Character

About classes, or the absence thereof, skills, specializations, abilities and spells.

• Classes
• Skills
• Alts
• Specializations
• Abilities/Spells
• Consumables

Classes

Nope

There won't be any classes in Pax Dei, a direct quote from the developer puts it best:

What you will find in Pax Dei is NOT a predefined set of things that we have in our infinite designer wisdom decided would make a good tank. What you WILL find are skills, specializations, armour, weapons, accessories, enchantments, abilities and/or spells that may be useful for someone wanting to be the Tank.

So, there's the holy trinity?

Here's another direct quote from the developer:

The gameplay will support the "holy MMO trinity" - i.e. tank, healer, dps roles, but we're aiming to be a bit more flexible when it comes to selecting your playstyle, gear and strategies. Unlike in most MMOs, you don't pick a class and be locked to it but define your role with gear, spells and your playstyle etc instead which also allows exploring different playstyles and evolving your character over the years.

Skills

General

With the little information available, one could guess that the character skill-system will be somewhat similar to the one in EVE Online, where there's a big list of possible skills that one can train over time (maybe even while offline). Some skill may require others to be trained to a certain level. Trained skills will unlock certain abilities/spells or increase their efficiency, power, range...etc.
Let's be clear that this currently is mainly speculation. Here's the most significant quote from a developer in that regard:

When it comes to leveling, we don’t have a global character level, but we have skills, and these skills have a leveling system. We will give more info about the roles, the skills, and how they interact (or not) at a later point (before too long™).

Alts

Multiple characters per account

From the information available, alts may play a role in Pax Dei. While there has no number of alts been mentioned for a single account, a developer response suggests there will be multiple characters per account. Also, multiple accounts may be a possibility, which begs the question if "solo-player-villages" will be a thing.

First of all, alts can be good and alts can be bad.  One of the first things I did in this project was to do a writeup of all the types of alts there are and why people make them.  So, we have given alts a lot of thought.

While not saying anything about number of characters on each account, I can point out two things that make it much more accessible to maintain meaningful alts:

1. Anything you build and the facilities and installations you have in your home, crafting hall or village, should be accessible to any of the characters you choose to create.

2. All items are tradable.  It is fun to twink out new toons, whether it is your own character or someone else.

Specializations

Coming soon... (well, "before too long™" ;-) )

Abilities/Spells

Coming soon... (well, "before too long™" ;-) )

Consumables

Food

Here's a developer quote in regards to the role of food in game:

... food will be part of the gameplay and enable you to explore more parts of the game, however it wont be mandatory to stay alive.