Character Attributes

Primary Attributes

Reaction

• Each point grants +1% Movement Speed
• Every five points grant +1 Initiative

Strength

• Each point grants +1% recoil reduction
• Each point grants +1% Melee Pure Damage Upgrade
• Every two points grant +1% Wound Resistance

Will

• Each point grants +1% Stress Resistance
• Every point grants +1% Dumpshock Resistance
• Every two points grant +1% Built-in Armor

Tech

• Every point grants +1% Critical Hit Chance
• Every point grants +2% Drone Damage
• Every point grants +1 Matrix AP
• Every five points grants +1 Cyberdeck Armor

Experience

Experience is required to gain a level increase for a character. Earlier levels require less experience than higher levels. Experience is primarily gained by participating on heists. Legwork can also grant a very small amount of experience. (Your Face seems to gain experience without going on heists although the details of this system isn't fully understood yet.)

Pay Rate

Pay rate is how much of your heists cash payment goes toward this mercenary. All mercenaries earn their payout while on your roster even if they didn't participate your heist. The Cyber Knight effectively has a pay rate of 0% as all money not spent on the mercenaries is considered his/hers. Presently, pay rate is always 3% per mercenary upon recruitment.

Pay rate can be permanently increased if Discontent is very high and a Stress Limit Break is reached. The maximum pay rate possible through these events is 6% total.

If a mercenary dies while on your heist, they are not considered for payment during that heist (or any future heists, obviously.)

Derived Attributes

Initiative

Initiative determines mercenary turn order within each overall turn of a heist. A higher initiative roll will result in an earlier placement in the overall turn. An initiative above 10 allows the character to delay their actions by shifting their personal turn to a placement 10 initiative later in the turn.

Initiative is rolled as 2d6+6 before being modified by any buffs, debuffs or character bonuses. Thus, the minimum natural initiative you could roll is an 8, and the maximum is an 18. The most common naturally rolled value is 13, which will occur roughly 16.66% of the time.

Initiative is increased by 1 point per unused AP at the end of a character's previous turn. The action "Take Cover", which automatically applies when at least one AP remains in a turn, also grants +1 initiative for the next turn.

If there is a tie in initiative between a player character and a foe, the player's initiative will always win.

Movement Speed

Increases the distance traveled per Action Point (AP) or dedicated Movement Point (MP). The unmodified movement speed is 4m per Action Point running and 2.75m per Action Point sneaking. Move Speed is a percentage modifier to those values.

Hit Points

Hit Points (HP) are a direct representation of how much physical punishment a character can sustain before risk of death. Higher HP means more survivability. For details on the consequences of lowered HP see Injury, Bleeding, and Recovery.

Built-in Armor

Built-in armor is armor formed from sheer grit and determination to shrug off wounds. It tends to be a low percentage value primarily granted via the Will attribute but is also available via a few Talents.

Built-in armor reduces damage from weapons by a percentage applied multiplicatively with soak from armor. Thus, if your armor soaks 50% of the damage, and you had a 50% soak from built-in armor, your total damage soak would be 75%, not 100%.

Built-in armor will reduce all sources of damage, Ballistic Damage, Kinetic Damage, and Pure Damage.

Death Resistance

If you are bleeding out, and your HP drops to 0 points or below, you will roll a percentage chance to permanently die. Your death save is the percentage chance that you will NOT die but instead restart the bleeding out process. If you have permadeath off for the character that is bleeding out, they will be treated as though they always pass their death saves. The only source of Death Resistance is granted by the selected Game Difficulty.

Dumpshock Resistance

Dumpshock resistance grants a percentage chance to avoid the effects of Dumpshock which is a possible outcome when disconnecting from a Matrix host improperly or involuntarily.

Recoil Reduction

Recoil Reduction is a percentage of recoil from running or firing Weapons that is not accumulated on your character. For instance, if you attack with a full-auto attack that would normally generate 30 recoil, but have a 10% recoil reduction on your character, you will instead generate 27 recoil.

Ignore X Recoil

Ignore X Recoil is a mechanic that treats any level of recoil you have as X points lower for accuracy purposes, but not lower than zero.

Wound Resistance

When a wound triggering condition is hit, wound resistance is a percentage chance applied to instead NOT gain a wound from that particular attack. Injuries are not resisted via this mechanism.

Reduction to all Injury Time

When an injury is incurred, all sources of Reduction to all Injury Time are multiplied against the total, original injury duration acquired during a heist or legwork. Each source of reduction is applied multiplicatively, rounding up to the nearest turn with each multiplication. No injury can be decreased beneath a duration of 1 turn (6 hours) no matter how much reduction is active.

A powerful source of Reduction to all Injury Time is the Cyberkeen Trait which is an optional trait enabled on some Kickstarter Backers' Cyber Knights. A more common source is the Triage Clinic which offers this perk to all characters passively.

Melee Pure Damage Upgrade

(Often Abbreviated "Melee Pure Dmg Upgrade" in the game.)

This secondary attribute indicates a percentage of damage dealt by melee weapons that is added as additional damage of the Pure Damage type. This has the effect of not only increasing melee damage, but having that increase ignore foes' armor.

Cover Bonus

Cover Bonus is the percentage chance of avoiding attacks provided only when in cover and only to relevant angles. Cover bonuses can be increased by some talents but, again, only have an impact if you're partially or fully in cover relative to the attacker.

Stress Resistance

Stress Resistance reduces the chance of incurring stress from relevant events other than story-related stress (which ignores all stress resistance.) When a non-story-related stressful event occurs for a character, the Stress Resistance from the character is added to the Difficulty bonus to stress resistance (if any) and is rolled against to see if stress from that event is ignored.

Stress Resistance is decreased by 1% per 5 points of Heat.

Evasion

Evasion is a flat percentage bonus or penalty to all accuracy rolls against a character. An evasion of +2% perhaps from a character Trait would cause a shot against that character to have a 2% penalty -- a shot with 50% accuracy would become 48%, for example. On the other hand, an evasion penalty such as is applied by a Soldier talent might grant a -15% Evasion penalty. This would increase accuracy against that foe by 15%, making a 50% accuracy shot a 65% chance to hit. Characters have a default evasion score of 0%.

Accuracy

Bonuses to accuracy are flat percentage increases to your chance to hit with one or more weapon types. It is directly offset by Evasion and conditionally by Cover and Recoil. None of the primary attributes directly impact Accuracy, but many Traits do. When Accuracy is increased it will be for one of the following weapon categories:

• Light Weapons (Pistol & SMG)
• Melee Weapons (Sword, Stun stick, and E-Cutter)
• Assault Rifles
• Close-Range Weapons (Shotguns, UARs, E-Rifles)
• Long-Range Weapons (Sniper Rifles, Railguns)