Oh, snap, I didn't realize that! That will make things a lot simpler. Thanks!
What about changing the default text color? I still can't find that anywhere, even digging through the scripts and Googling. Is it hard-coded?
EDIT: nevermind, I finally found it! It's in the window_base script file, line 156.
So, new question: is there a way to change the outline color of the text? That one I'm having trouble finding.
Second new question: How do I determine a character's starting stats? I want my character to start with 5 in every stat, but I can't find anywhere to set that.
You can also customize font color and size - among other things - through codes in the message box, kinda like BBS markup codes. At least, I'm pretty sure that specific usage of the codes is a default feature, not just something the scripts I use are doing. Things like actor/variable/class names and intalices/bold and such are definitely default.
Speaking of message boxes in general, there's quite a few good message box scripts out there that can be freely used. In fact, there's tons of all different kinds of scripts out there as well. I don't know if you're interested in using scripts made by other people, but things like that are worth checking out for different things: new menus, battle systems, lighting systems, et al. Yanfly is one of the big 'series' of scripts that work really great, and they all have compatibility with each other.
As for text outline, I don't know if you can change the color of it, that's something I'd have to delve into the code to find. You might be able to do that with certain message box scripts other people have made, I'm not so sure you can do that without some extra coding that doesn't already exist.
The starting stats is easy enough, and Skyrunner is right. In the actor window, you know those bar graphs that represent stat progression? If you haven't already changed them some, clicking on those brings up an interface for doing so. One of the things you can do is specify the starting value for the stat. You can also do that, technically, for each and every level just by manually dragging the bar, but the starting value has a field for that somewhere near the top.