Ad20r:Character Creation Basics

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== Determining the Game Type ==
== Determining the Game Type ==
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{| style="float: right; width: 300px; font-size: 86%;" border="1"
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| 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.
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|-
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| 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.
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|}
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:
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:
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** Half Gestalting - you get ten 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.
** Half Gestalting - you get ten 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. (The "Adventurer" class receives 20 character points per level, for those who want to have a metric ''ton'' of custom options instead.) 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.)
** Full Gestalting - you take two full character classes together, getting the best elements of both. (The "Adventurer" class receives 20 character points per level, for those who want to have a metric ''ton'' of custom options instead.) 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.)
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{|border=1px
{|border=1px
!Start Level !!No Gestalting !!Quarter Gestalting !!Half Gestalting !!Full Gestalting
!Start Level !!No Gestalting !!Quarter Gestalting !!Half Gestalting !!Full Gestalting
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|-|1st || 40 || 45 || 50 || 40
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|-
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|-|5th || 42 || 67 || 92 || 42
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|1st || 40 || 45 || 50 || 40
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|-|10th || 44 || 94 || 144 || 44
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|-
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|-|15th || 46 || 121 || 196 || 46
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|5th || 42 || 67 || 92 || 42
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|-|20th || 48 || 148 || 248 || 48
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|-
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|-|25th || 50 || 175 || 300 || 50
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|10th || 44 || 94 || 144 || 44
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|-|30th || 52 || 202 || 352 || 52
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|-
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|15th || 46 || 121 || 196 || 46
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|-
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|20th || 48 || 148 || 248 || 48
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|-
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|25th || 50 || 175 || 300 || 50
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|-
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|30th || 52 || 202 || 352 || 52
|}
|}
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''EXAMPLE:''
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== Character Outline ==
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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. 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.
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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.
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{| style="float: right; width: 300px; font-size: 86%;" border="1"
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| :Name: ''Gotta come up with the non-nick name...'' Echo
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:Race: Human
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:Central Talents: Glib speaker, exceptional melee gunning, technological adaptability.
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:Weaknesses: Poor non-gun weaponry skills, technological reliance for speaking with groups.
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: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.
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|-
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| :Name: Otto "Gidget" Jameston
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:Race: Human
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:Central Talents: Strong general intelligence, ''ludicrously good'' snipe-shooting.
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:Weaknesses: Extreme social ineptitude, cowardly.
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: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.
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|}
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== Character Outline ==
 
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!!!
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!!!
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Name: ''Don't worry if you draw a blank. Go hit seventhsanctum.org after you do the rest of this!''
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:Name: ''Don't worry if you draw a blank. Go hit seventhsanctum.org after you do the rest of this!''
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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.''
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: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.''
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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).''
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: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).''
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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 signifcant.''
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: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.''
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Other Big Ideas For Your Character: ''ESPECIALLY consider putting things that can be used as plot hooks here!''
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:Other Big Ideas For Your Character: ''ESPECIALLY consider putting things that can be used as plot hooks here!''
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EXAMPLES:
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Name: ''Gotta come up with the non-nick name...'' Echo
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Race: Human
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Central Talents: Glib speaker, exceptional melee gunning, technological adaptability.
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Weaknesses: Poor non-gun weaponry skills, technological reliance for speaking with groups.
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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.
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Name: Otto "Gidget" Jameston
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Race: Human
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Central Talents: Strong general intelligence, ''ludicrously good'' snipe-shooting.
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Weaknesses: Extreme social ineptitude, cowardly.
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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.
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== Devise Stats ==
== Devise Stats ==
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See [[Ad20r:Stat Generation]]. Expect to use the vast majority of your Character Points here, unless you are using Gestalt play.
See [[Ad20r:Stat Generation]]. Expect to use the vast majority of your Character Points here, unless you are using Gestalt play.
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(((EXAMPLES HERE LATER)))
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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.
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{|style="font-size: 86%;" border="1"
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|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:
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{|border=1px
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!- !!- !!- !!- !!- !!- !!- !!TOTAL
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|-
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| Strength || 3|| 1|| 2|| 6|| 4|| -|| 13
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|-
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| Dexterity|| 1 || 4|| 4|| 3|| 5|| -|| 13
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|-
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| Constitution|| 4|| 6|| 1|| 2|| 3|| -|| 13
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|-
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| Intelligence|| 1|| 3|| 4|| 1|| 3|| 4|| 10
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|-
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| Wisdom|| 6|| 4|| 6|| 6|| 2|| - || 18
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|-
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| Charisma|| 4|| 1|| 4|| 5|| 5|| - || 14
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|}
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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.
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|-
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| 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.
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His first set comes out as: 15, 9, 2, 6, 4, 2
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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.
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His second set comes out as: 10, 3, 8, 4, 3, 3
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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.
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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.
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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.
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|}
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== Select Race ==
== Select Race ==

Revision as of 20:06, 6 August 2010

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