Character Creation

Choose a Kin 

• Char
• Dwergaz
• Hobgoblin
• Imp
• Human
• Rotkin
• Trollkin

Origin

• Do you hail from the Bastions or the Grey?
• What is your Goal? What keeps you going in this harsh world?
• What is your greatest Fear? What keeps you awake and doubting at night?
• What is your chief Ideal? What philosophy guides your decisions and actions?

Choose a Path

read Character Paths

Your Path has a great impact on your character’s attributes, defenses, skills and abilities. 

Looking at your chosen Path’s information, write down the abilities it gives you access to, according to your starting level. Also, take note of your Path-specific attributes and skills. They represent generally your Path's main areas of focus, and will matter in the section below.

Attributes & Defense

read Attributes

Attributes are expressed as ranks, going from 1 to 6. At character creation, follow these steps:

1. Your Kin and Path each increase a specific attribute by 1 rank. Mark those first.
2. Then, increase three attributes from your Path-specific list by one rank.
3. Finally, spread six more rank increases anywhere you want.

At character creation, you are only allowed to raise a single attribute to rank 3.

Recommended Starting Attributes

Attributes boil down to your raw capabilities, or how you perform when unable to rely on acquired skills. From your physical state to your creativity, from the sharpness of your senses to your willpower, from your memorizing skills to your ironclad immune system.

Attributes are expressed as ranks going from 1 to 6. At character creation, all your attributes start rankless. Your chosen kin and path both increase specific attributes by 1 rank. Then, choose three attributes from a  path-specific list, and increase them by another rank. Finally, spread four more increases anywhere you want. You can start the game with a single attribute at rank 3.

Attributes

Strength

Toughness

Represents the extent to which you can perform physical activities and endure adverse effects. It is to grit your teeth through pain, fatigue, illness and cold. Toughness informs the growth of your Stamina pool.

Agility

Agility represents your physical nimbleness, reflexes, and overall ability to move with coordination and complexity. It is to dodge attacks and walk on a rope, to move silently and perform complex acrobatics. Agility is needed to learn most martial techniques unlocked through combat skills.

Dexterity

Dexterity represents you capacity to deftly sense and manipulate your body and the physical world through your hands. It is to repair your gear and dismantle traps, to lockpick and sleight of hand, to accurately use a sling or trace words of magic.

Perception

Represents your ability to perceive the world through your senses and instinct. 

Intelligence

Represents your capacity for understanding the world through thought and experience, and to retain it as knowledge. It is to deduce solutions to logical problems and to train your brain to retain countless facts. 

Heart

Represents your Faith, Willpower and sensitivity to the supernatural. It directly influences you ability to unleash the gifts of higher powers, to resist the Fog’s influence, that of some spells, as well as to run against your instincts for self-preservation. 

Presence

Presence represents you ability to command attention, influence others, convey emotions effectively, and navigate social dynamics with finesse. Characters with high Presence can more easily sway opinions and command with authority or magnetism. 

Defense

To avoid harm in the Foglands, you will have to Brace, Defy, Dodge and Handle. These defenses are represented by dice of various sizes, of which each Path has its own combination. For example, the War Hound starts with:

Mark down your bonus to defense method, which corresponds to the highest of two attributes.

Stamina And Health

Your ability to withstand harm is represented by a two-tiered system of Stamina and Health.

Stamina

Your Stamina score tracks how much you exert yourself to perform demanding tasks. It is equal to your (2 x Toughness) + Heart + Path bonus (if any).

• During your travels, you might lose Stamina points when pushing through rough conditions such as: travelling without rest, under harsh weather or terrain, with heavy load, or while performing activities that would normally require a slower pace.
• During combat, when an enemy attack beats your defensive roll, you lose Stamina points from the damage dealt to you. This represents the strained blocking and narrow-dodging of attacks that get past your defense or catch you off-guard. Once your stamina drops to 0, damage dealt to you instead reduces your Health.
  

Every time you level up, your class informs your gain in Stamina.

 You recover Stamina Points after each combat encounter, and the entire pool refreshes when you fully rest in a safe environment.

Health

 Your Health remains mostly the same after character creation and represents the vitality of each of your 6 body parts (arms, legs, torso and head). Each limb has its own Health Pool, equal to (2x Strength) + Kin Bonus.

• When an attack lowers your Health, you first apply your armour's damage reduction (if relevant).
  
• Some harmful sources, such as environmental hazards, poisons and curses, can slowly deplete your Health Points while bypassing your Stamina entirely. When your Head's Health Points fall to zero, you die. 
• Unlike Stamina, your Health pools do not not recover on full rest. Instead Downtime and / or medical attention are needed.

Fog limit

You are tolerant to the Fog’s influence...to some degree. Your Fog Limit, expressed as a number, represents how much FOG you can accrue without permanent consequences. To get your Fog Limit, add the Kin and Path values from the table below, then add your Defy score. Each time you gain a level, add your Defy score to your Fog Limit. 

Choose your Skills

read Skills

Skills have 5 ranks corresponding to your dice sizes: d4, d6, d8, d10 and d12.

At character creation, you are given 10 points to acquire skills, where 1 point = 1 die size. All skills in which you haven't put any points are diceless, and their value is 1. The following restrictions apply:

• Your chosen Path has a specific list of Path skills, from which you must choose a “core skill”. Put a star on your sheet next to your choice. At character creation, your core skill can be raised up to d8, Path skills up to d6, and other skills to d4.
• After character creation, skills cannot increase more than once per level. This means your starting choices have a major impact on the speed of your skills’ growth.