Narrative Examples of Character Creation from three different methods

Trait Based Character Creation

Lee is not exactly sure what sort of character he wants to play. He wants to play someone action oriented. The Game Master asked the players to make characters that lean towards being heroes and Lee is fine playing a virtuous action oriented character.   Lee does not want to play a spell-caster because he wants to keep things fairly simple. He wants to play a warrior, but he doesn’t just want to play someone who hits things and causes them to fall down. He plays an honorable warrior with a code of ethics and social connections that give him something to fight for beyond money and thrills (though he is not opposed to money and thrills)   He’s not sure yet what race he wants to play, but every race has the same basic attribute spread and most race’s warriors have similar builds. He is vaguely imagining a tall imposing warrior so probably human, elf, or satyr. Lee wants to play a male warrior.   So as a starting character, Lee’s character has one dot in all nine attributes. He has 15 more attribute to spread around. He figures as a baseline he wants to have at least a rating of ●●● in all the physical attributes, Dexterity, Strength and Stamina. 3 dots is above average, but not exceptional. That’s a good baseline for a warrior. This leave him 9 more dot dots to play with.   Lee doesn’t want his warrior to be dim, oblivious, or slow on the uptake. Lee raises Intelligence, Perception, and Wits to ●●, which is a normal person Now he has 6 more dots to play with.   He does not want to be unlikeable or naïve, so he uses two more dots to raise his Charisma and Manipulation to ●●. A warrior does not have to be good looking so he stays at Appearance ● for now. He has 4 discretionary dots left.   He puts those four dots off to side for now, and looks at his warrior’s abilities. He has 25 dots of abilities.   Lee wants his character to be a powerful warrior who is also versatile. He takes Archery ●●● and Melee ●●●. Combat prowess is core to his envisioned concept, so this is a no-brainer move. That leaves him 19 ability dots to play with.   Dodge is handy for warriors. Most of the time, Lee will focus on parrying attacks with his excellent Melee, but he takes Dodge ●● just in case he faces attacks that cannot be parried. That leaves him 17 dots of abilities left to assign.   Other things a warrior is likely to need to do include various non-combat physical feats of movement (Athletics), riding a horse (Ride), throwing his weight around (Intimidation), trekking across the wilderness (Survival), sneaking up on enemies (Stealth), and avoiding enemies sneaking up on him (Alertness). Sometimes he might have to fight unarmed (Brawl). To be well rounded, Lee takes a single dot in all of these things. Now he has 10 dots of abilities left to assign.   Lee wants his character to have a few abilities outside of combat. He wants a character that fights for a purpose and cares about others, so he takes a dot of Empathy. He wants a character that is chivalrous and respectable enough to deal with polite society, so he takes a dot of Etiquette. His character was probably inspired by tales of past heroes so he takes a dot of History. That leaves 7 points to play with.   That leaves Animal Ken, Commerce, Crafts, Enigmas, Hearth Wisdom, Expression, Investigation, Performance, Politics, Leadership, Legerdemain, Sailing, Seneschal, Subterfuge, and Theology all at zero. Lee hasn’t taken any Rare abilities either, but none of them are really appealing to him right now, so he is not worrying about it.   The campaign is going to initially take place far from the sea, so taking a dot of Sailing would not help much. The PCs are not going to have a home base starting out so having a home base or business to take care of, so Seneschal is not really necessary either.   Generally non-cerebral characters who are not spell-characters do not need Enigmas, so Lee leaves that at zero too. At the moment, Lee’s warrior doesn’t have to make or maintain his gear, so he leaves Crafts at zero. He doesn’t see himself sneaking a lot of concealed daggers around or doing a lot juggling tricks so he leaves Legerdemain at 0 without a second thought.   One of the other players is a playing a silver tongue tengku who is going to have a high rating in Commerce and Subterfuge. Lee can leave his abilities at zero for his character.   Another player is playing a theurgist who has a high rating in Medicine, Hearth Wisdom, and Theology so Lee can leave these traits at zero.   Both the other players are taking a single dot of Politics, so Lee doesn’t think he needs to add that level of redundancy at this stage.   This leaves Animal Ken, Expression, Performance, Leadership. Lee is planning to play a warrior that is more action oriented than command oriented, but he has grand ambitions, so he takes a dot of Leadership with an eye towards raising it later with experience points as his heroic profile increases. Six dots of abilities left, and his “maybe list” is Animal Ken, Expression, Performance   The Game Master looks over all three players working on their characters, and he points out no one is wilderness focused and he does have some wilderness adventurers planned. Lee says he might as well be the party’s wilderness expert and puts two more dots in Survival raising it to three dots total. He takes two dots of Animal Ken to go along with this general theme.   That takes leaves him two unassigned dots of abilities left and he has two abilities left on his maybe list. Why not? Expression and Performance. Lee’s warrior is not exactly a great poet or musician, but he can workc on expressing his mediocre artistic talents whenever his character has some downtime to kill between adventures.   Going back to his four unassigned attribute points, Lee wants to be a big imposing warrior so he raises to Strength to ●●●●. That means his still unnamed character, he has Strength ●●●● and Appearance ●. That means he probably looks like a scary brutish thug. If he went with Appearance ●● he would be a normal looking guy who happens to be big. With Appearance ●●● he would be handsome and big. He likes the idea of playing physically powerful warrior that looks like a physically fine specimen., he raises his Appearance to ●●●. Now he has one attribute point left to assign.   Both of the other players are planning on taking fairly high Charisma and Manipulation scores respectively, and are playing fairly brainy characters. One of the characters is playing a very Perceptive character. Because of the rest of the party, Lee is okay leaving his warrior’s Charisma, Manipulation, Intelligence, and Perception at ●●.   Raising his warrior’s Dexterity to ●●●● would be utilitarian for most combat situations. Raising his Stamina to ●●●● would make him an enduring powerhouse. Raising his Appearance to ●●●● would mean his warrior would be make him look the part of a physically powerful adonis. Wits ●●● would round out his character a little bit mentally and make him a more alert warrior. All of these options are tempting.   He puts a pin in assigning his last attribute point, and addresses something he skipped that many other players would have done first, choosing his character’s name and race.   He goes back to his character’s race. Scarterra does have elves who are super jacked and muscular, but Lee still feels a bit weird playing a super jacked elf. Now he is down to a satyr or human. Satyrs cost 10 freebie points to play and human cost zero. Lee has 40 freebie points and no intentions of playing a spell-casting (which eats a lot of freebie points), so he thinks playing a satyr might be fun for all the physical abilities that satyrs get. It also fits well with his character’s nature skills and his dot of Performance and Expression.   Most satyrs in Scarterra use elven names. There are umpteen websites online that can generate a ”random elf name”. Lee looks around and picks the name “Luvon”   Satyrs come with a free dot of Stamina, so Luvon already has Stamina 4 without Lee spending his last attribute point. Satyrs are nimble and athletic so Lee figures he can lean into that and spend his last attribute point to take Dexterity 4.   Lee has 40 freebie points to spend, but 10 of them are already spent on playing satyr, leaving with him a respectable 30 points to customize his character with.   Luvon has Dexterity 4, Strength 4, Stamina 4. Luvon is physically a fine specimen, so Lee figures he might as well take Appearance 4 so he can look like a handsome version of the masculine ideal.   The goal is to play a fairly long-term ongoing campaign, so the Game Master encourages to take choosing Merits and Flaws seriously. It also means it’s time to flesh out his background.   When making a satyr character, it is a good idea to figure out what herd your character came from and what your character’s relationship with his/her herd is.   After reading about satyr herds on Scarterra.com, Lee is torn between playing an unusually bold and aggressive satyr from the fairly soft and Mera focused “Faun Herd” or playing an unusually gentle and trustworthy satyr from the rough and tumble “Mountain Goat Herd.” Ultimately Lee decides “Why not both.” His mother was a Faun and his father was a Mountain Goat. Luvon has his mother’s piety towards the goddess Mera, and he has his father’s pragmatic results driven viewpoint and general attitude that action is better than words. Fusing this together, Lee decides to make Luvon a warrior who fights for Mera’s ideals. He love peace but is willing to fight for it. He protects the weak and fights with honor. He is not a knight but embodies the chivalric ideal nonetheless.   Luvon is not a theurgist or a priest, but that doesn’t mean he can’t be a holy warrior. He takes the two dot Merit, “Holy Order Member”. Despite not being a theurgist, the Tenders of the Sacred Hearth are happy accept Luvon as one of their own and will provide him their full support. Luvon has a few adventures under his belt, and he acted in a chivalrous and brave manner helping other so he takes the two dot Merit “Folk Hero” too. He hasn’t done a whole lot of heroic deeds yet, but he’s really good looking so this means that he leaves a favorable impression wherever he goes so the tales of his heroic deeds might be exaggerated a bit.   Any player of a warrior PC should give the Advanced Training Merit section a look. Luvon is brave and action-oriented, but he is not reckless. He takes “Shield Proficiency” for 1 point so he can properly defend himself. The other advanced training merits are a little too specialized for Lee’s tastes. He might pick more up later with experience points.   None of the Flaws are particularly appealing to Lee, so he leaves that blank. He doesn’t want any physical or supernatural handicaps and he figures Luvon can claim a lack of social Flaws to his general clean living.   That is 5 freebie points spent on Merits, probably enough for now. The Game Master is satisfied because both “Folk Hero” and “Holy Order Member” can be used for a lot of story hooks. Now he has 20 freebie points left.   Luvon’s starting Willpower is 3. Luvon is brave and dedicated so Lee figures he wants to raise his Willpower to at least 6. That leaves him 14 freebie points. Lee figures he will put the rest of his remaining points towards abilities.   Specializations are tempting, but since the game hasn’t started yet, Luvon is not sure what his character will be doing or how the game is going to unfold., so Lee is planning to use his first experience points awards to buy some specializations.   Since Luvon is a big strong action oriented holy warrior, Lee things he will lean towards close combat above ranged combat. He raises Luvon’s Melee to ●●●●.   Since he is now part of a holy order, he opts to take a dot of Theology. Luvon is no expert in the liturgy but at least he doesn’t embarrass himself during routine religious services.   Since his evolving character concept is a now a nimble satyr hero, Lee opts to raise his Athletics from ● to ●●●.   Luvon is a warrior for Mera, the goddess of healing, so Lee opts to give him a dot of Medicine, so he can at least do basic first aid.   With only one dot of Ride, Luvon can’t fight well from horseback but he can at least ride a horse from point A to point B and then dismount before engaging the enemy. That is good for short treks, but if Luvon goes on a hard and long ride without suffering an accident or arriving fatigued and saddle sore, he probably wants Luvon to a be better rider. Lee raises Ride to ●●.   He has two points left over, and figures raising his Willpower to 7 is not a bad idea. Notice that initially Lee decided he didn’t need Medicine or Theology but as his character concept and backstory became more fleshed out, these traits began to make more sense.   Recap, he spent 10 freebie points to be a satyr, 5 for an extra attribute dot, 5 points for Merits, 8 points for extra dots of Willpower and 12 points on extra dots abilities.  

Background Based Character Creation

  Adam knows he wants to play a scoundrel type of character. The Game Master asked for the players to lean heroic, but Adam doesn’t want to play someone squeaky clean. Adam proposes this idea to the Game Master.   “My character was a self-serving thief and conman but generally tried to avoid seriously harming people, or at least that’s what he told himself. Then one day he pulled a scam of sort that did a great deal of damage, and he is trying to get over the guilt of what he did. But his general nature of being selfish is still there, but he has a bit of nobility and altruism deep inside fueled by his guilt.”   This is essentially an anti-hero with a redemption arc of sorts, and the Game Master is on board with this.   Adam thinks it over and thinks a tengku would be a good fit for this basic concept. Tengku names are all two-syllable names with strong vowel sounds. Adam arbitrarily comes up with “Cobmak”.   Starting characters get two languages, Adam chooses Common and Dwarven, figuring he spent a lot of time in the Borderlands region and had to deal with dwarves there.   Adam wants Cobmak to be a quick witted and wily conman, but also a little bit action focused. He figures an arcane spell-caster will fit with this concept. Probably with a focus on Illusions and Divination.   He wants to focus on Cobmak's skills before he takes on attributes.   Based on his sneaky con-man concept, Adam definitely wants Alertness, Athletics, Dodge, Etiquette, Intimidation, Investigation, Legerdemain, and Stealth   He probably wants Commerce, Empathy, Etiquette, Expression, Melee, Legerdemain, and Politics.   He figures there is little to no use for Sailing (landlocked adventure setting), Seneschal (his character is too lazy for this), History (his character is focused on the here and now), Theology (he’s not very pious),   He might want Animal Ken, Archery, Brawl, Hearth Wisdom, Enigmas, Leadership, Survival. These are skills that are situationally useful to a thieving conman or simply broadly utilitarian for everyone. Enigmas is a little out of place for a thieving con man, but it fits for a cerebral mage.   He only has 25 ability points and he has eight abilities on the “Definitely List”, 7 on the “Probably List” and seven on his “Maybe List”   If he puts two dots in every “Definitely” and one dot in every “Probably” that leaves him two dots to spare. He opts to put the “extra” dots to raise his Stealth and Subterfuge to ●●●. First and foremost, Cobmak is a sneaky con artist. He’ll leave everything else at zero, at least for now.   Eying the rare abilities, Escape Artist, Spellcraft, Disable Device, and Use Magic Device are all tempting. Adam puts a pin in these to explore later with freebie points later, or more likely to raise with experience points later.     Returning to attributes, Adam wants Cobnak to be relatively well-rounded, so he doesn’t want any attribute at a one dot rating. Raising every attribute to ●● takes nine dots, so that means he now has six attribute dots left for customization.   Adam is not sure how much magic he is going to take at character creation but he definitely wants Divination and Illusion and he is considering Transmutation and Abjuration. The first and second circle Divination spells skew heavily towards Perception and the first and second Illusion spells skew heavily towards Manipulation. These attributes both fit a con artist well, so Adam raises Cobmak’s Manipulation and Perception attributes to ●●●●.   Now he has two unassigned dots of attributes left. He figures a sneaky conman should be quick witted and fleet footed, so he raises Dexterity and Wits to ●●●. He would not mind raising Cobmak’s Intelligence too, so if he has freebie points to spare, he’ll revisit that later.   Adam has forty freebie points to spend, but he has many holes left in his character to fill.   It costs four freebie points to be a tengku. Unless a mage is a warlock, an arcane caster has a minimum Willpower of five dots. Adam doesn't want to mess with the can of worms that is playing a warlock, so that’s another four freebie points.   Adam wants to flesh out his backstory more and take lots of Flaws so he can get more freebie points for Cobmak. What was the thing that Cobmak did he feels so guilty about?   Cobmak was hired by a crime boss to rob a wagon train of the goods without asking what was in the crates. It turned out the wagon train was carrying very important medicine for a remote village with an outbreak of a rare malady. The crime lord was planning to sell the medicine back to the villagers at an exorbitant price.   Cobmak did not realize what he did until after he delivered the goods, so he staged a second robbery against the crime boss and then delivered the medicine to the villagers.   The villagers did not realize that Cobmak robbed them in the first place, so from their perspective Cobmak saved them from the evil crime lord. Cobmak feels guilty because the villagers treat him as a hero when they shouldn’t. Also, at least one child died during the interim where the crime boss had the medicine.   The Game Master and Adam agree that they will come up with the specifics for what the crime lord’s name is, what is organization is called, and all the other details for that newly created villain later, but they have core concept down which is all they need at the moment.   Cobmak takes “Contract Marked” a three-point Flaw. The crime boss is of furious that Cobmak betrayed him and put a bounty on his head. Cobmak has a “Dark Secret”, that he didn’t really save the village, he endangered it. Dark Secret can range in points from one to three, but the Game Master lets him take two points, Cobmak would face legal trouble and social derision if exposed, but there are far darker secrets in Scarterra, so this feels like a mid level secret.   Cobmak gives both the crime boss and the villagers he “saved” a wide berth. They are at least a nation away, but Cobmak is not out of the range of bounty hunters aware of the price on his head.   Skimming the Flaw options, he looks on “Heretic”. Adam asks the Game Master if the Bearers of the Ill Wind (a faction of the Testers) could have spread the disease to the village in the first place and they are mad at Cobmak for undoing their scheme. Heretic ranges from a one-point Flaw to a five point Flaw.   The Bearers of the Ill Wind are a relatively small religious faction. The rest of Maylar’s Testers don’t like the Bearers much, so mainstream Testers are not going to be mad at Cobmak (some might even low-key respect his moxy). Normally having a small and obscure religious group mad at you is a one-point flaw, but the Bearers are brutally violent and crafty, so the Game Master lets Adam take a 2 point Heretic Flaw.   That is eight freebie points all from Social Flaws stemming from one bad heist. That cancels out the eight freebie points Adam already spent.   Now Adam is going to sink some freebie points into Cobmak’s magic.   To be an arcane spell caster it costs 3 freebie points. He wants at least Illusion 2 and Divination 2. At three freebie points per arcane dot, that’s 12 freebie points.   He still has to buy spells and takes experience points.   Eying the First Circle Divination spells, Adam wants Detect Magic, Detect Poison, and Identify. That is six experience points (two points each).   Eying the Second Circle Divination spells, Adam wants Clairvoyance/Clairaudience and Detect Thoughts. That is eight experience points (four points each).   Eying the First Circle Illusion spells, Adam wants Blur, Disguise Self, and Ventriloquism. That is six experience points (two points each).   Eying the Second Circle Illusion spells, Adam just wants Invisibility for now (Invisibility is why he wanted illusions in the first place). That is two experience points. Normally second circle spells have a base cost of four experience points, but Blur is an optional prerequisite for Invisibility and Disguise Self is another optional perquisite. Each optional perquisite lowers the base cost by one (minimum 1)   That is 22 experience points. At character creation, a freebie point can be converted into 3 experience points. That means Adam needs to fork over 8 freebie points and he has 2 experience points left over in the bank.   All told, Adam has 17 freebie points left to round out his character. Now that Adam knows what magic Cobmak can do, he wants to figure how he can do the magic. What broader magical tradition is Cobmak a part of.   Warlock is a complicated bag of worms Adam wasn’t to get into. Sorcerer works for his character concept but they have lots of mandatory Merits and Adam doesn’t have a lot of freebie points left to spend on Merits.   Adam sees Cobmak is a “City Bird” not a “Country Bird”. Folk Magician and Savage Wizard seem a poor fit for a City Bird. That leaves Aesthetic Hermetic and Classical Hermetic.   Cobmak is on the run a lot, and Adam doesn’t like the idea of Cobmak being hamstrung if he loses his spellbook or other arcane tools, so he opts to play an Aesthetic Hermetic to minimize tools needed.   Aesthetic Hermetics need a minimum of Intelligence 3, Wits 3, and Willpower OR Intelligence 2, Wits 2, and Willpower 8. Adam was already leaning towards raising Cobmak’s intelligence to ●●● anyway and already has Wits ●●●. There’s five more freebie points to raise his Intelligence.   None of the optional Flaws for Arcane Casters appeals to him. The Merit, "Practiced Silent Caster" is appealing so he takes that for three freebie points. That will make it easier to cast spells while sneaking around. Now Adam is down to nine freebie points.   Adam would like to take some more magic, but he’ll have to wait for later in the campaign and put experience points towards it. He wants to round out some holes in his abilities.   To recover Quintesssence, a mage needs to roll Intelligence + Spellcraft or Wits + Enigmas. Adam wouldn't mind having both Spellcraft and Enigmas but he is short on Freebie points and since Spellcraft is a Rare Ability, the first dot costs double. Adam gives Cobmak a dot of Engimas.   There are only three players in the group, and Adam now knows one of the player’s is playing a gnome with very little combat prowess. Lee is playing a powerful warrior named Luvon, but Luvon can’t do all the fighting by himself, so Adam drops four freebie points to raise Cobmak’s Melee to ●●●. With a six dice combat pool and the tengku's Dexterity bonus, Cobmak will be able to hold his own in a fight.   With only two freebie point left, Adam converts it into six experience points, with the two left over from before he has eight experience points.   He buys another First Circle Illusion spell, "Silent Image" That's two experience points.   Adam uses two experience points to buy a third language, Elven. With Four experience points left over he opts to buy some ability specializations.   He takes a melee specialization in “swords” because he figures as a spellcaster with only mediocre strength he is likely to favor long swords or falchians. He takes a Legerdemain specialization in “pick pocketing", an Empathy specialization in “falsehoods”, and a Etiquette specialization in "criminals". These fit well for someone of Cobmak’s background.   With five dots of Willpower and four combined dots of arcane attributes, Cobmak has 36 Quintessence points [(5+4) x 4].   40 base Freebie points +7 social flaws. -4 being a tengku -4 Willpower -3 Arcane Spellcaster -3 Practiced Silent Caster Merit -12 Arcane attributes -10 (30 experience points) -5 extra attribute dot -2 extra dots of abilities. -4 two bonus dots of Melee  

Character Role Based Character Creation

Shawna knows she wants to play a support character. She is already aware the other two players are leaning towards playing a physically oriented warrior and a sneaky thief/con artist who is also a mage.   She figures a theurgist (divine spell caster) would round out the group. She has played enough RPGs and team MMOs to know everyone likes a healer.   Lee is already playing a holy warrior dedicated to Mera, so Shawna figures playing a Mera aligned theugist would make it slightly easier to justify how and why the PCs know each other, at least those two. And Mera gives all her theurgists Healing and Protection as a favored spheres which is handy for what she wanted to do.   Skimming the information on the Nine and the player character races, Shawna opts to play a gnome. Gnomes lend themselves well towards support concepts, and are disproportionately represented among Mera’s core worshipers.   Shawna searches the internet for “gnome name generators” and comes up with Selmyra but that doesn’t roll off the tongue so she changes it to Selmara. That sounds stately and fantasy-esque enough to Shawna's ears.   Shawna wants to cover her basic character background though she doesn’t want to go too deep. For a theurgist PC, step one when figuring out a background is usually deciding whether your character was born a favored soul, monastically taught annointed or a self-taught theurgist.   Shawna likes the idea of playing a character with an academic background experiencing the "real world" for the first time, so she decides Selmara was educated in a monestary and developed her first theurgy there.   Basically, after gaining her new powers and developing them a little bit, Selmara decided she could serve Mera better in the world at large than she can tied to a temple estate. Shawna can add additional details to her background later.   Selmyra doesn’t really need Strength, but since she gets a penalty on most Strength rolls simply for being a gnome, Shawna doesn’t want to leave Selmara’s Strength at only one dot. Shawna doesn’t want to leave any other attribute at one dot either. Raising every attribute to ●● takes 9 of her starting 15 points of attributes.   Shawna sees that Charisma is the base attribute for divine healing and Divine Augmentation which is another magical sphere that Shawna finds very appealing. Gnomes get a bonus on non-magical Charisma rolls, so Shawna opts to lean into her strengths and raise Selmara’s Charisma to ●●●●.   With four elective attribute points left, Shawn raises Selmara’s Dexterity, Intelligence, and Wits to ●●●. She figures Selmara is probably book smart with a temple education so an above Intelligence makes sense. Dexterity is useful for staying alive (especially since Shawna isn’t planning to take too many dots of combat abilities). Shawna eventually wants to get divine Protection sphere and that is tied to Wits, and she likes the idea of playing someone is well educated and sharp.   With one attribute dot left, Shawna wants to round out her social attributes with either more Appearance or more Manipulation. She eventually decides Manipulation ●●● would be the more utilitarian of the two.   Next comes Abilities. Shawna immediately takes Medicine ●●● because this is the core concept of what she wants her character to do.   In Scarterra d10, divine spell-casters tend to either follow the Enigmas path or the Theology path to unlocking their potential. The difference is mostly for flavor. Enigmas is mainly for players who envision their character meditating on the nature of the universe and Theology is mainly for players who envision their character reading holy canon and memorizing liturgy.   Shawna sees Selmara as a bookworm, so opts for Theology and puts ●● in the ability to start with. Priests and priestesses need at least two dots in Theology or Engimas to be ordained and Shawna wants Selmara to be an ordained priestess.   Of the thirteen divine spheres, six of them use Enigmas or Theology as a base for casting but only one of the three spheres Shawna wants to get first uses it, so two dots is probably enough for now. 20 dots of abilities left.   Selmara is not a physically oriented character, but Shawna doesn't want her to be lazy or helpless. Selmara needs some basic physical skills to even think about being an adventurer. Shawna takes a dot of Athletics, Dodge, Melee, Survival and Stealth. 15 dots of abilities left.   As a kind-hearted socialite, Shawna takes two dots each of Empathy, Etiquette, and Expression. Selmara is not a manipulative person by nature, but its something most gnomes at least dabble in so Shawna takes a dot of Subterfuge. 8 dots of abilities left.   As an academically oriented character without a specific focus (besides healing), Shawna wants to give Selmara a broad education taking a dot of History, Hearth Wisdom, Investigation, and Politics. 4 dots of abilities left.   Selmara is more of a sidekick by nature than a leader, but she is so charismatic that she sometimes finds herself in leadership rolls almost by accident. Shawna gives Selmara a dot of Leadership. Growing up in a studious temple, Selmara probably had to do a lot of boring but necessary chores. Shawna gives Selmara a dot of Seneschal and Crafts just because it makes sense given her background. Only 1 dot of abilities left to assign.   Shawna has short little gnome legs so probably wants to be able to ride a pony or donkey to undertake longer journeys.   With Crafts, characters are required to take a field of expertise. Shawna chooses woodworking. For some reason, a carpenter with divine healing powers seems to make sense to her.   On the Rare abilities list, Alchemy is moderately tempting. Shawna opts to wait to see how many freebie points she has left after covering her main bases before looking into Alchemy. This is probably something she will revisit a few sessions in to raise with experience points.   Next it is time for freebie points. It does not cost any freebie points to play a gnome.   Shawna skims the Merits and Flaws list. Shawna obviously wants to take the Priest/Priestess Merit. It’s core to her character concept, and it’s only one point.   Most adventuring gnomes of respectable background very quickly get invited into the Order of Delas, so Shawna takes this Merit as well. That's two points.   Shawna likes the idea of taking the “Sheltered Upbringing” Flaw. This can be a one or two point Flaw. Shawna opts for the one-point version. She wants Selmara to be a little naïve but not extremely naïve, and Shawna plans to buy off the Flaw off after a couple sessions after Selmara witnesses two or three painful doses of reality.   Next, Shawna skims the list of Merits and Flaws specific to divine spell-casters. First off it costs three freebie points to just be a divine spellcaster.   Shawna wants Selmara to lean on divine Healing, Protection, and Augmentation. Healing and Protection are already favored spheres for Mera affiliated casters. Shawna takes the “Additional Favored Sphere” Merit for Augmentation. That’s four freebie points spent.   To offset all the freebie points she is spending on magic, Shawna takes the "No Still Casting” and “No Silent Casting Flaws”. That’s four bonus freebie points awarded.   Now for Selmara’s actual magic. To instantly heal lethal damage (the damage adventurers face most often), a theurgist needs Healing ●●●. Augmentation ● is always useful for every adventuring party, but Augmentation ●● is better because it can boost attributes and stack with the one-dot effect. Selmara likes Protection ● well enough and it fits her desired play style, but Protection ●●● is the power that Shawna really desires.   Augmentation ●●, Healing ●●●, Protection ●●● is twenty-four freebie points in total. That leaves only nine freebie points left.   Selmara’s starting Willpower is ●●●, but to be an anointed theurgist, a character needs Willpower ●●●● as a minimum. That’s four freebie points just for that. Six left.   Healing uses Charisma + Medicine. Selmara has seven dice in that pool. Protection takes Wits + Theology which is currently 5 dice and Augmentation takes Charisma + Survival which is currently at 5 dice.   Given that Selmara has barely ever left her temple, having more than a single dot of Survival is a bit hard to justify at this point.   Shawna looks over her character sheet and figures a dot of Alertness would not be amiss. A lot of gnomes use crossbows in combat to make up for their underwhelming upper body strength so she takes a dot of Archery to be able to use a crossbow proficiently. The last two freebie points raises her Willpower from 5 to 6, since she figured 5 was a bit low.   She has still has one freebie point left, so she converts it into experience points. Shawna decides to buy ability specilizations with it. She takes an archery specialization in "crossbows" so Selmara can contribute more in combat, a melee specialization in "parrying" so she try to stay alive, and takes a Hearth Wisdom specialization in "antidotes" because it fits with her general healer theme.   Starting characters get two languages. For a gnome, the default two languages are Gnomish and Common. Last step is to calculate Selmara's mana pool which is three times the sum of all her divine spheres and Willpower [(6+3+2+3)x3], 42 mana points. 40 freebie points +5 Flaws   -3 divine spell caster -7 Merits -24 divine spheres -6 Willpower -4 extra ability dots