"In a way, we are magicians. We are alchemists, sorcerers and wizards. We are a very strange bunch. But there is great fun in being a wizard." - Billy Joel
The plan here is to create a random PC and then stuff him into a randomly-generated dungeon and see what happens.
Character Generation
Most of a ToA PC is randomly generated, partly for speed and partly because a suboptimal PC is one of the challenges to player skill baked into an OSR style game.
Race: 6 = Human. Background: 46 = Miner; +1 Str, Detection, pickaxe.
Attributes: 3d6 down the line gives us Str 11 (+1 for being a miner = 12), Dex 7, Con 11, Int 15, Per 13, Will 10, Cha 8. I already have a 13 and a 15, so I don't need to bump anything to those minimum values, and I decide not to swap two attribute scores. Being human gives me a +1 on one attribute of my choice; the only place I can use this to boost an attribute modifier is Cha, so I push that to 9 to eliminate the penalty.
Class: This is a free choice, and the high Int suggests a magic user.
Luck 11, Rerolls 2, and DDM 1 are standard values. Initiative is the average of Dex and Int, so 11. Hit points for a M-U are Con + Level, so 12. Death save is 10 + Con or Will modifier, so 10 either way.
Skills: Detection from being a miner, Arcane Lore and Apothecary for being a Magic User, then 3d10 from the M-U list; 2 = Deception, 6 = General Lore, 8 = Watercraft.
Weapon and armour proficiencies, attack bonus, and starting gear, are determined by class. Class abilities too, for a M-U. Spells known are determined randomly, one per point of Int bonus; starting with a whopping two spells there. 36 = Gabbling of the Jade Moon (that's Confusion in old money), 73 = Sever Arcanum (Dispel Magic).
Battle Gear slots are half Str (i.e. 6), with the same again for Pack Gear slots.
AC is 10 + armour bonus + Dex bonus, in this case the bonuses cancel out so that's a 10.
Bonus languages equal to Int bonus (+2), but I'll leave those for the moment so that I can be vague about which setting I'm using.
Age is 1d20 + 16 = 17, this guy's starting early.
Name, personality, optional physical trait: I decide to roll for these rather than get stuck in analysis paralysis and get Ruen, who is cynical and ugly. Well, that explains the Charisma, I suppose.
Finally, a random party bond: 46 = expedition to find a lost ruin. There's no party at the moment, since Ruen is a solo PC, so I decide the first time he meets a friendly NPC they will know each other from a previous expedition.
A little page flipping here, between the Characters, Attributes, Races and Classes sections, but not too much. It took me a bit of thought to understand how skills are allocated, but again not too much, and I know how that works now. The internal hyperlinks to later pages are useful.
Level Up
This year, I've decided to run only one full-blown PC at a time, so I invoke the Solo Rules for a Lone Wolf PC. This gives many advantages to offset the lack of numbers, but the two of interest here are that the Lone Wolf starts at level 3 with 25 HP plus class bonus (28 for Ruen). Update: Ruen's Luck should also increase to 12, missed that!
That boosts Ruen's Attack Bonus to +2, and gives him a new skill (2 = Deception, but he has that already and it can't stack, so 7 = Persuasion), mental apparatus (some kind of headgear which helps resist mental attacks), and a unique feature. One is supposed to make that up with the GM's approval, but without knowing the game system that will be hard, so I turn to pp. 45-50 and pick Pilfer Pouch from the list of examples, because it looks like fun; the PC is a kleptomaniac who steals and forgets about random objects, so once per adventure he can reach into a pouch and pull out one of those items.
I almost forgot; we might reasonably say he can roll for two more spells, one each time he increased his level. 74 = Sever Arcanum, he already has that so let's say that for some reason he didn't manage to learn another spell at level 2; 53 = Lightning Bolt, tasty.
OK, we're done.
Statblock
Ruen, 3rd level human magic-user
Cynical, ugly ex-miner.
Str 12, Dex 7 (-1), Con 11, Int 15 (+2), Per 13 (+1), Will 10, Cha 9.
Level 3. Luck 12, Rerolls 2, DDM 1, Init 11, HP 28, AB +2, AC 10.
Skills: Apothecary, Arcane Lore, Deception, Detection, General Lore, Watercraft.
Proficiencies: Light armour, one handed weapons, light crossbows, sling.
Class Abilities: Sense Magic, Spellcraft. Spells: Gabbling of the Jade Moon, Lightning Bolt, Sever Arcanum.
Unique Features: Pilfer Pouch.
Gear: Battle - spellbook, longsword, leather armour (+1 AC), mental apparatus; 2 free. Pack - torch, bedroll, rations, tinderbox, 10 sp, pickaxe.
GM Notes
Character creation took me a bit over half an hour, more than usual for an OSR game even allowing for unfamiliarity. I like what I've seen so far, but if I were introducing newbies to the game I'd pregenerate a number of PCs for them to choose from, and even for experienced players I'd want to hold their hands the first time or two. Pregens would be fine since the process is mostly random anyway, but I think you do lose something by not making the rolls yourself, and my current players greatly prefer to make their own PCs.
That resulted in a bigger word count than I expected, so let's do the dungeon crawl next time.
Isn't luck 10 + level/2, so for a third level character it would be 12?
ReplyDeleteSo it is, thank you - I missed that. Updated in the post!
ReplyDelete