Character Creation Challenge 2024 - Day 5
Up until now I’ve been doing fairly simple characters for fairly simple systems because, although I do want to do this, I haven’t had a lot of time or energy because this month is frankly horrific. So I also haven’t really talked much about the games or the character creation process within them.
But tonight I have a bit of time to myself and I’m going in.
So, read along as I create a character for … (duhn duhn DUHN!) … Powers & Perils! Not a recent game but also not one very many people would describe as “a classic” so much as “a relic best forgotten”. But I do own the core set, the setting box “The Perilous Lands” (which, to be fair, is very good and I used it as the setting for a long Rolemaster campaign) and the module The Tower of the Dead. But I have never dared try to convince my group to actually play P&P.
The first thing I have to do is roll 2d10 for each of my ten Characteristics to determine my “Native Ability in each. Well, the actual first thing is to open Excel because there’ll be a lot of shit to keep track of here, but the second thing, then, is to roll Characteristics. OK, I actually first need to choose Race and Sex before I roll as this game gives you characteristic mods for both. Which isn’t great but there it is. I’m going for a human woman. Human to keep this from getting too complicated (the other choices are Elf, Faerry and Dwarf). Woman because, all in all, women get slightly better modifiers than men. Anyway, I get 7, 15, 15, 16, 13, 13, 6, 10, 7 and 13 for Strength, Stamina, Dexterity, Agility, Intelligence, Will, Eloquence, Empathy, Constitution and Appearance respectively.
You may be wondering what “Native Ability” means about which the rulebook has this to say: “Native Ability represents the phenotypic potential of
the Character.” I think this makes it very clear. Thank you.
Constitution and Appearance are special. For these, I need to roll on a tablel to determine a multiplier to determine my Current and Maximum Ability as, for some reason, these values can’t change. I get multipliers of 5 and 2 so my Current and Maximum Ability in them are 35 for Constitution and 26 for Appearance. For all of the others, I simply roll 2d6+14 for a number of Multipliers that I must assign to the other eight Characteristics in blocks of 0.5 to get the numbers by which I must multiply the Native Ability to find the Maximum Ability. I get 19 which isn’t great. I assign them in a way that mainly focuses on my character’s physical stats as I see her being, perhaps, a thiefy sort.
Next I need to roll a d100 twice to determine Age and Station. She’s 18 years of age and Station 1 which translates to Free man, Common soldier or servant. I now roll for Initial Increases on 2d10 plus Station plus double Age. I roll 17 on the dive for a total of 54. These must be assigned to the four categories Characteristic Points, (Combat) Experience Points, Expertise Points (for Skills) and Wealth. At least 5 points must be assigned to each category and I start by putting that minimum into Wealth because with the lowly status I enjoy, I’ll get virtually nothing for them anyway. I’ll put 7 into Experience to be Combat Experience Level 1 but i imagine being less of a fighter than a runner awayer, so I’ll split the bulk of the points not quite evenly between Characteristics and Expertise giving me 76 Characteristic Points and 340 Expertise Points for use in buying Skills later. I’ll spend the 70 Characteristice Points to boost my Characteristics closer to their lofty potentials.
I can optionally roll for Special Events where I roll once on a table for every full ten years of my character’s life so far (so: once). I will totally do this. I get a 41 meaning my character (whom I will now name Fela) has been imprisoned in the nation where the adventure is starting until she escaped 1d6 (4) days ago and is a wanted criminal. Oh, there’s a table to determine the severity of the crime that Fela committed. I roll a 31 – Felonious Theft. There’s a reward of 1d10 (10!) Gold Coins for her return. She could turn herself in and be rich! The reward is dead or alive, so Fela better watch her back.
OK, I need to determine a lot of boring ficured characteristics based on her stats. I’ll spare you the detail and just do it in Excel and get back to you.
I need to get some skills now. I didn’t say, but earlier I need to choose to be either Barbarian or Civilized and just quietly chose Civilized without mentioning it but this affects my starting Skills. As a Civilized character of Station 1, Fela gets the following for free: either maximum possible EL (Expertise Level) in City Survival and EL 0 in Rhetoric or maximum EL in Survival in a different native terrain and EL 0 in Tracking. I see Fela as more of an urban type so I opt for the former. She also gets to choose between Husbandry, Forester or Miner or any two skills with a cost to learn of 15 (Exp points) or less. I’ll just take Miner. No wonder a life of doing crimes seemed more alluring.
Okay, now I finally get to spend my 340 points. There’s a confusing skill list where some of the skills are actually bundles of other skills. One such skill is “Thief” which is also the first skill I want to get for Fela. Its cost to learn is 100 for freelance thieves but only 75 for Guild thieves. But to become a Guild thief, Fela must roll equal to or less than her maximum possible EL as a thief (on a d100) to be accepted! This number is 48 and I roll a 60. She’ll have to go freelance and pay full price. It was probably the guild that shopped her to The Man! She pays 100 for a Starting Level which, due to a peculiarity of how Starting EL’s are determined and her Characteristic values is 51 – greater than her Maximum of 48. I’ll just give her the 48. I’ll also get her the Dancer skill to give her something to fall back on when crime isn’t paying enough. I’ll pay 76 Exp Pts for Dancer at her maximum EL (6). Why not let her learn to Read & write? I’ll spend 45 points on a starting EL, so she can read and write very poorly. Finally, I should probably get her some Combat Skills. I’ll get her Dagger – Fight and Dagger – Throw at EL 2 and 3 respectively and Scimitar at EL0 because why not? (That leaves Fela with 2 Exp pts unspent which I’ll just say are put into Scimitar to help her pay for her next EL in it.
I suppose I should buy her some equipment for her 10 Copper Coins and it’s late and I want to go to bed.
Here’s a screengrab of as much of her character sheet as I could be arsed to fill out:
To be completely fair to P&P, this is actually a pretty compelling character, I think. Maybe I should give running it a go?
Speedy helps Fela get away from the countless people pursuing her for the rich bounty on her head and they go on many hilarious (mis)adventures together in The Perilous Lands after which Speedy’s stats increase to this:
Muscle 44, Speed 59, Stamina 31, Mental 54, Luck 16, Total 204
Damage 5, Init 6, Heal 4, Power 6, Luck Roll 7, Force 20
Skills: Pilot-1, Mechanic-1, Street Criminal-3, Unarmed-1, Rapier-3, Theatrical-1, Wilderness-2, Gamma Raygun-1, Futuristic-3, Magical-3, Stage Magician-1
Rapier, Gamma Raygun, Backpack, Mechanic’s tools, 4 Gold Coins cash, Lockpicking tools
He’s starting to pick up some arcane abilities. Perhaps these will come in handy in the strange alien site he finds himself transported after foolishly picking up a strange beetle-shaped artefact in a dungeon? Perhaps, but almost certainly not.
