Creating a Character

Your first step in building your character is to imagine what you want to be. Your character is a combination of game statistics, roleplaying hooks, and your imagination. You choose a species, typically humanoid, and a race, such as human, dwarf, or elf. You also invent the personality, appearance, and backstory of your character. Once completed, your character serves as your representative in the game, your avatar in the world.

Before you dive into step 1 below, think about the kind of person you want to play. You might be a courageous warrior, a skulking rogue, a fervent monk, or a flamboyant noble. Or you might be more interested in an unconventional character, such as a brawny noble who fights with a saber, or a sharpshooter who picks off enemies from behind with their blowgun. Do you like fantasy featuring dwarves or elves? Try building a character from one of those races. If you don’t know where else to begin, take a look at characters you like in your favorite piece of media to find what catches your interest. Don’t feel ashamed to recreate a character and put your own spin on it.

Once you have a character in mind, follow these steps in order, making decisions that reflect the character you want. Your conception of your character might evolve with each choice you make. What’s important is that you come to the table with a character you’re excited to play.

The Character Sheet

Throughout this chapter, we use the term character sheet. Your character sheet is a representation of all your attributes, abilities, and skills, as well as things like your inventory. Character sheets in this game are created via an automated spreadsheet to help negate too much repetitive math. This handbook won’t go over all the formulas, as some are a little lengthy, so if you have any questions about how something is calculated, ask your GM for more details.

The character sheet has a total of five pages, with only four being commonly used during the game. These are the overview, skills, inventory, and ability sheets, with the base stats page typically only being changed during the level-up process.

In regard to the way that the character sheet is formatted, the only things that need to be edited are highlighted in an orangish-yellow color. These are things like your current HP or Energy, as well as your Level or XP.

Step 1 - What is Your Race

Every character has both a species and a race. What species or races are available often depends on the setting. Races and species are separated into six overarching groups: Humanoids, Demons, Beasts, Primordials, Devils, and Spirits.

Once you decide what race you want to play, work with your GM to determine what species that race would be a part of. In most campaigns, your GM will most likely insist that your group of players all pick races and species from within the same overarching group for the sake of a cohesive party or world. In situations where this is the case, the reason is typically due to in-world issues like the near-universal attitudes of one group towards another. For example, most of humanity hates Devils more than anything.

During character creation, work with your GM to determine what abilities, skills, or modifiers your chosen race would give your character. For example, goblins might have a claw attack, elves might be faster, halflings might have some natural skill in stealth, or dwarves might have an increased constitution.

Step 2 - What Are Your Attributes

Much of what your character does in the game depends on his or her six attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. Each attribute has both a score and a rating. The score is used for things like ability or item requirements, while the rating is the dice aspect of the attribute. The six attributes and their use in the game are described later.

When you create a first-level character, every attribute starts with a score of 5. You then have a pool of sixty Attribute Points that you can allocate among the attributes of your choice. None of your base Attribute Scores at first level can exceed thirty.

In the case of creating a level zero character, all your attributes start with a score of four and you have a pool of ten Attribute Points to allocate, with none of your scores exceeding ten.

Step 3 - What Are Your Skills

In addition to attributes, a fresh level one character has a pool of forty Skill Points that can be split among any Combat, Defense, or Practical Skill, as well as twenty Skill Points to spend on Knowledge Skills. Like with your Attributes Scores, none of your base Skill Scores can exceed thirty.

In the case of a fresh level zero character, you have a pool of twenty Skill Points that can be split among any Combat, Defense, or Practical Skill, as well as ten Skill Points to spend on Knowledge Skills. In this case, none of your base Skill Scores can exceed eight.

Skills and their use are further explained later.

Step 4 - What is Your Class

Every character has their own abilities. A character's class broadly describes their vocation, what special talents he or she possesses, and the tactics he or she is most likely to employ when exploring a dungeon, fighting monsters, or engaging in a tense negotiation. Unlike other TTRPG systems, however, Ascension does not have classes in the typical sense, instead opting for a classless approach. While classes may be an established idea in some world settings, they’d often be treated like jobs. So, while you may have mages, fighters, and clerics, it’d be in the same way that you’d have carpenters, blacksmiths, or alchemists.

When you create a character, discuss with your GM the role that you want to take or the way you want to play. Together you will decide what abilities to give your character before beginning a campaign.

After character creation, all abilities gained from there on out will be obtained during your adventures. Did you meet a retired swordsman who took a liking to you? Maybe he teaches you a technique from his early years. Is there a local priest holding workshops on “Healing for Dummies”? Or maybe you found a mythical sword that showed you flashes of a technique once used to slice a mountain in half.

Step 5 - Who Are You?

Once you know the basic game aspects of your character, it’s time to flesh him or her out as a person. Your character needs a name. Spend a few minutes thinking about what he or she looks like and how he or she behaves in general terms.

Alignment

Background

Your character’s background describes where he or she came from, his or her previous occupation, and the character’s place in the world. A background is usually a one or two word backstory solution. If you are new to TTRPGs or just don't want to write a longer backstory, you may opt for a background.

When choosing a background, try to generalize it as much as possible. Were you a Mercenary? Sailor? Alchemist? Well there you go. You now have a background. Work with your GM to determine how your backstory or background will affect your character. Your background may affect your skills, abilities, or starting equipment.

Appearance & Personality

Take your character’s attributes and race into account as you flesh out his or her appearance and personality. A very strong character with low Intelligence might think and behave very differently from a very smart character with low Strength. A description of how every attribute could affect your appearance is listed below

Strength: A character with high Strength usually corresponds with a burly or athletic body, while a character with low Strength might be scrawny or plump.

Dexterity: A character with high Dexterity is probably lithe and slim, while a character with low Dexterity might be either gangly and awkward or heavy and thick-fingered.

Constitution: A character with a high Constitution usually looks healthy, with bright eyes and abundant energy. A character with a low Constitution might be sickly or frail.

Intelligence: A character with high Intelligence might be highly inquisitive and studious, while a character with low Intelligence might speak simply or easily forget details.

Wisdom: A character with high Wisdom has good judgment, empathy, and a general awareness of what’s going on. A character with low Wisdom might be absent-minded, foolhardy, or oblivious.

Charisma: A character with high Charisma exudes confidence, which is usually mixed with a graceful or intimidating presence. A character with a low Charisma might come across as abrasive, inarticulate, or timid.

Step 6 - What Do You Have?

What equipment you give a fresh character boils down to a seemingly simple question. 

"What would my character reasonably possess on a day-to-day basis?"

This can be guided by your race, background/backstory, and what role you wish to take. Work with your GM to figure out what equipment would be fair to give your character. The GM, as always, has the final say in what you can start the game with. In other words, try not to be excessive.

Your Strength score limits the amount of gear you can carry. Try not to start the game carrying equipment with a total weight exceeding your Carrying Capacity. The next section has more information on carrying capacity.

Leveling Up

As your character grows, they gain experience, represented by experience points. A character who reaches a specific experience point threshold advances in capability. This advancement is called gaining a level.

The experience point thresholds are calculated based on your next level, for example, to go from level zero to level one, you would need one-thousand experience points. While from level one to level two would take another two-thousand experience points for a total of three-thousand character xp. This means that, from level two to level three, you would need six-thousand cumulative character xp. The amount of xp you need to level up is always indicated on your character sheet right below your current level and current xp.

Attribute and Skill Points

Every time you level up, you gain a number of points to spend on your attributes and skills. When you level up, you gain a total of ten Attribute Points and twenty Skills Points to spend.

Attribute Points can be used to increase any of the six main attributes and Skill Points can be used to increase any Combat, Defense, Practical, or Knowledge skill. This means that you cannot become a better crafter or become more fluent in a language just by leveling up. Insights are a special kind of skill that can have wildly varying effects. Insights are normally related to some kind of natural law, like the elemental law of fire, the fundamental law of gravity, or the original law of spacetime. Your GM will grant and explain insights when they become relevant.