Creative Juices

Question: How do you guys handle character creation? Do you use Scion RAW, or do you do something different?

Question: What is your policy when an old character dies (or becomes unplayable) and a new one needs to be made, or a new player joins your group? How is character creation handled then in terms of allocating xp?

Lumping these into one post so we can all talk about character creation together! First, let me make an announcement.

Yesterday morning was our thousandth post here on the JSR blog! It's hard to believe we've spent that much time hanging out with you guys, answering questions, discussing world mythology and having a blast, but it's true. In celebration, we're going to do a bonus project this week and write up our character creation process to release on the website in the House Rules section. Since we're hard at work on that, I'm not going to go into detail here, but I'll give you the basics of the differences from the RAW as a teaser:

• No buying Legend. Ever. Seriously, stop.
• No bonus points. They make no sense and screw the non-mathemeticians at the table.
• Character balance requirements. Making sure starting PCs can function as mortals in their pre-divine lives, and that they aren't critically crippled at the beginning of the game.
• Better scaling costs for starting with higher-level powers. Five dots in one ability is more difficult to pull off than five one-dot abilities.
• Provisions for specialized abilities. We know you're out there, Science-specializers, and we're here to help.
• Separate pools of points for Epics and boons. Stop trying to buy all Epics and pretend you're not the children of gods, you fakers.
• Beginning character costs. Suggested starting points for characters created at all three levels of play.
• Band roles and requirements. For those whose groups have difficulty making viable bands with a good skill spread, an optional system for making sure everything is covered.
• Other awesome stuff.

Character creation's too big a subject to really tackle in a blog post anyway, so hopefully that'll give you something a little meatier to chew on, question-asker!

Now, on to the second question, which is a little more specific. New characters that have to come into the game mid-stream are challenging because you need them to balance and be able to handle what's going on, but also take into account where they came from and what's going on with them and the rest of the group.

For a new player entering a game in progress, the easiest thing to do is allow him to create a character as normal from the bottom, just the way the rest of the group did originally. Once he has, grant him the same amount of XP your PCs have gotten so far, and let him spend it wherever he'd like. If your PCs have gone through upgrades since then - became Demigods, for example, or Gods - then have the new player spend the XP they got pre-upgrade, go through the upgrade process with him, and then give himthe XP the other players have gotten since the upgrade to spend to bring him up to speed with everyone else. Finally, apply Fatebonds to the new character if he's Legend 5 or higher, and you should be good to go. It won't be a perfect portrait of what a PC that had actually been played would look like, but it'll be close.

Now, know your player: if he's never played before or isn't into math and crunch, this may be too much of a long and confusing process for him, so if that's the case be ready to help out. For players who weren't sure how to build characters but did know what they wanted them to be like, we've in the past done the basic building part, including template upgrades, for them, and then let them just spend the XP wherever they wanted to give it their own personal touch. Some players may not even want to do that much, and might find 150 XP (or whatever) too dauntingly high a number. You should never take character-building or XP-spending out of the hands of a player who wants them, but it's okay to help out if they're floundering. We have also, in rare cases, pre-built an entire character for a player coming into a game; we really only do that if it's a game that has a plot that requires very specific things to be true of new PCs, and we don't recommend it unless you don't have any choice, since players will always have more fun if they're in the driver's seat from the get-go.

Just as important as the numbers is the character himself; make sure your player knows what his backstory is, not just as a mortal but as a Scion, too. If he's joining a game anywhere above Legend 2, he must surely have already been on adventures and missions as a Scion and should know what he did and how his Legend increased by doing it. If there's a lot of stuff happening in your plot that might have affected him, work with him on it and be ready to provide suggestions, though as always avoid taking actual creative control away from him. Some Storytellers like to run little private "chronicles" as a single game session with a new player so they've had at least a cursory run through what they might have done before, while others are fine with just letting the player write it up and submit it for approval, or verbally narrate the general ideas. Whatever floats your boat should work here; just make sure the new PC isn't coming in as a nobody from nowhere.

Now, for PCs that join a game because the player's old PC died, we slightly modify that system; death is a serious consequence and we want it to mean more than just "Welp, I guess I get to reset with a character I can build from scratch who will be better suited for this," so that nobody thinks of it as a convenient way to start over with a better-built character. PCs that come in after their predecessor's death usually start one Legend lower than the dead PC (if the dead PC was already a Legend lower than most of the rest of the group, they might start the same, but the idea is that they're lower Legend than the average bear by a little), close to going up if they do enough awesome stuff but requiring a little time put in to make sure they're up to snuff. You want the player to be able to work up to everyone else and achieve awesomeness instead of just starting at the same level as those who have already put a lot of work into those characters; it makes them a little slower to get their superpowers, but in our experience doesn't prevent them from being important and effective and they generally catch up quickly.

That's about all there is to it, really; you want new characters to be the same level of effectiveness, or close to it, as the ones already in play, so allocate XP accordingly. The math's pretty quick and easy; it's making sure you have a good background on what a new PC has been doing prior to the game in which he's introduced that usually takes a little more work.