Character Description & Details

Posted by EarthDragon on 1st September 2015.

What does your character look like? How old is he or she? What sort of first impression do they make? When they pray, what deity or deities are called on, if any? What led them to become an adventurer? This section and the following sections help you establish your character’s identity by creating details that make them more lifelike, like a main character in a novel or a movie. For many players, the action lies here, in defining the character as a person to be role-played. When you first play a character, it’s fine to leave the details sketchy. As you play the character over time, you will get a better sense of who you want your character to be. You will develop their details in much the same way that an author develops a character over several drafts of a novel or over several novels in a series. This section covers alignment (the character’s place in the struggle between good and evil), vital statistics (name, gender, age, and so on), and personal description. Religion is dealt with in the page on Religion in the Background section of the site. For those with many years of experience creating their own characters, parts of this and related pages will only be slightly relevant and can be skimmed over, as long as you get the sections that relate specifically to the races, classes and circumstances of this campaign; much of this material is adapted from the core PHB.

Alignment

Alignment in the Chosen of the Unification campaign is very much as per the rules contained in the Players’ Handbook on pages 103 to 106. Ignore any religious connections with alignment for now as the alignments of the deities and their followers are provided in the chapter on Religion. Lawful Good is an extremely rare alignment, even when compared to normal games. In fact, it is virtually unheard of, and rarely trusted when it is.

Vital Statistics

This section offers advice as you determine your character’s name, gender, age, height, and weight. Start with some idea of your character’s background and personality, and use that idea to help you add the details that bring your character to life.

Name

Invent or choose a name that fits your character’s race and class. A name is a great way for you to start thinking about your character’s background. For instance, a dwarf’s name might be the name of a great dwarven hero, and your character may be striving to live up to that name. Alternatively, the name could be that of an infamous coward, and the character could be bent on proving that they are not like their namesake. Note that modern names are extremely rare and do not really fit the flavour of the campaign, and also note (from the names of races, classes and prestige classes) that Basic is a rather harsh, guttural language which often makes names strange to modern ears.

Gender

Your character may be either male, female, of no specific gender, or inhabit the body of one gender while identifying with another. Most characters exhibit one gender or another, rather than no specific gender, but any race can have individuals of no specific gender, and the gender of individual characters is entirely up to the player's choice.

Age

You can choose or randomly generate your character’s age. If you choose it, it must be at least the minimum age for the character’s race and class (see the table below), but can be any adult age short of old age. The classes that make up each of the three categories in the table are listed in the notes below the table.

* Karath-nulah, Ravenna, Rogaku, Selusid, Veratni, Wilder.

** Fedaykin, Forreska, Freth-yarl, Ghul-yarl, Hekhmani, Karamtsu-toh, Phaedim, Remen-kara, Rendathi, Warlock.

*** Draetha, Ghul-na, Illumanis, Noh-li, San-li, Savant, Shokatsu, Suhl-mat, Svarti, Terran-rah, Vraedun, Wau-ken, Wu Jen.

With age, a character’s physical ability scores decrease and his or her mental ability scores increase (see the table below). The effects of each aging step are cumulative. However, none of a character’s ability scores can be reduced below 1 in this way. When a character reaches venerable age, the DM secretly rolls his or her maximum age, which is the number from the Venerable column in the table below plus the result of the dice roll indicated on the Maximum Age column in the table, and records the result, which the player does not know. A character who reaches his or her maximum age dies of old age at some time during the following year, as determined by the DM. The maximum ages are for player characters. Most people in the world at large die from pestilence, accidents, infections, or violence before getting to venerable age.

* -1 to Strength, Dexterity and Constitution; +1 to Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma.

** -2 to Strength, Dexterity and Constitution; +1 to Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma.

*** -3 to Strength, Dexterity and Constitution; +1 to Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma.

Looks, Personality & Background

You can detail your character to almost any degree you like. As you play the character, you will probably come up with more details you will want to add. Just check with the DM if you want to do anything really unusual, just to see if there is anything extra you need to consider.

Looks

Decide what your character looks like using the descriptions of the various races available as a starting point. Characters with high Charisma scores tend to be better-looking than those with low Charisma scores, though a character with high Charisma could have strange looks, giving them a sort of exotic beauty. They could also be plain, but with a strong presence and an engaging personality. Likewise, a character with a low Charisma might be quite appealing to look at, but have all the charm and personality of a rusty nail. Your character can be right- or left-handed, ambidextrous, or even just as useless with either hand. You can use your character’s looks to tell something about his or her personality and background.

Personality

Decide how your character acts, what they like, what they want out of life, what scares them, and what makes them angry. Race and alignment are good places to start when thinking about your character’s personality, but they are bad places to stop. Make your lawful neutral lo'menni (or whatever) different from every other lawful neutral lo'menni. A handy trick for making an interesting personality for your character is including some sort of conflict in their nature. Your character’s personality can (and probably will) change over time. Just because you decide some basic facts about your character’s personality upon creation doesn’t mean you need to abide by those facts as if they were holy writ. Let your character grow and evolve the way real people do. Traits and flaws also help to flesh out your character’s appearance or personality, and these are dealt with on their own pages and have their own rules.

Background

Decide what your character’s life has been like up until now. Here are a few questions to get you thinking:

• How did they decide to be an adventurer?
• How did they acquire their class? A fighter, for example, might have been in the militia, may come from a family of soldiers, may have trained in a martial school, or may be a self-taught warrior.
• How did they get their starting equipment? Did they assemble it piece by piece over time? Was it a parting gift from a parent or mentor?
• Do any of the character’s personal items have special significance to them?
• What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to them?
• What’s the best thing that’s ever happened to them?
• Do they stay in contact with their family? What do their relatives think of them?

Customising Your Character

The rules for creating your character provide a common ground for players, but you can tweak the rules to make your character unique, with the DM's permission. Minor changes don't require much notice, any substantive changes, however, must be approved by the DM well in advance of the game.

Race: The rules for a character of a given race apply to most but not all people of that race. Your character’s circumstance while growing up may mean that they gain all of the innate abilities from their race, but none of the cultural ones. The character could, arguably, pick up benefits from a different race if they were raised by parents of a vastly different race to themselves. You could probably talk the DM into giving your character some special bonuses to balance the loss of the cultural features if your case is well thought out and logically consistent. For example, an Anath that was, for some bizarre reason, raised from infancy by lo'menni might retain the racial traits of an anath (such as the immunities), but lose the cultural ones (such as the weapon proficiencies and the merchant training) and instead gain something of the lo'menni focus (perhaps to half the usual modifications, rounded up) in order to reflect the difference of their upbringing.

Class: Some classes already give you plenty of room to customize your character, and there are already a wide array of primary classes to choose from, as well as a number of prestige classes. With the DM’s approval, however, you could change some of your class features. For instance, if you want a freth-yarl who used to work for the rokagu guild (rather than for a Citizen) as an enforcer but who is now trying to become a legitimate bodyguard, they could be proficient only with the weapons and armour available to rokagu, have 4 skill points per level instead of 2, and access to Bluff and Sense Motive as class skills. Otherwise, they would be a regular freth-yarl. Again, a convincing argument and logical consistency will be needed to sway the DM here, and minor changes will require little notice, but significant changes must be approved well in advance of the game.

Equipment: Your equipment can look pretty much the way you want it to look to match your character’s style. One san-li’s quarterstaff might be a plain, straight length of wood, while another san-li’s is gnarled, twisted, and engraved with mystic runes. Your character might have some items that aren’t on the equipment lists (see the Equipment page). Agree with the DMs on what a new item would do and how much it would cost and then your character can have it. Sometimes you see a weapon in a movie or read about one in a book, and you want your character to use that weapon. If it’s not on the weapon list in the Equipment chapter, try to find a weapon on the list that seems equivalent and check with one of the DMs and they will get back to you. The primary DM always has the final say.

Height & Weight

You may either choose your character's height and weight from the ranges given in the table below (or mentioned in the racial descriptions, where they are given), or you can roll randomly for them. Think about what your ability scores might say about your character's height and weight; a weak but agile character might be thin, while a strong and tough character might be tall, or just heavy. To use the tables, find the race of your character, and choose the base height and weight for the gender of your character (if you are playing a character of indeterminate gender, either pick one or average the two genders' values) from the table. Then roll the stated number of dice for the height modifier and add it to the base height. Then, using the same die roll result you got from the random roll for the height, multiply that result by the die roll or quantity specified in the Weight Modifier column and add the result of that multiplication to the base weight for your character to get their actual weight in pounds. Complicated, but that's the 3.5 way used in the PHB and reproduced here, but with all the extra races tabulated for you.