Race editor and class design
A race is a category, an icon and a list of modifiers to eight primary attributes. The derived block - health, mana, initiative, haste, evasion and power score - recalculates from those, so balance lives in the primaries.
The race editor is where a species stops being a look and starts being a set of tendencies. It is also the smallest editor in the game: a category, an icon, a description and a list of modifiers. Everything interesting happens in how those modifiers interact with the derived block.
What a race contains
| Block | Fields | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Identity | ID, display name, category, subcategory, description | Organisation and search only |
| Icon and visuals | Icon, visual selection | How it reads on screen |
| Primary modifiers | Strength, Intelligence, Dexterity, Vitality, Luck, Speed, Focus, Perception | Bonuses or debuffs applied to members |
| Derived preview | Power score, health, health regen, mana, mana regen, initiative, haste, evasion | Read-only consequence of the primaries |
The primary attributes are the levers. The derived block is what the game computes from them, and you cannot set it directly - which is a good thing, because it means a race's balance is expressed in eight numbers instead of sixteen.
The eight primaries, in plain terms
| Attribute | Reads as | Shows up as |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | Physical force | Melee power, carrying capacity in combat terms |
| Intelligence | Magical and mental capacity | Spell power and mana pool |
| Dexterity | Precision and finesse | Hit and crit chance, evasion |
| Vitality | Toughness | Health and health regeneration |
| Luck | Fortune | Crit and rare outcomes |
| Speed | Movement and reaction | Initiative and haste |
| Focus | Concentration | Spell consistency, resource regeneration |
| Perception | Awareness | Detection and ranged accuracy |
The exact arithmetic behind those links is not published, and the derived panel is the only authoritative readout. Use it as a live preview: nudge a primary, watch which derived numbers move, and you learn the mapping empirically in about five minutes.
Designing a species people can describe
A race that is good at everything is not a species, it is a difficulty setting. The useful pattern is one strong axis, one weak axis and a neutral middle.
The mountain folk: high Vitality, high Strength, low Speed. They hold ground, lose chases, and make excellent garrison troops. In simulation terms they will win defensive wars and fail at anything requiring a fast response.
The forest folk: high Speed, high Perception, low Vitality. They see trouble early and cannot survive it head-on, which pushes them toward ranged equipment and toward alliances.
The scholarly folk: high Intelligence and Focus, low Strength. Their value is craftable goods and spell slots, not soldiers, which makes them a faction that trades rather than conquers - until someone else decides to take what they make.
Each of those produces different faction behaviour without touching the faction system at all, because the members of the race are what the faction sends to do things.
Classes at launch
The class editor is not in the launch build. It is scheduled for the third major update in 2027, alongside the spell editor. What exists now is the race layer plus equipment: creature templates carry equipment, inventory, trait and spell slots, and the build ships classes as content rather than as something you author.
Practically, that means a "class" in your world today is a combination of race modifiers and equipped gear. If you want a distinct military caste, build the race for it and give its templates the equipment that completes the idea.
Balancing without numbers
Three techniques that work in this editor:
- Trade, don't total. For every point above average, take one below. A species with +2 in four attributes and no penalties is strictly better than everything else and will flatten your world.
- Test in the world, not in the panel. A race's real performance shows up as quests completed, zones held and creatures killed. The derived panel tells you what the numbers are, not what they do.
- Give each race one thing it cannot do. The inability is what makes the choice interesting and what gives factions a reason to hire, trade or conquer.
Where the numbers go next
Once a race exists, its members can wear equipment, and equipment applies bonuses to the same eight primaries. That is the second half of the balance equation: a mediocre race with excellent gear beats an excellent race with none. The equipment guide explains the derived preview on that side, and the attribute reference is the single-page list of every stat in both editors.
