerie agreed, “but it is not easily answered.”
“Gah, I figured as much. Let me guess, an architect would know for sure, right?”
“Undoubtedly, but I’m afraid I do not.”
“Well then, I guess I’ll just have to make stupid pop culture references and see how people react. Only another PC would laugh at any stupid meta jokes about RPGs, manga, or any of that shit.”
“Most likely,” the faerie said agreeably. “If that’s all, shall we move along to the final spell point category?”
“Please, let’s do. I didn’t realize I’d get any spells as a paladin, but now I’m itching to find out what else I can do!”
“Spell use in Fantasy Adventure Quest are limited to certain character classes,” Felicity said. “Although mages and clerics have the larges pools of both points and spells to work with, there are several other classes which can make some use of spellcraft in addition to their primary combat skills — rangers, monks, and paladins. So, as a paladin, although combat is your specialty, you have a small pool of spell points available to use with a correspondingly small number of low-level spells.”
“Got it,” Lexi nodded. “Not too far off at all from AD&D. I know I’ve got five SP. Can I just call up a menu with my spells? Wait…let me just try and see.”
Get spells!
As Lexi had expected a new semitransparent menu took prominence in her upper-left field of vision, this one simply showing a list of spells, along with their respective levels and what she assumed were point costs.
Level
Spell
SP
1
Holy Illumination
1
1
Heal Minor Wounds
2
“As you can see,” the faerie pointed out. “As a level one paladin, you’re limited to a pair of first level spells.”
“Seems par for the course with any fantasy RPG. Can’t have characters be too OP right out the door!”
Nodding in agreement, Felicity continued. “Spell casting in Fantasy Adventure Quest is, like most things, quite straight forward. Each spell has a point requirement to cast, so as long as you have enough points in your pool, all that’s needed is to subvocalize the spell’s name and perform whatever verbal or somatic components the specific spell requires.”
“Only verbal and somatic,” Lexi queried excitedly. “You mean I don’t have to lug around pouches of material components like an AD&D wizard?”
“Precisely,” the faerie said with a smile. “You can pull up descriptions of each one of your two spells the same way you would anything else. Just get the spell’s name, and you’ll see all of the relevant details for each spell.”
Lexi decided to try it out at once.
Get Holy Illumination!
Unsurprisingly, a clean and helpful menu containing the spell’s duration, range, requirements, and effects popped up for the paladin.
Spell Attribute
Description
Name
Holy Illumination
Level
1
Spell Points
1
Duration
1 min. (+ 30 sec. per level)
Range
10 ft. radius (+1 ft. per level)
Requirements
Caster must hold implement (e.g. sword, staff) above head with both hands at the time of casting
Effects
-2 AP and DP to any opponents within the affected radius
“Nice,” Lexi said, reading over the spell’s description. “I can see how this would come in pretty handy in encounters with groups of…what did you call them…greenskins?”
“Quite,” Felicity said with a wink.
“Seems pretty easy to cast too,” Lexi said with relief. “No crazy components at all. Let’s take a look at the other one.”
Subvocalizing the spell’s name, Lexi replaced the menu with Heal Minor Wound’s menu.
Spell Attribute
Description
Name
Heal Minor Wounds
Level
1
Spell Points
2
Duration
N/A
Range
Touch
Requirements
Caster must lay hands on the affected area being healed
Effects
Heals 5 HP
“Excellent! That looks super easy and helpful. Exactly what a paladin needs in her repertoire. And,” Lexi did a little mental math, “at my current level, I could either cast Heal Minor Wounds twice and Holy Illumination once, or switch it up and to the first one one and the second three times?”
“Exactly. Any usage combinations are possible, as long as you’re within the limits of your points pool.”
“Well fuck,” Lexi said with a pump of her fist. “I think I’m just about ready rock the shit out of this game!”