Dev Log [6.30.26] - Creating a Character
In which I present the basic character creation mechanics for Xainol, the Foreboding Isle, a solo-first TTRPG inspired by Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind
The readers have spoken, and this little experiment has become a fledgling game of its own! Now that we’ve looked at the four playable ancestries (Pteron, Anuran, Pufforell, and Human) and explored a bit of the setting’s lore, it’s time to make the jump to character creation.
If you’ve been keeping up with these posts, you’ll know that we have already had a post discussing character creation options. Thanks to those of you who read and voted, we will be moving forward with a condensed Attribute and Skills system (75% of votes chose this option).
Attributes
In Morrowind, attributes are the fundamental measurements that determine a character’s inherent abilities (UESP). Attributes also govern a set of Skills. For example, the Strength attribute governs five skills (Acrobatics, Armorer, Axe, Blunt, and Long Blade) as well as damage of weapons (both melee and ranged). On top of this, Strength also impacts how much you can carry, your maximum fatigue, and starting health.
This is a lot for attributes to carry in a TTRPG format.
The first step in determining how Attributes will work in this game is identifying which ones we are going to use. I think the suggestion I made in the previous character creation post is still a good one: merge similar/overlapping attributes together. This produces four Attributes:
Strength
Agility
Intelligence
Personality
Knowing what attributes we have is a good first step, but it tells us nothing about what they will do for the character. In the source material, attribute values are used in the various equations that the program uses to determine things like damage, accuracy, and damage reduction. Those things will be handled by the dice in a TTRPG, and no one wants more math than absolutely necessary in their pen-and-paper game.
The likeliest use for attributes would be to make up for any discrepancies in skills. If you want to do something and can’t decide which skill makes the most sense, you could roll the associated attribute instead. As an example, your character is a relatively physically imposing figure—rippling muscles for days—but they are faced with a locked door. They could try to use lockpicks, but with a low skill score, their likelihood of success is abysmal. Instead, they could make use of their 75 Strength score and roll to knock the door down.
Another idea I have been tossing about is that for every 10 points in an attribute, a connected skill gains a bonus. This would apply to all skills, not just primary ones. You might not have any bonus in stealth, but your agility of 30, might provide a bonus +6 to the skill (assuming the bonus is +2 points per ten attribute levels). This isn’t a massive bonus, but adds additional functionality to attributes.
Given what we’ve discussed here, we can give our four playable ancestries their first draft Attributes! Remember, for this iteration of the game, humans are considered a monolith. Eventually we will create various cultures with different starting attributes.
Dev Note: These attribute values are based on two premises: your character is slightly above the average for their ancestry (with most commoners having a 20 in all four skills), and at least one skill is “primary” and is assigned a 50. I shied away from using increments of five, or giving any ancestry an attribute below 30. I did consider putting the Pufforell at a base Personality of 25, since they are, according to the lore, quite reclusive. Feel free to chime in your thoughts in the comments.
No Classes
For ease of development and to allow for creativity in character builds, there will be no defined classes in this game. Instead, at character creation, you will choose one attribute as a “primary” attribute and add +15 to it. . You’ll also choose another attribute as a “secondary” and apply a +10 bonus to it.
Skills
While attributes give you a baseline for your character’s potential, skills are where you can really start to build a character unique to your playstyle and preferences. Each ancestry grants bonuses to certain skills that they are particularly good at or that are innate to their culture, lifestyle, or anatomy. In general, ancestries have four or five skills that they are innately skilled in, with bonuses ranging from +5 to +15. No ancestry can grant more than +15 to a skill, and only one skill may have said bonus. Likewise, no ancestry can grant +10 to more than two skills. The remaining skills will be set to a +5 bonus. This, technically, can allow for players to make custom ancestries.
Before we can set the ancestry skill bonuses, we have to decide what the skills will actually be. In the previous character creation post, I listed the following twenty as potential skills:
Most of these skills are self explanatory. I am of two minds about the “craft” section. I wonder if smithing, alchemy, and enchantment are even things we’d want to include in this game. Obviously, a game inspired by Morrowind is expected to have magic, and there’s five families of the magic arts, but how much do we want to include in terms of crafting mechanics? Including things like smithing, where you could make or upgrade armor requires including mechanics for mining at the very least, which then requires a list of mineable materials (complete with value charts, so you could, if you chose, become a merchant of sorts). Is this something a majority of people are interested in (I am, typically, except I know the difficulty of creating fun crafting mechanics).
Assuming we go with the current skill list, we can assign each to their respective attributes.
Strength: Axe, Blades, Bludgeon, Heavy Armor, Block, Smithing
Agility: Polearm, Marksman, Light Armor, Unarmored, Stealth, Athletics
Intelligence: Alchemy, Enchant, Healing Arts, Anima Arts, Transformative Arts
Personality: Barter, Illusory Arts, Summon Arts
Dev Note: I am considering splitting the Blade skill into Long and Short Blades, so that daggers can fall under the Agility attribute and make Strength less necessary for the sneak-thief and assassin types. If we drop or combine some of the “craft” skills, I might do that.
I purposefully haven’t included humans in the skill layout. Part of this was to avoid making humans the equivalent to the Elder Scrolls’ Imperials. When I laid out their skill bonuses, I saw that I was leaning into making them legionnaires and merchants, but that’s derivative and not very creative. So, as a boon to the human citizens of the Hegemony, I’ve decided that as they are the most diverse (but as yet monolithic) ancestry anyone who chooses to play a human can have their pick of five skills and then assign a +15, +10, +10, +5, and +5 to those skills. Technically, you could do this with any of the established ancestries, but it feels right for the lore (and current limited ancestry-variation) of humans in this world to have them be versatile from a mechanics perspective.
Primary skills are granted +20 points, on top of their Ancestry bonuses (if applicable). Primary skills that are governed by the character’s primary attribute gain an additional +15, while primary skills governed by the secondary attribute gain +10. To determine the final skill rank, add in the +2 bonus points for every 10 points in the governing attribute.
Finally, Skills that aren’t chosen as primary skills are set to the default of 10, and ancestral and attribute bonuses are applied.
Dev Note: As you’ll see below, applying the +2 per 10 ranks of an Attribute causes non-primary skills to be set to the same rank in each of the Attributes (i.e. an Agility of 60 will mean non-primary, non-ancestral skills will always start at 22 [10 base + 12 attribute bonus]). I’m not sure if I like this, so look for it to change some in the future.
Creating a Character
Now that we have determined the attributes, skills, and ancestral bonuses, we can make a character! At this point, we don’t have rules to determine Health, Fatigue (if we are even going to use that resource), or Mana (I haven’t decided on a term for magic energy yet). So you can’t actually play a character yet. I haven’t quite worked out how these derived attributes/resources will be derived yet (feel free to drop your ideas in the comments). But we can at least get a fill for the basics of character creation.
I think that I want to play a Pteron. They were the first ancestry that I came up with, and, at the moment, they are my favorite. The Pteron are a mountain-dwelling people, who are skilled archers and smiths. So, I’ll choose Agility as my primary attribute and Strength as my secondary.
My Pteron will have Marksman, Smith, Barter, Unarmored, and Axe as primary skills since I envision him as a former ranger turned miner and smith in the employ of a Hegemony-based mining operation set up near his village. I envision him having some skill with a (pick)axe from his experience mining, while his former life had him quite skilled with a bow. In his new life, he has become a mercantile go-between on behalf of his village, sourcing ore and gems for their use from his connections with the Hegemony Mining Company. As for his skill in smithing, I think he’s had some training prior to becoming a ranger, and that has only been a boon to him in his new life among the humans.
Dev Note: The skills system really does contribute quite nicely to character backstory building! I didn’t completely expect that when I set about deciding his primary skills. If you take the time to build out a character, let me know what your primary skills are and what backstory you’ve come up with!
Addendum: Character Creation Summary
Choose your ancestry
Set attributes based on ancestry
Choose a primary attribute and increase its rating by +15
Choose a secondary attribute and increase its rating by +10
Choose your five primary skills
Determine your primary skill ranks by adding +20 and applying ancestry bonuses, then:
If governed by primary attribute, add +15
If governed by secondary attribute, add +10
Add +2 points for every 10 ranks in the governing attribute
Determine your other skill ranks by setting them to 10, then:
Apply ancestral bonuses (if any),
Add +2 points for every 10 ranks in the governing attribute
Looking Forward
With these rules in place, we have developed the first draft of Xainol character creation! There’s more to be done, of course, with there currently being no method for generating Health and the other derived attributes, and I have a d10 (at least) table of potential inciting incidents to write up. Maybe I’ll save that for the play test documents though…gotta keep you folks wanting more!
The next couple design posts will be focused on:
The topography and climate of Xainol
Travel mechanics
Derived Attributes
Love the character sheet! I'm torn on the craft skills. Alchemy is a must, making janky weird potions is an Elder Scrolls staple, and I feel like enchanting too, but I'm torn on smithing. I leveled smithing in Skyrim mostly for the vibes, but I don't think I ever made anything actually useful until right at the end with the dragon armor. Of course, with pen and paper, crafting can be so much more interesting as you could make items not covered by the rules, for instance. I'm a sucker for gathering resources, and I haven't seen a TTRPG that has quite scratched the itch the same way roaming around in an MMO or Video Game has. I'll vote maybe for now, which is totally not helpful haha.
Do you plan to let players make their own spells like in Morrowind?