Its true, Divine Intervention Online is not made for character class balance. The choices you make at character creation determines the whole game from there on. Yes, you can make up simple errors like improving and learning skills you need as well as shoring up low attributes, but your class? That is just not balanced. Some classes make the individual very deadly, while other classes make allies deadly so and even other classes that are more utility. Some have more powers than others, and stronger ones, even. Its all about how you use that power that can make up for any balance issues- DIO

DIO looked off into space. He was obviously looking at something I couldn’t see.

“Oh dear, they died out? How sad. And who are these people? Hmm, yes, I see. They were an offshoot of… now where did they go? Ah ha! There they are… How rather unfortunate for them. Now this is interesting. How exactly did-“

“Umm, DIO?” I interrupted, as I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Oh, yes, I apologize. Its been 800 years since I have looked at the character creation system, and the options have changed quite a bit. The players have been busy little beavers. The races are quite different!”

“Oh, I see. Well what race and class give me the best combos?”

“Whoa, slow down there, cowboy! We have barely begun, and you are looking at combos? Min Maxing? Now I want to help you, but we should do this step by step. First, lets choose your ethnicity.” He looked at me askance. “Since you are starting out, we will start you in the central continent. That should help make you able to get some good experience without dying too much. There are three ethnicities available: Tauron, Yeshuan, and Gar’Shan.” He waved his hands, and suddenly three different humans were looking at me.

The first was olive skinned, dark haired and shorter. Despite the short stature, the man looking at me reminded me of Jason. I looked closely at him. He was attractive, but he had an aquiline nose that almost looked as if it had been broken multiple times. He conveyed a sense of power and strength. “Which ethnicity is this one?”

“This is a Tauron. They are the most dominant race on the continent of Shara, and control almost two-thirds of it. They are currently at war with the Yeshuan ethnicity. They have also enslaved more than 60% of the Gar’shan people. They have a belief in the New Pantheon, which is some of the more influential players. They are a haughty people, sure of their own domination of the continent and the eventual rise as a global power. If you want to be part of the dominant nation on the continent, they are the way to go! Playing a Tauron will give you an easier start but having a broad impact and gaining power on their society might be a little more difficult than with the other ethnicities.”

The second human looking at me was a lot taller and thinner than the Tauron. He was slightly lighter in complexion. He had brown hair, brown eyes, and a somewhat off-putting smile. I couldn’t quite place it, but something looked off about him. Something in his eyes. He also had many battle scars on his face and on his exposed skin.

“This is a Yeshuan. They are at war with the Taurons and are slowly losing the battle. I expect in 50 – 100 years they will be extinct. They still control about a third of the continent, though. They have an animosity with the Gar’Shan, something to do with their mutual holy lands. They believe in one God, a god who does not believe the Yeshuans or any others have souls, and therefore they can can neither sin nor do good. The only thing keeping them from being a totally immoral and lawless society is the strong grasp their queen holds over her people. They are a bloodthirsty people who have lived generations in a slowly losing war for ove. This will start a little harder than the Taurons, and you might have a greater impact in the long run on Yeshuan society than you would on with the Taurons.”

I looked at the third available human. The Gar’Shan, I assumed. He was blonde haired and blue-eyed, and his hair was long and tied into intricate braids. While he had an iron collar on, seemingly denoting he was a slave, his eyes twinkled and there was a look of pride hidden in his stance. I liked him, immediately.

“This, of course, is the Gar’shan. More than half of their people have been enslaved by the Taurons, the others are hidden around Solom. Solom is their tribal homeland which was once occupied by the Taurus nation but now is a part of Yeshua. They are fiercely religious; their god is based loosely on the god the western world of Earth largely worshipped. You can choose to start of being enslaved or part of the free Gar’shan. Gar’Shan have it hard, and it will not start off easy, but their culture can easily be influenced- but not their religion. You can become an angel of their faith, a hero or saint of the faith, but you would have a hard time being their deity.”

“Is this it for choices? I mean, shouldn’t there be dozens of options?”

Dio shifted a little anxiously after hearing my question. “There used to be 28 options for character creation. But the players, well, the players killed off all the other options. There used to be many more nations and ethnicities, and even other species. It was genocide, really. Quite a shame. I was fond of many of those ethnicities and species. The Goblins were my favorite.”

I sighed. I only had three options. “Are there any bonuses or flaws for each ethnicity?”

“No, we really went against that option on purpose. You choose the flavor you want, but do not get any benefits or negatives other than what is actually happening to the ethnicities story-wise.”

“OK, I guess I will choose the Gar’shan, then.”

“What a wonderful choice!” Dio said, with apparent relief. I mildly wondered if somehow I was manipulated into making the choice I did. I dismissed it- who the hell knows what is going on in the head of an AI?

The other humans disappeared and I was left with the Gar’Shan. “Ok, now you can change your appearance however you want. I will guide you with a few questions. How old do you want to be?”

I thought about it. Being in your 40s sucked. I knew that for sure. Being in your 20s would be much better. I dithered around a little. 21 still had that flood of hormones that were just exhausting, as I remembered it. 25 seemed more reasonable.

“I want to be 25.” I said, after thinking about it.

The Gar’shan aged a little more, getting a little stronger and more filled out. He also looked a little surer of himself. He had aged well.

“Do you want to look like you did in life? That was the only choice players had, adjusted for the species or ethnicity of course. Since you had the Deluxe Package, you can change it to look like anything you want.”

“God, no.” I was sick of being flabby. “This body looks fine. Maybe a tad bit more muscular. Maybe a little more taller. Give him my nose and maybe some higher cheekbones…”

We went on like this for what seemed a half hour. In the end I was happy with how the Gar’shan looked or, rather, how I would look soon. His face looked a little like me. He had my large, angular nose and shy smile. He was muscular enough to see the hints of a six pack and pecs, but not too much. I personally like my men muscular, like Jason. But I didn’t really want to be overly muscular myself. I darkened the hair as much as I could while still being blonde. In a departure from nature, DIO told me that the child of a Tauron and Gar’shan (of which there were many, sadly, as the female slaves had very little choice of who they could mate with) would always look more Gar’shan than Tauron.

“Very well-done, Seth! Dio said, looking proudly at my finished character. “Next we need to choose your attributes!” He went on to explain the brains, brawns, beauty and blessings categories and their individual attributes. I chose Brains to be my primary. Brawn to be my secondary, Blessings to be my tertiary and Beauty to be my weakest of the categories. I then got 4 single points of attributes that I could allocate anywhere I wanted. I brought all the negative points in my Beauty category up to 0, then put the last point into Intelligence.

I then got 20 points to put into my skills. “Be careful, though,” DIO warned. “Skills are limited in options based on your total Brains x 10. That meant I could have a total of 70 different skills, but they could go as high as I could train them or raise them through XP.

I chose skills in swords, shields, swimming, climbing, athletics, horse riding and dodge. I then took the navigation skill, the linguistics skill at the second level, (I now knew the Tauron, Yeshuan and Gar’shan languages) the scribe skill, and the theology skill. I took knowledges in istory, culture, and politics. I last chose tactics, leadership, diplomacy, memorize and analyze. I chose to know a little bit about a lot of things rather than dump all my points into a few different skills. I did this because DIO told me that increasing skills in the early levels is easy but learning them could be harder.

Then I got 2 free boons besides the automatic one of Unlimited Power. Unlimited Power just meant that my skills and attributes could go as high as I wanted them to, and not be stuck at the mortal limit of 5. The list of boons was immense. After hours of pouring over them, I chose my two.

Enigmatic was my second boon. It would make analyzing me harder and would always hide the fact that I was a player character and not an NPC. I chose this because I knew I would be behind my fellow players in XP and wanted to hide from them as much as possible.

Skilled was my third boon. It meant that I would learn skills at 2 times the normal rate and that skills were also cheaper to purchase with XP (2.5 XP per level, to be exact).

These weren’t the flashiest of boons. Some of them were mysterious, like IOU which meant that the system would grant the needed boon at the most needed time of the player’s choosing. Others seemed enormously powerful like Multi-class. I chose Enigmatic and Skilled so that I could maximize my potential and so that I could hide from the players.

Next up was to choose my class and specialty. The options were daunting. The idea I would be stuck with the class for 200 years made the choice extremely difficult. I didn’t want to choose a Brawns-based class, as that wasn’t me. I bet that I would be just as physically lazy in game as I had been in real life. Outside of that, though, I was stuck, there wwere too many options.

“DIO, can you narrow my choices based on what my attributes and skills are?”

Dio jumped at the chance, and about 15 different classes popped up. Instantly I narrowed them down to three. Each of the three suggested Brains as a primary and Brawns as a secondary category, which I had.

Enhancer: Wield willpower to increase your own attributes and those around you. This class is ideal for weaker players who want to compete against more challenging opponents. You can also enhance items that you use and empower them to have more characteristics than there normally should be on an item of that level.

Battlefield General: Be a tactician and win battles that you are leading. You get access to Tactics, which often takes willpower to cast. Tactics will do things like empower your allies, weaken your enemies, and enact complicated maneuvers in real time using mind-link and other battlefield enhancements. It will also increase the size and quality of NPCs you can gather in your army and improve soldiers’ attitudes towards you.

Sapper: Use willpower to weaken and damage your opponents. Break items simply through thought. Empower the land around you to hinder enemies by giving them negatives statuses like chill or burn. The best defense is a strong offense, and nothing is more offensive on a battlefield than a Sapper!

All three seemed to affect a battlefield and combat. I thought about them. Since I was a Gar’shan, I would most likely be fighting the Yeshuans and the Taurons. The Tauron fight would be a slave rebellion like the helots in Sparta or Spartacus in Rome. Fighting against the Yeshuans would likely be utilizing guerilla tactics. I immediately dislike the Sapper class, as it seemed like I would just inflict negatives. On the other hand, Enhancer seemed powerful, and I liked the idea of empowering yourself and allies. Plus the flavor text seemed to suggest that it would be good for me since I was weaker than my opponents. The General seemed to be in the middle and would both help allies and hinder enemies. As much as Enhancer spoke to me, the General class spoke to me more. I could lead armies against the Taurons, Yeshuans and the other players.

I chose General. “Interesting choice, Seth! I like it. Its not as powerful as some of the other classes, but it does have a wide arrange of utilization and can affect large groups. I would suggest raising your social attributes as well.”

I nodded, guessing as much.

“Now what specialization do you want as a General. You can select Defensive, Offensive, Weakening, Strengthening, Tactician, Communications, Inspiring, Cohesiveness and Overcoming.”

I reviewed the list descriptions and narrowed it down to three.

Inspiring: This specialty grants you tactics that will increase the morale of your soldiers both in and out of the battlefield. Long marches will become less strenuous, and long battles will cause less mental and physical fatigue for your soldiers.

Offensive: This specialty helps most when you are on the offensive in a battle. You will gain tactics that weakens the morale of the enemy, strengthens siege warfare, and speeds up your troops.

Overcoming: This specialty works best when you are fighting overwhelming odds against you. The worse the chances are, the stronger you shine on the battlefield. Tactics include passive powers like Against All Odds, which increases your chances of survival when in grave danger.

I thought these three over. I liked Offensive, because it seemed like most of my battles would be offensive in the beginning. Inspiring I liked as well, as it seemed like the things than can hurt most armies like mental and physical fatigue would be mitigated. But it was Overcoming that spoke to my situation the most. All my battles would be fighting more powerful enemies, whether it was slave-masters, occupiers, or enemy deities. I selected Overcoming.

“Lastly, do you want to start off as a free Gar’shan or an enslaved Gar’shan. This will determine your starting location and the difficulty level of your starting location.”

I thought about it, and then decided I wanted to be a free Gar’Shan. I mean, who would want to be enslaved?

I looked at my character sheet and liked it. I asked about the Tactic I already had: Against All Odds. DIO explained that it was a passive skill, and I could get a +1% to a +25% to party morale, speed and health regeneration depending on how overwhelming the odds are against me.

Character Sheet

Name:

Seth Sheppard

Ethnicity:

Gar'shan

Power Level

Mortal

Class:

General

Player ID:

G2379

Religion:

Monotheism

Faction:

Freed Gar'shan

Specialty:

Overcoming

Attributes

Brains

Brawn

Beauty

Blessings

Intelligence

3

Strength

1

Appearance

0

Faith

0

Wits

2

Dexterity

1

Manipulation

0

Devotion

0

Wisdom

2

Hardiness

1

Composure

0

Conviction

0

Average

2.34

Average

1

Average

0

Average

o

Stats

Willpower

7

Health

6

Social Graces

5

Zeal

5

Skills

Tactics

Boons

Analyze

1

Against All Odds

(Passive) 1

Unlimited potential

Athletics

1

Enigmatic

Climbing

1

Skilled

Culture

1

Diplomacy

1

Dodge

1

History

1

Horse riding

1

Leadership

1

Linguistics

(Tauron, Gar'Shan, Yeshuan) 2

Literacy

1

Memorize

1

Navigation

1

Scribe

1

Shields

1

Swimming

1

Swords

1

Tactics

1

Theology

1

After approving my character sheet, I looked to DIO. “What next?”

Dio smiled at me fondly, ‘Why, partner, it’s time to get a move on and start playing the game!”