Character Development

	Getting Started
	Geoscape
	Combat
	Character Development
	Classes and Skills
	Mission Types

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Overview

Phoenix Point uses a 'sandbox' approach to character creation and development, where the class of the character does not determine the role (a sniper does not have to be a long-range marksman, she can be a close quarters fighter, an assault does not have to be frontline fighter, he can be support, etc.)

This is implemented through a limited number of choices: in Phoenix Point characters have just 3 attributes, and there are only 5 unique skills to acquire in each class (with the possibility to dual class, for a total of 10), and 3 random personal perks from a pool of 14. However, all attributes and all skills can be useful for all classes, so though you have few things to choose from they can be combined in many different ways.

What each operative will be, what role they will have on the battlefield and what kind of weapons or abilities they will rely on, depends on how you build them; how you spend their skill points and what equipment you give them (and what personal perks you roll).

Stats

All characters have 3 primary or core attributes, Strength, Willpower, and Speed, and 3 secondary or support attributes, Accuracy, Perception, and Stealth. If they are human, the Forsaken or the Pure they can also wear armor or have augmentations (mutations or bionics), and possess skills and personal perks.

All operatives start with the same attributes (determined by difficulty level). They can wear any armor, or be augmented with mutations or bionics regardless of class (the only exception are 3 special mutated heads only available to the Priests), and you are free to mix and match pieces from different armors.

The primary and secondary attributes, the armor, the mutations, the bionics, the skills and personal perks all serve to determine or modify the following Stats of the character:

- Accuracy, expressed as a % bonus/penalty, adjusts the size of the aiming reticle (derives from armor, mutations, bionics, skills or personal perks). See all the things that increase or decrease Accuracy.

- Armor, average of armor on all the body parts (for humans derives from armor, mutations or bionics)

- Carrying capacity, in weight units, determines how much a character can carry without suffering a penalty to Movement (derived from strength, 1 pt in strength = 1 additional weight unit carrying capacity). Note that the personal perk Resourceful adds +2 to strength and increases the carrying capacity by 25%, but the +2 strength from the perk doesn’t actually add additional capacity when in battle, even though it shows so on the Geoscape. The neural torso bionic increases carrying capacity by 50%.

- Hit Points (HPs), when this goes to 0 the character dies (derives from strength, 1 pt in strength = 10 HPs)

- Movement, in tiles, determines how much a soldier can move in one turn (divided by four, gives movement per AP) (derives from the speed attribute, 1 pt in speed = 1 tile; can be modified by armor, mutations, bionics, or personal perks. See all the things that increase or decrease movement.

- Perception, in tiles, determines the range at which the character will detect enemies in daylight (for humans starts at 35, bonuses and penalties derive from armor, mutations, bionics or personal perks). See all the things that increase or decrease perception; at night reduced by 50%, unless character equipped with Multivisual Sensor Module or Echo Head bionic

- Stealth, a %, reduces the range at which a character can be detected by enemies, i.e. their perception (for humans stealth starts at 0%, bonuses and penalties derive from armor, mutations, bionics, skills or personal perks). See here all the things that increase or decrease Stealth.

- Strength, derived from strength attribute, determines hit points; also determines carrying capacity, grenade throwing distance (range equals strength * 0.6) and resistance to paralyze damage. Can be increased by Resourceful perk (+2) and Project Vulture (+3 to all operatives). The strength of a character is reduced when its body parts are disabled by the amount of max HPs lost divided by 10, so a character that due to a disabled limb loses 10 max HPs also loses 1 point in strength

- Willpower Points (WPs), fuel the use of skills, cost of mind-controlling the unit to the enemy, if below 0 the character panics (derives from willpower attribute, 1 pt in willpower = 1 WP; farsighted and healer personal perks each increase Willpower by 2, and sniperist reduces it by 4; Judgement Head mutation increases Willpower by 5 and Resistor Head by 2). For explanation on how WPs are spent and recovered, see WPs in the combat section.

Characters can also have resistances or immunities against certain kinds of damage

Accuracy buffs and debuffs

Armor, Bionics and Mutations						Personal perks				Skills
Head		Body		Legs		Proficiency		Other
	+20%		+30%		+20%		+20%		+20%		+30%
	+15%		+15%		+15%	Operatives with the mutation cannot wield two-handed weapons, so to benefit from the accuracy buff you have to use handguns Only Priests can have the mutation An operative cannot have more than two augmentations (whether bionics or mutations) reduces damage by 10%, which makes it inadvisable for operatives who use low damage per attack weapons To benefit from the accuracy buff there must not be any detected enemies within 10 tiles of the operative. Note that the +30% buff is not added to the accuracy stat in the info panel during tactical battles
	+10%		+10%		+12%
	+5%		+7%		+10%
			+5%		+7%
			+2%		+5%
					+4%
			-5%		-5%
	-10%		-10%		-10%
	-15%				-15%
	-20%								-20%		-50%

Movement buffs and debuffs

Movement

Armor, Bionics and Mutations				Personal perks		Skills
Body		Legs
	+2		+5		+2		up to +50%
	+1		+3	A with can further buff the movement of all characters within 20 tiles by +50% with
			+2
			+1
	-1		-1	Encumbrance (pending)
	-2		-2		- 2

Stealth buffs and debuffs

Stealth

Armor, Bionics and Mutations						Personal perks		Skills
Head		Body		Legs
	+10%		+20%		+30%		+25%		+25%
	+5%		+10%		+20%
	+3%		+5%		+10%
					+6%
	-5%
	-10%		-10%		-10%
			-15%		-20%
			-20%		-25%

Perception buffs and debuffs

Armor, Bionics and Mutations						Personal perks
Head		Body		Legs
	+14		+7		+4		+10
	+10		+4
	+7
	+5
	+4
	-4
	-5
	-7						-20

Leveling up

Operatives improve as they gain Experience Points to level up (unlocking new skills of their class) and Skill Points that can be spent on acquiring unlocked skills and personal perks and to raise attributes.

Experience Points

The operatives acquire Experience Points (XPs) from completing missions. The total amount of XPs depends on the type of mission and performance of the squad as a whole, while their distribution among the team members depends on individual performance (mostly enemies killed, but also damage dealt, HPs healed and some other factors), which means that you don’t get more XPs for slaying more enemies.

How are the XPs distributed exactly among the members of the squad? All I found is this post on the official Snapshot forum by cfehunter:

There’s not really any reason to arbitrarily kill enemies on the map, you don’t get bonus XP for kills, just the soldiers that kill them will get a bigger portion of the objective XP than those that didn’t.

Dug into the code. Here’s the exhaustive list of what you get “contribution” points for. Which are then used to scale how much of the objective XP you get shared between your guys.

• Killing Something (Based on the deployment cost of the object, so bigger = better)
• Dealing Damage (Damage over time is counted)
• Healing (HP healed x a settings multiplier)
• Taking Damage (Health lost x a settings multiplier)
• Opening a Crate (flat settings value)
• Activating a Willpoint Objective (the white areas with the head icons, flat settings value)
• Mind Controlling Something (flat settings value) Mind control doesn’t appear to be hooked up, it’s probably using the ability modifier instead, maybe this is legacy code?
• Using Abilities (amount depends on the ability)

The operatives also acquire XPs from staying at a base with Training Facilities (remember: you gain 2 XPs from each Training Facility at the base, see here for more).

Gaining XPs unlocks 'Levels' (and the skills associated to them):

LVL2	LVL3	LVL4	LVL5	LVL6	LVL7
100	150	250	400	600	850

Operatives also gain 20 Skill Points (SPs) when they level up.

Skill Points

Operatives acquire Skill Points (SPs) when they level up (20 SPs) and for successfully completing any mission (depending on the difficulty level: 12 on Recruit, 10 on Veteran, 8 on Hero and 5 on Legend). Raids and scavenging ops are considered to have been completed successfully even if you evac immediately after starting them, because you recovered 0 boxes, and 0 is a number as good any other

Skill Points (SPs) can be used to purchase additional primary attribute points, skills or personal perks, at the following rates

• Increasing 1 pt of Strength costs SPs = new Strength/2 rounded down (so increasing strength from 16 to 17 costs 8 SPs; increasing strength from 17 to 18 costs 9 SPs, etc.)

	Strength
Difficulty level ↓	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	← attribute #
Rookie							10	21	32	44	56	69	82	96	110	125	← SPs required
Veteran					9	19	29	40	51	63	75	88	101	115	129	144
Hero			8	17	26	36	46	57	68	80	92	105	118	132	146	162
Legend	7	15	23	32	41	51	61	72	83	95	107	120	133	147	161	176

• Increasing 1 pt of Willpower or Speed costs new Willpower or Strength (so increasing Willpower from 7 to 8 costs 8 SPs, and increasing Speed from 14 to 15 costs 15SPs)

	Willpower
Difficulty level ↓	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	← attribute #
Rookie				10	21	33	46	60	75	91	108	126	145	165	← SPs required
Veteran			9	19	30	42	55	69	84	100	117	135	154	174
Hero		8	17	27	38	50	63	77	92	108	125	143	162	182
Legend	7	15	24	34	45	57	70	84	99	115	132	150	169	189

	Speed
Difficulty level ↓	15	16	17	18	19	20	← attribute #
ALL	15	31	48	66	85	105	← SPs required

• Personal perks cost 25 SPs each

• Skills cost:

	LVL2	LVL3	LVL4	LVL5	LVL6	LVL7
SP Cost →	10	15	50	20	25	30

Common pool of SPs

Completing tactical missions rewards the player with SPs that are assigned to a common pool, which can be spent to increase the attributes or acquire skills of any operative.

The number of SPs seems to be the total XPs awarded for completing the mission rounded up / 100: so a mission rewarded with 265 XPs, will give 3 SPs to the common pool

You can also receive SPs from the following:

• Exploration Events

-At Peace +30 SPs

-Not a Barnacle +25 SPs

-The Beautiful Game +25 SPs

• Anu Haven events

-Rite of the Clear Sky +30 SPs

-Rite of the Crimson Moon +60 SPs

-Rite of the Luminous Deep +25 SPs

• New Jericho Haven events

-Further Developments +30 SPs

• Synedrion Haven events

-An Oral History of the Pandoravirus +50 SPs

-Cerebral Accelerationism +10 SPs

How many missions does an operative have to do to 'max out'?

Maxing out all the primary attributes and acquiring all the skills , including those of a second class and the 3 personal perks requires 720 SPs on Rookie, 748 SPs on Veteran, 774 SPs on Hero and 795 SPs on Legend. Leveling up provides 120 SPs and taking into account how much SPs are awarded for missions on each difficulty level, it will take:

50 missions	on Rookie
63 missions	on Veteran
82 missions	on Hero
135 missions	on Legend

What this means is that you can easily max out all your operatives on Rookie and Veteran, and even on Hero (or at least increase their primary attributes to the point where they are almost maxed out) without much effort. In other words, your most veteran operatives will be masters of all trades by the time they reach end game.

However, on Legend maxing out is out of the question unless you are willing to engage in some serious grinding. Therefore, when playing on Legend you have to bear in mind that spending SPs has an opportunity cost and you have to plan ahead.

On lower difficulty levels it's OK to spend SPs as you get them, safe in the knowledge that if your operatives survive they will end up being everything you want them to be and more: even if you don’t dual-class them at first, you will eventually, because they will have SPs to spare.

However, those of your soldiers with less experience, mostly brought up in the ‘stables’, will probably have to focus on specific roles.

Character progression tips

One key idea to keep in mind is that roles are not determined by class. For example, assaults can be in a support role, casting Rally the Troops once per turn. Infiltrators can be frontline melee troops clad in regular armor (and preferably melee bionic torso that reduces the cost of melee attacks by 1 AP), using Vanish to close in and land devastating Sneak Attacks. Technicians can ditch the exo-arms in favor of higher mobility and used to launch turrets for a forward attack. Two Technicians can work together in this way: for example, one dual classed as an infiltrator to throw the turrets near the enemy while remaining hidden and another to manually control them. Technicians can also manually control spider drones launched by infiltrators.

Mixing things up is fun and can have a huge payoff. If you think something might work, try it out

- Armor and augmentations are just as important in determining the role of a soldier as its attributes and skills.

You can mix different kinds of body armor/augs parts to achieve the exact balance of accuracy, mobility, stealth, and perception you want. Just bear in mind that the enemies will aim for the body part with the least armor.

There are many possible builds and arguably no wrong way to go about it. Be imaginative, try different things.

You may want to pay attention to the unlockable personal traits (aka third row skills). One approach is to consider these as the foundations defining the build. For example, a heavy class recruit with the close quarters specialist perk (profiency with melee weapons and shotguns and +20% damage) might make a particularly good… you guessed it, melee fighter. A sniper with the same perk can be a shotgun CQC specialist.

Don’t underestimate skills that are not flashy. For example, Ready for Action (assault LVL5 passive skill, allows reloading and inventory management for 0 AP) doesn’t seem like much, but combined with a heavy’s biggest booms (heavy LVL5, for 5 WP cost of using any explosive weapons reduced by 1 AP and their range by 50% until the end of the turn) and the Quarterback trait (+50% to grenade range and +2 to speed) a squaddie can be made into a devastating Grenadier. (It can also be used for weapon sharing during missions... The Assault with Ready for Action

Attributes are just as important as skills, don’t neglect them. For some builds/roles you don’t need that many skills (for example, melee fighters), but SPs invested in attributes can pay off nicely.

Strength determines the total HPs of the character, at the rate of 10 HPs for every point in strength. A squadie with 30 strength, 300 HP can withstand a lot of punishment. The damage dealt with the bash attack also scales with strength (weight of weapon * strength). I recommend that all you soldiers have enough strength to do 50 damage with a single bash attack. Why? Because that will allow them to one hit kill for 1AP worms, and attached mindfraggers. Some builds can also benefit from increased carrying capacity.

Willpower is important primarily for characters who will be using a lot of skills, which is usually those in support roles (techies, priests), but a minimum pool of 12 WP is advisable for any build. Bear in mind that WPs also act as defense against mindcontrol attempts.

Speed is the easiest attribute to recommend because of the importance mobility has in the game (given that accuracy is solely determined by range, being able to close the distance to a target is equivalent to having perfect accuracy).

The defensive approach

Strong preference for single class Heavies in heavy armor and top strength. (See Heavy below for reasons why)

Invest SPs in attributes and don’t rush to dual classing. It can be tempting to cross classes ASAP e.g. sniper with assault to get Dash and Quick Aim in a single package. However, these early multiclass builds are often too expensive in SPs (and WPs to power the skill combinations) for what they can accomplish. They are also fragile and encourage reckless behavior, such as Dashing far ahead and casting Quick Aim for a shotgun blast that may well score a kill but expose your squaddie to swift retaliation.

For the same amount of SPs, you can get an assault or a sniper with high strength (remember: = more HPs = higher survivability) and more than decent mobility.

Pay attention to personal traits (third-row skills) The damage buffs that some of them provide can make a huge difference in effectivity.

As a rule, it’s a good idea to have the soldier use the weapon for which he has a personal trait. So a soldier with the Trooper trait will be very effective with an Assault Rifle, a Strongman - with any Heavy Weapon (including Grenade Launcher), Close Quarters Specialist - using shotguns and melee weapons, or bashing, and so on and so forth.

Generally the Reckless personal trait is always a good pick. This is because the minor penalty to accuracy can be easily offset by higher mobility or an accuracy buff from armor. It’s especially useful for Area of Effect weapons, such as explosives and Mind Crash, and melee fighters and bashers, as they don’t rely on accuracy to deliver the damage.

Cautious, on the other hand, is not always interesting to have, because the penalty to damage is harder to compensate. In fact, I usually don’t take it unless the soldier also has the Reckless perk and I intend to use the soldier as a dedicated Heavy Weapons shooter, or give him a paralyzing weapon.

Some other personal traits can also give opportunities for interesting builds depending on the class/weapon proficiency of the soldier, such as:

Quarterback (increases grenade range by 50% and gives +2 Speed) - very interesting for an assault/heavy with Boom Blast and Ready for Action to make a grenadier build,

Biochemist (which adds +1 virus damage to each hit that does damage), for soldiers using burst weapons

Resourceful (increases Strength by 2 and carry capacity by 25%), for Heavy bashers, as it allows to maximize damage output.