Lords of Xulima Preview

RPGWatch's Aries100 has published a preview for Numantian Games' Lords of Xulima, an indie turn-based RPG that's currently in development (and available on Early Access) and was funded in part with a Kickstarter campaign. Here's a sampling of the article:

Character creation is quite deep.

You can choose to go with the default party (choose quick start), or create your own. The default party consists of Gaulen, the explorer; Duilas, the bard; Kira, the thief; Ixus, the soldier; Alesia, the cleric; and Menon, the mage. Gaulen is the leader of the party and the character you're controlling while you're exploring. You can right click each character's portrait to bring up the statistics for a particular character. Ixus is a a soldier, which means he has more life points than, say, a mage like Menon. Being a mage, Menon has more power points (mana) than Ixus since mages (and bards) need power points to cast spells. Mages also get a spell (sparks) for free at level 1, while Duilas as a bard starts with the Song of Courage for free. Gaulen, the leader, begins the game with a point in Knowledge of Herbs and Camouflage. Camouflage can be used as away of shielding the whole party from wandering enemies that ambush you in certain areas, provided you have enough power points.

If you don't want to go with the default party, you can always create your own. Gaulen is in your party by default, since he is the party's leader, appointed by the gods of Xulima themselves.

You can choose your characters to be one of these nine classes: Arcane Soldier, mage, thief, cleric, explorer, paladin, barbarian, bard and soldier. You'll need to choose which god you'll pray to since each god grants every character a different ability. If you create a thief character you'll want to pray to Valvet as this god grants you 5 extra ability (or skill) points. If you create a soldier or a barbarian you'll want to pray to Kersket, who grants you 3 extra strength points. Each deity gives you extra ability when you pray to them (e.g. you get 5 extra power points if you pray to Alnaet.) You'll need to make a balanced party, since combat requires you to use both strategy as well as tactics. So you'll need to have a thief, a soldier, an explorer, a cleric (for healing) and a bard who can sing songs of courage.