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Sample Character Creation By John M. Kahane To illustrate the character creation system, we'll follow Kathy as she creates her character with the help of John, her Chronicer. After perusing the WitchCraft 2nd Edition rulebook for a while, Kathy tells John that she's got an idea of what kind of character she'd like to create. Kathy decides that she wants to play a female character, since she's not all that comfortable playing male characters. She wants her character to be an Avenger. Kathy has already picked out a name for the character. She calls the character Judith Armstrong. Kathy goes on to establish a bit of Judith's background. Kathy's character grew up in a small suburb and led a normal, happy life. As a youngster, Judith was somewhat of a "wild child," and was very inquisitive about everything around her. In her early adolescent years, Judith started having recurring nightmares about fires and the burning down of some sort of house. At first, the nightmares didn't frighten her, but she came to realize that the house she saw burning down was the one in which she lived with her parents. Judith, called "Judy" by her parents and friends, attributed this to her fear of fire, based on the fact that she had accidentally set her bed on fire when she was ten with cigarettes. When Judy turned sixteen, the house in which her parents lived was hit by burglars. Her parents were knocked unconscious by the burglars and Judy herself was tied up. The burglars thought that the family could identify them, and in an effort to wipe out all the evidence, burned the house down. This was the nightmare-cum-reality that Judy had dreamed about all these years. Sheltered by friends of her parents, Judy's life became one of isolation, more violent nightmares, and she became withdrawn. Sent to a psychiatrist for therapy by her adoptive parents (the neighbours who helped her adjust after the death of her parents), Judith and her psychic ability was brought to the attention of Robert Cartwright, a member of the Cabal of Psyche. Recognizing the potential in Judith, Robert Cartwright helped her out in the matter of dealing with her family's death, and sent her to one of the Cabal's institutes for training. Judy has been a member of the Cabal in good standing ever since, and she works as a teacher at the local Institute for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired. Judy has a strong desire to avenge the death of her parents, and she has been searching for clues to the whereabouts of the criminals who killed her family and turned her life upside down in her spare time; she hasn't had any luck in this regard so far, but she continues her search when not busy with her work for the order. Healed of the psychological damage inflicted by her parents' deaths, Judy has become a loving, caring person in her own fashion. She has even gone so far as to adopt a young girl, Rebecca, and is trying to lead a normal life when she is not working for the Cabal on various jobs. Kathy decides that Judy will be Lesser Gifted. She begins play with 20 Attribute points, 15 points in Qualities (and may choose up to 10 points in Drawbacks), 30 points towards Skills, and 15 points for Metaphysics. Kathy picks the Cabal of Psyche as Judith's Association. Kathy assigns her Attribute points. She begins with 20 points to put into Attributes, and assigns 5 points to Perception, 4 points to Intelligence, 4 points to Willpower, 2 points to Strength, 3 points to Dexterity, and 3 points to Constitution. This results in a total of 21 points spent on Attributes; since Kathy only has 20 points to spend on Attributes, she will have to use 2 points of Drawbacks to bring her Strength up from 1 to 2. In summing up her character, Kathy says that Judith is very smart, higly perceptive, and has a strong sense of self-preservation and mental fortitude. She's only slightly above average in health, and has an average strength for a woman of her build. Kathy now works out Judith's Secondary Attributes, using the formulas found in the section on Secondary Attributes earlier in this book. Kathy determines Judith's Life Points Pool by taking the sum of her Constitution and Strength, multiplying them by 4, and adding 10. This gives her ((2 + 3) x 4 + 10) for a value of 30. Thus, Judith has 30 Life Points. Kathy determines Judith's Endurance Points by summing her Constitution, Strength, Willpower, multiplying the sum by 3, and adding 5 points to the total. This gives her ((3 + 2 + 4) x 3) + 5 or a value of 32. This gives Judith a total of 32 Endurance Points. Kathy now determines her character's basic Essence Point Pool, by summing her primary Attributes together. This gives the character (2 + 3 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 4) for a total of 21 Essence Points. Finally, Kathy determinesJudith's Speed by taking the sum of her Constitution and Dexterity, and multiplying by 2. This gives her ((3 + 3) x 2) or a value of 12. Judith can move 12 miles per hour, and one can find the combat Turn value by halving this number. Some of these values will change if Kathy takes certain Qualities and Drawbacks forher character. Once Kathy has determined Judith's Primary and Attributes, she needs to turn her attention to some of the Qualities and Drawbacks she would like to take for Judith. In several cases, she doesn't have a choice but to choose certain ones, and the background she has written above for Judith determines several others. Kathy starts with Qualities, since there are some that she will have to take. Since Judith is to be a Seer, Kathy must take The Gift, which has a cost of 5 points as one of her Qualities. In addition. she decides that Judith will be able to channel Essence, and takes 2 levels of Essence Channeling, which costs her 4 points. This means that Kathy has already spent nine points of Judith's possible 15 points worth of Qualities. In addition, Kathy takes Increased Essence Pool for one Level, at a cost of 1 point, and adds +5 points to her Essence Pool, bringing it to 26. She has spent 10 of her possible 15 points on Qualities. In addition, Kathy decides that Judith has had a tough life to some extent, but that she's a survivor, and she purchases 2 levels of Hard to Kill, at a cost of 1 point each, bringing her point cost for Qualities up to 12. This purchase of Hard to Kill adds +6 points to her Life Points Pool, bringing that up to 36 Life Points. She also receives a bonus of +2 to all Survival Tests (see Chapter Four: Rules, Survival Tests). Additionally, Kathy decides that Judith is reasonably attractive, and buys the Attractive Quality at 1 level, for a total cost of 13 Quality points so far. Finally, Kathy decides that Judith is quick on her feet and has an uncanny sixth sense of things, and purchases the Quality Fast Reaction Time, which gives her a faster initiative in combat and +1 to Willpower Tests versus fear. This spends Kathy's 15 points on Qualities. When it comes to the Drawbacks list, Kathy goes over this carefully, looking for Drawbacks that fit her character concept and background. As stated earlier in Judith's background, she has adopted a little girl, Rebecca, and so Kathy takes the Emotional Problem: Dependent, which is worth 1 point, to reflect this. Kathy decides that Judith is still plagued by the nightmares about the fire at her parents' house and the burglary, and gives her the Recurring Nightmares Drawback, worth 1 point. Finally, Kathy decides that Judith has a serious fear of fires, one that is quite detrimental to her psychological makeup in some ways. John, the Chronicler, decides, that since she is so afraid of fires, he will call this a Phobia, and tells Kathy that she can take the fear of fire, and it will be worth a 2-point Drawback. This gives Kathy's character, Judith, 4 points worth of Drawbacks. Kathy is now set to purchase Judith's Skills. She has 30 points to assign to Skills, plus any points that are left over from Drawbacks. She decides that Judith has had to learn certain skills to survive in her time as a Seer, but she has also come to grips with some of her past life as well. Kathy chooses Climbing at 3, First Aid at 2, Notice at 3, Running (Dash) at 2, Occult Knowledge (Seer Abilities) 1, Streetwise 3, Surveillance 2, Language (Sign Language) 4, Drive (Car) 2, Science (Linguistics) 2, Science (Botany) 2, Smooth Talking 1, Hand Weapon (Knife) 1, and Dodge 1. This gives Judith 30 points in skills. Finally, Kathy now chooses her Seer Powers, and assigns points to them. Judith receives one free Seer Power, and Kathy assigns the free level to the Strength of the Mindtime Power (for level 1 Strength). She has 15 points that she can assign to Judith's Seer abilities. For Seers, Kathy must purchase both the Art and the Strength for each of the Powers. Kathy purchases 2 levels of Mindsight Art at a cost of 4 points; she spends another 6 points to purchase 2 levels of Mindsight Strength. Kathy purchases 1 level of Mindtime Art at a cost of 2 points, for a total expenditure so far of 12 points. In addition, she spends 2 points for 1 level of Mindtalk Art and 3 points for 1 level of Mindtalk Strength. Thus, Kathy's character Judith will have Mindtime (Art 1, Strength 1) , Mindsight (Art 2, Strength 2), Minddtalk ( 1 Art, Strength 1). Thus, the character has spent 17 points total on her Seer Powers, exceeding her 15 points for Metaphysics, and must use 2 points from Drawbacks to do so. Kathy totals the levels in Arts and Strengths for all of Judith's Seer Powers, and this value is 8. She adds 8 more Essence points to her Essence Pool (see Chapter Six, Metaphysics, Seer Powers), bring the Essence Point Pool to 34 points. Finally, Kathy and John proceed to giving Judith some equipment and a bit of money. Judith has average resources and an average social level (Kathy didn't take either of these as a Quality or Drawback), so she starts the game with a small apartment where she and Rebecca live, a second- hand '95 green Chevy, and other odds and ends that would be typical for such a lifestyle.
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