CHARACTER CREATION TIPS

HOW TO BUILD A CHARACTER

Some things to consider:

A large part of roleplay comes from diving into a made up world and crafting characters and experiences to immerse ourselves into this fantasy world. There are a lot of skills in the rulebook and it can be hard to know where to start.

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When you play your first game, you’ll be experiencing, and experimenting with the ruleset to try and discover which play style fits you best - if you don’t like your starting build, you can change anything you wish about your character when you come back again

Race

 Human is the easiest race to start with since there are no special costuming or roleplaying requirements. They also start with 50 extra CP to spend on skills, so you get a bit more flexibility with your starting build. If there is a race you’re excited to play right away, then go for it. Otherwise, humans are a good starting point.

Class

Don’t worry about your starting class too much at first, as the unique skills won’t be available to you during your first event. Except for the few class specific skills, any class can purchase any skill. Your character class is an out of game concept that does not define who your character is in game. The most upstanding person could be an assassin, because the class only defines the cost of skills and unique skills they have access to, not who they are or how they are expected to roleplay.

Weapon Skills

An important thing to consider is what you want to do during the game. The experience of a Mage will differ from a frontline fighter and both will differ still from that of a physician. A few skills worth considering are:

Weapon Proficiency: Anyone can use simple weapons (staffs, daggers, clubs) but not everyone can use a sword, a stiletto, or a glaive. If there is a specific weapon you want to use, make sure you include the appropriate weapon proficiency in your starting build!

Dual wielding and Shields: If your image of combat is you holding two weapons or a shield in your offhand: you’ll have to make sure you’ve got the right skills. Shields require the Shield skill, while dual wielding requires Ambidexterity and, depending on the size of your offhand,  Florentine.

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Single Use skills or Persistent ones? Some skills have limited uses per day, while others are always active. Consider this factor when choosing skills.

Other Skills

Magic: Magic is a very cool part of the game, but can create limitations on your starting build since you will need to purchase the skills Read & Write, Read Magic, and your first Magic Sphere before you can even start buying your actual spells/

Self Mutilate: Whether  or not you purchase this skill will affect how your character reacts to many situations so it is a skill worth reading and considering.

As per the rulebook: 

Self-Mutilate This skill represents the character’s ability to overcome the instinct of self-preservation. A character may not willingly accept or cause themselves 1 Body or more worth of damage without this skill, and must actively fight any attempt to harm them, even if it is in their best interest. This skill must also be purchased for a character to actively kill themselves or to consent to their own demise.

In Zenithstrand: we interpret this rule to mean that a character without self mutilate and no armour would hesitate to go into battle, and may be inclined to run away if they became wounded. Additionally, the character without the self mutilate skill would not want to cause themselves any pain either. (They wouldn’t turn down surgery or physical healing, but they should still roleplay their hesitation to submit themselves to any sort of pain.)

Healing: If you want to be a healer, you can do so in two ways, the healing magic route, or the physician route. Both create unique roleplay opportunities. For either route, it is recommended to take The Anatomy skill.

Production: Most of the game’s actual production is created at the beginning of the event, during logistics. The game is spent gathering resources and planning your next batch of production, if you start with production skills, you may not get the full experience of using them during your first event unless you also take an appropriate tradesman skill to provide starting resources for yourself.