The Player's Compendium/Character Building

A player character is composed of many different components. At it's core, the player attributes determine your fundamental abilities and capabilities. Your species determines your appearance and some of your inherent abilities. Your classes (and subclass) determine your learned skill sets. Your background describes your life prior to adventuring. And finally, skills represent unique ways that you have specialized, trained or enhanced your abilities.

Player Attributes

There are 8 basic player attributes which determine the outcome of many in-game interactions, including combat, roleplay and exploration. The values for these attributes are between 1 and 30. However, for players, they tend to peak at around 20.

• Intellect (INT): The character's ability to intuit and understand the mechanics and complexities of a given situation, system or concept.
• Knowledge (KNO): The level of factual understanding the character has about the world within which they inhabit.
• Insight (INS): The character's ability to view the world and others within it with scrutiny.
• Charisma (CHA): The ability for a character to affect others on an interpersonal level. The power to persuade, convince or deceive a someone.
• Strength (STR): The character's ability to move their body with force. This determines how much they can lift and how hard they can hit.
• Dexterity (DEX): The character's ability to be both nimble and precise in their physical actions.
• Willpower (WIL): The character's ability to hold control of their mental faculties. Whether it be protecting aganst the intrusions or others, or forcing their own will upon another.
• Fortitude (FOR): The physical ability to with stand force, harm and ailment.

Attribute Domains

Domains are specific areas of expertise within an attribute's applicable area. The standard list of domains for each attribute is shown below. Willpower and Fortitude do not have any standard domains. In situations where an ability allows you to freely select a domain to apply itself to—such as, in your background, you can choose two domains to gain proficiency with—your game master may allow you to choose a domain not specified below. For example, you may want to gain proficiency in a domain of Knowledge which is setting specific, such as the politics of a particular region, or a particular type of monster.

Intelect	Knowledge	Insight	Charisma	Strength	Dexterity
Calculation Intuition Reasoning	Arcana Engineering History Medicine Nature Paranormal Religion Science Survival	Investigation Observation Personal	Charm Deception Enthrall Intimidation Misdirection Persuasion	Athletics Might Grip	Acrobatics Coordination Nimbleness Precision

Calculated Stats

In addition to the eight primary attributes, plays also have additional calculated statistics, as seen below.

Health Points (HP)

This value represent's the overall health of the character. This value decreases when the character takes damage, and increased when they are healed. Each character has a maximum calculated HP. Each class has dice rank associated with their HP. At first level, maximum HP is calculated by taking the highest value possible on that die, then adding the player's FOR modifier. On each level up, that die is rolled, and the value of the roll, plus the player's FOR modifier is added to their maximum HP. Alternatively, in place of rolling that die after levelling up, you can instead opt to simply take the average result, rounded up. (this will be equal to half the dice rank, plus 1)

Losing HP

When an attack, spell or other effect deals damage, that amount of damage is subtracted from the target's current HP. Any attack which would reduce the target's HP to less than zero, reduces it to zero instead. Abilities that provide healing cannot increase a creature's health above zero, unless stated otherwise.

Vitality Points (VP)

In addition to the calculated Health Points each player also has 3 Vitality Points. While at zero HP, any successful damage done to the player causes them to love 1 VP. If the source of that damage was a critical hit 2 VP. When a player character no longer has any VP, they make a FOR or WIL saving throw at the start of each of their turns. The difficulty of this saving throw starts at 1, and increases by 1 every time it is attempted. Failing the saving throw results in the death of the player character.

Returning From The Brink

If a player character is at 0 HP, but still has at least one VP, a Long Rest will restore 1 VP. If the player has 3 VP, a Long Rest will restore 1 HP, at which point normal healing abilities will work as normal once more.

If a player character has 0 HP and 0 VP, a creature can attempt to stabilize them by spending 10 minutes treating them, and making a successful KNO (Medicine) check, difficulty 15. While this time passes, the player character in this state does not need to make any saving throws. On a failed KNO (Medicine) check, the dying player character must make another FOR or WIL saving throw. On a successful check, the dying player character is now stable, and will wake up in 12 hours with 1VP.

Defence (DF)

This value represents the character's ability to protect themselves, combining ability to dodge, block and the protection granted by their armour and other items. Without any additional items, the character's DF is calculated as 7 + FOR modifier + DEX modifier. If you are wearing light armour, it is instead calculated as 7 + armour modifier + DEX modifier, if you are wearing medium armour, it is instead calculated as 7 + armour modifier + DEX modifier (max 3) and finally if you are wearing heavy armour, it is calculated as 7 + armour modifier.

Carrying Capacity

A character's carrying capacity is equal to their STR modifier plus their FOR modifier, multiplied by 35, for medium creatures, 25, for small creatures and 45 for large creatures. This is the weight in pounds (lbs) that your character can carry before they become encumbered.

Attribute Modifiers

Each player attribute has an associated modifier, equal to the value of the attribute minus 10, divided by 2. (rounded down)

In addition to the basic attribute modifiers, each player has an additional Initiative modifier. See the Combat section in the previous chapter, under Initiative for rules on how this modifier is used. This modifier, by default, is equal to the player's DEX modifier. Certain abilities, items and other sources can alter this modifier.

Finally, each player has a modifier identified as their “Level Bonus”. This is calculated by dividing the player's level by four, rounding up, then adding 1. The level bonus can only be added to any roll once, unless otherwise stated. Meaning that if two different features, abilities or effects allow you to apply your level bonus to a role, you only apply it once unless is explicitly says otherwise.

Modifier and Level Bonus Tables

Modifiers Attribute Modifier 1 -5 2 -4 3 -4 4 -3 5 -3 6 -2 7 -2 8 -1 9 -1 10 +0 11 +0 12 +1 13 +1 14 +2 15 +2 16 +3 17 +3 18 +4 19 +4 20 +5 21 +5 22 +6 23 +6 24 +7 25 +7 26 +8 27 +8 28 +9 29 +9 30 +10

Level Bonus Level Level Bonus 1 +2 2 +2 3 +2 4 +2 5 +3 6 +3 7 +3 8 +3 9 +4 10 +4 11 +4 12 +4 13 +5 14 +5 15 +5 16 +5 17 +6 18 +6 19 +6 20 +6 21 +7 22 +7 23 +7 24 +7 25 +8 26 +8 27 +8 28 +8 29 +9 30 +9

Determining Your Scores

There are two primary ways to determine your starting character attributes: standard array, and rolling. Standard array uses an array of preset numbers which you can simply assign to each attribute. There are three different standard arrays to choose from, depending on the types of character you wish to build. Theses can be seen in the table below.

Array	Values
Basic Spread	15, 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 9, 8
All-rounder	14, 13, 12, 12, 12, 12, 11, 10
Min-max	16, 16, 14, 13, 11, 10, 8, 8

Alternatively, you can roll for your attributes. This is done by first setting all of your attributes to 12. Then, roll 4d6. For each die rolled, take the result and add it to one attribute and subtract it from another. Once you have done this, the attributes modified can not longer be added to or subtracted from by the remaining dice.

Let's look at an example. Say the results of your rolled dice are 3, 1, 5, 2 and you are looking to build a frontline fighter. You may choose to add the 5 to Strength (STR) to increase the damage they do, then subtract it from Knowledge (KNO) because having vast knowledge doesn't help you when you swing a big axe. You may then add 3 to Fortitude (FOR) and subtract it from Charisma (CHA) because your planned character isn't going to be super friendly. You could then take the 2, and add it to your Dexterity, so you can get around the battlefield more easily then subtract 2 from Willpower (WIL) because you're okay with opening yourself up a bit more to psychic attacks to increase another important stat. Finally, you can add 1 to Insight (INS) to make yourself better at surveying the battlefield, then subtract 1 from Intellect (INT) because your character isn't the most tactical fighter out there.

Species

Playable species come in all shapes and sizes. They may come with inherent abilities, whether physical or magical in nature. Some of these abilities can be substituted with corresponding abilities in the character's chosen class to reflect the impact of lifestyle differences in comparison to most members of the given species.

Classes

There are three main categories of classes, corresponding to the three primary categories of combat actions: Offensive, Defensive and Utility or the Social & Skill category. Each class has sub-classes divided into five categories, either bolstering their primary category, or adding a complementary category of action, or non-combat skill, to their repertoire. (NOTE: All classes can perform all categories' actions, however some will be better structured to take advantage of one or two categories over the others)

Backgrounds

Backgrounds provide a character with their reason for adventuring, and give them some experience to get started on their journey. In addition to a narrative background, the player also gets player stat bonuses. They can either increase one stat by 2, and another by 1, or they can increase 3 stats by 1 each. They gain training with one set of tools. Additionally, each background provides the player with a simple skill.

Finally, select two domains from the Attribute Domains section earlier in this chapter. You have proficiency with these domains. If you select a domain of knowledge, you can select two instead of one. (i.e. you can select two domains outside of the Knowledge attribute, two domains of Knowledge and one other domain, or four domains of Knowledge)

Skills

Skills allow a character to expand their abilities beyond their chosen class. At varying levels, characters gain the ability to learn a new skill. Skills are divided into two categories: Simple and Complex. Simple Skills grant the character a new ability, alter their stats or otherwise modify their capabilities. Complex Skills do the same, except they can also be levelled up. Once a Complex Skill has been acquired, that skill can be trained (levelled up), at a distinct pace from the character's levels. Each level of the skill will have a set of requirements to advance and will provide the character with one or more options to select from upon reaching that new level.