Sneak Peek - Rolling up your character

In this weeks sneak peek, Jon takes a look at rolling a character from scratch.

Getting ready for a game, I thought it would be a good idea to take you through the rolling up of a character. So to begin I have a pencil, paper and some 10 sided dice. It would be good if at least one of them was a d%, as some of the rolls are out of 100, but this is not compulsory.

Rank – All starting characters begin as Harmless.

Starting Skill

As I am sure you have already downloaded the standalone adventure ‘The Worst Intentions’, you will have seen that the character sheet has a number of skills organised in to 5 categories. Personal Combat, Vehicle Skills, Intelligence, Social and Espionage. As a starting character, having not yet made any choices, I begin with a skill score of 10 against every skill* and so busily write 10, in pencil, against each skill.

*This gives every character in a group the opportunity to have a go at achieving a task, even if they might not be proficient or trained in that skill. In the Elite: Dangerous galaxy you are assumed to have at least a passing knowledge of the basic skills required to be a member of the Pilots Federation.

Background

I now have to choose a number of backgrounds, giving my character the possibility of increasing some skills, maybe even getting an enhancement and also achieve some depth and individuality.

The first background you get is free for every Player Character and that is ‘Trained Pilot’. This goes without saying as the main form of transport in the Elite: Dangerous galaxy is your spaceship; you do need to know how to make it fly.

On top of this compulsory one I get to choose four other backgrounds from a list of 55. As Oliver writes in the Core Manual:

‘The galaxy is an enormous place with a dizzying array of inhabited planets and space stations. Where you were brought up and the choices you made when young have a dramatic impact on the sort of person you become. Whether you were born on a high tech planet or a frontier refinery, lived under a dictatorship or had greater freedom under republican council all help to mould your character.’

You are not limited to select one character ‘class’ either. You can select backgrounds randomly by rolling percentile dice and using the table in the Core Manual or you can choose your own from the list. There is nothing to stop you from being a Child Actor, who through misfortune became a Petty Criminal, then turned to religion and after a spell as a Monk you became a Teacher. Equally you could be from a Borderland Homeworld but after a spell working on a large commercial freighter as a Ship Hand, you saved enough money up to go back to school and now as a University Graduate you have become an Engineer. You can even try and match it as close as is possible to your own life experiences but I do accept this will be easier for some more than others.

For my character, I am going to let the dice decide. Remembering I am already Pilot Trained for my next background I roll 10 – I was Born on the Streets. My next roll is Docking Bay Operative, My third roll is 64 – Partner (I have a partner with me on my ship) and my last roll is Second Hand Spaceship Dealer.

Image credits - Obsidian Ant

Just because I rolled these backgrounds in a particular order, this doesn’t mean that I have to stick with the same chronology, but for this purpose I think it suits, so I will stick with it. So, I was born on the streets of some colonised backwater and the best job I could get was working at the local Starport in the Docking Bay. It was here that I learned what I needed to about ships and to see that there was money to be made in selling them. It seemed only natural that I went into business selling second hand spaceships.

So far I can add the following bonuses to my skills:

Pilot Trained: Spaceship Piloting +20, Spaceship Weapons +20, Systems +10

Born on the Streets: Stealth +10, Streetwise +20, Enhancement – Strong*

*An enhancement is an ability, granted through one of your Background choices, that sets you apart from the common herd of humanity. Enhancements provide permanent bonuses, often to personal combat, that are always active.

For my Character, his enhancement is ‘Strong’ – The Core Manual says:

‘You do more damage in close combat and can lift more.

You gain a +2 damage bonus in Fighting and Melee combat, and can lift an additional 20kg of weight (a normal person can lift 80kg). Each time you take this enhancement the bonuses stack, except your damage bonus cannot go higher than +10.’

And then back to the Backgrounds -

Docking Bay Operative: Navigation +10, Planetary Knowledge (name change from Planetary Systems) +10, Repair +10, Security +10, Trading +10

Second Hand Spaceship Dealer: Bargain +20, Planetary Knowledge +10, Repair +10, Trading +10

NB – Each skill bonus can stack but you have a starting ceiling which increases only when you increase in rank. As Harmless, I am limited (in almost all circumstances) to a skill cap of 40.

Finally I rolled the Partner Background and this has a separate section in the Core Manual:

‘A partner is a companion who joins you on your adventures. A partner can be a best friend, a fellow cop, a business partner, a boyfriend or girlfriend, wife or husband or even a dependent child. Some partners are the best of friends, who’ll stick by each other through thick and thin. Others are thrown together by accident or convenience and might have a rather spiky relationship with each other.’

They get their own character sheet and you can choose three backgrounds for them. They do not automatically get Pilot Trained and amongst other limitations they also have 5 fewer endurance points that you. Yes, technically a partner can have their own partner and so on but each partner starts off with 5 fewer Endurance points than the last. Eventually you will have very vulnerable companions with tiny amounts of Endurance (and when a Partner dies they are dead for good!).

You can choose from where you found your partner or you can let the dice decide. You can choose: Best Friend, Boyfriend/Girlfriend, Business Partner, Dependent Child, Husband/Wife or Thrown Together by Chance. I rolled a 66 and so I have my wife with me (which is awesome, perhaps I can finally get her in to Role Playing Games - I wont hold my breath though)

After you have chosen who your partner is you will use that partner specific table to select the nuances. For a Husband/Wife the table is the same as the Boyfriend/Girlfriend and sets out the state of your relationship. There are six choices and I rolled a 2 (on a D10). My wife and I are:

‘Too cool to show affection. People would be forgiven for not realising you are a couple at all. You’ll never be caught kissing, holding hands or even complimenting each other in public. It’s not that you don’t love each other, but one, or both of you, just doesn’t like being all ‘lovey dovey’ with each other when people are watching. In private the façade can melt – perhaps just a little.’

Karma Capabilities

The next action is to pick Karma Capabilities but I will not go through those here but save that for another sneak peek.

Rounding it Out

In this section, you do several things to round off your character.

You get to enter your Endurance points (start with 20) and your Karma Points (10 – more on this in a later post).

Secondly you can increase 10 skills under the title of independent learning:

In addition to your Backgrounds all characters do some independent learning not tied to where they lived or what they were trained to do. Pick ten skills you wish to improve. Add 10 points to the first skill, 9 points to the second skill, 8 points to the third and so on until you give the last skill you chose a 1 point boost.

In all cases you cannot make a skill higher than 40, no matter what combination of Background bonuses and skill boosts you choose.

I have chosen the following:

Energy Weapons +10 – otherwise I would be useless in a gun fight.

Dodge +9 – I know it is no good now but soon, when I increase my Dodge it will push my bonus up.

Perception +8 – Another low skill which will need some boosting as I level up.

Computer +7 – I just think this will be useful.

Tactics +6, Parry +5, Sleight of Hand +4, Diplomacy +3, Veh Piloting +2, Trading +1.

One thing I am going to give my partner character is a good medicine skill, that may well come in handy.

Finally, for the Skills part of the character sheet, you need to calculate your bonuses. These are your score, rounded down to the nearest 10 and then remove the zero.

Therefore Dodge @ 19 rounds down to a bonus of 1, Spaceship Piloting of 30 rounds down to 3.

Do not despair at the 19 for dodge as there are a few ways in which you will be able to soon boost that up.

I have entered in the Bonus numbers for my character and you can see the final skills score below.