Character Forge

A character's basic information is divided between three categories: Attributes, Skills, and Derived Stats. A character's Attribute scores describe their basic capabilities, and are slow to advance in-game. The five attributes are: Body, Intelligence, Fellowship, Weaponry, and Willpower. Whenever an attribute is mentioned in rules text it will be Bolded and Underlined.
Each attribute has two or more skills associated with it. When skills are referenced in rules text they will be Bolded. When a Skill Check is made, players will add the percentage from their Skill and its governing Attribute (along with any other situational modifiers) and attempt to roll under that number on a d100. When a character improves a skill, they may choose to instead take a Subskill. Subskills are specialized forms of general skills and improve at a faster rate. Thus, a character may have a low Athletics skill, but a high Jump skill indicating their proficiency in that isolated part of Athletics. Whenever subskills are mentioned, they will be Underlined.
All attributes except Weaponry also have a derived stat: Health, Sanity, Soul, and Vis. Each is explained in its own section below. Finally, there are two special aspects to a character - their Mundane Acquisitions score and their Occult Acquisitions score. They measure a character's ability to acquire goods and services of mundane and arcane nature, respectively.

Creating a Character

Note: the following info is for creating a character completely new to the occult world and its arcane workings. For a more experienced character, consider adding 1-3 d10s to either the Attribute rolls or the Skill rolls. For a character raised in the occult community, consider allowing them to start with points in Occult Lore and Alchemy. This will speed up the pace of the early-game significantly as a character will not struggle with failure quite so often.

Step One: Determine Attributes and Derived Stats

Roll 2d10. Add the result of this roll to 25 and assign that number to Body. Repeat this step going down the line for the rest of the attributes. When finished, a player may choose to re-roll one attribute. If they does this the second result must be kept. Finally, two Attribute results may be swapped. The derived stats of a character are equal to the percentile result of their governing attribute, but are expressed as whole numbers - not percentages.

Step Two: Determine Skill Percentages

For each skill, roll d10s equal to the tens place of their governing attribute, sum the result and record it as the skill's percentage. For example, if a character's Body attribute is 37, roll 3d10 to get each of the starting skill ranks for Athletics, Finesse, Hand-to-Hand, Might, Survival, and Stealth. If a character's Weaponry attribute is 28, roll 2d10 to get each of the starting skill ranks for Guns, Improvised and Melee.
Note that neither Alchemy nor Occult Lore receive any points for a starting character. These are areas of knowledge that must be cultivated from nothing, as the little information that a modern citizen would even know about the Occult is likely wrong or misguided anyway. Conviction and Discipline do receive points to start, but start with one less d10 on their initial roll. A character will have convictions and some amount of mundane discipline, but this previous experience does not translate over perfectly to the art of arcane Evocation and Thaumaturgy.

Step Three: Determine Mundane Acquisitions Score

To determine a character's starting Mundane Acquisitions score, roll d10s equal to the tens column of their age and add half their age. Thus, an 18 year old would roll 1d10 and add 9. Someone in their 30s would roll 3d10 (plus half their age). This number represents your ability to acquire non-occult items: clothes, cars, guns, knives, medicine, property, etc. Each time a character comes into a windfall of wealth, through inheritance, theft, discovery, alchemic creation or otherwise, roll an Advancement check as if it was a Subskill (adding +1d4% instead of +1%). See Acquisitions for more info.
The basic assumption of the game is that all characters start with 0% in Occult Acquisitions. Modifying this number to start higher will make many aspects of the game occur quicker and be easier for a character.

Attributes, Skills, and Derived Stats

Body

A measure of a character's overall physical shape. A character with a high Body score will have a better success against all the challenges Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution would usually apply to.

Health

A character's health equals their Body score. Unsure of whether this needs to be edited. Playtesting will reveal.

Body Skills

Under normal conditions, the following skills use the Mundane Skill Challenge rules for making skill checks.

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Athletics

Athletics measures a character's general physical fitness and covers activities like running, jumping, swimming, and other general physical activities. This skill also covers speed of movement and dodging melee attacks in a fight. Athletics does not govern weightlifting (see Might below) - broadly speaking if a character is moving themselves, its Athletics; if a character is moving someone/something else, its Might. Subskills may include:

• Climb
• Dodge
• Fall

• Jump
• Sprint
• Swim

Finesse

Sleight-of-Hand, Dexterity, legerdemain - all synonyms for the same aspect of a character: their capability to manipulate precise tools and contort their bodies in hyper-specific ways. A character would use Finesse to pick a pocket, balance on a high beam, or win at Operation. Subskills may include:

• Balance
• Pickpocketing

• Stage Magic

Hand-to-Hand

Hand-to-Hand measures a character's capability to engage in violence without any sort of weaponry from barroom brawls to kung fu. If a character is punching, kicking, or using a choke-hold, its Hand-to-Hand. As soon as they grab that beer bottle to hit their opponent, it turns the skill check into Improvised (Weaponry). Subskills may include:

• Brawling

Martial Arts

Might

Brawn, muscle, pure physical power - these are the domains of Might. When a character needs to lift the burning tree off their ally, or push an enemy off a cliff through sheer strength, its a Might check. Wrestling is also located within this skill, though other more complex forms of fighting are not - see Melee (Weaponry) or Hand-to-Hand for those skills. When attempting to differentiate Athletics from Might, the following principle usually applies: use Athletics when moving/manipulating yourself. Use Might when moving or manipulating other people or things. Subskills may include:

• Break
• Lift

Wrestling

Stealth

Survival

Intelligence

Intelligence does... everything you think it does. Its how smart a character is, how skilled they are at all the misc. skills that don't fit in anywhere else. The two skills to take note of that are governed by Intelligence are Alchemy and Occult Lore, Neither of these skills can be improved during Character Creation so having a high Intelligence is important to being a character's magical study.

Sanity

In addition to all those nifty skills, your Intelligence equals your Sanity rating. Things will reduce your sanity. Don't let your sanity hit 0. Bad stuff happens. Probably 40k bad stuff.

Fellowship

Hey, you know what Charisma is right? Talk to people, be their friends, threaten their families? Yeah. Thats all Fellowship.

Soul

Hey, so friends. They're good for you. They keep you happy and striving to keep moving forward - thats your soul. Things will attack your soul, and you can even learn to spend your own soul to power magic. Don't let your soul hit 0. Your soul equals your Fellowship rating.

Weaponry

You probably aren't playing this game for the Guns and the swords... if you are, well... please, just come over here. Its ok. I just need to tell you this: Don't play this game for the Guns and the Melee weapons. These stats are here in case your fledgling wizard has to use them.

Willpower

Yep, here's the bread and butter of the game. This is the important one for magic. There's only two skills in this attribute, but together they power (haha) the entire magic system. But before getting into that...

Vis

Vis, Vril, Mana, Magic Points. Its all the same stuff and we call it Vis. Vis is the amount of power a mage has for spells. Run out of Vis and you run out of spells. Don't run out of Vis.

Willpower Skills

Conviction

A character's conviction

Disclipline

Mundane Acquisitions

Mundane stuff. Does a regular human use it in their day-to-day? This is the skill to get it. Roll normally to acquire it at game start. When you run into a windfall of wealth, roll to improve. Don't improve any other time.

Occult Acquisitions

Your ability to acquire occult items: occult doodads and alchemic ingredients - magical tools and laboratory equipment. Each time you run into a windfall of occult wealth (taking over a rival lab, stealing stuff, etc), roll to improve. Don't improve any other time. Don't start with any points in Occult Acquisitions.

Skills

Alchemy (Intelligence): Remember, you cannot add points to this prior to the game start, or do. its your game. Maybe an advanced start version would be a good idea

Craftsmanship (Intelligence)

Interrogation (Intelligence)

Investigation (Intelligence)

Occult Lore (Intelligence): Remember, you cannot add points to this prior to the game start. Same as Alchemy. You're a newbie in the magic world. Deal with it.

Performance (Intelligence)

Scholarship (Intelligence)

Security (Intelligence)

Technology (Intelligence)

Contacts (Fellowship)

Deceit (Fellowship)

Empathy (Fellowship)

Intimidation (Fellowship)

Rapport (Fellowship)

Guns (Weaponry)

Improvised (Weaponry)

Melee (Weaponry)

Conviction (Willpower): You do get points in this

Discipline (Willpower: You do get points in this

Elements

Elements aren't skills, exactly. They're more specialties. When you cast a spell, perform thaumaturgy, or brew a potion, put a mark next to the element - level up as per normal. Not sure how example to benefit from this yet. Could be a bonus to attacks with that element - could be a smaller bonus at set intervals. We'll have to see.

Earth

Air

Fire

Water

Spirit