TheGenerator's Character Generator

Let's make a thing!

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While it might feel a little funny to us to give a name as the first thing, it does make some sense.

'First' is a strong word, though, and I would recommend doing the whole first part as a unit. So: Name; Background Skills; Where you Came From (working with the background skill choices). The name might be tied to the place you come from or what your pre-adventuring background was.

The above part is the bit where you have control, and can make choices, this defines who you were before you went out into the world.

I won't enforce 'name first' thought, if you want to save it for the end. We can also (in the real character) shift the Background Skills around during the first Term if we find we messed up the choices (but this should be based on the choices not the dice, of course:).

You also don't need to ever use your given name... (except with your parents?)

Alright, I was already doing a test person outside of GP. Here's what I rolled so far:Now I have to read what I do next.

The book says: "you receive a number of background skills equal to your EDU DM +3 (so, 0 to 6, depending on your EDU score)," But since I'm rolling 2d6, it's impossible to get a +3 modifier, isn't it? So it's always going to be 0 to 5.

Probably more like 1 to 5 since you also can not get less than 2 on 2d6.

It is possible (likely) for these numbers to go up and down during character creation, and there are probably alternate rules or settings or races where the starting numbers are adjusted. For now, at the start, 2-12 is the range.

ContinuingI think I've got it down. I'm using the handy flow-chart that you can find here
You can add the affiliate id of choice to it ;)Any comments before I start my actual character?

While remembering that 'level 0' is huge. Else you are at -3. :)
Looks like it. I don't see anything the precludes Commission when being Drafted.

Yes, there are lots of situations during character creation where you end up getting nothing because you already have what they give. If you could have (and meant to) make different choices earlier on, we can talk about making adjustments, but this 'wasted opportunity' is part of the game, so we will only exercise this option when want of understanding is the root cause.

Pay careful attention to which increase and which don't and just set a value, it is a lottle bit confusing.
Then you just don't get the reward.
Indeed. We should have it all written down, so we can go back and check that nothing like this was left off, hopefully anything left off did not affect any of the rolls and the course of your life.

Getting something at Rank 0 seems like an unusual occurrence. We have to be on the lookout for these. At the table, with live back and forth, the GM (I actually quite like the term Referee, as they are not on either 'side' but are an impartial observer of the rules) and other players would look at each table and help guide things and pick up on missed things.
This is both a complicated enough and old enough game that I am sure there are all sorts of useful resources online. I will start a list and we can check which are 'proper'.
On this site, I use the site's affiliate link, from the bottom of the page.
Do we need to talk about 'tone' first?

Probably, yes :)
I've started on making an empty character sheet to use as a template. There was one in the repository, but it doesn't have any of the fancy new features :) (also it wasn't pretty enough for me :p)

Answer the questions then. :)
Blindly approved. (as usual)
I saw that, we can make our own as we make characters, and then, once we have ironed out the kinks, submit it to the repository.

Impressive work on the sheet.

Minor type 'Trainins'.

I am not a fan of the Characteristic DMs being hidden away in a 'spoiler' block, those are probably the things we most often wanting to see when we open a sheet, so they should maybe be front and center?

Nevermind, I see those are just the references to help while making a character. Not sure I would put them on the sheet and make the player remove them later, but they are handy.

We probably need a sheet field for the types of things that are should be deleted after character creation.

Thank you! I modeled it after the one Seth Skorkowsky made.
And thank you :) I fixed it.
There are some things on that sheet I don't even know what they're used for yet :P
I'm sure there will be tweaks while I play.

@TheGenerator If you are going to be working on sheets for other games I figured I would post my unfinished additions to your one here, so you can look at incorporating what you need into the CoC one.

The layout is horrible but I was looking at the code to do the calculations for us. This calculates the Characteristic DM via the long Lookup (we can not use something like the simple `_str_dm$=+floor(str/3)-2` because of the out of character 0), it also recalculates the Score and the DM after Damage.

[spoiler="Initial Stat Values"][table=stats grid zebra compact]
STR | [_str_init=1]  |   | INT | [_int_init=13]
DEX | [_dex_init=10] |   | EDU | [_edu_init=14]
END | [_end_init=9]  |   | SOC | [_soc_init=6][/table][/spoiler]
[table=stats grid zebra compact]
STR | [_str_dmg=0] |   | INT | [_int_dmg=3]
DEX | [_dex_dmg=1] |   | EDU | [_edu_dmg=4]
END | [_end_dmg=2] |   | SOC | [_soc_dmg=6]
[/table]

[table=stats grid zebra compact htl]
Stat |  Damage        | Score                    | DM
STR  |  -[_str_dmg=0] | [_str$=str_init-str_dmg] | [b][_str_dm$=+lookupBonus(str, 0,0,-3, 1,2,-2, 3,5,-1, 6,8,0, 9,11,1, 12,14,2, 15,17,3)][/b]
DEX  |  -[_dex_dmg=1] | [_dex$=dex_init-dex_dmg] | [b][_dex_dm$=+lookupBonus(dex, 0,0,-3, 1,2,-2, 3,5,-1, 6,8,0, 9,11,1, 12,14,2, 15,17,3)][/b]
[b]END[/b] | -[_end_dmg=2] | [_end$=end_init-end_dmg] | [b][_end_dm$=+lookupBonus(end, 0,0,-3, 1,2,-2, 3,5,-1, 6,8,0, 9,11,1, 12,14,2, 15,17,3)][/b]
INT  |  -[_int_dmg=3] | [_int$=int_init-int_dmg] | [b][_int_dm$=+lookupBonus(int, 0,0,-3, 1,2,-2, 3,5,-1, 6,8,0, 9,11,1, 12,14,2, 15,17,3)][/b]
EDU  |  -[_edu_dmg=4] | [_edu$=edu_init-edu_dmg] | [b][_edu_dm$=+lookupBonus(edu, 0,0,-3, 1,2,-2, 3,5,-1, 6,8,0, 9,11,1, 12,14,2, 15,17,3)][/b]
SOC  |  -[_soc_dmg=6] | [_soc$=soc_init-soc_dmg] | [b][_soc_dm$=+lookupBonus(soc, 0,0,-3, 1,2,-2, 3,5,-1, 6,8,0, 9,11,1, 12,14,2, 15,17,3)][/b]
[/table]

Ooh, thanks! :)

I combined yours and that seems to work too: [_str_dm$=+lookupBonus(str, 0,0,-3, 1,17,floor(str/3)-2)

There is no need to duplicate the _dmg fields, I was experimenting with having Damage in its own table, and ended up copy/pasting both. I think having Damage as a column in the Characteristics table works (hence the bolded END as the primary Damage receiver (though third on the list)).

We can also put the initial/base scores in the same table and rest, but that got a bit cluttered, so I moved them into their own spoilered table (we only need to think about them during character creation (or when they advance)).

I created _str_dm variables in case we want to create clickable roll tables to fill in the values, but this game has a few too many elements involved in each roll for that to be simpler than just typing it in manually.

I meant to test if we could have formulas in the lookup. I found I could not define the lookup as a formula.

Presumably this would extend past 17 now? Currently it says anything over the expected values is +0. I figured this was fine since they are not allowed and can be added if they ever come up.

Yeah, I was thinking about what to do with over 17 and below 0. How about this?
+lookupBonus(str,-50,0,'NaN', 0,0,-3, 1,17,floor(str/3)-2, 18, 50, 'NaN')

I wanted to put 'ERROR' there, but it doesn't seem to support text.

The rules are clear that values can not go below 0, but I am not sure I want to enforce this in the sheet. I would just leave it bottoming out at +0, and might add some colouring as a warning that there was an error.

I think the value reverting to +0 when someone goes over 17 is clear enough. We don't have rules for values over that in the core book, but there is implication that some aliens may be able to get higher numbers (higher than the +2 we have seen).

I assume higher numbers would continue the pattern, so the 1,17 could become 1,99 or whatever, but leaving it at 1,17 is all we really know for sure. I think I went to 18 on the lookup bacuse the pattern looked consistent.

The rules technically say 15+ is +3, so higher values don't provide higher DMs, but I think that is an oversight.

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Have you tested that that `floor(str/3)-2` formula is correct for all values 1-17? I sucked it out of my thumb, and once I moved to the lookup I did not test it thoroughly.

Not for all, but I think it's correct.

Right now I'm trying to hack the 2column tag to make it split in a non 50/50 way. But no luck so far :(

Maybe try a 3column tag instead? Then maybe you can, somehow, combine the two that you want to take more space?