Been thinking more about character creation. It feels like there are too many points (as many house rules have pointed out) so these additional cataegories should assist in spreading points around.

• Wealth should be changed to Social Class (see below)
• Add the following options:

Wealth Out of Career Start
cost (Class)" Basic Skills** Gear$ Stance~ Allies& Other^
0 Outcast 0 0 0 0 0
1 Poor 1 1 common 1 2 (1) 1 Characteristic Fortune Pt
2 Commoner 1+1 spec 1 rare 2 4 (2) +1 Wound Threshold
3 Wealthy 2* + 1 spec 1 exotic# 3 6 (3) +1 Fortune Point

Notes

• " Wealth is now Class and reflects the characters upbringing and family. If outcast then outlaw, ex-con, banished, drifter, etc. If wealthy, then a noble, merchant, etc.
• ** the character can train/acquire out of career skills (reflecting training in upbringing)
• * or acquire 1 Advanced skill with GM approval (Education, Magic Sight, Animal Handling, Tradecraft are okay)
• $ this is a piece of equipment beyond any starting in Wealth
• # Sword Master/Ironbreaker must choose this otherwise start without Sword/Armor (find original or quest for new). Note: this helps with power balance for the SM/IB as basic career choices as well.
• ~ character start with no free stance adds but can purchase them at creation
• & the character has some close allies or contacts that can help/mentor/be resource. The first number is the total of Ranks and the (#) is the max Rank of any of them. The player shoulder name and career each one
• ^ these are one time modifiers available. Note: the +1 Fortune Point is a permanent addition

Thoughts or ideas? Jay

jayhad said:

I like them, a lot.

Especially class. I've been thinking about setting class at the start too (whether or not that's tied in with wealth though). I think I'll allow players to choose a class, based upon their career and any special requests or ideas they have, but then force them to spend points on wealth which I will treat as 'income' rather than a one-time cash lump some.

So a 'rich' character would not just start with lots of money, but have investments, assets, and be good at managing money. A 'poor' character would not only start out with little money and no assets, but no habit of saving or investing.

Just one question: how does your stance rule work? Are these stance steps taken by the players in addition to their career stance? As if they'd purchased them with xp?

I like the idea of offering more choices at creation. The options you list are cool. The Allies one sticks out of the pack as something that would hopefully foster some backstory and chances for NPC interaction or roleplay down the road. However, I think the way you've got it now it is a bit too good for starting out. Dark Heresy has a system for acquiring contacts or favors owed from NPC's in its advancement system, maybe take a little inspiration from that. Don't get me wrong I actually think it would be pretty cool for an Outcast level character to have a decent number/quality of contacts (who knows maybe they've been cut off and mommy and daddy are wealthy). You just need to have some pretty clear restrictions on the benefit it can provide a gamist-type player who is going to wring every Karl or muscle-bound favor out of a high end contact.

If you let the three tiers be tied into starting wealth, then you can use this with interlude rules.

During the interlude, players can try to earn money. Your tier (starting wealth) dictates the kind of coins you recieve. Since there are four different starting wealth categories this is my suggestion.

0 = Bronze tier = money earned is bronze coins

1 = Lower silver tier = Money earned is 1xsilver coins

2 = Upper silver tier = Money earned is 2xsilver coins

3 = Gold tier = Money earned is gold coins. On top of that a gold tier character may be a minor noble.

On top of that your starting wealth gives you a number of fortune dice for checks to find items on the market (0-3 fortune points)

Thanks for the comments!

• I like the wealth based 0-3 Fortune Points...good reflection of general wealth and ability to deal
• For my Stance idea, the starting character would NOT receive any Stance advances to start! Instead any starting Stance pieces would have to be purchased with Creation Points (limited to the starting career potential). Just seems odd to be able to start with all the Stance pieces...

Gallows said:

I thought about this too, but I think I would want to separate class from wealth. You can be a poor / indebted noble, struggling to get financing for anything you want to do, and selling off the family heirlooms to stay afloat - but still have political and social power. And you can be a rich merchant, lawyer, banker etc, or even landowner, without being a noble. Money can buy you access and a certain kind of power, but it can't buy you status. That's why you have to marry into it. *cough* British Royal Wedding *cough*...

Angelic Despot said:

Yeah that's why I typed "may be a binor noble". It's not a given. You could be from a wealthy merchant family or be a broke noble runaway. It's just to make starting wealth more fun and important.

This looks really great. I'd set it up as follows though:

2 points - Fortune characteristic die; additional wound;

Here are a couple other advancements I've been thinking of adding to my "Ditching the Screwy Advancement system" rules that might work well at creation as well: Other optional advances (experimental)
* Gain heirloom item (roleplay; luckstone, healing draughts, superior item, chaos-tainted "red die" superior item)
* gain new career trait
* favor from npc (roleplay)
* Gain an action card a second time at a higher rank (cost is increased by 2, rank 3 only).
* gain another career's ability until next x.p.(non spell)
* Improve corruption threshold (human only)
* inheritance
* sidekick
* create new spell
* create superior item (blue)
* Gain resistance to one condition type
* Gain one super fortune point (yellow or blue), cost higher, must trade for current fp

jh

These are all cool ideas to customize creation (and may be good uses of XP later during play). I can see creating a list of Advantages with costs (Creation Points and XP) and also Disadvantages that give Creation Points (or maybe even XP). White Wolf and many rpgs did this successfully for years...

Come to think of it, I wonder if there might be some way for the GM to award to players not only XP but also some other gameplay currency (Character Points) that are spent on other non-XP issues and maybe could be expended to get a free Fortune Die in a test or banked for allies, money, etc. The awarding of such a small number of end of session rewards seems kind of weak and harder to differentiate for good roleplaying...