The second of today’s preview posts about Skyraiders of the Floating Realms, this time a starting character from the game.
Note the Zero edition of the game is still on Kickstarter but we are in the last 34 hours at time of writing.
Janic the Songbird
| DEX | CON | STR | CHA | INT | POW |
| 13 | 14 | 11 | 15 | 12 | 11 |
[Commentary: Characteristics rolled on 3d6, rerolling 1s and 2s, and swooping around two values]
Bonus Damage: 0 Hit Points: 14 Armour Value:1d4 (Leather armour)
[Commentary: Characters with Strength over 15 get a Bonus Damage, Hit Points = CON]
Career: Bard Age: 29
[Commentary: Career provides 110 of the Additional points below, with an extra 30 coming from a pool so the player can personalise the character. Janic suffers slightly skill-wise for having slightly average characteristics, but this is pretty typical spread for a starting character ]
| Base Calculation | Base | Additional points | Total | |
| Melee | (STR+DEX) | 24 | 20 | 44 |
| Missile | (DEX+INT) | 25 | 20 | 45 |
| Thrown | (STR+DEX) | 24 | 24 | |
| Unarmed | (STR+INT) | 23 | 23 | |
| Awareness | (CON+INT) | 26 | 26 | |
| Magic | (POW + INT) | 23 | 23 | |
| Deception | (DEX+INT) | 25 | 20 | 45 |
| Healing | (INT+CHA) | 27 | 27 | |
| Mechanisms | (DEX+INT) | 25 | 25 | |
| Movement | (CON+DEX) | 27 | 27 | |
| Lore | (INTx2) | 24 | 24 | |
| Linguist | (INT+CHA) | 27 | 27 | |
| Culture | (INT+CHA) | 27 | 20 | 47 |
| Oratory | (POW+CHA) | 26 | 10 | 26 |
| Fast talk | (INT+CHA) | 27 | 20 | 27 |
| Performance | (CHA+DEX) | 28 | 30 | 58 |
| Trade | (CHA+INT) | 27 | 27 |
Equipment: Dagger (1d4 damage), Rapier (1d6 damage), Leather armour (1d4 armour value), A lyre. flamboyant clothes, hooded travelling cloak.
[Commentary: The choice of career dictates this starting loadout, but most adventures start with an opportunity to buy extra equipment]
Spells: Balance, Confuse, Enthral, Bless
[Commentary: The first three spells come from the Bard career while the last spell is a free choice made by the player]
Interesting! The characteristics for the skills seem to make sense (I especially like the inclusion of CON for Awareness); I’m al little surprised about INT+DEX for unarmed – I guess you can make a case for INT being included in pretty much every skill, but I’m not quite sure while Unarmed should involved INT while armed combat doesn’t (of course, you could argue that Unarmed is often about fighting dirty, where intelligence should play a bigger role).
I kind of feel that HP should not be based exclusively on CON; but on STR and CON (that way, you can at least theoretically get the big guy with STR 17 and CON 6 who kind of has a glass chin, but still doesn’t get knocked over immediately …). Since STR is not really in any skill besides the combat skills, it would also seem fair to give it something that doesn’t make it a dump stat (although a potential Damage Bonus might be a decisive advantage).
All in all it looks like a good selection of characteristics and skills – and having played OQ, I feel I can immediately make sense of it.
Oh, and two small mistakes: for the Magic Skill, it says POWxINT (not, as it should probably read, POW+INT); and the oratory total should be 36, not 26.
A question (I know, I’m going to find out very soon anyway, but still):
Are 1s and 2s re-rolled once in character creation, or until at least a 3 comes up? If it’s the latter, I think you’ll end up with a very similar spread to 2d6+6 for each attribute.