Character Generation
4d6, discarding the lowest die, and arranging the stats at will.
If you don't get something that you like or want to play or is unplayable, roll again. I want you to be a hero afterall. You will be starting at first level.
Heroes are common people in extraordinary circumstances.
Their personalities are larger than life. I'm interested in characters who have personality, goals, quirks, fears, defects of character and a history that shapes how they act and react. Some ideas might be:
- What is your most profound childhood experience, describe?
- What or who do you fear about all else and give details why?
- What traits would an ideal mate possess? (ability to sing? high Chr? wealthy?)
The point I'm trying to make is to be creative. I'm looking for strong emotions. I'm looking for hooks to develop stories around or to help the character grow and change.
Think outside the character sheet.
Skill advancement and cantrip aquisition happens during game play; learning, practicing and using a desired skills makes its acquisition a role playing element. Skills may be awared based on good role playing or maybe even awesome dice rolling.
Skills will be worked out at the first game session. These are customized for the Talis culture and the caste system. Some will be the tradtional skills, others will specialized to individual characters. Trained use of a weapons is a skill.
There are no character classes in the tradtional sense. A character is build from stats and a great idea, to which skills and cantrips are added to deepen rather then define the PC. Mages can be anyone with a huge amount of courage (see below.)
Leather and hide armor are the most common type. Studded, enameled plates and other ingenious nonmetal armors are next most common. Metal breastplates are a sign of the Warrior Caste. It is extremely unlikely that a PC will have any armor at all.
There are no long bows or cross bows. Big metal weapons are nearly mythic. Spears with stone tips are the most common military weapon, but the mid-to-low castes usually avoid such obvious displays of martial skill---a knife between the ribs or a sling stone from a roof top are all better options.
Magic
Cantrips are fairly common. They are simple and practical magic that makes life easier, increase the quality of products. Creative use of cantrips are highly encouraged. Custom cantrips for profession or training will be worked out individually. The PCs will start with a limited number of cantrips with unlimited use. This does not require you to be a mage, everyone in the party will have access to these. For any old timers out there, I use the cantrips found in AD&D Unearthed Arcana by Gygax. It is not necessary to purchase this book, I will provide copies.
More traditional spells are much harder to get. Castes guard their knowledge and the Water Caste is always seeking to Take or surpress other mages.
Mages are able to push their spells to make them more powerful in a single aspect such as range or damage. This comes with a cost however: estra time, concentration, spell components, verbal incantations or even blood. It is not possible to push a spell or contrip without this sort a cost.
Researching new spells and creating items are fairly easy, but require uninterrupted time and can attract attention from enforcers of the Water Caste.
Since there are no gods there are no clerical spells. Please note that there are no healing spells in the usual sense either. It is highly recommended that at least one player take the first aid skill.
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