For the purposes of this Character Creation Example, we'll be creating "Seraph", a Night Caste Assassin.
It's very important to have a solid concept before you start putting numbers to paper, and so here we consider some of the details related to our character. Seraph is a member of the Night Caste, a quiet Assassin currently suffering from Amnesia who remembers very little of her past. She's graceful, attractive, yet something of an enigma. Though even she isn't totally aware of it, she's a master of unarmed combat and a master thief.
As a member of the night caste, her anima is usually a billowing aura of ghostly whites and golds, tinged with some purple and purple-grays. When her anima reaches totemic level, it takes on a ghostly-white image of a stalking cat with bright gold reflective eyes. Lastly, in terms of motivation, her primary drive at character creation is to rediscover her memories and past. While most Solars would have a more epic motivation, this is a necessary first step for this character and exactly how "epic" it ends up being depends in large part on the Storyteller.
We'll also note down the Amnesia as a two point flaw!
Now that we have a basic concept, we can decide how the attributes will fall into line for these characters. Since this character is a highly trained killer, we'll put Physical Attributes primary. Between Social and Mental, the Mental Attributes seem more useful to the concept, so those will go secondary -- leaving Social in the third spot. All attribute dots start at 1!
We thus have 8 dots to divide between our Physical Attributes. We know we want Seraph to be graceful, and the description for Dexterity 5 ("almost inhumanly swift and graceful") definately seems to fit. So we'll place 4 of our eight points there. She should be incredibly resilient, carefully toned and incredibly healthy, so we'll put three of our points into Stamina 4. That leaves one point for Strength 2; our assassin obviously relies on grace and skill rather than bulk to inflict damage!
We have 6 dots to divide between our Mental Attributes, and we know right away that Seraph is incredibly astute and seldom misses anything. So we'll throw three of our points into Perception 4. We also know that she is quick, able to alter plans midstream and carefully adjust her methods, so we'll put two points into Wits 3. The last point goes into Intelligent, leaving her with rather average overall smarts.
With only 4 dots left for Social Attributes, we might want to come back here later. None the less, we'll put two points into Appearance for 3 dots. The other two dots go into Charisma 2 and Manipulation 2. We might come back here later with freebies to boost these, or she might not be the hugely social assassin...
As a member of the Night Caste, we know that Seraph automatically has Athletics, Awareness, Dodge, Larceny and Stealth as her Caste Abilities. In addition, we'll select her five favored abilities. Combat-wise, she focuses on Martial Arts and Thrown, for her assassination techniques. She's also a natural dancer, with Performance favored. Lastly, we'll give her both Investigation (for gathering intelligence) and Linguistics (for a natural aptitude for languages).
Now these abilities cover most of Seraph's true talents, but it's important to grab all the non-Favored abilities you might need first, so we'll see where we might need to spend some of these 18 "anywhere" abilities. Just looking over the sheet, we know that Seraph might very well need a bit of Resistance and Ride. So we'll put one dot in the first, and two dots in the second. She was also well trained by her former master to handle mental strain, and thus has an Intgrity of 3. We'll also give her a Lore of 1 to cover a bit of lite Education -- she can read and write, and knows a little of history, but was never trained as a scholar. Lastly, the GM suggests that she might want to grab a Occult skill of two though he doesn't explain why.... We agree!
That more or less covers what she needs from her non-caste/favored abilities, so we thus have 19 points to spend here. Since we're limited to only three dots at character creation, let's get our core competencies here. We know we'll want high skill in Martial Arts, Athletics and Stealth -- so we put three dots in all of those. We'll throw 2 dots in Performance, 1 in Investigation and Linguistics as well. We'll also grab two dots of Thrown, leaving us with four dots left to spend where we might need them. We'll toss two points in Awareness, and one in each of Dodge and Larceny.
We know we want to boost some of these abilities, however. First, we know we want a Martial Arts, an Athletics, and a Stealth at 4. That costs 3 bonus points! We'll also put two dots in Larceny (for a rating of 3), and one more dot in both Dodge (2) and Awareness (3).
We'll spend our Linguistics dot on Old Realm, meaning our character can speak the ancient language of Gods and Elementals, mostly because the Storyteller says it'll fit into our lost memories. "Riverspeak" is our native languages, but we choose to make our exact home a bit hard to find by spend 1 bonus point here. We thus have native-level dialects in Great Forks, Nexus and Larisian.
Next up, we have our characters Backgrounds! We have 7 dots here, and looking over the list, the Familiar background catches our eyes. We want a Black Panther! So, we plop down three of our points toward that Background! You've also been in the Village of Nulam for a while, and met a lot of people through the Tavern. So we'll grab a Contacts background of 1, centered on "Detrik Orone" the Tavernkeeper. While our character was more or less taken in by the Villagers naked and without anything, she's spent a year working as a Taverngirl and has managed to earn a bit of a nestegg, so we'll give her Resources 1. Our last two points, after looking over the Background list, we decide to put into the Manse background. None of the others really fit, and this is easy to work into our background -- so our character has a small fortress of solitude nearby, and carries a small magical gem with her.
We don't really need any more background points, so at this point we assign our characters Virtue dots. We know we want our character to be a very driven cold individual, willing to do horrible things if necessary, and not really getting worked up about a whole hell of a lot. So we assign her a Compassion of 1, and a Conviction of 4. This costs three of our points, since all Virtues start at 1 for free! Our last two points we'll divide evenly between Temperance and Valor, but we can't help but think that Temperance is a bit low. So we'll spend 3 bonus points and boost it to 3.
We also assign our Virtue Flaw at this point -- we already know what we want here, so its easy! "Heart of Flint", which deadens out Seraph's emotions and renders her ruthlessly efficient, fits perfectly. So we note that down, as well as its Limit Break Condition of "The character is frustrated by the intemperate or childish nature of the world around him." Every time that condition applies, we'll roll four dice and add the successes to our Limit Break bar. Once we hit 10, our character goes sociopathic!
Now we have 10 Charms to assign to Seraph. Since she's a master of Unarmed Combat, we'll start with the Martial Arts styles that she'll need to completely dominate her opponents. Just because we need her to be supernaturally skilled at all kinds of martial manuevers, we'll grab the First Excellency for Martial Arts. This lets her double base dice pool for only 9 motes! After this, it's just a matter of whether we want Solar Hero or Snake Style. Of the two, Snake Style definately seems to fit our "graceful and deadly" idea. So we'll use it! We'll take four charms, just to give Seraph a basic mastery of the Style. This takes us all the way to Snakes Strikes The Heel, giving Seraph a reflexive Martial Arts reply to any attacks that hit her. This requires us to grab Martial Arts 5 for one bonus point though.
We also want our character to be good at some related but non-combat activities! So we'll start with some basic Excellencies, grabbing the Second Excellencies for Awareness and Stealth. We'll also give her Flawless Pickpocketing Technique for Larceny, letting her palm items without even rolling in most cases. Lastly, Easily Overlooked Presence Method will give her exceptional stealth capabilities over and above her Excellency, letting her just go unnoticed when she wants to stand to the side and observe.
With one last charm left, we head back to Martial Arts. "Essence Fangs and Scales" increases both our defense and our offense in all kinds of interesting ways, so is a good choice. We'll also grab a quick combo for 2 bonus points, giving us a Serpent Strikes The Heel/First Martial Arts Excellency. We'll call it "Coiled Serpent Rattle Attack", and describe it as a rapidly building corona of white energy that pulses and rattles, striking out in tune with your counterattack as your hit in combat.
We still have three final bonus points left, and we'll dump these into Specialties. This buys us six "in caste or favored" speciaties for us to use. We plop two of them in Martial Arts, grabbing (Unarmed Combat x2). We'll put one of them into a Stealth speciality, "During Combat", helping to Ninja Vanish. Two points will go into Performance, making us a master of the Dance (x2). Our last specialty goes to Investigation, "Assassinations", a flexible speciality good at planning and following up on such things.
We mark our Essence at 2, and our Willpower 7 (Conviction 4 + Temperance 3). Both of those are more than acceptable, so there's no reason to fiddle with them for now. We also have one intimacy to pick, due to Seraph's Compassion of 1. Since she wants to fit in with the rest of the group, she chooses "The Village of Nulam". She's a lot more cold blooded than most of them, but she still cares about the Village that's taken care of her for the last year.
We note down damage stats for unarmed attacks, throwing knives, and our characters Armor options. Join Battle is equal to our Wits + Awareness, or 6 dice in total. Seraph's DV is equal to Dexterity (5) + Dodge (+2) + Essence (+2) divided by two, for a total of 4.5 (rounded to 5). Our PDV with a Punch is 7. Our MDV, for mental defense, is equal to our Willpower (7) + Integrity (3) + Essence (+2), divided by two, or 6. Lastly, we note our Essence Pools. Personal is (Essence x 3) + Willpower, for a total of 13 motes. Peripheral is (Essence x 7) + Willpower + Sum of Virtues, for a total of 31 motes.
Go to SeraphPage for the Final Sheet for Seraph!
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