Anatos is primarily a legacy game and unlike normal settings that have lots of magic or none at all, we have the capability of growing from a low/medium-magic setting to a high-magic one. In order to have that sense of progression the starting races and classes are limited, and it is up to you to fight for the next generation and leave behind the tools and allies they’ll need to face the increasingly dangerous challenges that the city will face.
The reason is to give as much access as possible to the community and to it’s games for everyone. One frequent issue with these sorts of community games is the older players get to really high levels, so when you run games for them (Which could be the coolest looking session, or story critical) not everybody interested could join. This issue is rarely addressed, what typically ends up happening is the oldest players just keep a rotating pool of different level char’s to join any session they want.
As a community I want us all to be able to play together and not lock content behind barriers. I don’t want people to feel like they have to make lots of characters just so they can play. When a session is announced I want everyone to know that if it peaks their interest they can join it.
In my mind this comes with a couple of additional benefits, letting players focus on their own character stories, giving DM’s an easy benchmark to balance encounters, and avoiding the nightmare of trying to balance low level play versus high play.
This is not to say that the Max Level won't increase, it will, but when it does the Minimum Level will also increase so we always maintain the ability for players to join any session they want too.
Yes, the only restrictions are that you can’t gift the item to one of your own characters, and if your character is retiring they take all their magic items with them. If you want to leave behind an item for another player ask a Admin if it’s ok first.
Yes, but actually no. The design ethos of Anatos is about bringing the community together primarily as a team, and a good way to disrupt that is by allowing players to diverge into being selfish little monsters. The game works best when the player characters are ready and willing to team together and protect the city. You can certainly have selfish motivations for doing that (I live here, I want riches/fame, I want to impress/terrorize everyone with how strong I am) but ultimately you’ll miss out on content and the ‘goal’ of the game if you stray too far.
If you're really interested in what it’d be like to enact your dreams of being an antagonist then you just need to wait for a ‘special’ antagonist event, which are one shot’s where players can act out and scheme as one of the settings various villains.
Sort of? Sort of no. While the mechanics to be a necromancer exist it is considered abhorrent by the people of Anatos, and is therefore technically forbidden. This is an IC (In-Character) ban, so if you do want to be a necromancer you’ll unfortunately have to hide it, as in this setting the magic actually does have consequences.
Anything from the player handbook, anything that can be ‘bought’ in Anatos, and finally anything you have personally witnessed. Quite a few land based animals don’t exist in Anatos, without normal forests or fields they have nowhere to live. Such animals usually live in dungeons, or have visited a druid in their dreams.
No. They can understand you, and can ‘motion’ at you, but unless you can speak to animals your conversations are unlikely to be that deep.
No. Not because people haven't tried, some doomed fools have, but because invoking their name actually causes curses and accidents to happen and doesn’t grant any powers. Some believe that speaking their name aloud brings their attention, along with their terrible wraith, while others believe a curse was placed upon the name so that one could ever summon them back into the world.