Character Creation Example

We’re making Hex, one of the sample characters. We know that we want to make an async Firewall agent who is heavy with social abilities.

We start with Step 1 of the character creation process. Since we are building an async, we decide to make the character part of the Lost Generation — a corporate project to raise kids under accelerated conditions that went horribly wrong. We choose Lost as their background. This skill pack comes with two Know skills for which we get to pick the fields, we choose Psychology and Mind Hacks. That gives us these skills: Deceive 40, Infiltrate 20, Kinesics 40, Perceive 20, Psi 50, Know: Mind Hacks 30, and Know: Psychology 60.

For Step 2, we choose Face as the career pack. There’s a lot of skill overlap with the first pack here, but we want a heavy social character. For the Know skills, we choose Drugs and Smuggling as the fields, as we are leaning towards this character having criminal connections. With the new skills, we now have: Deceive 80, Infiltrate 20, Kinesics 70, Perceive 20, Persuade 60, Psi 50, Know: Drugs 30, Know: Mind Hacks 30, Know: Psychology 60, and Know: Smuggling 60.

For Step 3, we decide to keep it simple and focus on making a badass async, so we choose Async as the interest. Again, there’s some skill overlap, but we’ll just modify the skills to customize the character a bit further in the process. For the Know skill, we choose Black Markets, because we want this character to be a skilled underworld dealer. With this new package, our skill totals are now: Deceive 120, Infiltrate 20, Kinesics 70, Perceive 40, Persuade 60, Psi 90, Know: Black Markets 40, Know: Drugs 30, Know: Mind Hacks 30, Know: Psychology 60, and Know: Smuggling 60.

In Step 4, we opt to make this an inner-system character. We choose Lunar as their faction, which gives them Know: Lunars/Orbitals 30 and a motivation of +Lunar Interests.

In Step 5, we pick an aptitude template, choosing Survivor. We decide to switch the SAV and SOM scores, though, given that the character is more social than physical. This gives us aptitudes of COG 15, INT 10, REF 15, SAV 20, SOM 10, WIL 20.

Now it’s time to add our skills and aptitudes together for Step 6. Adding the aptitude to each linked skill, we have skill totals of: Deceive 140 (SAV), Infiltrate 35 (REF), Kinesics 90 (SAV), Perceive 60 (INT), Persuade 80 (SAV), Psi 110 (WIL), Know: Black Markets 55 (COG), Know: Drugs 45 (COG), Know: Lunars/Orbitals 45 (COG), Know: Mind Hacks 45 (COG), Know: Psychology 75 (COG), and Know: Smuggling 75 (COG). Remember that Perceive has a base of INT × 2.

We know that the max skill value you can have is 80, so we’ll need to make some adjustments and re-assign the points that spill over that amount. We lower Deceive, Kinesics, and Psi all to 80, which gives us 100 extra points to spend as we wish. We decide to give the character Athletics 20, so they can handle some physical activities. We also add Fray of 20 and Guns 30, so they take care of themselves in a fight. And we add Provoke 30, to cover the one social skill they are missing. Adding the aptitudes for those skills, we have Athletics 30 (SOM), Fray 50 (REF), Guns 45 (REF), and Provoke 50 (SAV). Remember that Fray is based on REF × 2.

Our skill list is now at: Athletics 30, Deceive 80, Fray 50, Guns 45, Infiltrate 35, Kinesics 80, Perceive 60, Persuade 80, Provoke 50, Psi 80, Know: Black Markets 55, Know: Drugs 45, Know: Lunars/Orbitals 45, Know: Mind Hacks 45, Know: Psychology 75, and Know: Smuggling 75.

Looking over the skill list, we decide that there’s one more skill we want the character to have: Research. We could buy this later on with Customization Points, but we have a feeling we will want to spend those on other things. So we decide to tweak our skills slightly. We drop Kinesics by 10 points (to 70), Perceive by 20 points (to 40), and Psi by 5 points (to 75). With those 35 points, we buy Research at 25 (35 with INT) and add 10 more points to Infiltrate (making it 45).

Moving on to Step 7, we get 2 languages to start with. We choose Korean and Russian. Our combined COG + INT is only 25, not enough to get us another language for free.

In Step 8, we get our 1 point of ego Flex.

For rep in Step 9, we want our character’s strongest rep score to be with criminals, so we choose a g-rep (Guanxi) of 50. We want the character to be equally comfortable in the inner and outer system, so we assign 25 to both @-rep and c-rep.

Step 10 is a big one: customization. We have 20 CP. Since we want an async, we start there, buying the Psi trait at Level 2, which costs 4 CP. This allows us to use both psi-chi and psi-gamma sleights. We also want to have a good selection of sleights, so we spend 5 CP to buy 5 (which we’ll pick later). We spend 4 more on the Resources (Level 2) trait, which is important for operating within the inner system. That leaves 7 CP left. We want a bit more CP than that, so we buy two negative traits: Enemy and Enhanced Behavior (Level 2). Those give us 2 CP each, so now we are back up to 11. Since this character relies on networking, we spend it all on 55 more rep points, increasing @-rep to 45 and c-rep to 60.

Next we move on to derived stats, Step 11. Looking at the formulas, this character’s stats are:

Initiative: REF 15 + INT 10 = 25, 25 ÷ 5 = 5

Aptitude checks are all aptitude × 3, so:
COG Check 45 • INT Check 30 • REF Check 45
SAV Check 60 • SOM Check 30 • WIL Check 60

Lucidity: WIL 20 × 2 = 40

Trauma Threshold: LUC 40 ÷ 5 = 8

Insanity Rating: LUC 40 × 2 = 80

Infection Rating: Psi trait level 2 × 10 = 20

Step 12 is a fun one: picking a morph. The GM assigns us the default 6 MP to start. The Resources trait give us 2 more, for 8. Going with our Lost background, we choose the futura morph for 4 MP. We decide to spend the other 4 MP on two pieces of Moderate complexity gear. We choose skinflex, as it will help with social and infiltration scenarios, and enhanced vision. We write down our morph stats on our character sheet.

Our gear packs are based on the campaign type (Firewall) and profession (face). Looking them over, we decide they are good as is.

The futura morph gives us pools of Insight 2, Moxie 4, and Vigor 1. We also Flex 1 from our ego. The neuromodulation ware that comes with our face gear pack provides +1 Moxie, raising our Moxie to 5.

Step 13 is choosing motivations. We decide that this character is probably not that dedicated to their faction, so we ditch the +Lunar Interests motivation from Step 4. We choose three new ones based on the character’s history and agenda: +Expand Influence, +Independence, and +Thrill-Seeking.

Our character is mostly finished, but we have a few final things to wrap up. First, we pick a name for our muse: Mirror Mirror. Second, we look through our traits and make sure everything is designated. We make our enemy Cognite (fitting for the Lost background), and and choose curiosity for our Enhanced Behavior trait.

Since we are an async, we must choose which sub-strain of the Watts-MacLeod virus affects us. We go with the Stranger because it’s pretty creepy and cool. That strain gives us a Mental Disorder trait (we go with paramnesia) and a free sleight (we choose Basilisk Stare). We also pick the other sleights we had spent CP on: Browse Thoughts, Cloud Memory, Control Behavior, Short Circuit, and Subliminal.

Looking the final version of Hex over, we have a solid social character with some nifty psychic abilities and decent rep! You can see her on Sample Characters.