Grousemetal Character Creation

Soul Magic, please!

The Soul type Magic is simpler to describe than the others, as there are only three schools, and only one of them is further subdivided.

Spirit School magic deals with shaping your own spiritual energies and how they interact with the spirits around you, embodied and otherwise. Its subschools are Aura, Potence, Pulse, and Vessel.

Truth School magic deals with releasing the true nature of your soul. Perhaps you have greatness inside you, or the potential for phenomenal magic, or maybe you're not even human! Not originally. The only subschool here is True Self Magic.

Ancestry School magic identifies you as the most recent link in a noble chain, the greenest twig of the family tree. You have a great many ancestors in your past, and some of them could be leaders of men, mighty generals, wise mages, or even something entirely inhuman, like an Elf, a Jinn, or a Dragon. By pursuing the Ancestral Spirits subschool, you travel the world in search of the lingering will of each and every one of those who came before. They will communicate with you, and offer you quests. On completion, these quests could grant you money, magical items, other items or properties they once held, ancient servants of the bloodline, advanced abilities or traits, and even magic powers! Depending on what boon your Ancestors choose to bestow, you could end up with any subschool imaginable -- Fire, Lightning, Space, Time, issues of blood and brain, the options are wide open! However, the amount of control you have over what you get is...limited.

Oooo, boy. I was building this character to be a badass, but Ancestry seems like it could introduce some challenges and make her a more interesting character, if I am understanding it right. How much input do I have in who all is in my past, how many quests I have completed up until this point, what boons I was bestowed prior, etc? I am now kind of thinking she is a young adult and learning to manage Ancestry and how to apply her innate and learned skills to her new career with the historical society. Also, is the existence of this society something you are comfortable with in your setting? I guess I should have asked that a while ago! I can flesh that concept out more or you can or a mix of both, whatever is best.

All excellent questions! Though I will assure you that an Ancestral Spirits mage is badass enough. No mere archaeologist.

You can certainly divulge any dead parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, etc. that you like, and I will fill in the rest. I may choose to interpret their wishes and boons differently than you expect. I'll give you this much: the direct line leading to you are all going to be Galura, since adding other Purebleeds would dilute your bloodline and make you Baseborn. However, you can have relatives that did not contribute to your gene pool, like a cousin or great-great-great uncle, something like that. These can be anything you like. You might have an Elf, Pix, Dwarf, Goblin, or Hobgoblin from among the Siir, a Blackwing or Demon from among the Kemuim, or even something more unusual like an elemental Yon, a deathly Ghoul, or a Dragon. What likely happened in the latter three is that your ancestors were granted a wish through magic, or influenced more directly, since they cannot physically mate with humans. Closest a dragon could get would be providing some kind of DNA sample for a mad scientist to mess with.

As a Level 1 character, you have not completed any quests yet. Even if you have multiple levels in the subschool. However, we can definitely set you up with some quests that you have "already started." Any number is allowed, but keep it practical; more than ten pending quests would be pretty absurd. Obviously this means you haven't gotten any boons yet either.

Hebrimar is a very weird, mysterious place. Makes a lot of sense that an artifact-collecting society would exist there. We'll work together on its exact definition, membership, behaviors, etc.

Ancestry it is!

Alright! So your Focus is School Sage (Ancestry), giving you 3 Magic Levels at the start of gameplay instead of just 1.

Now we move on to Equipment. Since you're from Hebrimar, you will be a First Class of Progression character. This means that your society has not yet achieved certain advances found in medieval Europe, such as advanced metallurgy. However, First Class also means that your society is much more advanced in magic than more "sophisticated" people.

First Class characters roll 3d10x10 to determine how much their starting gp is.
That is then modified by your economic status, which can be Wealthy, Middle Class, Lower Class, or Impoverished.
You also get +20 gp for being Human, after the above has been decided. Go ahead and roll 3d10.

My first roll on this site, wow

As far as what class wealth-wise, would a wealthier person be more likely to have access to schoolin' and magic-learnin'?

Mechanically speaking, there is no connection between your knowledge skills and your wealth. However, a logical assumption would be that a wealthier person has more access to "book learnin'" while a less wealthy person develops their skills almost entirely through experience.

Makes sense to me! She will be wealthy, then.

That's 3x the rolled wealth, +100 gp. That means you've got 150x3 (450) plus 100 (550) plus 20 for a grand total of 570 gp.

Since your Combat Style is unarmed, there's no automatic deduction for weapons. Are there any weapons you would like to own?

I'd like four daggers balanced for throwing and a staff, just to have on hand. Could I have the daggers be poisoned or magic in some way?

Special throwing daggers are a Third Class item, way out of reach for a First Class character. But what we can do instead is normal Daggers enchanted for Distance. Unfortunately, that would mean being unable to add a second enchantment. What you could do instead is apply normal poisons to them in-game. There's no poisons for sale in cc. The staff is definitely doable. Did you want it magical as well?

Normal daggers enchanted for distance sound swell. And yes, to magic staff.

Would you like the staff damaging, magically durable, or charged?

Could I get more details on each of those? I want to make sure I am understanding my options.

Absolutely! You are proving to be quite the inquisitive player so far. I like it.

The options for Magically Damaging are Gnarled, Bladed, Briar, and Energy-Charged (which is different than Magically Charged).
Gnarled Magic Staves strike like a metal staff, but gain benefit from Training like wooden staves.
Bladed Magic Staves count as slashing damage whenever a condition would ask (for example, the time it takes to heal from injuries dealt by a slashing weapon).
Briar Magic Staves are similar to Bladed in this respect, but exchange blunt for piercing instead.
Energy-Charged Magic Staves deal normal damage in normal quantities, but any Health damage or Wounds damage dealt by the staff will not heal by any means (magical or mundane) until the staff is broken.

While most staves ordinarily have 2 inches preventing them from breaking (Health 3 per inch and Hardness 2), there are staves that have been magically prepared for Durability. They remain roughly the same thickness, but they have Health 6 per inch and Hardness 4, doubling the total Health of the staff. Such staves are highly resistant to heat and flame, despite being made of wood. These are what is referred to as Magically Durable.

Finally, we have Magic Charges. Think of a Charge like a battery. Any known object can be designed by an Artifice mage to contain one, and when it is full, it can be used to cast any one spell imaginable. Once cast, the charge is empty. The only way to refill it is to have the appropriate kind of mage cast the same spell into the charge, as if that were the "location" they were aiming. Since a Charged weapon can have any effect in the game, the real question is: what would you want it to be able to do?

Let's do an energy-charged staff.

Now, to be clear, you want the one that deals damage which cannot be healed, yes?

Yep!