Zhao Li's Advanced Character Guide

Foreword:

First, a quick introduction: I'm Zhao Li, a veteran of a year and a half in the group, decently strong, at least able to hold my own against a few of the old min-maxers... and the group's resident looks and conscience.

Actually, every newbie has questions like these when they first get into Infinite: "Boss Roma, how do I build this character so it's actually decent in a fight?" "Boss Dango, how on earth did you stack DP that high on DC-Rank resources?" "Old thief Shenxu, how could anyone beat a monster this strong with this many resources? What?! You crushed it with half the resources?" And when newbies want to dig deeper, the answer is usually "Read the book! Go read the book. Read it yourself. Read the book or I'll cut you down! (That last one is Manzi.)"

As a PC myself, I really get how awful it feels to spend a week poring over the rulebook to build a character, only to get crushed in an actual session by a character some veteran built in 5 minutes. So there have long been calls for the group's veterans to share some strong builds or common character-building patterns. But speaking as a veteran and a pattern designer, I don't want overpowered builds to run rampant so that PCs give up studying the rulebook and just copy characters, and I even less want fixed patterns to limit PCs' imagination.

So some friends who just want to learn overpowered min-max patterns may be disappointed. I don't like building overly utilitarian character sheets. This guide is mainly about sharing how I think about building characters, with a few min-max patterns that long ago got nerfed, gutted, crippled, or became common knowledge, in the hope that you'll find some inspiration in them.

This guide mainly covers version 2.30 of Xingguang's Infinite Horror TRPG; resources from other versions are marked as such.

I. What kind of character do I want to build?

Before building a character, the first thing you should do is figure out what kind of campaign you're in, what level your ST and teammates are at, and what the campaign demands in combat power. Is it a spring-outing campaign, a story campaign, or a survival campaign? I've always believed that a TRPG is, in Essence, the ST and PCs telling a good story together. Deliberately putting any one person in the spotlight is wrong and hurts everyone's experience. The character you build should match your ST's level of running games and your teammates' level of building characters, especially in online campaigns. Next, you need to be clear about what kind of character you're actually building. Under the current rules, it's almost impossible for one character to do everything, especially in the current version where support is dead. So a team should divide up roles: you handle technological crafting, I handle magical spellcasting, he handles frontal assault, Su Can handles backstabbing teammates, and so on.

Once you have a role, the next things to consider are how long the campaign will be, whether the ST runs it reliably, whether resources are handed out generously, what the rules for splitting rewards are, and so on. Why consider these? Because they decide how many resources the campaign can support a build with, how many resources to set aside to get through the early weak phase if you're playing a late-game build, and whether and when to respec. A quick example: if a campaign is expected to run four sessions, ending with around BBCC in resources, then planning to build an EVA pilot clearly doesn't fit. If you plan to save up a B and buy the Heroic Spirit Augmentation outright, you also need to think about how many resources you'll have before then to stay alive and contribute a bit early on, so you don't feel invisible. Of course, this step is mainly for campaigns that stick fairly close to the source material, emphasize combat power, and have a complete plan. If you're in a spring-outing campaign, skip this step and play whatever you like.

The next step is the core of most people's character building: which resource do I want to play? A good number of people play Infinite for the cosplay: I just want to play a Duelist, I really want to play the Magma-Magma Fruit with Withered Earth, and so on. My personal advice here is to go with what you love... balance in the current version is nearly nonexistent, but everything is more or less playable. Some resources are strong and some weak, and there are only a few you'll really love, so just go with what you like. Finally, to protect your groupmates' titanium-alloy eyes, I strongly advise against some combinations that are too painful to look at...

II. How do I build my ideal character?

Right, this is the meaty part, and I'll break it down with a few examples. Once you've settled your role and the resources you want to play, you need to think about how to do your job: how do I deal damage? How do I take damage? How do I stack detection level and range? And so on. I'll cover this in a few sections.

(1) The core idea

While reading the resource books, you'll always have some flashes of inspiration, like "Chapter of Gunfire with projection might be really strong" or "Cthulhu with tentacle monsters would definitely be fun". These flashes often lay the foundation for a new pattern. To use Hearthstone as a comparison: the idea of "fatigue" gave rise to Mill Rogue, the idea of "go face" evolved into Face Hunter, and Mysterious Challenger single-handedly created the whole Secret Paladin deck. A build usually picks its resources around a core idea, which is the soul of the whole build.

By Xingguang's theory, resources split into quantitative resources and qualitative resources. Quantitative resources just pile up numbers, while qualitative resources are where a build's 1 + 1 > 2 comes from. As I understand it, the core of a build is just one or a few core traits, and the different effects those core traits produce in combination decide the idea behind your build. For a build to do the job you set out for it, you first find an idea that delivers the effect you want, then build around the core traits. Let's look at some concrete examples.

Example 1: Heroic Spirit Augmentation (versions before 2.29)

Noble Phantasm: a Noble Phantasm is also called a [precious fantasy]: the concepts a Heroic Spirit followed throughout their life, and the items and abilities they used, sublimated by human imagination into Noble Phantasms. After making the Heroic Spirit contract, for each extra success on your base Intelligence, you can create one Skill, and that self-made Skill costs half the XP. The Skill must be exchanged for when you become a Heroic Spirit, and can't be saved.

The self-made Skill can be any ability in the resources, including:

Skills: you can gain a Skill.

Spells: you can gain a spell. You can't gain a spell above your caster level, and its spellcaster role is Heroic Spirit.

Titles: you can gain a Title, but you must exchange for it starting from D-Rank.

Items: you gain an item, at double its price; for example, an item priced D + 1,000 counts as DD + 2,000. A Noble Phantasm can't be lost or handed over.

If a spell or Skill can be heightened, evolved, or developed with new uses, each upgrade counts as a new Skill.

If you have enough slots, you can even use this ability to exchange for an entire Title or Grimoire, which means exchanging for every Skill and level under that spellbook or Title, each level and Skill counted separately.

The Heroic Spirit Augmentation is a classic min-max resource. Its key trait is this XP discount, and the core idea is to use the XP discount to jump beyond your current resource level and grab high-Rank abilities, then rely on that resource advantage to keep the build strong. A little trivia here: in the Infinite rules, the XP currency and the Rank currency don't grow in step. Under the self-made ability rules, one D of Rank is worth 10 XP, a C 28 XP, a B 54 XP, and an A 88 XP. Self-making an A costs less XP than self-making 9 D's, while in Rank one A = 27 D's, so the higher the resource, the better the deal of self-making it with XP. Lots of min-max patterns were built around this Heroic Spirit trait: grabbing resources from above your level naturally lets you crush the little kids. The most classic use was Grape's build in Infinite Universe season 1, which hoarded 120+ XP and then used the Heroic Spirit Augmentation to take an S-Rank vehicle, the Imperial Palace...

Resources like this all have one outstanding trait strong enough to carry a build, and they're fairly easy to spot. Similar ones include the Angels' AT Field, the great dragons' magic immunity, and so on.

Example 2: any Strength/Size Bloodline + the Mario Augmentation (version 2.27)

C + 1,000: Mushroom Augmentation

Prerequisite: Mario the plumber

You ate a mushroom about as tall as you, and it made you shoot up. Your height doubles and your Size doubles; this trait doubles your current Size, not your base Size. If you gain more Size later, it adds on top of this.

Legendary Strength

1 point: 1 extra success, 500 kg more carrying capacity, double base throwing distance, +1 DP on STR rolls, and +1 to your damage cap when attacking with Strength.

2 points: 2 extra successes, 1,000 kg more carrying capacity, four times base throwing distance, a further +2 DP on STR rolls, and a further +2 to your damage cap when attacking with Strength.

3 points: 3 extra successes, 2,000 kg more carrying capacity, eight times base throwing distance, a further +3 DP on STR rolls, and a further +3 to your damage cap when attacking with Strength.

4 points: 4 extra successes, 4,000 kg more carrying capacity, twelve times base throwing distance, a further +4 DP on STR rolls, and a further +4 to your damage cap when attacking with Strength.

5 points: 5 extra successes, 8,000 kg more carrying capacity, sixteen times base throwing distance, a further +5 DP on STR rolls, and a further +5 to your damage cap when attacking with Strength.

Size: an ordinary adult is Size 5, and only choosing a special Feat makes it 6; it seems fitting to let minors choose 4.

For every 2 points of Size above 5, you get +1 Strength, -1 to hit, +1 Natural Armor, and -1 Dodge Defense (this can drop Dodge Defense below 0, but in any case it can't drop your defense below 0).

From these three traits we can see that under the 2.27 rules, Size converted straight into Strength, and Strength converted straight into DP and damage cap. Based on this, there were lots of Strength/Size builds back then, and the flashiest was Mario, a resource that simply doubled your Size. With this trait, you could crudely stack damage and DP to absurdly overpowered levels. In this build, Mario is the qualitative resource, and the other Strength/Size resources are the quantitative ones. (By the way, all the rules traits above have since been nerfed to death.)

In this example, such traits need a certain numerical base to work their magic. Resources like these usually turn large numbers into base values or grant key traits. Here, Strength/Size Bloodlines like the Titan provide the numerical base, and Mario acts as the catalyst for a qualitative leap. The common "add XX Attribute or XX value to something" belongs here. Similar resources include sword qi, the divine staff, and so on.

Example 3: Requiem + Rakshasa Ghost Bone

Requiem, D + 1,000

Sleep is the brother of death; in dreams, people come closest to dying.

You can sing a hymn to the cycle of life and death, which puts the living to sleep and lays the dead to rest.

As a full-round action, you make a PRE + performance roll, opposed by the Will rolls of the living and the spirits of the dead who hear it. Living creatures who fail fall asleep for 1 hour per success; they can be woken with a standard action, and wake automatically if they take any damage. If the soul of a dead creature (a vengeful ghost or other incorporeal creature or undead; their trait-based immunity to mind-affecting effects doesn't work against this) fails its Will roll, it falls into dejection, gaining dejection points equal to the performance successes left after its Will roll offsets them. When the dejection reaches devastating consequences, the dead creature is laid to rest.

Rakshasa Ghost Bone

Essence: Magical Essence

Price: D + 1,000

Category: magic treasure

Prerequisite: creature of darkness

Size: 1

Description: He asked again, "How do you bewitch them?" She said, "Whoever gets intimate with me, I secretly prick his foot with an awl, and he falls into a daze, and I draw his blood for the demon to drink. Or I tempt him with gold, but it isn't gold: it's a rakshasa's ghost bone, and whoever keeps it has his heart and liver taken. Both just play to what people crave." Ning thanked her and asked when to be on guard, and she answered: tomorrow night.

Hidden form: this item looks like a gold ingot. This is an illusion, counting as D-Rank anti-detection; seeing through it takes a DC 20 PER + Investigation (Spotting) or INT + Occult (Illusion) roll.

Refinement: you must pour 1 point of maximum yokai power, Tao Power, true qi, life force, grudge power, or True Essence into it to refine it, after which this magic treasure gains the [Soulbound] trait toward you.

Dark sensing: once this magic treasure is [Soulbound] to you, while you hold the Rakshasa Ghost Bone, you can sense the state of living creatures within your sensory range (see Qi Control). This is an A-Rank Magical Essence detection effect. It means you may not see the target, but can sense it is nearby. It doesn't give you any locating ability, but you know for sure whether there are other targets around you.

Instant-death attack: if a creature within the Rakshasa Ghost Bone's sensing range is unconscious, asleep, or otherwise helpless (except petrified), you can pay 5 of the energy used to refine it and, as a full-round action, make a lethal attack, tearing out the target's heart and liver.

This attack involves no roll; instead it counts as an A-Rank, curse-type instant-death attack against the target, which dies outright unless immune.

Against an immune target, it counts as a coup de grace, and the refiner makes the attack roll with INT + Occult (Necromancy).

Special: against targets whose heart isn't a vital spot (spirits, some undead, constructs, and so on), the "instant-death attack" doesn't work.

This idea relies mainly on the chemistry between two or more resources to get around some harsh conditions or achieve some overpowered effects. This is a new build I came up with recently. In PvP, if you don't guard against it, there's a real chance of getting ambushed: never mind how high your defense or Health, within the conditions it's instant death... Similar ones include Cloud-Fire Duelist, Night Angel Bomb Master, and so on, which you can develop yourselves.

(2) Stacking numbers

In general, apart from a few ideas, most builds still need numbers stacked to work. In wuxia terms, the core traits are your Techniques and the number stacking is your inner force: the higher your numbers, the better your effects work, and sometimes even without any flashy core trait combos, plain, honest number stacking can beat the people doing fancy tricks. This part is internal training with no shortcuts: read the books, build up knowledge, learn the patterns. Taking DP stacking as an example, the most direct way is to add straight to the final calculation, a typical example being Multiple Brain Partitioning in the other Arts. Next is stacking base values like Attributes; for Strength-based damage, Muscle Dominator is the direct embodiment of this idea, simply adding Strength. Raising Skills, weapon damage, Size, and so on all fall into this category. The third way is closer to the trait-combo idea we mentioned before: using certain resources to add other values onto this one. Let's analyze two builds.

Example: Executor + Soldier Bloodline (nerfed)

You've become more skilled with Black Keys. When you attack with Black Keys, you can wield three in one hand at once. Only one counts for weapon damage, but the other two's weapon damage becomes a DP equipment bonus added to the attack roll, and the three Black Keys' other effects stack. So it becomes a weapon dealing 3L damage, +6 DP, +3 [Armor Piercing], +3 DP holy bonus against creatures of darkness, and leaving 3 lingering damage each hit.

Boot camp: the Skill you chose at C-Rank rises 1 more level, and rolls with it get 9-again. While you wear armor, your weapon damage rises by your Strength, up to your rating in the chosen Skill. If you have extra successes on Strength, you get the same extra successes on attacks, up to your extra successes in the chosen Skill. Besides that, your maximum Health rises by 3, and you gain one level in the Diehard Feat.

From the Executor Title's effect, we can see this build's core idea is to use the Mark of Death's effect, stacking weapon damage for big damage output. The number we need to stack here is weapon damage. To that end, we can use the Soldier Bloodline's B-Rank trait to boost weapon damage massively, and that second approach can itself serve as a core idea, building out damage by pairing it with resources like the Executor.

As this example shows, different patterns can actually be used together; it's just that a build has its main and supporting parts. Again taking weapon damage stacking as the example, a high-Power, heavily developed Magic Archer can also boost Black Key weapon damage massively, but the high caster level and stacked spell Power it needs will inevitably eat up some resources. Whether that affects your core idea is something each person has to weigh.

Example: Hunyuan Sword Canon (version 2.33)

Mystic Mastery

Basic training: your Blade Skill gains every Specialty related to "swords" and "sabers", and their specialty bonus becomes 3.

Sword qi: once per round, you can spend 1 free action and pay up to (the lower of your Dexterity or Perception) points of sword qi, then gain the same amount as a circumstance bonus on melee Blade attack rolls or on defense (your choice) for 1 round. This use can be combined with sword qi's basic use.

Sword qi is one of the go-to DP stacking tools for Eastern Dexterity-Blade builds: it adds the lower of your Dexterity or Perception straight to your DP, and as the rare circumstance bonus at that. Brutally direct, with no real downside except a heavy energy cost.

However many different patterns get mixed and swapped along the way, the number stacking always comes down to base values like Attributes, Skills, Power, Size, and caster level, and to direct DP bonuses. Allocate your resources well in your build, and never chase fancy patterns at the expense of building up the basics.

(3) Getting key traits

Once we've sorted out the idea and the number stacking, your build should have a basic framework, and maybe you're feeling very confident about it. Why not try it out? See how easily the ST toys with you (laughs).

At this stage, quite a few players, especially Dexterity-Blade players, will have noticed: I built a character with hundreds or thousands of DP, so why does my damage come out in single digits? Simple: you haven't solved the damage cap problem. In Infinite 2.xx, Blade DP is worked out as Strength + Skill rating + weapon Power + other, and the damage cap as Strength + Skill rating + weapon Power. Plenty of resources let you roll damage with Dexterity, Presence, and so on, but if you don't solve the damage cap problem, your damage cap becomes Skill rating + weapon Power, and however high your DP, that's all the damage you can deal...

There are currently two main ways to solve the damage cap problem. One is to crudely stack weapon damage. The other is to get this trait: when making a Blade attack, if you use DEX instead of STR for the attack roll, you can also use Dexterity instead of Strength to work out your damage cap. (Apart from the White Tiger Star, this trait is usually at B-Rank in each resource.) This is what's called a key trait.

Likewise: your melee damage is unbeatable, but the ST sends flying ranged monsters; your marksmanship can pick off an enemy's head from eight hundred miles away, but you can't see the invisible assassin next to you; your sword descends from the west like an immortal flying from beyond the sky, but you have no area attacks, and hacking left and right does nothing to that swarm of sacred scarabs... There are many more traits like these, which you can explore in play. In my summary, a few traits are especially key, for your reference: damage cap, AoE, detection, range, movement speed, flight, Initiative, the three resistances, and so on.

III. What is my role in the team?

After reading the last section, clever friends may have noticed: there are only so many resources, and so many key traits to cover; how can you handle them all? Indeed, apart from mages and a very few shameless resources like the Kidney-Drained Demon, most builds can't do everything. If you spend resources on detection, flight, and the three resistances, your damage probably won't keep up with someone who only stacks damage. Faced with everything that can happen in a session, one person basically can't cover it all, so we need teammates. Here's my take on what roles a team needs.

1. Detector. The classic mental scan from the original novel is this. A team without detection won't even know how it died; when other teams attack you, you won't know where they are. In advancing the story, the detector is also the team's key source of intelligence and is fairly involved in the plot, so the play experience is decent. It's indispensable to a team. A good detector focuses on solving three problems: detection range, detection level, and sharing intelligence.

2. Striker. No need to explain this one much. In most campaigns, it doesn't matter whether you have the other roles, but you absolutely can't do without strikers; 80% of PCs build striker characters anyway. In a typical team, you can't have too many strikers, and other roles can double as strikers. Personally, I feel 2 or 3 strikers is best, each specializing in one area, with different strikers covering different kinds of attack: single-target attacks, beyond-visual-range attacks, AoE, special attacks against Will or Fortitude, control abilities, and so on. Strikers usually have the best play experience and the best rewards too.

3. Support. Infinite's supports are like the "crutches" in FGO: a good support can prop up any striker, and one support might multiply your damage several times over. In general, supports mainly act as buff machines and debuff machines, and some supports are strong strikers themselves. Pure supports have a somewhat worse play experience, but a support who doubles as a striker is the team's MVP; just hang on to them. Supports need to watch Initiative, numbers, and survival; get these wrong and it's easy for the support to get one-shot on arrival and leave the whole team crippled...

4. Logistics / utility. Personally I feel this is the most fun role. In a typical session, if you don't have utility characters, the ST won't make things too hard for you, but once you do, you can pull off all sorts of tricks, double the fun! With abilities like group teleportation, changing terrain, speaking with the dead, mind control, or mass-produced armies, a player with a wild imagination and an ST willing to let PCs run riot can tear up the script. The play experience in this role depends on the ST: if the ST won't let you run riot, your experience will be worse, but STs in PvP campaigns are usually fairly lenient, and all your crazy moves work on the Reincarnator teams. Note! One kind of character in this role is special: the almighty crafter! The crafter is the daddy of most of the team, especially those who play Gundams and vehicles. A crafter can usually also boost their own power quickly by charging extra fees when crafting for teammates, so they don't usually fall behind in combat power either. Of course, if your teammates are all magic players and you insist on building a technological crafter, sales may not be so guaranteed...

Some of you may still ask: what about the front line / tank? Isn't that needed? As I understand it, under the Infinite 2.xx mechanics, you really don't need a tank. A beefy character can be useful for springing traps, but on one hand, Infinite's numbers explode too easily, and defense growth can't keep up with damage growth at all, especially since Infinite's range of attacks is so broad: some hit defense, some hit the three resistances, some deal fixed damage, and some even hit lifespan or causality; there's no defending against all of it. On the other hand, Infinite's taunt effects are too weak. Apart from the Flashy Man, taunts have small ranges and need contests... if I could win the contest, why would I taunt you? Wouldn't I just control you? So in a typical PvP campaign, Infinite is a game of rock-paper-scissors plus one-shotting each other: you didn't guard against my pattern, you acted after me, so you're dead. For example, my original PvP pattern of double Yi B + Blood Curser A, "Seven Nails Arrow Script" (version 2.34): the moment I sense you, I know your birth date and time, and knowing that, I can curse you through a doll... builds without immunity to causality generally have a very hard time dealing with this pattern.

But survival is still necessary. Every role has to think about survival, or it's very easy to die to all sorts of plot events. The most honest, straightforward survival tool is stacking Health; the best survival tool is not getting hit. Other ways, such as damage absorption, temporary HP, escaping out of attack range, substitute-death tricks, and hiding in imaginary space, you can work out yourselves.

IV. Final words

Because of work, I don't play many sessions, and I basically went into retirement around version 2.32. But in my experience, most online campaigns struggle to reach the late game and usually end before A-Rank resources. And since Infinite is a game heavy on rules and combat, in many cases PCs start an arms race partway through, which is really bad. Overpowered builds wreck not only other teammates' experience but also the ST's. My advice is for everyone to hold back a little and keep your power at about the same level as your teammates, keeping the team in step, for a better experience at the table.