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

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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

Thanks! I did read through that particular post before but somehow missed the part at the end.

Ok, so continuing with my skill points assignments, if I'm not mistaken so far I've only assigned 18 of my 21 Practical Knowledge Skill points. Actually I can't say I'm too happy with my skill selection as it seems to lack focus. Going back to my character concept what I imagine is this Gythaar is a hunter. You want someone found, he's your guy. There is no rock in the city or the widerness where you can hide if this guy wants to find you, and in many cases that means you are a dead man. Oh, and I'd like him to bhave an special interest and expertise in Bio-tec & Earth-Tec (as Ex-Militia I am already ranked Familiar in the latter). With this in mind which skills would you suggest?

With what you've said, I think your Practical Skills selection is pretty good. For the three remaining points, as a hunter I'd recommend Fauna recognition. I would also suggest that you consider taking points back from Traveler and Lore (leave them each at 6/Familiar) and put those four points into one skill that you'd like at Experienced. You could do the same with Geology, as well, which would give you six points to divvy up. How about something like this:

Bio-tec: 10
Earth-tec: 6
Fauna Recognition: 8
Geography: 12
Geology: 6
Lore: 6
Traveler: 6
Weather: 8

As an alternative, you could consider: what skills are you likely to want to increase? What skills do you envision trying to use in stressed situations in the game? You could give yourself 10s or 11s in the skills that will be your foci, and only give yourself more than a 6 in those skills that you think you will need to perform in a pinch (ie, you'll have to roll). Remember that without opposition, you will succeed at tasks if you're Familiar, given enough time. Given an 11 in a skill that will be a focus, you might improve it quickly and thus gain a rank in a characteristic, too.

That looks good, thanks! So I've assigned Practical Knowledge Skills as you suggested.

For Common Skills, I spent 18 pts improving skills I already have as Ex-Militia, and the remaining 3 pts to buy some new skills:
• Improved Conceal Self, Silent Movement, and Tracking from 6/Familiar to 12/Experienced
• Tail: 6/Familiar
• Search: 6/Familiar
• Contacts: 6/Familiar

On to Moon Skills! What can I do with 4 Color Points and 7 Moon Skill Ranks? One of the things that drew me to play a Crugar was when you mentioned that some crugar can throw lightning bolts. But maybe that's further along in advancement, eh? :-D

Actually, maybe I should work on combat skills first. Where do I get points to spend on those? The Extras?/At present I only know Knife, Fist, Sword, and Shield. I'm not looking to learn any new weapons (except maybe a ranged one), I'm thinking more along the lines of maneuvers/techniques and such.

I can't wit to jump into the game thread already! But I'd really like a completely put-together character first! :-)

Color points are used only for using rare isho-based items and for learning new dyshas, so I wouldn't be too concerned about how many you have now.

For moon skills, to cast the lightning blast dysha, you need a minimum of 3 ranks in the Desti moon skill. You could put all 7 into Desti, or you could take a look at the full dyshas skill list and see what other moon skill requirements they have, in case you might ask one of the muadra to teach you another dysha.

Yes, your combat skills would be increased by spending your extra skill points.

Lightning Blast sounds cool but looking at the full list of dyshas it looks like what would be most consistent with my bounty hunter concept is Bubble or Cage. Unfortunately I don't have enough points to spend. Most economical for now would be Quantum (5) - Du 7 - shoot a single orb of searing energy at a target. So I'll do that.

Spent my 3 Extra points raising Sword to Seasoned.

Foci (4): Sword, Tracking, Tail, Earth-Tec.

Gythaar learns by succeeding.

Rolling for cash: 100 yules.

Gear:
Sword (free)
Knife - 20
Backpack - 15
5 yards of rope - 20
Waterskin - 5
One week's bland rations - 20
Durlig - 5

Wow, I can hardly afford anything else!

Ok, special item. I'd like it to be an artifact of some sort. Earth-tec or alien technology...

Interesting. Pick one of these:

* an Earth-tec weapon that you were assigned as part of the militia. Being crugar, you can't use it (typical bureaucratic nonsense that you were issued a weapon you couldn't use), but you still have it somehow, and it's in good condition.
* an artifact that you found on a previous adventure, which no one yet has been able to identify. Is it Earth-tec, or from some other culture? Does it work? Who knows? But what would it do?
* a piece of working Earth-tec that is not a weapon, but is probably worth a lot to the right people

I'm excited about the second one. Gythaar has a personal fascination with all ancient tec that goes beyond his occupation. Call it a hobby :-)

Speaking of which, I'm working on his background and personality now.

Gythaar is nearly there! I see him as somewhat older than your typical adventurer, a grizzled veteran, but certainly not over the hill. Maybe not the most talented bounty hunter out there but he's certainly got experience on his side. He's earned his stripes (no, he doesn't have tiger stripes! :-D ). When he was younger he was motivated by the thrill of the hunt but these days his primary motivator is the attainment of Drennship in the pursuit of a better life for his family. I'm thinking maybe he has grandchildren. What's the average life-expectancy for crugars on Jorune?

He's even-tempered in his moods, and cynical in his genreal outlook on things. He doesn't see the world in absolutes, and is pragmatic rather than idealistic. but This cynicism hasn't diminished his natural curiosity for all things, however, especially when it comes to ancient tec.

Gythaar is cool and collected for the most part, but can sometimes take rash action. These reckless streaks are sometimes sparked by his long-time addiction to _______, a mild, legal stimulant.

I'm waiting for the results of my rolls above, but I imagine he was born in a village, and that he knew his parents, though they are both long dead (natural causes). His father was a Condrij and his mother was a Learsis. I'd say he took after his father in a way, and may still be in touch with some of the old cat's contacts.

Any resolution on these rolls? :-) Thanks!

Left home: separated from family through a natural disaster, possibly an isho storm

Friend: a non-human met at the shen (sort of a social club/hall); your choice of race. Could be a PC race, or it could be any of a variety of other sentients: croid (a bit like an umber hulk), corastin, scarmis (sentient giant mantis), salu (salt water merman), thriddle, trarch (club-wielding ogres), blount (frog person).

Reason for leaving home sounds good. What's an isho storm like? I'm going to say no one close to Gythaar died in the disaster. I've played too many tragic PC's and want to move away from that. Parents died of natural causes before the storm. Will roll for sibling relationships later. Is in close contact with daughter and grandkid. Pursuing drennship for their sake.

In char gen guide part 7 you said parents might grant extra skill points? Dad was a Condrij and mom was a Learsis.

Friend: which race would be most likely to share Gythaar's interest in ancient tec?

You get 2 skill points from your parents, which can be spent on any skill(s) they may have taught you.

Thriddle would be most likely to be interested in tech of any kind.

Axopho the Thriddle then :-) Gythaar seeks to make time to spend with this person, and at the moment everything is fine between them.

Gythaar's father Thomzorr (a Condrij) taught him the knife. Spending the 2 points to raise that to skill to 12/Experienced

I'll say Gythaar was very close to both parents when they were living, with his father being a mentor and key presence in his life. I'll determine sibling relationships randomly.

Feniar (brother, deceased): Gythaar was close to Feniar when he was living, and value time spent with him.

Hisanori (sister, deceased): Gythaar was inseparable from his sister, and she was a key presence in his life.

Haatono (brother): Gythaar used to enjoy seeing Haatono in social engagements, but didn't seek him out otherwise. Something bad happened between them however, and currently they avoid contact with each other.

Sayomi, Naufo, & Xomith (sisters): Gythaar enjoys seeing his sisters in social engagements, but doesn't seek them out otherwise. Everything's fine.

EDIT: Those relationships are inconsistent with him being separated from his family because of an isho storm. Let's say the parents and the two siblings all died in the storm and the remaining siblings made their own way in the world.

Isho storms are a bit like lightning storms, if the lightning was in seven different colors. Rather than static electricity, objects and creatures build up excess isho until it explodes outwards. This often destroys buildings and terrain, but rarely does it kill non-muadra, as other PC races generally have so little isho to begin with that even excess isho won't make them explode.

So I think the you may just have been separated from your family for a time by the disaster, and perhaps that started a distance between you?

Let's say my three sisters (Sayomi, Naufo, & Xomith) and I were separated from our parents and the other siblings (Feniar, Hisanori, and Haatono). We never saw our parents nor the two eldest again (died of natural causes). We found Haatono again but the relationship is strained.

Jabes, we've got a conundrum here, caused by my still catching up on my write-ups of the game system information (particularly the isho article).

In order to cast quantum, Gythaar would need to spend 15 isho points (you can think of your isho points as analogous to "mana").

We can resolve this in a number of ways:
- Gythaar can have learned the "caji entropy" skill, which a character uses to draw extra isho out of the environment to raise his isho points
- Gythaar can have a crystal that he drains for extra isho points
- Gythaar can cast a weakened version of Quantum with fewer isho points (9)
- we can retcon it and have Gythaar have his moon skill ranks in Desti and cast Lightning Blast like most crugar

If you don't like any of those alternatives, let me know.

The last one sounds like the most efficient solution so maybe we should go with that. :-)

OK, so back in the game thread, I'll have you roll 2d6 for the lightning blast damage.