In keeping with the tone and setting of this campaign, and to handle the West Marches arrangement, some character options are unavailable, and others have been re-flavoured or modified. This section serves as a guide for creating legal characters.
Unless otherwise stated, non-PHB content is not available. If there is a non-PHB option you want to use, I am happy to consider it. When this happens, I will update the relevant section here to explicitly allow or forbid it.
Character Creation Process
Use the following process to create a character:
- Generate ability scores as described below
- Add common features
- Select a Race
- Select a Background
- Select a Class
- Advance to 3rd level
- Add Gear
Ability Score Generation
To generate ability scores, use a deck of cards. Take the following cards, and shuffle them: one 9, all four 8s, one 7, two 6s, two 4s, and two 3s. Deal them randomly into six pairs. Calculate the sum of each pair of cards, and assign them to your abilities in any order you choose.
Alternatively, you may use the following array. It will always produce weaker characters than the above method: [15,14,12,11,10,8].
This method is more involved than others. It is intended to introduce a degree of randomness into character creation while still producing balanced and interesting ability score distributions.
Common Features
All PCs are Medium size, and have a speed of 6m/30ft.
Languages
All PCs can speak Brashkan, the common tongue of the Icereach States, but are illiterate. If a PC knows additional languages, they may select them from the following:
Human Languages:
- Brashkan: The most common language in the Icereach states
- Draxen: The official language of the Draxiel Empire is used extensively in legal and religious texts. Spoken Draxen is highly dialectal across the empire.
- Eveclaise: The language of Eveclon
- Torskaldi: The language of the Torskaldi Wilds natives
- Torvish: The language of New Torvany, roughly derived from High Torven
- Viccarassi: The language of Viaccaro and the Free Cities
Non-Human Languages:
- Dwarven: The native tongue of dwarves. Outside their homeland, dwarves are normally forced to use human languages, so Dwarven is not known widely outside of scholarly circles.
- Elfin: Spoken by the elusive elfs, this language is difficult to grasp due to each word often meaning a combination of several abstract concepts.
Ancient Languages:
- High Torven: The ancient language of a fallen mage empire
- Volic Script: The written language of most societies of the dark age. This includes several languages, but they are generally mutually intelligible. The spoken form is unknown.
XP and Leveling
XP is awarded for clearing or overcoming rooms of an appropriate difficulty tier, and is awarded after an adventure. On reaching 100xp, a PC advances to the next level, resets their xp to 0, and adds any remaining earned xp.
Advancing a level is the same as normal, except for rolling HP. You may choose to either roll the additional HD, and increase your maximum HP by that amount plus you constitution modifier (as usual), or you may reroll all HD. When re-rolling everything, you max HP only increases if you roll above your previous HP, but does not go down if you roll poorly.
Example: A 5th level fighter with a constitution modifier of +3 and current max HP of 40 levels up. They may either increase their max HP by 1d10+3, or roll 6d10+18, and set their max HP to that value if it is greater than 40.
Feats
There are currently no available feats, as I have not looked at them. If you would like to take a feat, let me know so I can approve or outlaw it globally.