Jabes.plays.RPG's character

This thread is for Jabes.plays.RPG's character generation.

The first part is determining your initial characteristic scores. Will you roll, or will you distribute points?

I will roll as well! :-) I have a few initial character concepts but let's see what the dice say first.

Group 1 roll results after dropping lowest: 11, 11, 15, 8.

Group 2 roll results after dropping lowest: 14, 9, 13, 12.

Group 3 roll results after dropping lowest: 14, 13, 9, 8.

I always value flavor over mechanics but I do try to take both into consideration when making my RPG decisions. So what would it take (mechanically) for my character to be an Ex-Militia Condrij? And what would be the pros & cons (again, mechanically) of "multiclassing"?

Well, there's two ways you could do this: the "literally two occupations" way, and the "effectively two occupations" way.

Literally two occupations
If your education is high enough, you can "buy" both occupations. Your EDUCATION is part of that second group: 9, 12, 13, 14. The cost of ex-militia is 6; the cost of condrij is 9, for a total cost of 15. But they would be chosen in sequence, as makes sense to your back story. Did he start in the militia, and then became a condrij afterward? Then he'd get all the benefits of ex-militia first, including the 3 bonus characteristic points. Using 1, 2 or all 3 of those points, you could increase your EDUCATION to 15 or above, as long as you didn't start with the 9 in EDUCATION. After that, you could still "afford" the condrij occupation.

The benefits of this approach is that you get two full occupations, with all the skill bundles they represent. The drawback is that you have few to no points remaining for other skills in step 5 of character generation (skills, which I just posted).

Effectively two occupations
As an alternative, you can officially buy just one of the occupations (ex-militia, say), and then use your "other skills" pool of points to buy skills that fit your story of finding work as a condrij after leaving the militia. The advantage is more flexibility with skill choice (due to having more points left over for "other skills"), but the drawback is that you don't get everything from the second occupation.

Next, I'll post the details of both the ex-militia and the condrij. Where there is overlap and a player does want to pursue two occupations, I'll work with the player to "credit" back skill points where the skills are duplicated across the two occupations.

Ex-Militia
Cost: 6
Prerequisites: Minimum AGILITY, STRENGTH, CONSTITUTION, and SPEED: 10
Bonuses: +3 characteristic points, +3 skill points
Skills:
- Knife - 10/Familiar
- Fist - 10/Familiar
- conceal self - 6/Familiar
- Cook - 6/Familiar
- Earth-tec - 6/Familiar
- First Aid - 6/Familiar
- Foraging - 6/Familiar
- Language: Entren (written) - 4/Familiar
- Set Traps - 6/Familiar
- Set Up Camp - 6/Familiar
- Silent Movement - 6/Familiar
- Tracking - 6/Familiar
- Wilderness Travel - 6/Familiar

Pick one of these, then roll 1d6. If the result is 6, choose another.
- Halberd - 10/Familiar
- Pike - 10/Familiar
- Spear - 10/Familiar
- Sword - 10/Familiar AND Shield - 10/Familiar
- Two-handed sword - 10/Familiar

Pick one of these, then roll 1d6. If the result is 6, choose another.
- Pistols and rifles - 5/Familiar
- Animal Handling, Thombo - 5/Familiar
- Animal Handling, Talmaron - 4/Familiar
- Animal Handling, Bochigon - 3/Familiar

--------------------------------------

Condrij
Cost: 9
Prerequisites: Minimum AGILITY: 11, minimum CONSTITUTION 12, minimum STRENGTH 13
Bonuses: +2 characteristic points, +2 skill points
Skills:
- fist 13/Experienced
- Kick 13/Experienced
- Defend without weapon - 13/Experienced
- choose two weapons at experienced (13 for melee weapons, I'll have to supply the ranks for ranged weapons)
- First Aid 6/Familiar
- Hide 6/Familiar
+1 to all Athletic skills (Jump, Climb, Swim)
- Military Etiquette 8/Experienced
- Search 6/Familiar
You have one contact still in the military.

Choose one of the following, then roll 1d6. If the result is 6, choose another.
- Bargain 6/Familiar
- Drinking 6/Familiar
- Gaming 6/Familiar
- Interaction: Corastin 4/Familiar
- Pistol 5/Familiar
- Sailing 6/Familiar

Hello again! So like I said in my PM I'm actually loving all the switches and dials on the character generation, and would honestly love nothing more than spend hours and hours on it, but RL has just been getting in the way :-( So thanks for offering to walk me through this.

Often when I create characters I start with a character portrait to draw inspiration from. In this case I definitely knew I wanted to play a crugar. Like I said before I absolutely love the pulpy feel of the game world! I can only hope we're in sort the same sort of feel on the adventure itself! :-D Scoured the internet for the pulpiest cat-man photo I could find and came up with this.


This is Gythaar, Crugar Mercenary. I imagine him to be a former member of the militia. I still don't know which way between "literally two occupations" and "effectively two occupations" I want to go.

Hold on, something just stopped me in my tracks: I'm a little curious why Military Etiquette and "You have one contact still in the military" are part of the Condrij package - seems to me like they belong in the Ex-Militia package. And the foraging, wilderness and stealth stuff in the ex-militia package sounds more like a Condrij to me. Is that right? Sorry, just thinking out loud here.

The rulebook goes into a bit more detail in the text about the typical backgrounds of different occupations. Though I think that's something that players should decide, their assumptions on background do affect the skill list. Condrij are assumed to be ex-soldiers who have gone on to work as mercenaries for one reason or another, so they have a greater familiarity with actual Burdothian military procedures. Militia are assumed to be semi-guerilla irregulars who have had to live off the land as part of their maneuvers as tactical support for actual Burdothian military units.

Let me know what further help I can provide; I'll be happy to make suggestions at each of the further steps, if you like, once you've decided on occupation(s).

Thanks for the clarification! Ok, first things first, Here is how I've arranged my initial characteristics (including racial adjustments):

GROUP 1
Constitution: 15
Social: 8-2=6
Color: 11-4=7
Isho: 11-2=9

GROUP 2
Strength: 14
Education: 9-2=7
Learn: 12
Agility: 13+2=15

GROUP 3
Speed: 14
Aim: 8-2=6
Spot: 13+1=14
Listen: 9+3=12

I think I will go the "effectively two occupations" route and choose Ex-Militia as my occupation. With that in mind, how do those score assignments look to you (in particular, Education vs Learn, and Strength vs. Agility?).

Assuming no changes, with Ex-Militia I get +3 characteristic points, +3 skill points. Where to assign these? Hmmm...

These skills are locked in:
- Knife - 10/Familiar
- Fist - 10/Familiar
- conceal self - 6/Familiar
- Cook - 6/Familiar
- Earth-tec - 6/Familiar
- First Aid - 6/Familiar
- Foraging - 6/Familiar
- Language: Entren (written) - 4/Familiar
- Set Traps - 6/Familiar
- Set Up Camp - 6/Familiar
- Silent Movement - 6/Familiar
- Tracking - 6/Familiar
- Wilderness Travel - 6/Familiar

For the next part I pick Sword - 10/Familiar AND Shield - 10/Familiar and roll 1d6. Result is 5 so that's it.

Next I pick what looks like social skills. My Aim is horrible so for now I don't think I'm going to touch pistols. What's "Interaction: Corastin"?

Corastin are huge, horned, vaguely saurian alien creatures covered with a hard crust for skin.
A picture of a corastin

Usually pretty dim-witted and with poor eyesight but at least ten feet tall and horrifically strong, they're typically used as laborers, stevedores, and bearers, sometimes as brutes/enforcers.

----------------

Your stats look fine; I might've considered swapping STR for EDU, but it's fine this way. A higher strength will mean that you can carry more and hit harder, and a lower EDU means that you'll have fewer skill points to fuss with for the rest of character generation.

Thanks! I would have assigned higher for EDU if I was taking two occupations.

Ok, I pick Bargain 6/Familiar, and rolling 1d6 for a possible additional skill...nope.

Any recommendations for those +3 characteristic points and +3 skill points?

Characteristics: STRENGTH, CONSTITUTION and AGILITY all confer combat benefits if they are 16, so if you're envisioning someone who won't shy from combat, you might consider increasing one or two of those.
CON of 15+ means that you ignore superficial wounds.
STR of 16+ means +1 hit, Advantage, and Injury Bonuses
AGL of 16+ means +1 hit & Advantage

Skills? That really depends on whether you are going to focus on combat or want to increase non-combat skills. You might increase Sword to 13, or perhaps First Aid, Tracking, or Wilderness Travel to 9. All will probably be called upon at some point.

(edited to correct the CON threshold for ignoring superficial wounds)

I was just looking at those bonuses. Pity, STR is currently at 14 so will require 2 of the bonus points, so I can't do all three characteristics. Maybe I'll do STR & AGL. Those bonuses stack, correct?

The bonus skill points may be applied only to skills I already have, or can they be used to buy a new skill?

EDIT: I see now in Part 5 of your awesome guide how skill points work.

Yes, the bonuses accumulate. So a 16 for STR and AGL would mean +2 hit, +2 Advantage, and +1 Injury Bonus.

These bonus skill points can only be applied to the skills you get with the occupation that grants them.

But Stamina=15 also grants me this benefit, yes?

Correct! I've edited my earlier message to reflect this. So you actually CAN have all three sets of benefits from STR, CON and AGL!

Putting 2 points into STR and 1 into EDU, you end up with:

Constitution: 15
Social: 6
Color: 7
Isho: 9
Strength: 16
Education: 7
Learn: 12
Agility: 16
Speed: 14
Aim: 6
Spot: 14
Listen: 12

Here are the derived stats from those characteristics:
* Stamina: 15 (immune to superficial wounds)
* Your SOCIAL is low enough that you might want to choose to boost your interaction or etiquette skills...say a +2 to interaction and -2 to etiquette? That way, you'd have a somewhat better chance to succeed at interaction rolls, though you'd be a bit crude at the niceties of good manners across societies.
* Color points: 4
* Initial Moon Skill ranks: 7
* Maximum isho: 9
* +2 Advantage Bonus
* +2 Hit Bonus
* +1 Injury Modifier
* Maximum lifting weight: 260 pounds
* Size modifier: 0
* Running speed (upright/all fours): 14/20
* Number of close NPC friends: 1
* Foci: 4
* Practical Knowledge Skill Ranks: 21
* Common Skill Ranks: 21
* Agility skill ranks: Climb, Jump, and Swim all start at 4; you have 16 additional points to distribute to these three skills.
* Extra skill ranks: 3
* AIM bonus: 1

So with this, you need to distribute your agility skill ranks and the three extra points for your occupation skills. Then we can spend the other "buckets" of skill points in Step five.

Ex-Miltia bonuses:
+3 characteristic points: I put 2pts in STR and 1 pt in AGL
+3 skill points: I put them all in sword

I dealt with Social as you suggested: +2 to interaction and -2 to etiquette

I assigned AGILITY skill ranks as follows:
Jump: 10
Climb: 9
Swim: 9

I assigned my 21 pts Practical Knowledge Skill Ranks as follows:
Bio-tec: 8
Geography: 8
Geology: 8
Lore: 8
Traveler: 8
Weather: 8

I'm now at the point where I will assign my 21 pts Common Skill Ranks.

The question I was unable to phrase properly in the general discussion thread is this: At what numeric value do you jump from Skilled to Experienced? And from there to Seasoned?

As always, thanks!

I've made sort of a table for this in the Skills thread; look for "Skill Table" at the end.

Note: at the moment, you'll need to infer the skill's difficulty by the number in parentheses, which is the threshold for being Familiar in any skill of that difficulty.

Or I could just tell you here! The number is the base for Familiar level in the skill, as shown in the step 5 of character generation. Which number is there indicates the skill's difficulty (all moon skills are hard).
Melee skills - 10
Easy skills - 6
Moderate skills - 5
Hard - 4
Very Hard - 3