Now it’s time to put the finishing touches on your character: your final attributes, your defenses, your action dice, your language, and your literacy.
Assign Attributes
Your attributes form the building blocks of the other stats you’ll calculate in this section.
If you haven’t already done so, allocate 6 attribute points between your Agility, Strength, Will, and Intellect. No score can be higher than 3—unless you’re a Shinarian, in which case your Strength can be as high as 4.
Make sure you’ve accounted for the minimum attribute requirements from your calling, lore, and any weapons you’ve acquired through credit. (By design, the minimum requirements of these choices can’t sum to more than 6 points.)
You can think of the four attributes arranged like the cardinal points of a compass. Your other stats—your action dice and your defenses—lie in between these cardinal attributes, and are in fact built from them. The higher an attribute, the higher these adjacent stats.
For example, putting more points in Strength means your hero will be better at Brace and Attack actions, and have more Stamina and Guard. Heroes with high Intellect are better at Compels and Maneuvers, and have higher Spirit and Awareness.
Calculate Defenses
Each defense is based on the sum of two attributes. Additional bonuses may come from your calling, lore, or the block value of your armaments.
If you’re Kananite, increase one defense of your choice by +1.
The defenses here are your maxima. Remember that defenses—unlike attributes—are dynamic. On your hero sheet, each defense has a current value (big number) and a maximum value (small number).
Calculate Action Dice
Each action die, like the defenses, are based on two component attributes. Use the following table and round the sum down to the nearest even number. That number equals the number of sides on the action die: a d4, d6, d8, and so on.
For example, if your Agility is 2 and your Strength is 1, your Attack die equals 2 + 1 + 4 = 7, which rounds down to a d6.
Language and Literacy
All characters speak Kananite, also known as the Common language of Tel-Kanan. Your character may speak other languages too, depending on their origin and lore:
Mazrian, the language of the empire. Wealthy and powerful Kananites often speak Mazrian, as do scholars.
Shinarian, the language of the lost kingdom. Shinarian is the ancestor language of the Common tongue, and some Kananites still speak it.
Zordin, the language of the chaos tribes. Few outside the Zordin themselves speak this language.
Antediluvian, the language of chaos and the mother tongue of some monsters.
Chthonic, the language of death. Those who know this language can speak to dead souls nearby.
While almost everyone in Tel-Kanan can speak, very few can read or write. Three writing systems exist in Tel-Kanan, and all require specialized lore to learn. Glyphs (the writing of Mazr) and Forms (the writing of Shinar) are both pictographic systems, where symbols represent ideas. The Oxhouse, a secret code developed by Kananites, uses a small number of Glyphs to represent sounds in the Shinarian language.
Lore grants literacy in these writing systems. The table below shows which writing systems are granted by which lore. Two mundane items—the Book of Glyphs and the Book of Forms—also grant both language and literacy.
Finishing Touches
Before you play, you can take some time to get to know your character. You can draw a picture of your character’s face in the upper-left (or find a picture on the internet). You can also form a backstory for your character—what they did before the cataclysmic events of the game, and what they do now. The tables in Origins can provide inspiration for your backstory.
But don’t feel pressure to have it all figured out at the start. It’s useful to leave blanks in your character’s life that you can fill in later. You’re sure to learn more about your character as you roleplay their adventure!
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