Dice A Time of Monsters - Characters

[Grey]

You can optionally ask me to put a character together for you, mechanically.
I've also got a quick allocation array somewhere around here which I'll add ASAP.

All Attributes start at 1. You have 60 Attribute XP. Attributes are capped at 4
1 is below average, 4 is world-class - 5 is actually superhuman, which is why it's not available.
You can spend it according to the chart below.

Level	Cost
1	0XP
2	3XP
3	6XP
4	9XP
5	12XP

All Skills start at 0. You have 60 SKill XP. Skills are capped at 6
You can spend it according to the below chart.

Level	Cost
1	2XP
2	1XP
3	2XP
4	3XP
5	6XP
6	9XP

Note that Skills are general until level 3. From level 4 onward, choose a Focus - a particular area of the Skill where your character has put in extra practice. You can have multiple Foci, and the cost is the same every time you buy a new one.

Next, choose 3 Advantages. These are reflections of your background, education, and social role.
For your Familiarity, choose 3 Social Skills and a situation in which they are specially honed - for example, Courtly Manners or Forest Cults
For your Knowledge, choose 3 Mental Skills and a field of study or academic practice where they are particularly focused - for example, Doctoring or Theology
For your Training, choose EITHER 3 Physical Skills and a particular style of engagement (or disengagement) where they're most practiced - for example, Sniping or Brawling
OR you can swap the Training for an additional Knowledge/Familiarity

Finally, apply static values like Health, Condition, or other and calculate derived stats like the combat block according to the below list.

Defence
Defence: Dexterity + Defence
Parry: Defence + Parry Focus, etc
Evade: Defence + Evade Focus, etc
Block: Defence + Shield Focus, etc

Offence
Melee: Dexterity + Melee
Ranged: Intuition + Ranged
Unarmed: Dexterity + Unarmed

Speed: Fitness + Athletics
Initiative: Speed + Composure
Combat Pool: Speed + Dexterity
Physical Soak: The lower of Fitness or Strength
Magic Resistance: = Willpower + any special traits
Health: 10 Condition: 20

DEFINITIONS - Attributes
Strength - used for feats of physical strength; also directly impacts your damage in combat, the weight of weapons or items you can carry, and your ability to take damage.

Dexterity - represents general agility, fine motor skills, flexibility, hand-eye coordination. Directly contributes to your ability to attack or defend yourself, pick locks or pockets, perform surgery - a very useful Attribute. Also contributes to Combat Pool.

Fitness - used for endurance and resilience. Resisting disease and poison, enduring extremes of weather, recovering from injury or sickness. Fitness also contributes to how much damage you can take, your Speed, and your Combat Pool.

Intellect - used for feats of memory, logic, learning. You roll Intellect to try and recall important details, make connections, plan, or calculate.

Intuition - used for perception and quick-thinking. You roll Intuition to figure out how someone feels, look out for an ambush, search a room, or make leaps of logic that seem a bit of a reach. Also contributes to your Ranged Pool and ability to hit with ranged weapons.

Willpower - a character's strength of will, used extensively in employing or resisting Magic, overcoming penalties and wounds, and resisting mental influences of one kind or another.

Bearing - force of personality. Whether your character is terrifying or charming, beautiful or hideous, Bearing represents those extremes. Used when persuading, intimidating, performing, and so on.

Guile - a measure of cunning and cleverness. Used to lie, misdirect, cheat, steal, convince, cajole, seduce.

Composure - how well your character keeps it together. Used to maintain face in the path of insults, suffering, and defamation.

DEFINITIONS - Skills
Awareness: Your ability to pay attention. The skill of the paranoid and the cautious. Used to hear the Vampire sneaking up on you, or notice the way that guard is nervously fingering his weapon.
Suggested Focuses: Wilderness, City, Escort, Assassins, Ambush, Hunting

Athletics: Your ability to run, swim, climb, jump, and pace yourself in a fight. Also contributes to your Speed and Combat Pool.
Suggested Focuses: Sprinting, Climbing, Swimming, Endurance,

Melee: Your ability to swing a sword, club, spear, or other implement of murder. Contributes to Melee Offence.
Suggested Focuses: Swords, Axes, Spears, Glaives, Hammers,

Ranged: Use of ranged weaponry such as bows, or shorter ranged weapons like throwing axes. Contributes to Ranged Pool and Ranged Offence.
Suggested Focuses: Longbow, Shortbow, Sling, 'Casters, Spells, Thrown Weapons

Unarmed: Punching, kicking, grappling, and brawling.
Suggested Focuses: Striking, Wrestling, Boxing, Bar-Brawls, Improvised Weapons

Defense: Your ability to avoid harm in a fight. Contributes to Dodge. Block, or Parry ratings.
Static Focuses: Parry, Dodge, Shield

Stealth: Avoiding detection, either by hiding your presence or altering it.
Suggested Focuses: Disguise, Shadowing, Sneaking

Thievery: Stealing, or otherwise going places barred and taking things forbidden.
Suggested Focuses: Pickpocket, Lockpick, Breaking and Entering

Social Skills​

Persuasion: Convincing someone to do what you want through compelling argument or bullying bravado.
Suggested Focuses: Rhetoric, Seduction, Leadership, Inspire, Earnestness

Subterfuge: Convincing someone that the thing you want is also what they want. It was their idea, even. They're proud to have come up with something so useful to you.
Suggested Focuses: Lying, Misdirection, Fraud, Seduction

Empathy: The skill of reading people.
Suggested Focuses: Motive, Lies, Body-Language
Cultural Focuses: Bersarkar, Peasant, Townsman, Nobles.

Mingling: The skill used to maneuver through society, read a crowd, get your way, and avoid getting mobbed or ostracised.
Suggested Focuses: Etiquette (for Nobility), Carousing, Streetsavvy, Underworld, Outcasts

Perform: Put on a show with this skill.
Suggested Focuses: Dance, Singing, [Instrument], Recitation, Gladiatorial Combat

Animal Handling: Befriend and train animals, ride a horse, avoid a wolf attack.
Suggested Focuses: Riding, Animal Training, Discouraging Predators, Animal Friendship/Being a Disney Princess

Language: The languages your character can speak.
Languages: Hrothgaard (Dialects: Southron Settled, Northern Settled, Bersarkar, Urban, Frontier), Kelene (Dialects: Eastern, Northern, Southern, Western, Frontier, Courtly), H'kaeri, Kromsian (Dialects: Nightspeech, Dayspeech), Laman (Dialects: High Speech, Low Speech, Wildlands, Outcaste), and Tradestongue.

Language comes in three tiers of fluency - first tier is the basics; you can speak the language enough to get by, but anyone can tell it’s not your first language, and you cannot discuss complex ideas. You’ll also struggle with dialects outside the one you’ve learned. Second tier allows you to speak conversationally, but it’s still not your native tongue. You struggle with complex concepts and academic or poetic uses, but cope well enough with dialects. By third tier you have fluency. You can discuss complex ideas, compose poetry, and understand most dialects. Characters are assumed to speak their native language fluently.
Each time you buy a point in a Language, you choose another dialect.
Your Language rating caps the dice available for Social rolls in that Language.

Mental Skills​

Academics: The skill of scholarly education and knowledge. Recall facts, compose academic arguments.
Suggested Focuses: Commerce, History, Mathematics, Alchemy

Administration: Delegate, inventory, expedite, save and spend, lives or coin.
Suggested Focuses: Governance, Tactics, Strategy, Politics, Logistics

Artisan: Make something beautiful.
Suggested Focuses: Poetry, Songwriting, Composing, Storytelling, Jeweling, Engraving, Painting, Drawing

Medicine: The skill for treating the sick and wounded.
Suggested Focuses: First Aid, Surgery, Field Surgery, Medicines

Craft: Make something useful.
Suggested Focuses: Leatherworking, Blacksmithing, Tinkering, Siege Engines, Pottery, Wainwright, Shipwright

Lore: Knowledge of the supernatural, and secret histories of the world.
Suggested Focuses: Vampires, Magic, The Magocracy, Demonology, Folklore

Survival: The skill for surviving, even thriving, in the wilderness.
Suggested Focuses: Tundra, Jungle, Plains, Forest, Mountains, Coast, Desert

Investigation: For deliberately and methodically assessing a scene, finding things, tracking.
Suggested Focuses: Hunting, Crime Scene, Traces of the Unnatural

 

[Grey]

Character Sheet - you can make your own copy and link it under your character bio

HORRIBLE SUPERNATURAL PATRON EFFECTS:

For this game, your character will be offered power by an otherwordly entity. This has two main effects:

You gain a RESONANCE stat which starts at 1. Each time your draw on your supernatural powers, this begins to increase.
Each new point of Resonance grants you an EXPRESSION, a step in your transformation into something other, defined in part by your patron and in part by your personality, your actions, your strengths.
Mechanically, each Expression is more powerful than the last, and also more obvious.
For example, your first Expression might be Aura of Authority; you gain a bonus die whenever you exercise authority over others, and your voice gains a strange distortion, as if something else is speaking through you.
Your fifth Expression might be Crown of the Tyrant, a set of horns growing from your head surmounted by a burning halo, compelling bystanders to prostrate themselves in your presence and applying penalties to attempts to oppose your will..

We'll work on your Expressions together, making them entirely unique to you.

You also gain BLASPHEMIES at each odd-numbered Resonance level. These are fixed, based on your patron.

PATRONS:

Illuminors: Associated with pride, discipline, authority, honour, martial prowess, excellence, law, disdain, bigotry, supremacy. Aesthetically marked by light, gold, ivory, swords, crowns, wings.

Nightmares: Associated with sloth, perception, creativity, dreams, fixation, solipsism, disregard. Aesthetically marked by darkness, autumnal imagery, eyes, tentacles, exagerration of form, formlessness, books and art.

Avengers: Associated with wrath, violence, revenge, justice, self-destruction, endurance. Aesthetically marked by fire, iron, horns, hooves, axes, great size.

Scourges: Associated with envy, betrayal, loss, pain, survival, the sea, poisons, cold. Aesthetically marked by ice, salt, serpentine elements, whips.

Cubii: Associated with lust, hunger, obsession, passion, indulgence, desire, empathy. Aesthetically marked by claws, tails, sensuality, malleability.

Integrators: Associated with greed, hoarding, crafting, machines, money, callousness, self-reliance. Aesthetically marked by precious metals, rigidity, machinery, modularity.

 

[Random Word]

Lucien Maerlyn

Gnostic Alchemist in Search of the Truths that Unmake the World​

Combat Block

Offence	Defence
Melee: 5	Defence: 4
Ranged: 1	Parry: 4
Unarmed: 3	Evade: 4

Speed: 6

Initiative: 7

Combat Pool: 9

Ranged Pool: 1

Physical Soak: 2

Magic Resistance: 4

Health: 10

Condition: 20

By the looks of him, he was maybe a distant sixth son, set to be sent off to the clergy. Perhaps he went off to school in Definitely-Not-Paris and was drawn into sin and heretical ideas. He's quiet, timid, and reserved by nature. His wit is not quick, and he was often taken advantage of, overlooked, or dismissed, but he has a depth of intellect that, once discovered, astonishes those who can grasp it. Given time to ruminate, his vengeance could be inventive and terrible.

He found his people amongst the coffee houses frequented by Stonecutters and Humanists, impressing no one with his conversation but impressing many with treatises on mathematics and philosophy. He would listen quietly, then return the next day with startling critiques, lemmas, and extensions. In correspondence he was a towering intellect; in conversation he often shut down, or curled in upon himself. Once he was invited into a Stonecutters guild hall, and had access to their library, he disappeared from seminary entirely. He became an itinerant problem solver, travelling from guild hall to guild hall to help solve interesting problems, and learning the joys of the trades of the craftsman, province of lesser folk. At first these problems were in geometry, logic, ethics, or metaphysics, but, eventually, as he gained a reputation for his insight, they became more esoteric. He began to contribute to investigations of the nature of reality that hinted at powers of myth and legend, arcane secrets long lost to the world. The mysteries of alchemy and hermeticism.

Then the inquisitors arrived. The prince they had supported, dreamed an enlightened despot, had sacrificed them to deflect the inquisition's ire. The guildhall burned, his fellows cut down or arrested, and he leapt through a window to escape. As he lay broken and bleeding in an alleyway, he drew a geometrical proof in blood on the cobblestones, and called out to something greater than himself. Not to create, as he had always dreamed, and as his order had taught was moral and just, but for vengeance. He could not bring about a better world. He was no leader, and only passable with a sword as his tutors had always reminded him, but perhaps he might still become the bloody hand that cleared the path for better men to change the world. He would become a monster unfit for that shining future, but it was that or die a broken man in a dark alley, works burned, amounting to nothing. It was no choice at all, really.

Attributes
Mental	Social	Physical
Intellect: 4	Bearing: 2	Strength: 2
Intuition: 1	Guile: 2	Dexterity: 3
Willpower: 4	Composure: 1	Fitness: 3

Skills
Mental	Social	Physical
Academics: 5 (Alchemy)	Persuade: 0	Athletics: 3
Lore: 5 (Magic)	Subterfuge: 0	Melee: 2
Investigation: 2	Mingling: 0	Awareness: 2
Craft: 4 (Alchemy)	Empathy: 0	Defend: 1
Languages: 3 (Language of erudition - French, Latin, Italian eq?)	Animal Handling: 0	Stealth: 0
Medicine: 2	Perform: 0	Ranged: 0
Survival: 0	Languages: 0	Unarmed: 0
Knowledge: Investigation, Lore, Academics: Magic	Familiarity: Mingling, Empathy, and Subterfuge: Nobility	Knowledge II: Craft, Lore, Academics: Alchemy

 

[Meredith]

Audrey Taylor

Tailor and Troublemaker​

Combat Block

Offence	Defence
Melee: 3	Defence: 5
Ranged: 4	Parry: 2
Unarmed: 5	Evade: 2

Speed: 4
Initiative: 6
Combat Pool: 7

Ranged Pool: ?
Physical Soak: 2
Magic Resistance: 2

Health: 10
Condition: 20

[Placeholder content from character pitch. Picture also subject to change - it's so hard to find a painting of an older woman that suits The Vibe.]

A somber woman in her early fifties. Her pallid cheeks stand starkly against the laugh lines engraved about her mouth and eyes, grey eyes dulled and lips pressed tight. Once, she was known as a tailor, working along with her husband, a few skilled tradesmen, and a handful of apprentices. There was the occasional demand for custom-made work–especially from the workers of other trades–but the great majority of their income was of course derived from more crude, accessible garments, adjusted upon their purchase to the wearer. This was the task that [name] had most enjoyed: a new set of clothes was always a pleasant occasion, and the odd embellishment here or there had never been poorly received.

It fell apart so quickly. So fragile, that kind of life. A war waging, decimating the spending power of the local population as they struggled to pay for bread. Waves of refugees, only devaluing the price of labour and making resources more scarce, but where else were they to go? It was only reasonable to try to make do with limited stock, to accept the recycling of textiles for a lower price, to spend time mending things for those without thread. It did harm to the heart, to see people unclothed.

But it was not their altruism that sank the ship. The reality was that there was not enough money to be made in what business they could manage, and worse, the respiratory illness her husband had suffered for many years had only intensified with the crowding in the houses and the streets. The network she had relied on before in times of crisis–many involved with the Stoneworkers Mystery Cult, and others assorted craftsmen and women–had begun to hush, intimidated by a rush of investigations of traitorism and consorting with demons alike. While her work had once been admired in the eye of the public, very few were willing to collaborate with her. Their hesitation was reasonable, with the escalating political climate. With only one other tailor and an apprentice remaining, they were only taking on debt to order materials at their price.

And the fact of the matter was that they were taking on debt rapidly. The herbalist whose tonics seemed to ail her husband’s pains had always charged heftily for her skills, and she too was struggling with obtaining imports. Their supplier–a man that [name] had worked with for years–made the difficult decision to sell their debt to a collector, being unable to maintain his own living, or perhaps being unwilling to be involved in their ledgers. This was reasonable, but still devastating. The pressure to pay on their debt.. intensified. There were threats against their home, small acts of violence. .Slowly, the tools of their trade were repossessed. She pawned a good part of her personal possessions, hoping to keep the threats of having her husband incarcerated in a debtor’s prison at bay. Having little ability to practice the mercantile trade, she could no longer argue the tradesmen’s defense on his behalf. Their last workers abandoned the workshop, reasonably. There was nothing left.

Her husband died at home, alone, while she pleaded for a tincture to soothe a final pain from a healer who could not afford to give it to her without payment. A personal debt would not be paid so quickly, she knew, when others more powerful were first in line. This was reasonable, too, even if it pained them both.

This did nothing to cool the anger rising through her body, from flushed cheeks and hot tears, clenched arms and nails biting bloody into her palms. She had worked, worked hard and long, and for what? For this? No, no. She was quite done being reasonable.

It was almost time to burn it all down.

Attributes
Mental	Social	Physical
Intellect: 3	Bearing: 2	Strength: 2
Intuition: 4	Guile: 3	Dexterity: 3
Willpower: 2	Composure: 2	Fitness: 2

Skills
Mental	Social	Physical
Academics: 4 (Stonemason's Theology)	Animal Handling: 0	Athletics: 2
Administration: 2	Empathy: 2	Awareness: 3
Artisan: 4 (Tailor)	Mingling: 3	Defend: 2
Investigation: 3	Perform: 0	Melee: 0
Lore: 2	Persuade: 4 (Specialty)	Ranged: 0
Medicine: 0	Subterfuge: 2	Stealth: 2
Survival: 0	Languages: N/A	Unarmed: 0
Knowledge: Investigation, Lore, Academics: Occultist Activities & Literature	Familiarity: Mingling, Persuasion, and Subterfuge: Conversational Investigation	Training: Awareness, Defend, Stealth: Evasion in Close Quarters

 

[Bone2pick]

• Backstory
• Character Sheet

• Before he ever fashioned dolls, Viktor Krumbach fashioned shoes. He inherited the profession of cordwainer from his late uncle, Christoph, who had owned and operated a shoe shop in the town of Port d'Erbor. When his uncle passed away, the small, well-kept shop overlooking the bay was left to Viktor.
  
  Christoph’s former customers quickly sweetened on Viktor — even more so than his uncle, who had been a rather peculiar sort of fellow. More importantly, the customers appreciated the new cordwainer’s craftsmanship, as well as his eye for design. Despite Viktor’s satisfied customers, his trade afforded a meager livelihood. For one, he had competitors. And for another, times were simply (and sadly) hard.
  
  He fell into debt once when the price of leather spiked, and was forced to borrow from a friend. Embarrassed by his imposition, he fashioned a doll for said friend’s young daughter as a gesture of gratitude. It wasn’t the most well-polished product, it being Viktor’s first attempt, but it had an evident charm. After laying eyes on the doll, two of the girl’s cousins wanted one of their own. Their parents promptly sought out Viktor and placed what would be the first order for his dollmaking services.
  
  Seeing a potential revenue stream, Viktor bisected his shop: one side for crafting and displaying shoes, the other for children’s dolls. His newly offered services quickly proved to have a greater demand than his former. Over the next few years, primarily due to his dollmaking business, Viktor climbed his way out of debt and into a modest, but comfortable lifestyle.
  
  He took a wife during that time — Zora, a carpenter’s daughter. They had seven lovely years together before she died in childbirth. Viktor never entertained the idea of remarrying.
  
  One day an agent of Duke Auguste de 'lim met with Viktor. The agent explained that his grace planned to conscript additional soldiers, lots of them, and that they would require, among other things, shoes. Viktor was to help provide these shoes; he didn’t have a choice. And while doing so he wouldn’t have time to work on anything else. His dollmaking businesses would have to be put on hold. So it was.
  
  In order to increase production, Viktor was given an apprentice, a young man named Hubert Kern. Viktor was less than enthused at the prospect of working alongside someone, yet Hubert proved to be an affable and competent assistant. A friendship blossomed between the two. Hubert had a younger sister, Ellen, who would occasionally visit her brother at work. Viktor took a liking to the girl and crafted a special doll just for her.
  
  One wintery evening an angry mob coalesced. The townsfolk were furious over the duke’s conscriptions, high taxes, and overall strangling grip on their lives. When the mob encountered Viktor’s shop they put the torch to it. The dollmaker pleaded to be spared, but they knew about his service to the duke. The fact that Viktor had been forced to produce for the duke’s soldiers didn’t stay their hand. The mob needed to make a statement. They needed to hurt someone. His shop went up like a candle.
  
  Because Viktor had dwelt in living quarters above his shop, he was left homeless. Hubert and Ellen, ever compassionate, took him into their hovel.
  
  The dollmaker immediately came down with a fever, likely due from acute stress, which worsened into a life-threatening condition. Ellen, though still a child, acted as his nurse.
  
  Agents of the duke quickly uncovered the identities of the orchestrators of the mob. One of them had been Konrad Kern, Hubert and Ellen’s elder brother. Konrad went into hiding, but Hubert and Ellen were found and taken. Possibly killed, possibly imprisoned.
  
  
  
  Viktor was left alone, mad with fever. On his death bed in Hubert’s lonely home, he noticed Ellen’s doll. While looking at his precious creation, he reflected on his life, everything he’d lost, and the terrible cruelties he and his loved ones had suffered. Anger gave way to sorrow which gave way to despair.
  
  Then he heard a voice. A preternatural voice, from the doll. Its whispers offered Viktor something: life. It promised to save him, and empower him, for a price. He would have to change. Transform into a creature with the proper temperament to face the fire and pain and tyranny of men, for these were the tribulations of his age.
  
  And what was offered, was accepted.
• ATTRIBUTESStrength: 2
  Dexterity: 3
  Fitness: 2
  
  Intellect: 2
  Intuition: 3
  Willpower: 2
  
  Bearing: 4
  Guile: 2
  Composure: 3
  
  SKILLS• MENTAL
  Academics: 2
  Administration: 1
  Artisan: 3
  Craft: 3
  Investigation: 2
  Lore: 1
  Medicine: 0
  Survival: 0
  
  • SOCIAL
  Animal Handling: 0
  Empathy: 1
  Mingling: 1
  Perform: 0
  Persuade: 3
  Subterfuge: 0
  Languages: Kelene (native), Tradestongue (2), and Hrothgaard (2)
  
  • PHYSICAL
  Athletics: 2
  Awareness: 3
  Defend: 2
  Melee: 4 (chain weapons)
  Ranged: 0
  Stealth: 2
  Unarmed: 2
  
  Knowledge: Administration (small business), Artisan and Craft (dollmaking)
  
  Familiarity: Persuade and Empathy (children), Mingling (market)
  
  Training: Athletics (balance), Melee (strangling), Unarmed (dirty fighting)
  
  
  Defence
  Defence: 5
  Parry: NA
  Evade: NA
  Block: NA
  
  Offence
  Melee: 7 (chain weapons)
  Ranged: 3
  Unarmed: 5
  
  Speed: 4
  Initiative: 7
  Combat Pool: 7
  Physical Soak: 2
  Magic Resistance: 2
  Health: 10
  Condition: 20