Character Creation 2: Ursula's Xenobiologist

Ursula is interested in Science Fiction as a way to understand perspectives she would never otherwise consider. With this in mind, she likes the idea of her character being an enlightened intellectual, a friendly sociologist, xenobiologist, and explorer ready to catalogue alien species and meet different cultures.

  • Content with the average distribution of stats, Ursula opts to take the array for her character, rather than rolling. Arranging them to her liking, this gives her:
    Strength: 7
    Dexterity: 10
    Constitution: 9
    Intelligence: 14
    Wisdom: 11
    Charisma: 12

    She jots down the modifiers, a +1 in Intelligence and a -1 in Strength.

  • Looking at the backgrounds, Scholar is an obvious choice, which grants Know as a free skill, written down as Know 0. Wanting a variety of skills, Ursula opts to roll all of her rolls on the Learning column, rolling Notice twice (becoming Notice 1), and Know once (bumping Know up to 1 as well). While not the variety she planned for, she's incredibly specialized in knowing things and spotting them; Ursula's character might be even little more active in her explorations than Ursula had originally thought.
  • Not making a combat focused character, Ursula rules out Warrior straight away, but likes the idea of having some psychic power. She ends up playing an Adventurer, blending Expert and Psychic, and remembers that her GM is allowing two alien species, one of which is always Psychic, so she keeps that in mind.
  • For her first Focus, of which she gets two, Ursula chooses an "Origin Focus," that being the alien species her GM has made, tentatively called the Murnou, a species of tall, gangly psychics who conspicuously resemble classical vampires. The benefits of this focus are that every Murnou must be either a Psychic or a Partial Psychic, but in exchange they gain one additional point of Psychic Effort, and their senses are incredibly sharp, automatically granting one rank in Notice. Because Ursula's character already has rank 1 in Notice and cannot increase it any higher, she's allowed to put one rank in any non-psychic skill of her choice, and she chooses Exert; while she was originally planning on a more communicative character, she likes the sound of her being a little athletic (by way of training and experience rather than natural talent- remember she has a Strength score of 7). For her next focus, one that must be non-combat related as it's granted by being a partial Expert, she chooses Wanderer, gaining Survive as a skill, basic knowledge of all the common languages in the sector, and the ability to always find transport for her and her friends should she ever need it.
  • Double checking her skills, Know 1, Notice 1, Exert 0, and Survive 0, Ursula picks Heal as her last skill, gaining rudimentary knowledge of medicine so that she can patch herself up and treat any friends, which makes sense due to her character's interest in biology, xeno or otherwise.
  • As a Partial Psychic, Ursula's character must pick one Psychic discipline, and since she is only a Partial psychic, this is the only one she'll ever get— she can improve it, but she can never branch out of it. Of the available choices, she picks Telepathy, and notes down Telepathy 0. Her maximum Effort is also written down as 2; 1 by default, and 1 for playing a Murnou, she has neither a Wisdom nor Constitution bonus, so neither of those affect it.
  • Rolling for hit points, at 1d6+0, Ursula gets a 6, which means her character is either sturdy or particularly lucky, probably a bit of both.
  • Her base attack bonus is +0, for being an Expert/Psychic. This character simply isn't meant for fighting, but that's okay.
  • Not enthused by any of the equipment packages, Ursula decides to roll for her starting money, getting 900 starting credits (having rolled 9 on a 2d6 roll). She then buys a TL 4 backpack for 50, an Atmofilter for 100, a Compad for 100, three type A energy cells for 30, a medkit and 3 Lazarus patches for 190, 4 doses of Lift for 200, and a Revolver with 20 rounds for emergencies (costing her 60 credits). Double checking her money, she has 170 credits left, and buys 4 more rounds of ammunition (2 credits) so that she has four full reloads of the revolver, a Survival kit for 60, two Thermal Flares for 10, and a telescoping pole and 20 meters of rope for 14 more. Realizing she needs some armor, she likes the idea of her character wearing a very traditional form of quilted armor from her culture (or perhaps one she has grown close to), which won't do much against bullets, but will help enough versus alien beast attacks or angry people with pointy sticks; this costs her 10 credits. Finishing off with a monomolecular knife worth 40 credits to cut through any alien vines or make Space Kindling, she's left with 34 credits remaining for future spending.
  • Her revolver does 1d8 damage with a range of 30/100, a magazine size of 6, and an Encumbrance of 1. Unfortunately, her attack bonus is -2 due to not having the Shoot skill. Her monomolecular knife is in a similar spot, dealing 1d6 damage with a shock rating of 1 point/15 AC, an Encumbrance of 1, and an attack penalty of -2. This character just isn't a fighter, but still, it's best to be armed just in case.
  • Her AC will be 13 thanks to her quilted armor, though because it's primitive, this armor will be useless against Tech Level 4 advanced melee weapons or firearms of any kind.
  • Ursula goes through the saving throws, with Physical being 15 (while her character has a Strength of 7, the average Constitution makes up for this), Evasion being 14 (due to having a +1 Intelligence), and Mental being another 15.
  • The final step is naming the character and coming up with a goal. While her DM hasn't really considered naming conventions for the Murnou yet (he always has trouble with that sort of thing), she imagines taking something Germanic and shortening it down to a syllable or two, tweaking it severely. Playing around with a German name generator and removing a lot of letters, she settles on Vel. For a goal, she decides that right now, Vel would love to document a new alien species somewhere, giving her plenty of reason to adventure in dangerous environs.