Character generation overview

This is an overview of the steps to follow for character generation. Take a look and come up with some ideas for your character; I will create a separate thread for each player to use for their character generation, as there are a lot of choices to make and I will be following up with those who do not have a copy of the Skyrealms of Jorune 3rd edition rule book to assist you.

OVERVIEW
1) Generate characteristics - there are 12 characteristics in Jorune: 3 groups of four. You can roll dice to generate them randomly, or divvy up 50 points for each group of 3. Detailed instructions

2) Choose a race - human, boccord, muadra, crugar, woffen, or bronth. detailed instructions

3) Choose an occupation - beaster (animal wrangler), Burdothian military, caji (isho weaver), condrij (mercenary), dyte punk (muadra street tough), entris (translator), ex-militia member, githerin (licensed thief), shadow warrior, indoor Iscin (scientist), outdoor Iscin (naturalist), jer (jungle explorer), learsis (healer), merchant, querrid (researcher), sailor, shast (host/innkeeper), sherja (gladiator), thomboc (cowboy), country toth (farmer), city toth (worker), yiordeh (private investigator), yord (city guard/cop) detailed instructions

4) Fill in derived characteristics - occupations may affect your characteristics. After you choose your occupation, your characteristics are final, and you have a set of secondary characteristics derived from the 12 primary ones Detailed instructions

5) Choose remaining skills - Your education characteristic determines how many points you have to spend on skills. detailed instructions

6) Equip your character - roll 3d6 for money, then spend that to buy equipment, and then get a special item or items. Detailed instructions

7) Describe/choose your background - you'll come up with a backstory, origin and motivations for your character; the GM and/or other players will offer suggestions if you like. Detailed instructions

Here's an example of character generation. I'll start by rolling dice for the 3 groups of characteristics.
Then I arbitrarily assign the results in each group. That's part 1.

CON 16 ------ STR 14 ----- SPEED 11
SOCIAL 8 ------ EDUCATION 14 ----- AIM 12
COLOR 15 ----- LEARN 14 ----- SPOT 15
ISHO 14 ----- AGILITY 12 ----- LISTEN 14

Part 2: I rolled to select a race randomly. I could've chosen, but I like the random method sometimes. I rolled a 3: a muadra. I subtract 2 from both STRENGTH and SOCIAL.

STR 12
SOCIAL 6

Part 3: Occupation. As a muadra, and especially with my low SOCIAL, I'm going to choose to be a Dyte Punk. The cost is 5, less than my EDUCATION, and my muadra meets all the other minimum/maximum requirements. I get two characteristic points. With my CON already at 16, I'm already immune to superficial wounds. I could increase my COLOR to get more moon skills (so I can cast more dyshas), I could increase my LEARN to bump up my number of foci, or put both points into EDUCATION to get more skill points to spend. As much as I like a broad range of skills, though, I'm thinking of this character as a street-wise kid who uses his facility with the crystal energy of the planet to get him out of scrapes; I'll put one point into LEARN and one into COLOR.

COLOR 16
LEARN 15

Dyte punks get to add 2d6 to their max isho, so I'll roll that. I also get:
- Desti Moon Skill - 8/Experienced
- Dysha: Lightning Blast - 12/Experienced
- Dysha: Frost bolt - 4/Familiar
- Hide - 6/Familiar
- Knife - 10/Familiar
- Underground Information - 8/Experienced

I choose Fast Talk 12/Experienced, and get to roll 1d6 for the chance to choose another.

Part 4, I get to calculate the derived statistics, thus:

Stamina: 16 --------------- Color Points: 32 ------------ Moon Skill Ranks: 32
Max Isho: 28 + 8 = 36 ---------------- Max lifting weight: 120 pounds ------------- Size modifier: -1
Running speed: 11 -------------- Friends: 2 ------------------ Foci: 5
Practical Knowledge Skill ranks: 42
Common skill ranks: 42
Other skill ranks: 27
Aim bonus: +3

Part 5 comes next, spending points for various skills.

OK, so my character - I'm calling him "Ullis" - has a bunch of practical skill points. I could buy into every skill, but as a dyte punk I feel like some of the outdoor/nature skills would be less represented. He's a city kid.

So, here's how I spend the points for Practical Skills: I start by putting 1 point each into Arithmetic, Current Events, Earth-Tec, Fauna Recognition (I see a lot of vermin in the city), Geography, History, Lore, Traveler, and Weather. That's 9 of my 42 points, and I now have a 6 in each of those skills. I don't put any points into Bio-tec, Flora recognition, or Geology, because I think most of those things would be encountered outside the city limits, and Ullis has spent little time in the wild.

So then I have 33 points remaining. The 6 in Geography is sufficient for my concept; Ullis has little more than a vague idea about the layout of the world outside of Ardoth. So I won't put more points into Geography. That leaves 8 skills that I will put points into; 8 goes into 32 4 times - I could just put 4 points into each of the skills, bringing them each to 10 with 1 point remaining that I could put into any of them. That'll work for most of them, but I want it slightly more tweaked than that. I like the idea that, as a streetwise kid, he knows more lore and history of the area, so I'll bump those up to 12 and keep Traveler and Weather at 8. I'll put the leftover point into Current Events.

- Arithmetic (6) - 10
- Bio-tec (6) - 0
- Current Events (6) - 11
- Earth-tec (6) - 10
- Fauna Recognition (6) - 10
- Flora recognition (6) - 0
- Geography (6) - 6 (only the vaguest idea of Burdoth's geography)
- Geology (6) - 0
- History (6) - 12
- Lore (6) - 12
- Traveler (6) - 8
- Weather (6) - 8

Here's how I spend the points for Common skills. It's the same number of points - 42 - but there are a lot more skills to consider. Luckily, there's a bunch of skills I can discard right away, given my character concept. Info Search, Teaching, Tracking and Wilderness Survival seem like easy ones to discard. Reluctantly, I'll also discard First Aid, as it makes sense that he would rely on others to help him if he got hurt. He's a youth, after all. That leaves 14 skills...whaddaya know? 14 divides into 42 3 times, so I can put 3 points into each of the remaining skills. The first point brings the skill to 6, the two remaining bring it to 8. But there's a few skills that I think he doesn't need at an 8: Conceal Self (which he probably has no skill in, come to think of it), Cooking (doesn't need more than a 6), Gaming (he's just not lucky), and Bureaucracy (I think he has contempt for authority). So I'll keep Bureaucracy, Cooking, Gaming at a 6 (3 points, instead of 9) and spend nothing on Conceal Self (0 points, leaving me with 3 more). So with that modification, I have 12 left to spend. He's pretty connected, so I'm going to bump up Contacts and Tail 2 points each to a rank of 10, and then bump up Getting Around and Hide in City four points each to 12.

- Bargain (6) - 8
- Bribe (6) - 8
- Bureaucracy (6) - 6
- Conceal self (6) - 0
- Contacts (6) - 10
- Cooking (6) - 6
- Fast Talk (6) - 8
- First Aid (6) - 0
- Foraging (6) - 8
- Gaming (6) - 6
- Getting Around (6) - 12
- Hide in City (6) - 12
- Information Search (6) - 0
- Search (6) - 8
- Silent Movement (6) - 8
- Tail (6) - 10
- Teach (6) - 0
- Tracking (6) - 0
- Wilderness Travel (6) - 0

Athletic skills
Ullis' AGILITY is 12. 12 divided by 4 is 3; I have a starting score of 3 in each athletic skill: Climb, Jump, Swim. Now I have 12 points to divide equally between the 3. I figure that in Ardoth, Ullis doesn't come into contact with water all that often, so I'll add no points there and put 6 each into Climb and Jump.
- Climb 9
- Jump 9
- Swim 3

Moon Skills
I have 32 points to put into Moon Skills. As a dyte punk, I start with 2 dyshas (lightning blast and frost bolt), so I need to at least make sure I have sufficient ranks in the moon skills required for those dyshas. Lightning blast needs Desti 3; Frost Bolt needs Desti 10, Du 4, Gobey 2. As part of my occupation, I start with a Desti of 8. That covers Lightning Blast, but I need 2 points to bring Desti to 10. I'll put 4 into Du and 2 into Gobey, and I've spent a quarter of my moon skill points. I like a bunch of the Du-heavy dyshas, so I'll add 6 more to Du, bringing it to 10. I'll add 5 to Launtra, 3 to Shal (I like Healer), and 4 to Tra. Then I have 6 points remaining...what to do with those. I could bump up Gobey to allow me to cast the Shield dysha, or I could put all 6 into Ebba so that I could learn Tumble. Given that he's a street urchin who climbs a lot, I figure the Tumble option is preferable. So I'm left with these ranks in my moon skills:
Desti 10
Du 10
Ebba 6
Gobey 2
Launtra 5 (6)
Shal 3
Tra 4

Extra Skills
I've got just 27 points to spend on all other skills I want. Most of that is going to be dyshas, I think. My 12 in lightning blast is good. My moon skills allow me to learn: Cast Energy, Deflector, Fire Touch, Flingers, Healer, Light Orb, Power Orb, Push, Quantum, Stiff, and Tumble...and I have just a 4 in Frost Bolt. But that's 11 skills! I narrow it down: Deflector, Fire Touch, Flingers, Healer, Quantum, Stiff, and Tumble. Spending 1 point on each gets me these dysha skills, and leaves me with 20 points remaining:
Deflector: 6
Fire Touch: 6
Flingers: 6
Healer: 5
Quantum: 5
Stiff: 6
Tumble: 6

I'll divide 20 by 5 and put 4 points into Stiff, Tumble, Deflector and Fire Touch, increasing them to 10. The last 4 points I'll split into 2, and increase both Healer and Quantum 2 points, to 7. So my final extra skills look like this:

Deflector: 10
Fire Touch: 10
Flingers: 6
Healer: 7
Quantum: 7
Stiff: 10
Tumble: 10

(Edit: removed some personal notes)