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Character Creation

Step One: Character Concept

The first step in creating a character is to develop a general idea of who your character is.
Try to boil the essence of the character down to one simple phrase, like "poor but brilliant med student" or "retired assasin and widower"
At this point it may also be beneficial to think about your characters goals.

Think about what anchors the character in his life. Anchors are those things that help a character retain his sense of self and drive his behaviour.

Questions as Inspirations: - How and Where were you raised? - What about your Parents (or Elder)? - Financial Status? - What do you normally do for a living? - Hobbies? - How do you see yourself? - How do others see you? - Important Persons/Places/Memories/etc.? - Experiences with the world? - Unwanted Habbits? - What do you want to achieve atm.?

Good Hook apart from that: What happend right before start of the Game?

Step Two: Attributes

These are the attributes used in Construct:

Approach/Arena Mental Physical Social
Offensive Intelligence [INT] Strength [STR] Presence [PRE]
Cunning Wits [WIT] Dexterity [DEX] Manipulation [MAN]
Defensive Resolve [RES] Stamina [STA] Control [CTR]

and also the special Attribute: Force [FRC]

Attributes represent the basic characteristics of a player.
Each attributes has by default rating 1, human average is 2, maximum is 5.
Players can now distribute 15 points across these attributes.

Step Three: Skills

Skills represent applications of your abilities. These are things you have learned from training, books or teachers.
Having no points in a skill means you are untrained in a skill and incur the unskilled penalty as listed below.
You may distribute 25 points across these skills.
The ratings can be roughly translated to:

Rating Description
1 Your character is a novice in this craft
2 Your character is an intermediate student on his way to master the craft.
3 Your character has mastered the craft.
4 Your character is a professional that operates on a very high level in this skill.
5 Your character is one of the best in this field.

Step Four: Skill Specialties

Skills represent broad categories of training. Someone with the Science Skill is equally familiar with particle physics, basic chemistry, and genetics.
Skill Specialties allow you to differentiate more, focusing on a specific area of a Skill that your character is more knowledgeable or proficient in.
A character's Specialties say a lot about them. For example, a character with a Socialize Specialty in Formal Events is very different from one with a Specialty in Dive Bars.
Specialties have a rating from 1 with a maximum of half your skill rating rounded up and give you one extra die per rank when using the skill in this particular field.
You may now distribute 3 ranks of specialties across your skills.

Step Five: Traits

Traits are important facets of your character that do not fall under attributes, skills or specialties.
A traits represents a knack, special training or other complex things.
They add unique capabilities to your character beyond the above mentioned.
You have 8 points to buy traits with from the trait lists.

Step Six: Determine Advantages

The final step in the character creation is calculating your advantages.
Use the following rules to determine the values for these traits.

Advantage Formula
Size 5, unless modified
Speed Strength + Dexterity + Size
Health Size + Stamina
Init Mod Dexterity + Control
Defense (lower of Dexterity or Wits) + Athletics
Perception Wits + Control

Skill List

Mental (-3 unskilled)

  • Academics (Geisteswissenschaften)
  • Science
  • Technolgy
  • Crafts
  • Occult
  • Medicine
  • Investigation

Physical (-1 unskilled)

  • Athletics
  • Brawl
  • Firearms
  • Pilot
  • Sleight of Hand
  • Stealth
  • Survival
  • Weaponry

Social (-1 unskilled)

  • Animal Ken
  • Empathy
  • Expression
  • Intimidation
  • Persuasion
  • Socialize
  • Streetwise
  • Subterfuge
  • Socialize