By now you probably know I'm a bit of a geek. So it may come as no surprise that I've been thinking about what roles the characters in my story would play in a RPG-style video game.

Let's go with your basic fantasy-style RPG. Lots of magic, with black (attack) magic and white (healing) magic, and attack characters. What sort of stats would each of the major characters in my story have?

Derik's obvious; he's your classic tank: High hit points, high damage, low defense. Not so big on the magic, although with his basic first aid he has a nice health patch he can slap for a quick HP boost when he starts getting low. Elizabeth's also a front-lines fighter type, with more standard-level damage but a higher defense and a nice set of fire magic spells. She may give slightly less damage (although she's still a hard-hitter), but she takes less, too, and has the hit points of any fighter character.

Kelly and Trax are the second-row fighters. Although Kelly is the leader of our adventuring party, she's not really a fighter-type. Instead she provides the magical support to random encounters. If the characters used a standard spell assortment, she'd have buff and debuff spells to enhance her own party's attacks and defenses, and lower the other party's. She's got healing spells to keep her party going, but her own low HP and low defense means she'll stay in the back lines as much as possible. If cornered she does halfway decent damage.

Trax would be more of a jack-of-all-trades character, with decent melee damage and decent spell damage, good defense but low HP. His highest stat would be maneuverability, meaning the monsters would miss him more frequently than the other characters. He also has a higher-than-normal chance of scoring a critical hit (doing a lot of damage at once), but on the whole he's not going to be the party's biggest damage dealer, and his low HP means he'll be doing most of his attacking from the back. Where he really shines is outside the battle when encountering NPCs: many of them will be star-struck and react favorably, dropping secrets and offering side quests in exchange for autographs, and getting the party better deals in inns and while shopping.

Valdez is your gun-wielder in the party, and like in most video games this means he hits less frequently, but can do a ton of damage when he does score a direct hit. He's also got a med-kit to toss healing potions at the other party members, and can summon a pair of low-HP fighters to aid the party. Like Derik he'll also take hits to meant for other party members, and his high defense means he takes less damage during each hit, despite low maneuverability. Because he's a ranged character he's usually in the back, where he is rarely targeted by encounters, so despite average HP he rarely gets close to dropping.

Sandra's a long-range specialty character. In an RPG her attack would be throwing pens or words at the enemy. While this wouldn't produce a lot of damage, there's a small chance of conferring confusion to the enemy, making them attack the wrong targets or behave erratically. She's got low damage and low HP, and does the least melee damage of the party. However, she's good at dodging and has some interesting summon spells, bringing in Editors and Deadlines to do high levels of magic damage.

If you were a character in a video game, what kind of party role would you fill? What would be your highest and lowest stats?