You’ve got your concept and you know the role your character will be filling in the group. The story leader has explained the setting and has given you the standard 70 character points to spend. Here is my advice on how to spend them during character creation.
Before you can do anything else you should select the paths you want. Whilst it is possible to create a workable character from only one path, you’re going to want to take at least two to give you a wider range of options for selecting other advantages and for later character growth. A consistent standard is three paths. Character who are more specialised would be better off with two, saving the extra character points for another advantage at the cost of restricted choices. If you’re looking for a character with lots of potential to develop then you should consider four paths. You’ll have fewer abilities and life advantages at the start, but a wider choice of what to spend your experience on later, without having to invest in a new path.
Look over the archetypes or the sample characters and you’ll see a pattern emerge: They’ve all between three and five life advantages. Life advantages are used for more situations than abilities at the cost of them being lost when you’re hurt. So would it make sense to have lots of them to create a character who can take lots of damage and still get things done? Surprisingly difficult to do. Life advantages represent the character’s physical existence, they don’t represent what they can do. A character with nine life advantages will repeatedly find themselves able to spend two to three potential for nearly every action, but won’t be able to make that big 6d6 or 7d6 roll when it’s really needed. As a secondary tip to this, try to have one of each of the body, mind and soul keywords. With this you should be able to put at least one advantage into play for any action.
Skill, knowledges, environments and feats. These ability advantages are where your character’s specialities and competences come from. When selecting these, keep in mind how they might work together. 6d6 is about combining these advantages to create actions, so it makes sense to have synergy. If you want a character who can shoot accurately then weapon expertise alone isn’t going to be enough. Also, keep an eye out for the keywords. These keywords will get you rerolls, extra dice or allow for special actions. You can manage without them but they are a tool I recommend you pick up and use. Finally on abilities, keep an eye the number of static advantages. Have too many and you’ll either quickly run out of them or not be able to use all the advantages you want together.
In 6d6, you spend points on how good you are with a piece of equipment, not on the equipment itself. If you haven’t spent any points, the equipment is considered mundane and only gets you 1d6+0. As mundane equipment is free, you can have as much of it as can be justified. Indeed, a character can put together a very effective action using just mundane equipment. So, is it worthwhile spending points on making a piece of equipment a piece of character equipment? My answer would be only rarely. If your character is going to be using that piece of equipment a lot or it’s a fundamental part of the character then spend the points. If you’re not sure, take it as mundane and spend the points later on.
Got any tips of your own or disagree with mine? That’s what the comment box is for.
Image Credit – Aga Foundry by Emyr Jones – CC-BY-ND-2.0