Dice Slayers - Characters

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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

 

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

 

[Wixard]

Salus
As a younger daughter born to the cadet branch of a minor country barony, Salus was given to the church at the age of eight to secure her education and future. Though she still has a great fondness for the countryside and the outdoors, within the church she found more care and attention than her family had to spare for a relatively unimportant daughter well outside the line of succession. She remembers the local abbey as a blessedly tranquil place, for she’s never been intimidated by the hard work that other abbey wards and novices might resent. She wrote often to her family, and occasionally received replies or even visits, particularly from her elder cousin, the Baron’s firstborn son, who always seemed ready to make time for her.

When she was 12, she was chosen along with two other wards to be sent to an inner-city cloister to train as an acolyte. Over the years she often yearned for the simple purity of her former home in the countryside abbey, far isolated from society’s greater problems. When she was 17, she drew the unwanted attentions of a prominent young noble, and a passing knight-priestess (Saeranna O’Dell) removed her from the situation by selecting her as a squire.

For the next two years, she spent most of her spare time honing her martial skills under the tutelage of her master as she travelled the country. Saeranna’s small, unpopular knightly sect focussed on serving the common folk and pursuing corruption within the church, owing their existence to their popularity with the commons and a few discrete, high-ranking sponsors within noble society.

They rarely met with other members of their order, but when they did it was an opportunity for fierce-but-friendly physical and theological sparring matches. Saeranna prepared Salus well for both, until she was killed in an unfortunate ambush by suspiciously well-armed brigands.

Salus

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