Character Creation

Concept
Come up with an idea, a vision, or a thought to describe your character. Are they noble or dastardly? How do they look and act? What drives them out into the skies, away from home, and across the vast soars? Characters in Skies of Fortuna are not built upon rote roles. A character’s profession does not define who they are, though it informs what they can do. This is one of many reasons why characters gain several professions over their lives; people and characters are both broader than a sample archetype.

There is no Fighter—everyone fights. Those who don't have a very real chance of dying.

There is no Rogue—every character can sneak or stab someone in the back. Some are better better at those skills, and some will approach each situation differently, but still resort to similar tricks.

There is no Wizard—everyone *could* learn magic (except Medua), but very few do. There are those who make a study of magic, and those who cast spells, but there are no archetypical wizards who throw fire around at will.

Any character can become anything. Come up with an idea, and go from there.

Step 1 - Race
Choose what race your character will be. Each has strengths and weaknesses, and while some are more common than others, all make for interesting characters. Choose a race: Avoral, Human, Medua, or Ursa.

[avoral sheet]

[human sheet]

[medua sheet]

[ursa sheet]

Avoral
Begin with AGI 2, one Perception skill rank, the Avoral Feathered Flight ability, and one other ability of their choosing.

Human
Begin with one Human ability, one additional connection, two additional skill ranks, and one other ability of their choosing. Human characters roll 1d6 for their trait bonus instead of 1d4.

Medua
Begin with WIT 2, three Crafting skill ranks, the Medua Airborne ability, another ability of their choice, and the Thinkspeak language. Medua have six health instead of nine. They are incapable of learning any spells or casting any form of magic.

Ursa
Begin with STR 2, one Nature skill rank, the Ursa Honed Senses ability, and one other ability of their choosing.

Name
Your name is your own. Each race usually follows specific conventions, but if you have something in mind, go nuts.

Avoral
Avoral names are generally alliterative or melodic, following some rhyming convention.

Human
Human names are varied, though usually a given name preceeding a surname or house name.

Medua
As in keeping with thinkspeak, medua names are usually specific concepts, emotions, feelings, or ideas bound to a character.

Ursa
If hailing from a traditional Sal upbringing, an ursa‘s given name may be follow by their clan name, depending on their region or the type of ursa. See their page for more details.

Player name
That’s you.

Home Sky
Choose one of the ten skies as your home sky, where you come from. You begin play with access to your homesky regional ability as well as wherever your game is taking place. Choose a home sky from the following: Dalaam, Ushua, Hozavi, Hila, Sal, Andi Mone, Crean, Damasta, Waren, or Ferra

Background
This is who you were. You will be allocating 1 skill rank according to your background. Given a character’s past, they are considered Familiar in one of their background’s respective skills. Characters are not required to choose a background, and can begin play without a defined backstory.
 * Artisan: (Crafting, Lore, or Perform) Ex. tailor, cook, carpenter
 * Entertainer: (Acrobatics, Perform, or Sleight) Ex. bard, actor, singer
 * Hunter: (Nature, Perception, or Ranged-Combat) Ex. sky fisher, hunter, defender
 * Labourer: (Crafting, Fighting, or Sailing) Ex. miner, woodcutter, blacksmith
 * Merchant: (Geography, Lore, or Persuasion) Ex. trader, shopkeep, merchant
 * Military: (Fighting, Perception, Sailing, or Ranged-Combat) Ex. militia, soldier, mercenary
 * Noble: (Geography, Lore, or Sailing) Ex. aristocrat, scholar, aureate
 * Outlaw: (Ranged-Combat, Sleight, or Stealth) Ex. pirate, cutthroat, criminal

Money
1 gold piece = 10 silver flans (rectangle oblongs) =100 brass coins. You start play with 5gp’s worth of money on hand, plus whatever you didn’t spend during character creation.

You’ll be earning loot from in game activities, as well as end of session reward, generally about 10g per session, unless other rewards are presented. See End of Session.

Infamy
How well your name and the stories of your deeds are known can yield much more than most think, from free lodging and aid to favours and even grand gestures and invitations. Likewise, more notoriety means you are easily recognizable and can be identified at a glance—not so good if you’re trying not to be found.

Your Infamy starts at 0, so write 0 inside the hex.

An Infamy check is Your Infamy + d20. LIke every check, meeat or beat an 8 to succeed.

While not necessary, your title on an airship adds to your character. If you‘re on a ship with the other PCs, this is a good place to write your position.

At 10 Infamy, consider promotion to Officer Rank.

Health
Whenever characters are successfully attacked, they mark damage down by checking off appropriate boxes on their health track. depending of the severity of the attack inflicted.

Avorals, humans, and ursas all begin with 9 Health boxes, 5 Scratches, 3 Wounds, and 1 Injury. Medua, however, are more fragile, and begin play with 6 Health boxes, 3 Scratches, 2 Wounds, and 1 Injury.

Your health may increase with higher Spirit ranks, or you may wear armour to negate damage.

Weapons & Armour
Most people in the Skies are armed, though often it is s blade of poor quality. Any weapon is considered lethal, while unarmed characters are considered non-lethal, though they may still damage (and inflict lethal damage if they have the Brawler ability).

You start with a poor quality weapon (worth 10g) of your choice. Armour is often ineffective and unwieldy for most, though those embroiled in conflict might make investment. Despite difference in style, make, and material, all armours fall under the same ratings.e categories above. Armour takes damage before the character. Damage that piles up (overflows rone first) causes armour to break, and it remain1s broken until repaired. At the end of every day, any unbroken armour that has been damaged is considered repaired.

Armour is represented as circles to the left of your Health boxes.

Light Armour confers a +1 bonus when calculating physical damage. Heavy Armour confers a +2 bonus, while shields confer a +1 bonus. Characters may only effectively wear one type of armour at a time.

When a character is successfully wounded (they acquire an additional wound modifier), their armour becomes damaged. Damaged armour loses its +1/+2 modifier until it is repaired.

All new characters begin with suitable—if ragged and poor quality—clothing. They may also choose up to three commonly procured possessions, such as: "Weapon Bandolier, Belt Pouch, Ritual Chalk, Marlin Spike, Grappling Hook, Hammer, Tankard, Small Mirror, Writing Set and Journal, Flint & Steel, Pocket Knife, Personal Lantern, Flask, Musical Instrument, Chest, Travel Sac, Small Pet."

Step 3 - Traits
Traits describe your character’s overall prowess and talent. Buying or allocating ranks into each grants certain bonuses. Each races has different tarting traits.

Strength (STR)
Physical power and prowess.

At rank __, __, and ___, your melee damage increases.

Agility (AGI)
Dexterity, speed, finesse. At rank __, __, and ___, your reflexes let you reduce all damage.

Wit (WIT)
Mental ability and fortitude. At rank __, __, and ___, you’ve learned how to move in a way to reorganize different severities of damage.

Spirit (SPI)
Willpower and magical force. At rank __, __, and ___, your willpower triumphs over your body, increasing your health track.

Roll 1d4 (humans roll 1d6) and allocate that many ranks between your traits.

Step 4 - Skills
These represent a character’s knowledge, talents, and competencies. As they grow and develop their skills, their margin of error decreases as their overall proficiency rises to mastery.

Acrobatics: 		Athletics, Balance, Tumble

Arcana: 		Spells, Rituals, Truename, Windweave

Crafting: 		Build, Repair, Forge

Close Fighting: 		Spar, Kill, Attack

Geography: 		Soars, Spires, Settlements

Lore: 			Stories, Memory, Culture

Medicine: 		Surgery, Heal, Nurse

Nature: 		Survival, Hunting

Perception: 		Spot, Hear, Sense

Perform: 		Act, Sing, Play

Persuasion: 		Charm, Barter, Con

Sailing: 		Pilot, Maintenance, Rigging

Ranged Combat:	Firearms, Archery, Throw

Sleight: 		Steal, Palm, Quickdraw

Stealth: 		Sneak, Hide, Move Silently

A rank (one filled bubble on a character sheet) represents a character’s training and level of skill. New characters begin with nine skill ranks allocated where they would like, in addition to any other skill ranks they might acquire during character creation. The remaining skills considered are Untrained. Get skill ranks from a background, professions, race abilities, or buy them with accumulated gold.

Allocate nine (9) ranks among your skills.

Skill training 	Ranks 	Roll

Untrained 	0 	d12

Familiar 	1 	d10+2

Trained 	3 	d8+4

Experienced 	8	d6+6

Mastered 	15 	d4+8

 Health and Sanity 

Whenever characters are successfully attacked, either physically or mentally, they mark damage down by checking off appropriate boxes. depending of the severity of the attack inflicted.

Humans, Avorals and Ursas all begin with nine (9) Health boxes, and no change to the character sheet is necessary. Medua, however, are more fragile, and begin play with six (6) Health boxes, three (3) Scratches, two (2) Wounds, and one (1) Grave Injury. Cross out or fill in two Scratches and one Wound box.

Avorals, Humans, and Ursas do not need to change their Health track. Medua characters should cross off two (2) Scratches and one (1) Wound for a total of six (6) Health boxes.

A character’s total Sanity is equal to their WIT + SPI scores. Cross out the boxes below that number under Sanity. It is helpful to draw a dividing line underneath WIT many boxes—once your character has taken that much Stress damage, they become unhinged and crazed.

Count WIT number of boxes of sanity and draw a line beneath it. Count SPI number of boxes below that and cross off all boxes below that.

 Ex.  

'' Adam decides that Ruven should be sneaky, stabby, and sarcastic. Able to do more than one thing, but not only spread too far out. He decides to put two ranks into Perception, becoming Trained, three into Sleight, two into Stealth, and his last rank into Close Fighting. Ruven is Familiar in Close Fight, Trained in Perception, Sleight, and Stealth. Adam’s idea is that Ruven is better at backstabbing, so he’ll be attacking with sleight and stealth rather than directly engaging his opponents. ''

'' Ruven is an Avoral, so Adam doesn’t make any changes to his Health boxes. Ruven has WIT 3, so Adam counts three boxes of Sanity and draws a line beneath the third. Ruven has SPI 1, so Adam counts one more box for a total of four Sanity, and crosses out the four boxes beneath. ''

4 - Abilities, Professions, & Gear
New characters have 60g to spend on abilities and gear.

 Abilities 

These talents bring characters to life. Buying an ability (regional, racial, or professional) costs 30g. Some abilities are automatically received when playing specific races. All Abilities are described in full in Chapter 3.

Make sure you’ve chosen and marked down any chosen or automatic abilities. Racial Abilities can be found in Chapter III - Abilities, on p. XX, and Professional Abilities can be found in Chapter IV - Professions, on p. XX..

 Professions 

Each profession provides a collection of specialized abilities that a character may buy. Each profession has certain prerequisites (usually having a certain rank in specific skills) that must be met before characters may begin learning those abilities.

If a character meets the prerequisites for a given profession, they may note the profession and buy its abilities.

Professions are described in full in Chapter 4.

 Gear & Equipement 

Most people in the Skies are armed, though often it is s blade of poor quality. Any weapon is considered lethal, while unarmed characters are considered non-lethal, though they may still damage (and inflict lethal damage if they have the Brawler ability).

Mark down what clothes you’re wearing, 5g in wealth (top of the page), and any additional possessions you choose.

Poor		Good		Fine

 Weapon  Base price			10g		20g		40g

 Weapon Damage			1		2		4 

 Light Armour  & Shield base price 	10g		60g		90g

 Armour				1 Scratches	+1 Wounds	+1 Grave Injuries 

 Heavy Armour  base price	 	20g		100g		160g

 Armour				2 Scratches	+2 Wounds	+2 Grave Injuries 

Armour is often ineffective and unwieldy for most, though those embroiled in conflict might make investment. Despite difference in style, make, and material, all armours fall under the categories above. Armour takes damage before the character, and scars first. Scarring armour causes it to break, and it will remain broken until repaired. At the end of every day, any unbroken armour that has been damaged is considered repaired.

Armour is represented as circles to the left of your Health boxes.

Light Armour confers a +1 bonus when calculating physical damage. Heavy Armour confers a +2 bonus, while shields confer a +1 bonus. Characters may only effectively wear one type of armour at a time.

When a character is successfully wounded (they acquire an additional wound modifier), their armour becomes damaged. Damaged armour loses its +1/+2 modifier until it is repaired.

All new characters begin with suitable—if ragged and poor quality—clothing. They may also choose up to three commonly procured possessions, such as:

'' Weapon Bandolier, Belt Pouch, Ritual Chalk, Marlin Spike, Grappling Hook, Hammer, Tankard, Small Mirror, Writing Set and Journal, Flint & Steel, Pocket Knife, Personal Lantern, Flask, Musical Instrument, Chest, Travel Sac, Small Pet. ''

Equipment quality, durabilities, and benefits are discussed in Chapter 5.

 Ex.  

'' Adam realizes that Ruven’s skills have unlocked the Smuggler profession, so he writes in “Sg.” Under Professions, and checks the box. If or when Ruven buys all the abilities Smuggler has to offer, Adam will fill in the box completely. Adam likes the idea of Ruven being a thief or someone who’s good at finding treasure, so he buys the smuggler’s Stash ability for 30g. Liking the idea of Ruven’s weapon being a sharp hook at the end of a length of chain, painted black, he spends 20g on a good quality hook and chain weapon. Adam writes down his hook and chain’s damage as 2, and after asking his GM, writes down its critical effect as “entangle.” ''

'' With the leftover 10g, Adam decides he wants Ruven’s coat to be padded and lined—poor quality armour—so he writes “(LA)” behind Ruven’s longcoat under Clothing & Armour, and draws in the circle on the Scratches row immediately to the left of his five Scratches boxes. ''

'' Adam thinks that Ruven wouldn’t have much in his pockets, but thinks that giving him a previous romance and a fondness for fruit rounds out the character. Ruven’s possessions are a black sash, a cord necklace with a polished stone—a memento from an old lover—and an apple. The black sash, Adam thinks, could be used for a number of different things, at the very least could be fashioned into a makeshift side bag. Adam writes these possessions down. ''

5 - Connections & Magic
 Connections  

Factions, associations, or even contacts may aid you or provide marginal support. These people may be called upon to provide help, advice, resources, or other contacts. While these can be invaluable, they can rarely be called upon to solve overarching problems without stressing the relationship.

Connections are factions, associations, or even contacts that a character may know. Though a connection may represent a network of contacts, it may simply be one or two individuals. These may be called upon to provide help, advice, aid, resources, or introductions to other connections. While connections can be invaluable, they can rarely be called upon to solve overarching problems without stressing the relationship to breaking, which may lead to complications or even backlash.

Connections should be used to inform and aid, not destabilize play. The GM and each player should discuss their character’s connections before play. The nature of a connection results in different aid. If a character is a full member of an organization, lauded and praised with known accolades, they will have better opportunities than those who have a cursory knowledge gained from a brief encounter. The character’s relationship with a connection also determines what the connection may expect in return.

Every character begins play with one (1) connection. Write in your connections, more if applicable. Speak with your GM to incorporate backstory, and to find out what’s appropriate given your past, setting, or location.

 Magic 

Only those who take the Witch profession may begin play with a spell. Any spells are developed in the format below, though the spell’s title and rating is all a character needs to note.

 Spell Name 

 Style - Action (Rating)[Cost] 

 - Direction (@ target/area/self) 

 - Subject (name of person/place/thing) 

 - Power (0–4 Trait check) 

If you decide to start play with magic, develop your starting spell with your GM.

 Ex.  

'' Adam isn’t sure where the GM is going to have the characters turn up, so he decides that he wants his connection to be a ring of travelling merchants who act as fences for stolen goods. He writes down “merchant fences” under Connections. ''

'' While Adam linked the idea of his character singing rooms of people to sleep, he’d much rather be able to stab faster. Ruven has no magic, and so Adam writes nothing down under Magic. ''

Finishing Touches
 Backstory & Ambition 

Take a few minutes to come up with a backstory for your character. How did they join the party? Where did they come from? What are their overarching goals, their ambitions, their drive that pushes them away from their hometown to sail the open soars? Try to come with a motivation beyond a lust for gold.

Make sure your character sheet is filled out. Have the GM check it if necessary.

 Ex.  

'' Adam thinks that Ruven’s goal will be to sharpen his skills until he can steal something truly noteworthy, though what that is and where it might be are uncertain. Ruven is looking for work to test himself, improve himself, and refine his talents until he can make his way to one of the many rich cities that dot the skies, to steal something that will skyrocket him into infamy. ''

'' Adam’s GM checks over his sheet. She gives him the okay, and Ruven is ready to play. ''

Character Growth and Improvement
After a session or campaign, divide the spoils equally among those involved. Treasure and other profitable ventures (piracy, theft, plot) may yield If a month has passed in game, crew are each paid 5 gold from the ship’s war chest, while officers get 10g, and the captain gets 20g. Characters can then spend some of this on training to improve themselves, or to buy better equipment, armour, weapons, and other gear.

Growth			Cost (g)

New skill rank		10

New spell		20

New ability		30

Increase trait +1d6	80

New language		100

Advanced Character Creation
If you would like to build character further along in their career, consider turning them loose with a sack of gold after character creation. Buying character growth costs the same as listed above. The following are recommendations based on a character’s starting infamy.

Infamy		Starting gold

Nobody (12)	200g

Swab (11)	400g

Matey (10)	600g

Adventurer (8)	2,000g

Veteran (6)	4,200g

Make sure your character sheet is filled out and have your GM check it over