Creating a Character
Creating a character in this game requires the following:
- Assigning skill points, and choosing your signature skill.
- Choosing your starting Arts.
- Choosing any Potion Formulae, Artistries, and Metamagic you might start with.
- Choosing any languages that you start with.
- Making other setting-dependent decisions (e.g. place of origin, occupation).
Skills
Skills are divided into four categories:
- Pen (Personal Reality, Arts, Depths, Presence, Empathy, Spirituality)
- Paper (Medicine, Encyclopaedia, Visualisation, Arcane, Reason, Politics).
- Hand (Alchemy, World, Composure, Endurance, Prowess, Energetics).
- Sword (Performance, Reflexes, Elegance, Awareness, Precision, Discretion).
Each character starts with 12 points to distribute as they like between these four categories, representing the lessons learned in their life before the story begins. Each skill starts at a level equal to the category's score.
Each category must have at least one point, and can have at most five.
Signature Skill
Choose one skill to be your signature skill. Increase its score by 1 (this can increase it above 5). Your signature skill isn't subject to the same restrictions as your other skills when you gain skill points later.
Optional: Starting With Experience
Depending on your world (and how experienced your group is), you might start with some experience. Start by building your character at level 1 as normal, then apply any extra skill points the same way as you would normally level up.
Advancement
Advancement is represented by skill points, which you can spend to increase your skill scores.
The way that you gain skill points will depend on your world — consult your Arbiter for your world's rules. You might gain skill points slowly over time (some number per session, or per story arc), and you might be able to earn them in certain ways (e.g. exceptional role-playing).
Skill points can be spent to increase a skill (e.g. Composure, Precision, Spirituality) by one. You cannot increase a score to more than two points higher than the next-lowest skill in that category. For example, suppose your Hand skills are:
| Skill | Score |
|---|---|
| Alchemy | 5 |
| World | 4 |
| Composure | 3 |
| Endurance | 3 |
| Prowess | 3 |
| Energetics | 3 |
You can increase any skill you like from this category. If you increased Alchemy to 6, then you wouldn't be able to increase it again (as increasing it to 7 puts it more than two higher than World, the next lowest in your Hand skills).
Your signature skill is not subject to this restriction: you can increase it as high as you like, regardless of the other skills in its category.
Languages
All languages in your setting will be divided into common and specialist languages. Common languages are those spoken in or around the area you're in, or languages you are likely to come into contact with. Specialist languages are those from far-away countries, dead languages, and other languages that require uncommon training to learn.
You cannot usually learn specialist languages without at least 5 in Encyclopaedia; if your character is from a foreign country or would otherwise have come into contact with a specialist character before the story starts, ask your Arbiter if it would be appropriate for you to start with a specialist language.
Example Character: Lysander Bell
Lysander is a relatively balanced character, with a focus on movement and dexterity. He uses firearms to fight, but prefers to avoid fighting where he can. He isn't a smart man, despite his image of himself as a tech genius.
Lysander starts with the following skill category distribution:
| Hand | 3 |
|---|---|
| Paper | 2 |
| Pen | 3 |
| Sword | 4 |
From a baseline of 3 / 3 / 3 / 3, he moves one point from Paper to Sword to represent his firearm proficiency and dexterity, and relative weakness in intelligence.
He chooses Intrigue as his signature skill, increasing it to 3. This will allow him to increase it later (as he's interested in politics) without having to increase his other Paper skills along with it.
Based on his starting skills, he gains some proficiencies that he chooses from the musical instruments and languages available in his world. His world uses the Artistries, Potions, and Metamagic lists from this guide.
- Alchemy (3):
- Potions: Light, Dark
- Encyclopaedia (2):
- Languages: English, Russian
- Arcane (2)
- Arts: Microkinetics
- Personal Reality (3):
- Metamagic: Hush
- Expression (3):
- Artistry: Gardening
- Performance (4):
- Instruments: Piano, Double Bass