Post by Drasanil on Dec 13, 2005 15:54:35 GMT -5
Character Creation
Step 1: post in the Character Request board, saying what sort of character you would like. You must post the following information for a character to be made:
Similarly, elves aren't welcome in Kazad Dawr(though Yetzinburg is still open to them), as such they have their own starting area and barring very special circumstances will not be allowed into the hold.
You should not include any equipment (trappings) or skills or anything, as these are determined by your race and career. If you want to make a request for a slight modification to a career, such as wishing to swap a skill such as ‘Special Weapon – Parrying Weapons’ for ‘Special Weapon – Lasso’, then that may be taken into consideration by the GM in question.
Any such requests must be backed up with a reason relating to your character’s background or personality. The better the reason, the more likely your request will be considered.
Step 2: wait for a GM to create your character. When they have finished, they will post it in the Created Characters board. Check it, and ask any questions you have about that particular character in your thread. The GM in question will then reply either in the thread, or by Private Message (PM).
Step 3: create a single thread in the ‘Your Character’ board. Your post should include all of the details about your character from the Created Characters, plus any background, descriptions or history you wish to include.
Step 4: create a link to your ‘Your Character’ thread in your signature, so that everyone can view details about them quickly and easily.
Step 5: get role-playing!
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Character Advances
So I bet you're wondering what to do with all those lovely XPs you keep getting given?
It's easy - you use them to advance your character! You can do this in a number of ways, which I shall demonstrate with the help of this simple bulleted list:
Increase A Stat:
If you look at your profile, you should see there are two lines for your statistics. The top row of numbers are your actual statistics, while the row of numbers below is your Advance Scheme, e.g.
M WS BS S T W I A Dex Ld Int Cl WP Fel
4 33 37 3 4 7 31 1 26 23 31 32 28 37
0 10 10 1 0 2 10 0 00 00 10 10 00 00
The numbers below your main stats indicate how much the above stat may be increased in your current Career. Spending an advance on your Strength, Toughness, Wounds or Attacks will increase one of their values by 1, e.g.
With the above character, I decide to advance my Strength (S). I spend one Advance on increasing my Strength by 1 point, from 3 to 4.
Spending an advance on any other stat (with the exception of Movement, which cannot be increased) will increase it by 10, e.g.
With the above character, I decide to advance my Weapon Skill (WS). I spend one Advance on increasing my WS by 10 points, from 33 to 43.
Advancing any one stat always costs 100 XPs. You may only ever increase a stat by the amount shown on your Advance Scheme for that career. For instance, with the above character, I cannot increase her (yes, it's a she) WS by more than 10 in my current Career. If I wish to increase my stats by more than shown in my current Career Advance Scheme, then I must change Careers (detailed below).
Gain A New Skill:
To learn a skill that is listed as one of your Required Skills for your Career (you won't have any until you change Career - when you start out, you have all the Skills you need for that Career) costs 100 XPs.
To learn any other skill that is not listed in your Required Skills for your Career costs 200 XPs.
Either way, you simply cannot gain the new skill by simply spending the XPs on it - you must l(earn) the skill first.
The main way to learn any Skill is to find someone who knows the Skill, then ask them to teach it to you. The tutor will want some kind of reward (usually between 25 and 50 GC, although it doesn't necessarily have to be in gold), and you must roleplay your training in it sufficiently well to convince a GM that you have earned the right to now have it as a permanent Skill. A few paragraphs about how you were tutored the Skill is not sufficient - your character must spend a large amount of time acquiring the Skill, depending on its difficulty.
For instance, skills like Identify Plant and Pick Lock might only take a few days training to learn properly - they are relatively simple.
More complicated skills such as Surgery or a Secret Language are much harder to learn, and may take weeks, or indeed months, of practice. Use your common sense here, and consider how long they would take to learn correctly in the real world - could you perform complex surgical procedures after a few days training?
There are a final set of Skills, called Innate Skills, which are the hardest of all to learn. They represent natural characteristics and abilities of a character, that they've had either from birth, or have been conditioned into for years. These are things like Night Vision and Very Resilient. More often or not it is impossible to learn these - if your character did not start with them, then they'll never acquire them. However, there may be odd occasions when it is possible to acquire them, though it will acquire both lots of time and lots of roleplaying. PM me if you wish to learn one of these, and it will be discussed.
To find a tutor for a Skill, there are a number of options. You can either find another PC with that Skill and ask them to teach you it, create a suitably convincing NPC to do the same (such as a druid or Taalite etc. for Charm Animal), or go to the Academy in Kadaklan, where you can learn and train in any skill you care to mention. As above, this will also require payment for the tutor, as nothing is free.
Alternatively, you can attempt to learn the skill yourself. This is much harder, and will take both more time and more effort. The relatively simple skills such as Pick Lock are still very difficult to learn this way, without a tutor, as you have no real idea what you're doing when you start practicing. It may take you a week or two to get a basic grasp of the skill, with regular practice.
On the other hand, it is highly improbable that you could learn a more difficult skill such as Surgery on your own - it might take you years of experimentation, and I imagine there would be very few forthcoming volunteers for your practicing. Unless there are very special circumstances, you cannot learn harder Skills on your own.
In addition, some books will contain the knowledge to learn certain skills. A few days reading and studying of the book will furnish you with the knowledge to have a basic grasp of the Skill you are trying to acquire. Any book that allows you to learn new skills will be explicitly stated in a thread, either in the Academy Library, or the Galleries Library.
Gain A New Spell/Ritual:
This only applies to characters who have the Cast Spell/Ritual skill - typically Wizards, Druids and Clerics.
The number of XPs required to gain a new spell or ritual (spells are magick that works almost instantaneously e.g. Fireball, while rituals take longer e.g. Summon Elemental Node) depends on the level of the spell:
Petty Spell - 50 XPs
1st Level Spell - 100 XPs
2nd Level Spell - 200 XPs
3rd Level Spell - 300 XPs
4th Level Spell - 400 XPs
When you wish to gain a new spell or ritual, you must learn it, either from a tutor or from the appropriate book. Learning spells and rituals requires a great amount of time and roleplaying, especially for the more powerful ones.
If you wish to learn a new spell, but do not have the WHFRP book listing them, please PM a GM and put in your request. You can specify what kind of spell you wish to learn e.g. a fiery death one, and the GM will PM you back with one or more options.
Change Your Career:
To change your Career, you must have completed your Advance Scheme (that is, improved your stats as much as your current Advance Scheme allows), as well as have all of the Required Skills and Required Trappings of the Career.
With your first Career, you will start with all of the Skills and Trappings, so you simply need to fill your Advance Scheme. With the example given above, once the character has had:
+10 WS, +10 BS, +1 S, +2 W, +10 I, +10 Int and +10 Cl,
she can advance to her next Career (given she has all the Required Trappings and Skills of her current Career).
To advance to a new Career you have a number of options:
Once you have made your request, a GM will post your new character profile in the same thread as your old one. There will be a few differences:
Character Profiles
When you receive your character, they will have a profile, similar to the following:
M WS BS S T W I A Dex Ld Int Cl Wp Fel
4 33 31 3 4 7 38 1 30 36 31 25 34 37
0 10 10 1 0 2 10 0 00 00 10 10 00 00
The top row of letters tells you what the numbers underneath refer to. These are your characteristics, and tell you what your character is good, or not so good, at:
Step 1: post in the Character Request board, saying what sort of character you would like. You must post the following information for a character to be made:
- Character’s Name (including any aliases you may wish them to have)
- Character’s Race. The choice is out of:
- Dwarf
- Elf
- Gnome
- Halfling
- Human
Similarly, elves aren't welcome in Kazad Dawr(though Yetzinburg is still open to them), as such they have their own starting area and barring very special circumstances will not be allowed into the hold.
- Sex: male or female
- Age: how old your character is. Different races live for different lengths of time:
Human: living to the age of 40 is considered lucky for an average adventurer, although humans can live up to about the age of 100. Halflings are similar, though their life expectancy is greater than 40 because they live less-risky lives.
Elf: elves are long lived creatures, and can live for several thousand years, and are rarely seen younger than 50 years of age outside of Elven countries. Dwarves and gnomes have life spans of 200 to 400 years. - Your chosen career. See the Careers FAQ for a list of careers and career paths.
You should not include any equipment (trappings) or skills or anything, as these are determined by your race and career. If you want to make a request for a slight modification to a career, such as wishing to swap a skill such as ‘Special Weapon – Parrying Weapons’ for ‘Special Weapon – Lasso’, then that may be taken into consideration by the GM in question.
Any such requests must be backed up with a reason relating to your character’s background or personality. The better the reason, the more likely your request will be considered.
Step 2: wait for a GM to create your character. When they have finished, they will post it in the Created Characters board. Check it, and ask any questions you have about that particular character in your thread. The GM in question will then reply either in the thread, or by Private Message (PM).
Step 3: create a single thread in the ‘Your Character’ board. Your post should include all of the details about your character from the Created Characters, plus any background, descriptions or history you wish to include.
Step 4: create a link to your ‘Your Character’ thread in your signature, so that everyone can view details about them quickly and easily.
Step 5: get role-playing!
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Character Advances
So I bet you're wondering what to do with all those lovely XPs you keep getting given?
It's easy - you use them to advance your character! You can do this in a number of ways, which I shall demonstrate with the help of this simple bulleted list:
- Increase A Stat
- Gain A New Skill
- Gain A New Spell/Ritual
- Change Your Career
Increase A Stat:
If you look at your profile, you should see there are two lines for your statistics. The top row of numbers are your actual statistics, while the row of numbers below is your Advance Scheme, e.g.
M WS BS S T W I A Dex Ld Int Cl WP Fel
4 33 37 3 4 7 31 1 26 23 31 32 28 37
0 10 10 1 0 2 10 0 00 00 10 10 00 00
The numbers below your main stats indicate how much the above stat may be increased in your current Career. Spending an advance on your Strength, Toughness, Wounds or Attacks will increase one of their values by 1, e.g.
With the above character, I decide to advance my Strength (S). I spend one Advance on increasing my Strength by 1 point, from 3 to 4.
Spending an advance on any other stat (with the exception of Movement, which cannot be increased) will increase it by 10, e.g.
With the above character, I decide to advance my Weapon Skill (WS). I spend one Advance on increasing my WS by 10 points, from 33 to 43.
Advancing any one stat always costs 100 XPs. You may only ever increase a stat by the amount shown on your Advance Scheme for that career. For instance, with the above character, I cannot increase her (yes, it's a she) WS by more than 10 in my current Career. If I wish to increase my stats by more than shown in my current Career Advance Scheme, then I must change Careers (detailed below).
Gain A New Skill:
To learn a skill that is listed as one of your Required Skills for your Career (you won't have any until you change Career - when you start out, you have all the Skills you need for that Career) costs 100 XPs.
To learn any other skill that is not listed in your Required Skills for your Career costs 200 XPs.
Either way, you simply cannot gain the new skill by simply spending the XPs on it - you must l(earn) the skill first.
The main way to learn any Skill is to find someone who knows the Skill, then ask them to teach it to you. The tutor will want some kind of reward (usually between 25 and 50 GC, although it doesn't necessarily have to be in gold), and you must roleplay your training in it sufficiently well to convince a GM that you have earned the right to now have it as a permanent Skill. A few paragraphs about how you were tutored the Skill is not sufficient - your character must spend a large amount of time acquiring the Skill, depending on its difficulty.
For instance, skills like Identify Plant and Pick Lock might only take a few days training to learn properly - they are relatively simple.
More complicated skills such as Surgery or a Secret Language are much harder to learn, and may take weeks, or indeed months, of practice. Use your common sense here, and consider how long they would take to learn correctly in the real world - could you perform complex surgical procedures after a few days training?
There are a final set of Skills, called Innate Skills, which are the hardest of all to learn. They represent natural characteristics and abilities of a character, that they've had either from birth, or have been conditioned into for years. These are things like Night Vision and Very Resilient. More often or not it is impossible to learn these - if your character did not start with them, then they'll never acquire them. However, there may be odd occasions when it is possible to acquire them, though it will acquire both lots of time and lots of roleplaying. PM me if you wish to learn one of these, and it will be discussed.
To find a tutor for a Skill, there are a number of options. You can either find another PC with that Skill and ask them to teach you it, create a suitably convincing NPC to do the same (such as a druid or Taalite etc. for Charm Animal), or go to the Academy in Kadaklan, where you can learn and train in any skill you care to mention. As above, this will also require payment for the tutor, as nothing is free.
Alternatively, you can attempt to learn the skill yourself. This is much harder, and will take both more time and more effort. The relatively simple skills such as Pick Lock are still very difficult to learn this way, without a tutor, as you have no real idea what you're doing when you start practicing. It may take you a week or two to get a basic grasp of the skill, with regular practice.
On the other hand, it is highly improbable that you could learn a more difficult skill such as Surgery on your own - it might take you years of experimentation, and I imagine there would be very few forthcoming volunteers for your practicing. Unless there are very special circumstances, you cannot learn harder Skills on your own.
In addition, some books will contain the knowledge to learn certain skills. A few days reading and studying of the book will furnish you with the knowledge to have a basic grasp of the Skill you are trying to acquire. Any book that allows you to learn new skills will be explicitly stated in a thread, either in the Academy Library, or the Galleries Library.
Gain A New Spell/Ritual:
This only applies to characters who have the Cast Spell/Ritual skill - typically Wizards, Druids and Clerics.
The number of XPs required to gain a new spell or ritual (spells are magick that works almost instantaneously e.g. Fireball, while rituals take longer e.g. Summon Elemental Node) depends on the level of the spell:
Petty Spell - 50 XPs
1st Level Spell - 100 XPs
2nd Level Spell - 200 XPs
3rd Level Spell - 300 XPs
4th Level Spell - 400 XPs
When you wish to gain a new spell or ritual, you must learn it, either from a tutor or from the appropriate book. Learning spells and rituals requires a great amount of time and roleplaying, especially for the more powerful ones.
If you wish to learn a new spell, but do not have the WHFRP book listing them, please PM a GM and put in your request. You can specify what kind of spell you wish to learn e.g. a fiery death one, and the GM will PM you back with one or more options.
Change Your Career:
To change your Career, you must have completed your Advance Scheme (that is, improved your stats as much as your current Advance Scheme allows), as well as have all of the Required Skills and Required Trappings of the Career.
With your first Career, you will start with all of the Skills and Trappings, so you simply need to fill your Advance Scheme. With the example given above, once the character has had:
+10 WS, +10 BS, +1 S, +2 W, +10 I, +10 Int and +10 Cl,
she can advance to her next Career (given she has all the Required Trappings and Skills of her current Career).
To advance to a new Career you have a number of options:
- Advance to a Career listed in your Career Exits
- Change to a new Basic Career
Once you have made your request, a GM will post your new character profile in the same thread as your old one. There will be a few differences:
- You will have a new Advance Scheme - this is used in the same way as your old one, but usually allows further improvement of your stats.
- The list of Skills will be replaced with a list of Required Skills - these are the skills you must learn to advance from this Career. You do not gain any new Skills when you change Careers.
- The list of Trappings will be replaced with a list of Required Trappings - these are the items, clothes and weapons you must acquire to advance from this Career. You do not gain any new Trappings when you change Careers/
- You will have new Career Exits - these will be the Careers you can advance to once you have completed this Career.
Character Profiles
When you receive your character, they will have a profile, similar to the following:
M WS BS S T W I A Dex Ld Int Cl Wp Fel
4 33 31 3 4 7 38 1 30 36 31 25 34 37
0 10 10 1 0 2 10 0 00 00 10 10 00 00
The top row of letters tells you what the numbers underneath refer to. These are your characteristics, and tell you what your character is good, or not so good, at:
- M (Movement) – how fast your character can move. Normal movement for a human is 4.
- WS (Weapon Skill) – how well you can wield any melee weapon e.g. swords, spears etc.. It is based on a percentage chance of you hitting your target with an attack.
In the above example, for every Attack the character made against his opponent, he would hit his opponent 33% of the time. For a human, a starting WS of between 20 and 40 is normal. - BS (Ballistic Skill) – how well you can aim a missile weapons e.g. bows, blackpowder weapons etc.. It is based on the percentage chance of you hitting your target with a shot.
In the above example, you have a 31% of hitting your opponent for every shot you take. - S (Strength) – how physically strong your character is. A typical human has a strength between 2 and 4. It determines how good your character is at carrying heavy loads, smashing objects, and how hard they hit in hand-to-hand combat.
- T (Toughness) – how resilient your character is, determining how much physical blow, poison and disease will affect him. A typical human has a toughness between 2 and 4. It primarily comes into effect when you take damage, as the value is deducted from the amount of damage done.
- W (Wounds) – how long a character can stay active when taking damage. If this characteristic is reduced to zero, you don’t die, but you are in great peril, as any further damage will be critical, which could result in loss of limb, or indeed life!
- I (Initiative) – how alert and swift a character is. It allows you a greater chance to strike first in combat, there’s a bigger probability of you noticing thing that other characters may not, or give you a better chance of avoiding a dangerous situation from speed of reaction.
- A (Attacks) – how many times you can strike with a melee in one round of combat (ten seconds in roleplay time). Most characters have only one attack, but particularly dangerous fighters and monsters may have many more, making them particularly deadly.
- Dex (Dexterity) – how skilful you are with your hands or fingers, usually at a particular craft, whether it be building boats or picking locks. It is a percentage chance of your character accomplishing a relatively difficult task that requires skilful use of their hands (or in extreme circumstances, feet!)
- Ld (Leadership) – how authoritative your character is, i.e. how good a leader they are, and how effective they are at giving orders. It is the percentage chance that people he is trying to order about will actually listen to him.
- Int (Intelligence) – how clever and wise a character is, and how easy they find it to learn. This is most commonly used when a character is trying to learn a new skill. Most humans tend to have an intelligence between 20 and 40, although scholarly types like wizards can have much higher values
- Cl (Cool) – how calm a character is in a stressful or dangerous situation. Some large monsters or spells cause fear, and a character’s Cl value is how likely they are to lose their wits and run away.
- Wp (Willpower) – how strong-willed a character is. It is mainly used when attempting to resist the effects of some spells, where it is the percentage chance that the spell will not take effect. Some spells, such as Fireball, cannot be resisted. In addition, wizards can expend additional magical energy (MP) to temporarily reduce a character’s chance of resisting the effects of a spell.
- Fel (Fellowship) – how well a character gets on with other people. A normal person usually has a fellowship of around 30. Those with lower values may be particularly uncommunicative or surly, while those with higher values may have a particular way with words and tend to get along better with people. Note that it only represents how appealing a character seems, not necessarily how they actually are.