EDRulebook: 6 Creating A Character

3. GENERATE ATTRIBUTES (PURCHASING METHOD)

Each character in Earthdawn possesses six Attributes that define the character's natural, unlearned physical and mental abilities. These Attributes--Dexterity, Strength, Toughness, Perception, Willpower, and Charisma--are of more or less importance to different Disciplines. For example, a thief needs a high Dexterity Value, which makes him faster, more coordinated, and better at performing sleight-of-hand tricks and other tasks requiring extraordinary small-motor control, in order to follow his Discipline faithfully.

Players can generate Attributes for their character using two methods. The first uses a purchasing system to buy Attribute Values from a pool of points. We recommend that players use this system to create their characters. Because each player has the same number of Purchase Points available to buy the same Attributes, this system creates more balanced characters across Disciplines and races. Each player chooses how he will take advantage of identical opportunities. The purchasing system also gives players more control over their chosen character by allowing them to guarantee that their character has the required minimum or maximum Attribute Value for a particular race.

[Beastmaster Geeble] Using this system, each player receives 66 points with which to purchase his character's Attributes. The cost for each Attribute Value appears below. No character may begin the game with a starting Attribute Value lower than 2 or higher than 18. Remember that certain races ahve minimum or maximum Attribute Value requirements. Consult the Racial Abilities Table for that information, or refer to your notes from step two, Choose a Race.

Generating Attributes with the purchasing method requires a certain amount of strategy. For example, by choosing a very low value for one attribute, you gain additional Purchase Points that can be applied to other Attributes. As the tabel shows, assigning a value of 2 to one Attribute actually gives you 3 extra Purchase Points to assign to other Attributes. Choosing a value of 3 will gain you 2 points, and choosing a value of 4 gains you 1 point. Attribute Values higher than 5 must be paid for at the point cost given in the table.

Racial modifiers may also affect the value you assign to your characters Attributes. Note the racial modifiers for your character's race as you assign Attribute Values. For exampel, a troll character receives a Strength modifier of +4, which allows a player to assign a lower value to the Strenght Attribute and still end up with a satisfactory character, while freeing up purchase points for other Attributes. Trolls also suffer a Perception modifier of -1. A player might decide to use the extra points to purchase an extra Attribute Value or two to offset that modifier.

Write the unmodified Attribute Values in light pencil on your Character Record Sheet, or list them on a separate sheet of paper.

ATTRIBUTE COST TABLE

Attribute Value	Purchase Points	Attribute Value	Purchase Points
2	+3	11	6
3	+2	12	8
4	+1	13	10
5	0	14	13
6	1	15	16
7	2	16	19
8	3	17	21
9	4	18	23
10	5

The gamemaster of Jill's group has asked the players to generate their characters using the Purchasing Point system. Jill sees that a windling has a maximum Strength of 11 and that Toughness and Charisma are important Beastmaster Attributes. Jill decides to give her windling Beastmaster high Strength, Toughness, and Charisma Values.
Her gamemaster reminds the group to check the Racial Modifier Table to see how those modifiers will affect the Attribute Values. Jill sees that a windling modifies Charisma by +2, Strength by -4, and Toughness by -3, and so she assigns a value of 17 to Charisma, 11 to Strength, and 18 to Toughness. This gives her windling modified Attribute Values of 19, 7, and 15, respectively. Consulting the Attribute Cost Table, Jill calculates that she has now spent 50 of her available 66 Purchase Points.
Jill now decides that she wants her windling to be observant, so she assigns an above-average Attribute Value, a 10, to Perception. This Attribute costs 5 points. The windling Racial Modifier adds +1 to Perception, for a final Attribute Value of 11.
Jill decides to make her character's remaining two Attributes slightly above average. She assigns Dexterity an Attribute Value of 10, modified for race by +1, for an 11. This costs 5 Purchase Points, for a total of 60. With her remaining 6 Purchase Points, Jill gives her windling a Willpower of 11. This character is susceptible to most suggestions, but nobody fools this windling all the time!

3. GENERATE ATTRIBUTES (RANDOM METHOD)

The second method of generating Attributes uses a random system that often creates more unpredictable characters with less evenly balanced Attributes (from a group standpoint), but that can result in more powerful characters. The random generation system has two main advantages. It is quicker, and the player can actually end up with higher Attribute Values than are possible in the purchasing system. For example, by using random dice rolls, a player could conceivably have an Attribute Value of 15 for all six Attributes. The Attribute Cost Table on this page shows that a character could not purchase Attributes at that same level with the allowed Purchase Points. The random generation system's biggest disadvantage, as illustrated in the example below, is that a player creating a character this way has far less control over what values he or she can assign to Attributes, and the character may emerge somewhat unbalanced.

Players randomly generate Attribute Values by rolling 6-sided dice. These dice rolls are not Action dice, so you do not gain a Bonus dice roll on a result of 6 Roll 4D6, discarding the lowest die roll result. Add the three remaining dice rolls to get a result from 3 to 18. Repeat this process a total of six times and note the results on your separate sheet of paper.

When you have generated six Attribute Values, assign them in any order to the six Attributes of Dexterity, Strength, Toughness, Perception, Willpower, and Charisma. Check the racial minimums or maximums for your character's race. If one of your character's Attributes requires a racial minimum, you must assign it one of the randomly generated Attribute Values equal to or higher than the required racial minimum. If you did not randomly generate a number equal to or exceeding the racial minimum, use the generated number closest to the racial minimum and adjust it to equal the minimum. For example, if you wanted to play an obsidiman character and generated no numbers equal to or exceeding 15 (the racial minimum for Strength), you would assign the closest number to 15 to the Strength Attribute as a 15.

For curiosity's sake, Jill's gamemaster asks the group to generate Attributes using the random generation system. The gamemaster wants to see how this will affect the characters the group wants to create. Jill rolls a 15, 5, 14, 14, 17, and 9.
Because she is creating a windling, Jill' s character has a maximum Strength of 11. Because her character's unmodified Strength Value cannot exceed 11, Jill decides to assign the 9 to Strength. She then modifies that value by -4 for race, giving her windling a Strength Attribute of 5. Again looking at her notes for the Beastmaster, Jill next decides to assign the 15 to Charisma and adds the racial modifier of +2, for a Charisma Value of 17. She assigns the 17 to Toughness and subtracts the racial modifier of -3 for a Toughness Attribute Value of 14. Though the important Beastmaster Attributes came out all right, Jill thinks the rest of these numbers make the character very lopsided.
Determined to create a character as similar to the first as she can, Jill assigns a 14 to her windling's Perception, modified for race by +1. This leaves a 14 and a 5 for the remaining two Attributes. Jill decides to go for as many physical advantages as possible and assigns the remaining 14 to Dexterity. Modified for race by +1, the windling has a Dexterity Attribute Value of 15.
This leaves the windling with a Willpower Attribute Value of 5.
With the numbers Jill randomly generated, this windling would make a better Thief than Beastmaster. Many of the Beastmaster's talents are based on Strength, and so the character's low Strength Attribute Value will prove a disadvantage to that Discipline. On the other hand, Strength is far less important for a Thief. If she had chosen the Thief Discipline for her windling, Jill could have assigned a higher number to Dexterity and received a bonus to use it, rather than assigning Charisma such a high Attribute Value (thieves don't need to look good--they prefer it when no one sees them at all).

Write the Attribute Values in light pencil on a character sheet, or record them on a separate paper. Consult the Racial Modifiers Table and Modify Your Character for Race to determine what racial modifiers you must apply to the Attribute Values.

The following descriptions of each Attribute also list the various Disciplines for which that Attribute is important. When assigning numbers to Attributes, you will want to favor the Attributes especially related to your character's Discipline.

Dexterity

Dexterity measures your character's agility, speed, and hand-eye coordination. Dexterity affects the character's foot speed, and determines his or her basic ability to engage in and avoid physical attack.

Important For: Archer, Cavalryman, Swordmaster, Thief, Warrior

Strength

Strength measures a character's muscle power. It determines the base damage done by a physical attack and how much a character can lift and carry.

Important For: Cavalryman, Sky Raider, Warrior, Weaponsmith

Toughness

Toughness measures a character's endurance and general health. It gauges a character's ability to absorb damage and still keep going, as well as his natural ability to heal himself. A character's Toughness determines his Death Rating, Wound Threshold, Unconsciousness Rating, and the number of Recovery Tests he can make per day. Use the character's Toughness dice as his Recovery dice.

Important For: Beastmaster, Sky Raider, Warrior

Perception

Perception measures a character's mental quickness, alertness, and ability to notice things. Perception is important to the casting of magical spells, as well as for avoiding the effects of spells.

Important For: Archer, Elementalist, Illusionist, Nethermancer, Thief, Troubadour, Weaponsmith, Wizard

Willpower

Willpower measures a character's concentration, sense of self, and force of will. It helps characters resist illusion magic and potentially damaging spells. Willpower also increases the effectiveness of spellcasting.

Important For: Elementalist, Illusionist, Nethermancer, Wizard

Charisma

Charisma measures a character's persuasiveness, social savvy, and ability to create a positive impression on others. The Charisma Attribute determines a character's success or failure at using charm, persuasion, or any number of other social skills.

Important For: Beastmaster, Cavalryman, Sky Raider, Swordmaster, Troubadour

RACIAL MODIFIERS TABLE

Race	Dexterity	Strength	Toughness	Perception	Willpower	Charisma
Dwarf	+0	+2	+3	+0	+0	-2
Elf	+2	+0	-2	+1	+1	+1
Human	+0	+0	+0	+0	+0	+0
Obsidiman	-2	+6	+4	-1	+0	-1
Ork	-1	+3	+1	+0	-2	-1
Troll	+0	+4	+2	-1	+1	+0
T’skrang	+1	+0	+1	+0	+0	+1
Windling	+1	-4	-3	+1	+0	+2

3A. MODIFY YOUR CHARACTER FOR RACE

After you purchase or randomly generate your character's Attributes, apply the racial modifiers given in the Racial Modifiers Table. The resulting modified Attribute Values represent the character's starting Attribute Values. Record them in the parentheses immediately to the right of the Attributes list in the Attributes section of the Character Record Sheet.

3B. RECORD STEP NUMBERS AND ACTION DICE

After modifying your character's Attributes for race, use the following table to determine your character's Attribute Step Numbers and Action dice (see Game Concepts). For each Attribute, record the Step Number and Action dice on the character record sheet.

Jill's gamemaster decides to stick with the Purchasing Point system of generating Attributes, and so Jill writes down the following Attribute Values: Dexterity 10, Strength 11, Toughness 18, Perception 10, Willpower 11, and Charisma 17. Checking the Racial Modifiers Table, she adjusts those values and writes the final Attribute Values in the appropriate place on the Character Record Sheet: Dexterity 11, Strength 7, Toughness 15, Perception 11, Willpower 11, and Charisma 19. Jill now consults the Step/Action Dice Table and fills in the appropriate spaces. The Attributes section of her Character Record Sheet now looks like this:

Attribute Value Step Action Dice

Dexterity 11 5 1D8

Strength 7 4 1D6

Toughness 15 6 1D10

Perception 11 5 1D8

Willpower 11 5 1D8

Charisma 19 8 2D6

STEP/ACTION DICE TABLE

Attribute Value	Step Number	Action Dice
1	2	1D4 - 1
2	2	1D4 - 1
3	2	1D4 - 1
4	3	1D4
5	3	1D4
6	3	1D4
7	4	1D6
8	4	1D6
9	4	1D6
10	5	1D8
11	5	1D8
12	5	1D8
13	6	1D10
14	6	1D10
15	6	1D10
16	7	1D12
17	7	1D12
18	7	1D12
19	8	2D6
20	8	2D6
21	8	2D6
22	9	1D8 + 1D6
23	9	1D8 + 1D6
24	9	1D8 + 1D6
25	10	1D10 + 1D6
26	10	1D10 + 1D6
27	10	1D10 + 1D6
28	11	1D10 + 1D8
29	11	1D10 + 1D8
30	11	1D10 + 1D8