Importing CharActor as ca is just a convention. But it's a good one. It's short and sweet. Upon doing so you are granted public access to the following:

• ca.character_bank - The character bank will have no public attributes until you create a character.
• ca.create - The create function can, you guessed it, create a character. It accepts a number of parameters, but none are necessary, they are as follows; obj_name, name, role, race, background, alignment and grid.

Creating a character is easy. You can do it in one line. But first, let's look at the parameters.

• obj_name - This is the identifier that will be assigned to the character. It is not necessary, but it is recommended. If you do not provide one, the character will be assigned a sequenced identifier, (e.g. char1, char2, etc.)
• name - The name of the character will default to 'Unnamed' if not provided.
• role - A string, representative of the character's role(traditionally referred to as 'class'). Will be randomly selected if not provided. The available roles are as follows:
  • 'Barbarian'
  • 'Bard'
  • 'Cleric'
  • 'Druid'
  • 'Fighter'
  • 'Monk'
  • 'Paladin'
  • 'Ranger'
  • 'Rogue'
  • 'Sorcerer'
  • 'Warlock'
  • 'Wizard'
• race - A string, representative of the character's race. Will be randomly selected if not provided. The available races are as follows:
  • 'Dragonborn'
  • 'Dwarf'
  • 'Elf'
  • 'Gnome'
  • 'Half-Elf'
  • 'Half-Orc'
  • 'Halfling'
  • 'Human'
  • 'Tiefling'
• background - A string, representative of the character's background. Will be randomly selected if not provided. The available backgrounds are as follows:
  • 'Acolyte'
  • 'Charlatan'
  • 'Criminal'
  • 'Entertainer'
  • 'Folk Hero'
  • 'Guild Artisan'
  • 'Hermit'
  • 'Noble'
  • 'Outlander'
  • 'Sage'
  • 'Sailor'
  • 'Soldier'
  • 'Urchin'
• alignment - A string, representative of the character's alignment. Will be randomly selected if not provided. The available alignments are as follows:
  • 'Lawful Good'
  • 'Neutral Good'
  • 'Chaotic Good'
  • 'Lawful Neutral'
  • 'Neutral'
  • 'Chaotic Neutral'
  • 'Lawful Evil'
  • 'Neutral Evil'
  • 'Chaotic Evil'

Depending on your shell, you may be able to use tab completion once you've created a character. If you're using a shell that doesn't support tab completion, you can use the dir function to see what attributes are available to you. Upon creating an a character instance, if you prepare a statement with the character's identifier, followed by a period, and then press tab, you will be presented with a list of attributes and methods available to you.

>>> import CharActor as ca
>>> ca.create()
>>> char1 = ca.character_bank.char1
>>> char1. # Press tab here
char1.Bard           char1.Intelligence     char1.character_sheet  char1.fortitude_save(  char1.name         char1.speed
char1.Charisma       char1.Strength         char1.dispatcher       char1.hp               char1.pickup(      char1.target
char1.Constitution   char1.Wisdom           char1.drop(            char1.initiative       char1.reflex_save( char1.will_save(
char1.Custom         char1.actions          char1.end_turn()       char1.inventory        char1.saving_throws    
char1.Dexterity      char1.age              char1.entity_id        char1.level            char1.scene            
char1.Good           char1.armor_class      char1.events           char1.look_around()    char1.skill_points     
char1.Halfling       char1.attack()         char1.experience       char1.move(            char1.skillbook 

Some of the attributes you will see are dynamically generated based on the parameters(see above) you provided when creating the character. For example, if you created a character with the role of 'Bard', you will see the attribute char1.Bard. This dynamic attribute has a static counterpart, which is always available. For example, char1.Bard and char1._Role are the same attribute. The dynamic attributes are there for convenience.

The character bank is a dictionary of all the characters you've created. You can access it directly, but it's recommended that you use the ca.character_bank attribute instead. The character bank is a dictionary of character instances, with the keys being the identifiers you assigned to them. For example, if you created a character with the identifier of 'char1', you can access it by calling ca.character_bank.char1. You can easily assign a character to a new variable using the usual syntax. For example, char1 = ca.character_bank.char1.

>>> import CharActor as ca
>>> ca.create() # Creates a character with the identifier 'char1'
>>> char1 = ca.character_bank.char1
>>> char1.name
'Unnamed'
>>> char1.name = 'Bob'
>>> char1.name
'Bob'

CharActor is designed to be used in conjunction with gridengine_framework, CharObj, CharTask,