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From Fax Encyclopedicus

Character Creation for Ad20r Rebirth in a nutshell: 1) Chat with the GM and figure out WTF is going on. You probably don't want to be a cybernetic hacker in a medieval fantasy environment. (Probably.) 1a) Determine what level your character will be, and how many character points you will have to work with. 1b) Determine if you are running a Classic, Third-Gestalt, Half-Gestalt, or Full-Gestalt game. 2) Write out an outline of the character, ''and have the DM approve the core concept before working on more of the sheet.'' 3) Set up your basic six stats. You should already understand them pretty well if you're seriously considering using Ad20r, or have help from someone who does. 4) Acquire Tags. Tags either cost or provide Character Points. 5) Select skills and feats. 6) Use your remaining Character Points. 7) Calculate all your stats (if you haven't been doing so already). 8) Flesh out your character some. 9) You're done! Get ready to play! == Determining the Game Type == {| style="float: right; width: 300px; font-size: 86%;" border="1" | Douglas is GM'ing for a campaign that includes Katrinn. He tells Katrinn that the campaign is going to be fantastic Steampunk - while humans are the vast-majority PC race, all sorts of monsters exist and are common, making sky-based travel sources, like the hero team's small-ish zeppelin, a regular source of transport of goods across Europe and beyond. The campaign will be around half-and-half on the role-versus-game balance, and have a highly comic tone to mix things up. Characters will be starting at 1st level, and the game will be Half-Gestalt. Katrinn immediately chooses to have her character as the communications officer. Per the GM's request, she immediately chooses her primary weapon build - her character being ''loaded'' with derringers and hidden guns. |- | Erik, presented with the same campaign, comes up with the ship's navigations officer, armed with a special gun-staff - a steel quarterstaff that doubles as a full rifle suited for sniping, firing various types of alchemical bullets. |} It is important, before you do anything else, that you know what type of campaign your GM plans to host. Five of the most important questions you need to consider, outside of the numbers: * What is the technological level of the setting? More common ones may include high pre-industrial fantasy, fantasized industrial era (AKA "steampunk"), modern day, near-future, or space future. * What is the magical level of the setting? Is it all humans, some fantasy races, or a full-blown world where all sorts of traditional fantasy elements exist? * What is the overall tone of the game? A typical d20r game's tone centers around action, with significant epic elements, however, your game may vary the tone by being (among other examples) more actively humorous, grittier, more horror-centric, or actively romantic in nature. * Related to the last question, how heavy will the role-playing versus game-playing elements be? In a more RP-centric campaign, some elements, such as Diplomacy skill checks, may be ignored in favor of actually speaking the gameplay out, while a heavily GP-centered campaign may have next to no in-character lines spoken at all. (RP-centric campaigns tend to be a little easier to Munchkin, but doing so massively misses the point. * How fast will character development be (in stat terms)? This more subtle question can be valuable in deciding the numeric details down the line. With these questions answered, you can be offered the most important decisions in the game: * What character level do you need to be at first? * How many character points will you have on top of? * Will there be any house-rule variants (most importantly, outside books allowed or explicitly barred) to worry about? (A very common one, and one of the most vital to ask about, is dice rolls for your stats - do you use character points to buy stats, roll 3d6, 4d6 drop one, 5d4, are you allowed rerolls, etc.?) * How much Gestalting will be involved in this game? Gestalting is the provision of specific elements that heighten your array of options compared to a typical character of the same level. In d20 standard, this is provided for by taking two classes at once. In Ad20r, there are a few options for this: ** No Gestalting - you get one character class, a starting character point stock, and that's it. This variant provides for very little use of Ad20r rules. ** Quarter Gestalting - you get three character points per level, on top of a starting stock and one class. ** Half Gestalting - you get five character points per level on top of a starting stock and one class. ''However'', you must specify a central concept around which at least two-thirds of your character points to go into. ** Full Gestalting - you take two full character classes together, getting the best elements of both, as per the SRD Gestalt rules. Check for limitations on your two classes. (For example, [[D20r:Succubus | d20r's Succubus]] MUST take a Racial Progression until completing one in Gestalt play, or your DM might mandate that your second class be an Ad20r-specific class, or the like.) Alternatively, you take one full character class and gain 10 character points per level. ''STARTING VALUES TABLE FOR VARIOUS LEVEL POINTS AT ALL RANKS OF GESTALTING:'' :"No Gestalting" is also the character point supply for a player who chooses Full Gestalting and takes two classes. :"Full Gestalting" is ''only'' for characters who choose one class and 10 character points. :For any value not listed here, start from the next value down, then add points proportionate to the level of Gestalting. :Note that this means that characters who start at a higher level will have up to 12 CP more than a character who doesn't. The amount should be enough to counter possible small advantages gained by playing over time, such as knowing the character, the advantages gained through in-world interactions, etc. {|border=1px !Start Level !!No Gestalting !!Quarter Gestalting !!Half Gestalting !!Full Gestalting |- |1st || 40 || 43 || 45 || 50 |- |5th || 42 || 57 || 67 || 92 |- |10th || 44 || 74 || 94 || 144 |- |15th || 46 || 91 || 121 || 196 |- |20th || 48 || 108 || 148 || 248 |- |25th || 50 || 125 || 175 || 300 |- |30th || 52 || 142 || 202 || 352 |} == Character Outline == {| style="float: right; width: 300px; font-size: 86%;" border="1" | Name: ''Gotta come up with the non-nick name...'' "Echo" :Race: Human :Central Talents: Glib speaker, exceptional melee gunning, technological adaptability. :Weaknesses: Poor non-gun weaponry skills, technological reliance for speaking with groups. :Other Big Ideas For Your Character: She's of a noble family, ran away to her father, ended up falling in enamorment with the captain and joined him. |- | Name: Otto "Gidget" Jameston :Race: Human :Central Talents: Strong general intelligence, ''ludicrously good'' snipe-shooting. :Weaknesses: Extreme social ineptitude, cowardly. :Other Big Ideas For Your Character: Gidget's family are famous scholars. His primary purpose aboard the ship is the acquisition of scholarly materials from around the world - ''especially'' technological and scientific tomes. He's a little distrusting of divine magic in general. |} Before going into ''any'' numeric details, you should figure out a basic concept of your character, and chat with both the GM and (ideally, at least) other players, to devise your character's concept. An easy way to handle the concept is to fill out the following short form. Make sure the DM sees the concept before you go ANY further!!! :Name: ''Don't worry if you draw a blank. Go hit seventhsanctum.org after you do the rest of this!'' :Race: ''Don't just name the race, name the abilities that define it, too! This is DOUBLY important if the race isn't one of the standard d20r races.'' :Central Talents: ''Outside of your racial abilities, what central talents define your character? This will not only help with selection of Tags later, but also help you select your class (or classes).'' :Weaknesses: ''And if you say "Has none!", you are to walk up to the GM and let him slap you at least twice. Not all weaknesses need to be point weaknesses, though - taking it as a point only represents that it's a glaring issue.'' :Other Big Ideas For Your Character: ''ESPECIALLY consider putting things that can be used as plot hooks here!'' == Devise Stats == See [[Ad20r:Stat Generation]]. Expect to use the vast majority of your Character Points here, unless you are using Gestalt play. If your stats end up ill-fitting your character (say, you chose a Gygax and got shafted), you may wish to revise your character concept - go back to step 2, and write a new outline. {|style="font-size: 86%;" border="1" |Katrinn chooses to use the recommended 30 points in her set, using the Dice Buying variant. She chooses to use 60 of the pooling points to roll 5d6 (dropping the lowest two) on every stat, with a 6th die going to Intelligence. Being the GM's girlfriend, and having one pooling point left, she's told to note that she receives an additional skill point once she hits that step. Her roll sets end up as: {|border=1px !- !!- !!- !!- !!- !!- !!- !!TOTAL |- | Strength || 3|| 1|| 2|| 6|| 4|| -|| 13 |- | Dexterity|| 1 || 4|| 4|| 3|| 5|| -|| 13 |- | Constitution|| 4|| 6|| 1|| 2|| 3|| -|| 13 |- | Intelligence|| 1|| 3|| 4|| 1|| 3|| 4|| 10 |- | Wisdom|| 6|| 4|| 6|| 6|| 2|| - || 18 |- | Charisma|| 4|| 1|| 4|| 5|| 5|| - || 14 |} Needless to say, given she's going for a tech-geek girl, a 10 Intelligence isn't going to do it (though being the highest Wisdom score on board's just dandy to her!). She chooses to apply some post-roll modifiers, "Priming" her Intelligence Roll (turning the 1s into 6s and thus bringing the total to a respectable 16). In the end, she's spent 26 Character Points on her stats, coming out with 13 STR, 13 DEX, 13 CON, 16 INT, 18 WIS, and 14 CHA. |- | Erik knows that he needs to have one stat high for his character to work, and that every other stat is potentially secondary. Given he's thinking of using the Rogue class, though, a decent DEX mod would be kinda smart. He decides to go for a Doubled Full Set. His first set comes out as: 15, 9, 2, 6, 4, 2 He decides to put the 15 directly into Intelligence, the 9 in Dexterity, the 2s in Strength and Charisma, the 6 in wisdom, and the 4 in Constitution. His second set comes out as: 10, 3, 8, 4, 3, 3 He's pretty much forced to put the 10 and 8 into Strength and Charisma to make sure he comes out with at least 8 in both stats - resulting in a 12 and a 10 there. (He'll take a Tag to drop Gidget's Charisma later for some Character Points.) He then applies the 4 to Constitution, and spreads the 3s around to fill it out. He's wound up with a Strength of 12, Dexterity of 12, Constitution of 8, Intelligence of 18, Wisdom of 9, and Charisma of 10. Having spent only 12 points on his stats so far, the GM asks him to spend at ''least'' 8 more. Erik decides that he's not TOO concerned, so he spends 4 points to raise three random stats by 2, getting Wisdom once and Constitution twice, then spents 4 more points to raise Dexterity by 4. His end stats are a Strength of 12, Dexterity of 16, Constitution of 12, Intelligence of 18, Wisdom of 11, and Charisma of 10. Not bad, overall; though spending 6 less points than Katrinn has left his stats much weaker overall, he can make up for it using those 6 points on a Tag later. |} == Select Race == See [[Ad20r:Races]]. A standard race will cost 10 CP, for reference. (((EXAMPLES HERE LATER))) == Select Class == See [[Ad20r:Classes]]. Classes (USUALLY!!!) do not cost character points, so don't worry about spending any to pick one. (In fact, some classes, like Ad20r-specific ones, may even provide you with a few!) (((EXAMPLES HERE LATER))) == Select Tags == See [[Ad20r:Tags]]. Tags are the second-biggest use of skill points, behind your stats (and in campaigns with Gestalting, quickly become much bigger). == Fill Skill List == See [[Ad20r:Skills]]. You may be out of character points at this point - that's okay, since your Skill points are separate! == Select (and Invest) Feats == See [[Ad20r:Feats]]. You'll most likely only have one of these at 1st level, but you may have bought an extra using some character points. Remember that a ''lot'' of feats will be obviated by the points system, though! == Finish your Character Points off == If you have any character points left, then go back to the Tags, add a couple, and kill your stock. While you ''can'' save points up, it's strongly encouraged that you ''not'' do so during creation - save saving for levelings-up! == Calculate Everything == If you're the type of gamer who obsessively recalculates the elements of their sheet with every decision made, congratulations, you've already done this. For the REST of you, you've got a little more work to do. See [[Ad20r:Stat Calculation Aid Charts]] to make it easier. == Fleshing Out == After completing your character sheet, you might take some effort to flesh out your character beyond the outline above. A page or two of character history, a sketch of the character, or just providing the DM with plot hooks relevant to your character might be worth bonus character points - up to 10. If you get bonus points in this way, you ''must'' use them immediately. (This is one exception to the "Please don't save points during creation" rule, above - saving points to combine with Flesh-out points for a last Tag or the like is perfectly okay!) == Getting ready for play == At this point, your character should be good to go. If the game is more RP-heavy, you may wish to flesh out your character's voice with some practice exercises. This won't provide bonus points, but can make actual play more rewarding. Remember, if you're playing offline, you want to bring: * ''Printed'' character sheet * Scratch paper * Pencils and erasers (or pens) * At ''least'' one full set of d20 dice: d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, d100 (or a second d10). ** If you commonly roll multiple dice of the same size (Say, your primary weapon deals 2d4 damage per swing), bringing enough of that die to do the roll in one roll is considered polite. * Snacks - especially ones that can be eaten quietly. These games can run long. Remember, if you're playing online, you don't need to bring anything, but the following extra preparations can be handy: * If using a program like Maptool, get a graphical icon for your character. (check what style the team's using and move accordingly!) * Prepare macros (of the type relevant to the software you're using) for speeding up dice-rolling and the like (rolling physical dice when playing online, unless using webcams, isn't good form.) HINT: If you're using IRC, ''get a dedicated client such as mIRC or xChat. Don't use web-based IRC services unless you REALLY have to!'' * Chat with the rest of the group beforehand. An "Omake" chapter or two can be worth it. * Bring snacks. One nice part of playing online, how loud they are when eaten doesn't matter. These games ''still'' can run long, though!

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