Alesmiter: Character Creation Challenge: Day 17

Today takes us to Germany for what I understand to be one of the most popular RPGs in Central Europe. I almost played this in my old gaming group, when we saw the 3.0, 3.5, 4 escaltor we started looking for a follow on to D&D 3.0; my friend Cucch had recently come across the game in his work and a game producer for Atari. After looking at the mechanics, his wife said 'No', multople die rolls to resolve climbing a wall were excessive in her estimation. Mine too. She gave me his copy last year and now I present the results to you.

I'm making a format change to these posts, and listing the completed character first for any TLDR responses to my stream of consciousness posts. All abbreviations will be explained below - or not.

Janar ibn Charhil Mhanadistani Burglar

CO 14 CL 12 IN 12 CH 8

DE 13 AG 13 CN 10 ST 10

SO 5 HT 1.81m WT 76kg

VI 25 ED 29 RM 8

BAV 11 BPV 10 BRV 10 BI 11

Dagger 1d6+1 Damage

No Armor

Combat Talents: Brawling +1, Daggers +5, Sabers +3, Throwing Knives +4, Wrestling +2

Physical Talents: Acrobatics +6, Athletics +2, Body Control +5, Climb +6, Dance +1, Hide +5, Perception +4, Pick Pockets +2 Sneak +6, Willpower +2

Social Talents: Etiquette +1, Fast Talk +5, Human Nature +4, Masquerade +4, Persuade +4, Seduce +1, Streetwise +5

Lore Talents: Appraise +6, Calculate + 3, Engineering +1

Mother tongue (Tulamidya) 10; 2nd language (Garethi - the name of the big medieval European culture) 8

Artisan Talents Farming +1, Open Locks +8, Paint/Draw +2

Advantages: Dwarfnose, Social Chameleon, Special Item (20 SO worth of Contacts);

Disadvantages: Obligation (He belongs to Mousavi trading clan. They have factors in most major cities (his Contacts). He must report into the factor, make an accounting of himself and share at least 10% of his profit (no matter how he gained it) and do any task requested.) Greed -1

Equipment: Dark clothing, Dark hood and cloak, dark gloves, lockpicks, 10m of rope, grappling hook, hidden dagger.

Appearance. He has light broe=wn skin, chestnut hair and (unusually for a Tulamides) gray eyes.

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The Dark Eye has a well edited character generation system, walking you through it step by step with page references to the more detailed information. I'll follow along., but may change some of the descriptions.

1. Character Concept - I want to create an Aladdin-like thief

2. Human or Pointy Eared - Aladdin is quite human so human. For culture Tulamides are the in setting ersatz-Middle Eastern. This gives me the following infomation on my character: Skin tone Light brown, dark hair, dark eyes. Height HT = 1.55-1.96m Weight WT = HT -105 kg. Vitality Points VP+10 Endurance Points EP +10 Reisitance to Magic RM -4 ; Talents (Skills) Dance +1 Appraise +1, Calculate +1

3. Profession Group - They list Fighter, Outdoor Specialist (Ranger), Shady Characters (Bards 7 Thieves) and Scholars (Mages and Clerics) Aladdin was basically a thief, so Shady Character.

4. Sub-Culture - Just as Iranian (Persians), Arabs, Turks and Israelis are all considered Middle Eastern, but very different, The Dark Eye offers more granular cultures than just Tulamides. They have the sub-cultures of Mhanadistan (urban, fantasy Baghdad) and Novadi (Bedouin) . Aladdin was a city boy, so Mhanadistani for me. An advantage of this is that it doesn't cost any Generation Points (GP). More Character Information: Combat Talents Brawling +1, Daggers +1, Sabers +1, Wrestling +1

Social Talents: Etiquette +1, Fast Talk +2, Human Nature +1, Seduce +1, Streetwise +1

Lore Talents Mother tongue (Tulamidya) CL-2; 2nd language (Garethi - the name of the big medieval European culture) CL-4

Artisan Talents Farming +1

All talent scores are additive, if I gain Daggers +1 again, I will have Daggers +2.

5. Profession - looking at the options under Shady Characters (Burglar, Mountebank, Pirate and Rogue), I'm going with Burglar, although Aladdin would probably be classified a Rogue in this game.

Combat Talents Daggers +3, Throwing Knives +1, Wrestling +1

Physical Talents: Acrobatics +2, Athletics +2, Body Control +5, Climb +6, Hide +5, Perception +2, Pick Pockets +2 Sneak +5, Willpower +2

Social Talents: Human Nature +1, Masquerade +1, Streetwise +4

Lore Talents: Appraise +4, Calculate + 2, Engineering +1

Artisan Talents: Open Locks +7, Paint/Draw +2

Equipment: Dark clothing, Dark hood and cloak, dark gloves, lockpicks, 10m of rope, grappling hook, hidden dagger.

Special Item - if selected as an advantage a total of 20 SO worth of Contacts.

6. Attributes (Warning Number Crunching Ahead!) - Everyone starts with 110 Generation Points which are used to buy Attributes and Advantages (more later). As I selected a Human from a standard culture, I haven't spent any yet - Elf would have been 25 GP off the top!

Attributes must be between 8-14, and each Profession requires specific minimums, which I'll list in parentheses after the Attribute. Attributes are divided into Mental and physical, and then there is Social Standing which is different yet again.

Mental: CO = Courage (12) CL = Cleverness (8) IN = Intuition (8) CH = Charisma (8)

Physical: DE = Dexterity (13) AG = Agility (12) CN = Constitution (8) ST = Strength (8)

SO = Social Standing (<8) Social Standing is initalliy limited to 1 (Criminal/Slave) to 12 (Minor Nobility); Burglar is capped at 7.

Initial Attributes

CO 14 CL 12 IN 12 CH 8

DE 13 AG 13 CN 10 ST 10

SO 5

7. Advantages and Disadvantages: I've used 97 of my 110 GP and have 13 left to purchase Advantages. I want to purchase the Special Item (20 SO worth of Contacts) which is 7 GP; Social Chameleon (which helps him blend in across social classes) and Dwarfnose (a Gift that enables him to find secret and hidden doors and compartments in stone. Handy for a Burglar) 12 GP . That totals 26 GP worth of advantages and I only have 13 left. I could change my selections, but I'll choose some Disadvantages that grant the additional GP instead. Obligations (he works for an organization that tasks him and jerks his chain regularly) -12 GP and one point of Greed (he is a burglar) for -1 GP

Talents - he's already picked up a fair number of Talents from his background, now I get to improve them and round them out. He get (CL+IN)*20 in Talent Points or 240 TP. But it's not a one to one point for point increase, each step has an increasing cost and all steps must be purchased, i.e. if I want to increase his Saber from +1 to +3, I have to buy +2 ( 6 TP) and +3 (9 TP) individually. Also, there are different cost classes of Talents - Swords (sabers) being moderately expensive to increase.

Not going to go through the numbers I crunched, but in the end he raises

Combat: Throwing Knives to 4, Daggers to 5, and Sabers to 4

Physical Acrobatics to 6, Perception to 4 and Sneak to 6

Social Fast Talk to 5, Human Nature to 4 (so he can take Persuade), Masquerade to 4, Persuade - buys the skill and raises it 4 ranks

Lore Appraise to 6

Artisan Open Lock to 8

I have 9 TP left I can add to my combat values later.

8. Vital Statistics

Vitality VI (hit points) = (CN +CN +ST)/2 + VP = (10+10+10)/2+10 = 25

Endurance ED (CO+CN+AG)/2 + EP = (14+10+13)/2 + 10 = 28.5 round up to 29

Resistance to Magic RM = (CO+CL+CN)/5 - RM = (14+12+10)/5 - 4 = 3.2 round up to 8

9. Combat Values