All right I'll copy-paste the QSG from the rules but then I'll walk through it in more detail:
Quote:
Quick-Start Guide: Level 5 PCs
Invest your starting XP into your
attribute scores and talent ranks. The XP cost of increasing an attribute or talent is equal to the value you are trying to change its score or rank to. For example, raising Vitality 3 to Vitality 4 costs 4XP, for a cumulative total of 10XP.
If you prefer, these sample arrays weigh in at 25XP (Level 5), assign them to your attributes and talents in any order:
4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 0 — Talent A +2, Talent B +1
3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1 — Talent A +2, Talent B +2
3, 3, 2, 1, 1, 1 — Talent A +3, Talent B +1
4, 4, 1, 1, 1, 1 — Talent A +1
5, 2, 2, 1, 0, 0 — Talent A +2
4, 2, 1, 1, 0, 0 — Talent A +4
Remember that for every Talent with a rank of +2 or greater, you also get to pick a
speciality: a +2 bonus to one roll when making an action that involves a specific skillset (e.g., a "knives" speciality is more likely to be approved by the GM than a "melee" speciality). Speciality bonuses don’t stack, but they can sometimes be used with Talents other than the one they’re tied to if it seems appropriate (using Tech with the aforementioned knives speciality for weapon maintenance, even if that speciality was granted by Combat).
Pick
5 aspects from one of the lists in
chapter 7. You may mix and match across multiple lists if you prefer. Each aspect must be tied to an attribute: an attribute needs at least 1 point in it to support an aspect. Remember that when an attribute suffers an Injury, any aspects tied to it are lost until the Injury is addressed: tying all your aspects to one attribute can be effective as many benefit from high scores, but this can backfire.
Create up to
3 Resources using the lists in
chapter 8. A single Resource can have up to 3 slots and you can have up to 5 slots total across all your Resources. Without a Resource, your actions and attacks can only deal Fatigue hits: that is, hits that can deplete Hit Points but can’t deal attribute damage in the form of Injuries.
Determine your starting
Hit Points: (VIT+MND)/2 + 5. You also have
3 Edge Points. If your aspects or Resources generate Block points or Inspiration points, remember that their combined total cannot be greater than your max HP. Your
Df (Defence) defaults to 7.
A player character has no base damage reductions (armour or resolve), but you might have some granted by your aspect and Resource choices.
1. So! Level 5 characters are allocated 25XP to spend on attributes and talents. Every character has the same 6 attribute scores, but their talents may vary. The XP cost of increasing an attribute or talent is equal to the value you are trying to change its score or rank to. For example, to raise a 0 to a 1 costs 1 XP, to raise a 1 to a 2 costs 2 XP, and so on. I whipped up a quick table:
I think Shadowrun does (did?) something similar. So as an example you could spend your 25 by taking a 6 for 21XP, then four 1s to spend the remainder. Or you can pick one of the premade arrays, either way works!
There are eight potential talents: Bio, Combat, Insight, Mobility, Psi, Social, Stealth and Tech.
2. Once you’ve picked out your attributes and talents (you don’t
need talents, but I’d recommend having at least one, they grant quite significant bonuses for their cost) you can choose your aspects. Aspects can be found in several "role lists", presented in the table of contents for chapter 7 (linked above). You can pick whatever aspects you like, you don’t have to be a "pure" role. When you pick an aspect, you must choose the attribute score it uses. Any aspect can be tied to any attribute (as long as it has a score of 1 or higher).
And since aspects reference them a lot, I’ll include a link to the
status effects.
So you might say, okay, I’ve got 6 STR, and I want to take 5 aspects from the Striker list. I’m going to take Combination, Crescendo, Deadeye, Intensity and Multiattack, and tie them alllll to STR. You’d write that as Combination [STR], Crescendo [STR], and so on.
… Not that I’d actually recommend doing that! Because if your STR got Injured? Bam, every single one of those aspects is gone until you address that Injury.
3. Resources are a bit more complicated as you have to build them yourself, but that comes last, we can go through that in more detail (I appreciate all this is very complex) when we're through with the first stages of character creation. If you want in the meantime you're welcome to just say something vague like "Name of resource [number of slots]" and we'll work together on the specific mechanics later.
And obviously none of this has to be set in stone: you can easily go back and tweak what you come up with, and in fact that’s encouraged: you’re putting together a party that has worked together before, so don’t think twice about tweaking your builds for maximum synergy (or just because you feel like it).