Session 0: Character Creation

[C. Steven Ross]

Greetings, adventurers! This far there are three of you: a paladin, a thief, and an Elf. Post and update your character sheets with the information below, and the human characters should post here what their abilities (Health, Will) and bonus human skill will be. When you gain a rating in a skill, replace the listed ability with the indicated number. This indicates that your character has some degree of skill in this area.

Human Paladin!
A warrior dedicated to fighting for the will of the Immortals of Law, the paladin swears vows to the Lords to earn their favor. Uncomfortable in the hustle of cities and the subtleties of temple life, paladins are dispatched to the wilds to hone their craft and earn the favor of the Immortals by battling the rebellious forces of the Nords in their dens and lairs.

Distribute 8 points between Will and Health; neither stat may have a rating lower than 2 or higher than 6. Also, your Health may never be above your Will.

Your alignment must be 'Imperial'.

You gain the following skill Ratings: Fighter 3, Orator 3, Rider 3, Theologian 2, Ritualist 2

Choose one skill from the following and gain it at Rating 3: Criminal, Haggler, Pathfinder or Survivalist.

Your Level 1 benefit is: You can use all weapons and all armor. You will start with any weapon (besides bow or crossbow), leather armor, and either a shield or a helmet.

You gain the following Trait: Feared in Hell.
A paladin’s righteous fury is known to all demons and evil spirits. These forces quail when facing one so pure of purpose. Thus a paladin must always be vigilant against temptation, lest a simple act lead to evil deeds.


Human Thief!
Distribute 8 points between Will and Health; neither stat may have a rating lower than 2 or higher than 6.

You gain the following skill Ratings: Criminal 3, Manipulator 3, Scout 3, Dungeoneer 2, Fighter 2

Choose one skill from the following and gain it at Rating 3: Criminal, Haggler, Pathfinder or Survivalist. If you choose Criminal, increase its rating to 4.

Your Level 1 benefit is: You can use swords, hand axes, daggers, bows, crossbows and leather armor. You will start with a dagger.

You gain the following Trait: Devil May Care.
Theives are rakes and libertines. Their swagger and ability to spit in the eye of danger helps them win admirers and keep a steady hand when others would shake in their boots. It can also lead them to take foolish risks to protect their reputations.


Elf Ranger!
You start with Will 4 and Health 4.

You gain the following skill Ratings: Arcanist 3, Fighter 3, Lore Master 3, Scholar 2, Scout 2, Survivalist 2

Your Level 1 benefit is: You can use bows, swords, daggers, chainmail, and leather armor. You know one spell and can memorize and cast one spell each time you make camp or visit town. You will start with a dagger. Roll 2d6 and tell me the result (I trust you. I'll have the online dice roller set up soon.) this will randomly determine your starting spell.

You gain the following Trait: First Born.
Elves were the first to awake to the world and wandered beneath the stars long before the coming of dwarves or men. The trees and the stars recognize them as kin, and they are often possessed of special insight that comes of their memories of the dawn of the world. But their long lives can often make them seem remote and detached to the younger peoples.

[drpete]

My spell roll:

Starting Spell [2d6] = 9

Is this "Mystic Porter"? Might be useful...

[C. Steven Ross]

Quite right! Since you seem to have the book in front of you, I'll spare you the description (unless you actually need it).

For everyone else, it is the equivalent of a Tenser's Floating Disc. We can even call it that, if you prefer. It creates a magical means of hauling stuff.

[drpete]

I've got the book, yup... I actually have the pdf on my phone (which is convenient, but not exactly optimal) as I was trying to get up to speed with the game

Here's a question for ya... none of the players are super familiar with the game, so "optimizing" may not really be a thing, but generally is it "better" here to have lots of skills at low levels or a few skills at higher levels?

[C. Steven Ross]

That's a great strategy question. The answer is really either. Having a handful of 4s to start out with is awesome, but being spread out with a lot of 2s means you'll have more opportunities for Help and may end up netting you more success overall. Ultimately, it's going to come down to a matter of taste.

[thesniperknight1]

I posted all I can avoiding anything that resembles stats, I love that our map is from Skyrim, I have so many memories with that game. Will it actually be the same with all the towns and places?

Also drpete, I took your formatting, I hope you don't mind

[drpete]

Heya Knight,

No problem, though it looks like you scooped up a little of my character along with the formatting (which was just copied from Steven's right above it, if you want a clean copy). I noticed that you got my spell, and my will/health numbers, unless you intended to distribute 4 to each of those... also, I *think* the will/health comments on each skill go there if you don't have the skill, so you're missing some (my starting skills) or if I misunderstood that, you and I are both missing those

Before you get too far along with relatives and friends and enemies and such, be aware that in this game, those things directly relate to your stats, and keep in mind we're sort of doing a collaborative character creation here, which might shed light on things like how we fit together, or help us to mesh together better as a group, or something

[thesniperknight1]

Oh, sorry about that , deleted the spell. And I intended will/health numbers.

I didn't know that relations effected the stats, I thought it was simply background story, I suppose I am going too fast

Well, I was gonna choose survivalist as the extra skill but saw you had it covered so I added to Criminal to try and cover more as a group. But from what I understand now, if you have more than one person with the same skill they can help with rolls, so maybe I dropped the ball on that one.

[drpete]

No prob I just know that the various things like home, friends, family, etc, have concrete impacts on your sheet, so those choices can/will get expanded a bit as we go.

I'd say it's hard to know, regarding the choice of skill, which was why I was asking Humans get this ability to choose one of these skills, so it's sort of up to you where you see your guy... haggling would help you make what's likely to be very meager rewards stretch farther, criminal is most of the pickpocket/pick locks type skills rolled into one, so not a bad choice... pathfinder or survivalist will help us survive out in the wilderness... you'd be better at it than me if you choose that, but it suggests you're more of a highwayman than a city pickpocket, I guess, no?

I don't have a name for my elf yet, but I'm thinking he'd have lots of "dabbling" type experiences, but not be such an expert in much, maybe because, being an elf, he's not focused in the way humans are, basically a space cadet (from a human perspective) and kind of unreliable because he's always wandering off and listening to the wind blowing in the leaves instead of dropping off that package today, or whatever things people might pay him for. Just a starting place, admittedly, but that's how I'm seeing a ranger turning into this kind of desperate adventurer.

[drpete]

Ok, last one for now...

I was looking over the map, thinking about home cities, and I was looking at Riften, and thought about making my elf a bit of a thief. But then it occurred to me that we'll need to find a reasonable way to mesh a thief and a paladin. Not saying it can't be done, but I guess even a down on his luck, starving paladin can't turn to a life of crime... or can he? What are your guys thoughts about how to make that work?

[thesniperknight1]

If I am basing the skill on my character then Criminal is the way to go, he was a noble until his parents were murdered and their wealth was stolen, he fell into a life of pickpocketing and stealing to support himself and his traumatised sister who witnessed their death. So he couldn't really leave his sister for long until recently because she somewhat recovered, therefore he couldn't have learned any dungeon survival skills or pathfinder skills.

I suppose it's relative to the paladin, if his belief and determination is strong enough then I guess he would rather starve to death than steal, but a paladin is still a human, so they might resort to theft to survive but it might raise doubts in his adequacy as a paladin and a human and that would be interesting character development. But then again I am new to role playing so what do I know

[C. Steven Ross]

Yes, great work guys and thank you drpete for pointing out to the newcomers to the system that (almost) every piece of the character sheet has some sort of mechanical effect to reinforce the narrative, so taking it slow is key! We await the third character sheet posting before moving to the next step.

As for Paladins leading a life of crime: perhaps the paladin maintains his piety to The Divines, but at his core has a dark streak which leads him to a life of crime. Or maybe someone I society has ROYALLY screwed the paladin, gotten him banned from all the decent jobs in the civilized world, and now this is the only thing he can think of to do to survive.

As for Skyrim: yes! The idea is that a fair number of gamers already have a great sense of how this world looks and what is going on, that I'll just crib that and go exploring. Skyrim also has similarities to Torchbearer that I like in that you can just go wandering around the world until you find some random cave and whoa!, turns out it's a dungeon. Also in both games, the more you work at a skill, the better you become at doing it. So, it just seemed a great fit to me.

[drpete]

Hrmm, well a different tack that occurs to me would be more of a connection to the noble/traffic side of your history, rather than the criminal side.

Looking over the skyrim docs, I see that elves are sort of second class citizens already around here, so maybe it's not as important that my elf be so spacey. The elves seem to have a much darker edge to their "first born" nature here... Hrmmm

[MrHemlocks]

I made my character as much I can without more information from the book. Hope he is complete enough

[thesniperknight1]

Well, his parents died at the age of 7, so although he is of nobility he doesn't really possess any noble characteristics unlike his sister who was 16 at the time and had already finished her "training". Therefore he doesn't feel that big of a connection to his noble side.

I suppose I can't really take advantage of my knowledge about Skyrim here right? I got a Platinum in the game so I know my way around

[drpete]

Lol, I'd assume you can know the map, but don't assume all the faction stuff is the same.

I think it would be interesting if these were the stories he told himself, but he was really a street kid/orphan with no special connection.

[C. Steven Ross]

MrHemlocks! Excellent work selecting your starting skill as Survivalist and posting your character sheet. One note of miscommunication on my part is about your stats and skill ratings. You do not add these together, a number (a rating) REPLACES the line that reads Will or Health. The mechanics of the game will make the number, even if it is small, way better than showing Will or Health. More on that as we delve.

STEP 2.
Where did you grow up? Where doth thou hail from?

Check out the World Map & Towns thread. Pick a location and tell us all what ONE skill and ONE trait from the town's listed skills and traits you learned while living there. Then update your character sheet with that as your home, add that trait, and for the skill either gain a rating of 2 if you don't already have a rating, or increase your rating by 1 if you do already have a number in there. Max starting rating on any skill is 4. All traits have the same mechanics, it's all story/fiction driven, so just pick one that sounds like it fits the idea you have in mind for your chacter.

[thesniperknight1]

Edited it, Riften, Haggler, Quick-witted

I personally love Whiterun but Riften is the place for thieves

[drpete]

Ok, so my elf, Tandir, calls Winterhold home. As a student at the college, he studied alchemy, and became very thoughtful.

(on my phone it's not easy to edit, but I'll fix it up when I get a chance)

[C. Steven Ross]

You guys have your fourth member coming in, a Human Cleric!

Human Cleric!
Create a post for your character sheet in the Character Sheet thread. Replace Will/Health on your skills when you get a numeric rating. After posting your skill choices from this, go ahead and tell us about what Town your character is from.

Distribute 8 points between Will and Health; neither stat may have a rating lower than 2 or higher than 6.

You gain the following skill Ratings: Ritualist 4, Theologian 3, Healer 2, Scholar 2, Fighter 2

Choose one skill from the following and gain it at Rating 3: Criminal, Haggler, Pathfinder or Survivalist.

Your Level 1 benefit is: You can use maces, flails, warhammers, slings and any armor. You will start with any one of those weapons and leather armor.
You start with the prayer Fury of the Lords of Life and Death, though you might prefer to call it Turn Undead. After regular prayer at Camp or Town, you can cast this as often as you like until you fail at it.

You gain the following Trait: Touched By The Gods
The Divines speak to clerics. Moreover, when a cleric speaks to the Divines, they are often willing to listen. The gods guide and protect their chosen. But the clerics must be ever vigilant to ensure that the words they speak are truly those of the Divines and not the secret desires of their own hearts.