Character Creation rules

Materials here are from the freely available Stars Without Number Core Rulebook

In old school games like Stars Without Number, it can be good to go into character creation with an open mind, so that the dice might fill in some blanks for you, or give your character an organic, unexpected twist. Besides hit points, which can be quite volatile, choosing to roll for your ability scores could give you high highs or really low lows in unexpected areas. It's one thing to intend to make a strong warrior, a bruiser for the party, and be excited that they have a 15 strength! Yippee! Things might change, however, when he rolls an 18 Charisma. Do you change course, and make a smooth, slick, face character with a little muscle, or is your hero an ox-sized brute who's surprisingly eloquent? I'm always a fan of getting bad scores when rolling this way as well, with many of my fighters winding up with supremely low Dexterity scores, which I usually chalk up to some badly treated spinal injury.

Below are the steps to create a character, complete with a party's worth of examples:

Character 1: Andre's Spy

Character 2: Ursula's Xenobiologist

Character 3: Keith's Robot Warrior

Character 4: Fred's Lostworlder

Character 5: Isaac's Blank Slate

  • The first step is to determine ability scores:

    • Ability scores can be determined in one of two ways. They can either be rolled randomly and in a set order of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma, which grants an entirely random set of abilities. If this method is determined, one score of your choice can be bumped up to a 14, so that you're guaranteed to have one pretty good stat of your choice.

    The second method is to use an array, which allows you to choose your ability scores as desired using the following numbers arranged as desired: 14, 12, 11, 10, 9, and 7. Choosing this method guarantees one good stat and one poor one, with the rest being average.

    Don't worry about your stats being particularly high or low. While they'll be noticeable, low stats can be fun role playing exercises, and with these stats being cast along an unweighted bell curve, the threshold for an "average" stat is a lot more forgiving. While modern games declare an average stat to be 10 or 11 and encourage (or require) everyone to start with an 18 in their best stat, SWN stats are average from 8-13, a much larger window, while making an 18, or a crippling 3, truly rare. Ability modifiers are determined as follows, and may be modified later:

    3 = -2
    4-7 = -1
    8-13 = 0
    14-17 = +1
    18 = +2

  • Pick a background from page 9 of the Stars Without Number rulebook. These determine your starting skills, can modify your stats, and declare what your character did before beginning their new career as an adventurer, whether or not it relates to what they currently do. A clergyman may take up arms or have a natural knack for killing, a singer or salaryman may develop psychic powers, and a soldier may find a new life as a hacker. What your character once did is important to who they are, but their past can look very different from their present. If you don't feel like picking a background, you can also roll a d20 to determine one randomly, though there is no incentive to do so.
  • Determine what skills your background gives you. At this step, you are presented with two choices: you can either pick your skills, or you can determine them randomly. If you choose them, you can pick any two skills from the Learning column except for "Any skill". If you choose to roll them randomly, you get three rolls, which you can divide between the Learning and Growth columns as you choose, with the Learning column granting new skills, and the Growth column having a high chance of boosting key ability scores. While not a guarantee, if one of your ability scores is a 13 and you want it to be a 14 for the +1 bonus, this can be a good choice. Rolling randomly for your skills also adds the chance of getting "Any Skill" or "Any Combat Skill" for certain backgrounds, letting you branch out in unexpected ways.

    • Whether you pick or roll randomly, every background also gives one guaranteed skill, such as Fix for a Spacer, Talk for a Politician, or Heal for a Physician. When a skill is gained, write it down as rank 0, like "Heal 0". Getting the skill again by any means bumps it up to rank 1. At level 1, no skill may be higher than rank 1, and anything that bumps a skill higher than that instead allows you to pick any non-psychic skill of your choice. Skill ranks will determine your bonus with the skill, with skill checks being determined by rolling 2d6 and adding your character's rank, and the ability modifier applicable to the check. For example, most Talk checks will be made with Charisma to sway someone; however, if your goal is to use logic to talk someone in circles and create a distraction or confuse someone, you could make an argument for that using Intelligence or Wisdom. Lifting something heavy, meanwhile, will almost always be an Exert check using your Strength bonus, but literally bending over backwards, or perhaps catching a medium sized object falling very quickly, may be a Dexterity-based use of the skill.

  • The next step is to pick your class, of which there are three with a special fourth option. Characters can be Warriors, who reign supreme in combat, Experts, who are any person that uses skills particularly well, whether they're an engineer, a smooth talker, a performer, or a thief, and the last primary class are Psychics, who master powers of the mind, the disciplines of Telepathy, Telekinesis, Biopsionics, Precognition, Teleportation, or Metapsionics. The fourth class, Adventurer, combines any two of the other classes; versatile, but not as skilled in either niche as someone truly specialized.
  • Next comes picking your Foci; for those familiar with games like 5th edition or Pathfinder, these are a lot like Feats, or something like Perks in skyrim. They represent either particular specializations for your character, or interesting side skills to give them a bit more variation. For example, a Warrior taking Close Combatant might just be a particularly specialized melee warrior, perhaps some tribal native of an out-of-the-way planet, while an Expert choosing Close Combatant may be an asteroid miner who knows how to enjoy a good brawl. Most foci have no restrictions as to who may pick them, but read what it says closely just to double check. Every character gets one Focus of their choice, and Warriors (or Partial Warriors) gain one bonus one that must relate to combat, such as Close Combatant or Ironhide, while Experts (or Partial Experts) gain one bonus focus that must relate to their skills (and not be combat focused) such as Healer or Wanderer. At this step, you may also choose whether or not you're playing an alien (I have created two for this campaign) or some sort of android (referred to in the rules as a "VI" for Virtual Intelligence). With this in mind however, see the following aside.
    • "Only Human"

    While I normally am loathe to do so, this campaign will be humanocentric. It's the assumed setting for Stars Without Number, and I think I'll roll with it. That's not to say that there won't be any aliens or robots, but by and large most of the people will be humans in all their diverse glory. That said, if you feel that the idea of playing a human is boring, I would like to present to you the idea that being a human does not mean being.... merely human. Science fiction is rife with people who, for various reasons, are a little bit different than most. These could be easily reflected by your choices of foci, skills, and class

    • Consider genetic engineering. Through some quirk of genetics, legal or illegal, knowing or unknown, consenting or otherwise, individual or ancestral, intentional or accidental, you may be simply better in some areas than most people, or perhaps you're just some kind of a genetic freak. Stronger, faster, smarter, possessing better hand-eye coordination. Hell, maybe there's something more visually explicit going on, and your genes have been spliced with those of an animal so that your ancestors could better survive on a newfound planet, perhaps giving you an exotic trait like scales (represented by the Ironhide focus) or strangely sensitive eyes (giving you the Specialist [Notice] focus). And consider what this means for your character, whether they keep it a secret, what it means for their job, social class, how it happened to them, et cetera.
    • Implanted cybernetics may give a similar edge. While there are rules for cyberware in the setting, if we assume that your character has something unique and precisely tuned to their body, one that could never be sold, and would likely never break, prosthetic limbs that grant an edge with the Exert skill, a series of implanted chips giving your brain the power of a supercomputer, or a prosthetic eye that gives you a knack with firearms (the Gunslinger focus) are plausible
    • Maybe you have a unique idea. A really unique one. Maybe your character has been tossed through time and comes from a completely different era. Maybe they're one of a large batch of clones, maybe there's nothing different about them except they're adapted to low or microgravity environments. Maybe they're inexplicably genetically immortal, a wanderer aged six hundred and counting, or maybe their abilities actually represent a heretofore unseen kind of psionic ability; we can work that out!

    Just because your character is a human doesn't mean they have to be any kind of person you would ever meet in the real world, or one that's ever existed. So long as an idea is not literally magic, we can work it out. While I'm building the world to be somewhat grounded at the start, it's our job to add a little more weirdness to it.

  • Next, pick any one non-psychic skill, whether it's a combat skill or something else, this represents a natural interest, inclination, or hobby.
  • If you've chosen the Psychic class, or are making a partial Psychic Adventurer, pick two psychic skills of your choice from the list of psychic disciplines. Partial psychics only pick one. Picking the same skill twice, making it rank 1 instead of rank 0, allows you to pick a technique.
  • At this stage we're almost done and need to start just filling in some numbers. Generate your hit points by rolling 1d6 and adding your character's Constitution bonus; any Warriors or partial Warriors add an extra +2, and anyone who took the Diehard focus adds yet another +2. While I normally load die rolls to create higher hit point totals, I won't be doing that for this game, and if you roll 1 hit point, you may just be stuck with 1 hit point until you level up. Given that Warriors are supposed to be the best at combat, making sure that they never start with 1 hit point has already been accomplished. Combat is scary in this game, and may not always be the best course of action.
    As a side note about leveling up, hit points are increased in an interesting way, and if we get there I'll be curious to see how it works out; upon reaching higher levels, instead of just rolling another d6 and adding that number, you instead reroll the entirety of your new hit point total and add the applicable bonuses, increasing your HP TO the number you roll, or increasing your total by 1 if you roll equal to or less than what you had before. I.E. if you start with 2 hit points, having rolled 1d6+1, upon reaching level 2 you roll 2d6+2 to generate your new hit point total, meaning you could jump all the way up to 14 hit points if you're lucky. It's odd, but I like it.
  • Next, write down your base attack bonus. Warriors, or Partial Warriors, start with a +1. All others start with +0. This will be further modified by other weapons, and by applicable combat skills. Ranks in Stab are added to melee attacks, ranks in Shoot are added to ranged attacks, and ranks in Punch are added to unarmed attacks. If you make an attack without having the appropriate combat skill for whatever weapon you use (I.E. shooting a laser pistol without even rank 0 in shooting) you take a -2 penalty.
  • While I would usually do this last, now is the best time to choose your Equipment. Luckily, a range of Equipment packages are on page 25 of the rulebook, and I may make a couple more. If you don't feel like picking a predone equipment pack, you may roll 2d6*100 and start with that many credits to purchase equipment of your choosing. As always, no rerolls or take backsies.
  • Note down the damage done by your weapons, equal to the damage dice plus the appropriate ability modifier as noted under the weapon; for example, a high Dexterity score will add a damage bonus to ranged attacks with a laser gun, while a melee attack with a monomolecular-edged katana (a medium melee weapon) may add the higher of your Dexterity or Strength modifiers. Other stats are recorded at this point as well, such as weapon range, and Shock rating. Shock is unique to this system, and is a feature of melee weapons that means your attacks will deal damage even on a "miss," representing a glancing blow, a quick jab, or any of the many perils of melee combat, so long as the opponent's armor class is low enough for the weapon to affect them. It is also used as a minimum damage number- you can never do less damage with a melee weapon than its shock rating against opponents whose ACs are low enough, as noted by the weapon. For example, against opponents of 15 AC or less, a Knife has a shock rating of 1 even in the hands of an untrained commoner, noted as "1 point/15 AC."
  • Record your armor class. Unarmored, most people have an Armor Class of 10, and any kind of armor will change this number. Added to that is your Dexterity modifier, and anything else explicitly adding to your AC. While skill rolls use a 2d6 system, attack rolls use a familiar d20 roll with the appropriate bonuses trying to hit the opponent's Armor Class.
  • Note down your Saving Throws, of which you have three: Physical, Mental, and Evasion. Every saving throw starts at 16, and you subtract your level and the highest modifier of one applicable ability score. So at level 1, your Physical saves equal 15 minus the higher of your Strength or Constitution bonuses, your Mental saves equal 15 minus your Wisdom or Charisma bonus, and your Evasion saves equal 15 minus your Dexterity or Intelligence bonus. If both applicable stats are so low that they have a penalty, this is added to the number instead. Saving throws are made by simply rolling a d20 and trying to get higher than the number.
  • Congratulations! You've made a character! The final step, if you haven't done so already, is to come up with a name for your character, as well as a goal of theirs. The goal can be anything, and it may even change if it is fulfilled or made impossible somehow, but it's important that an adventurer want something they do not have. Content people don't go adventuring, after all.