Advice on Character Creation

The following is by Jared from an email I received. It probably looks a little unpolished. That's my fault (Mark), not his.

Another couple terms I've been using are discretionary points and disposable points. These are financial terms which cover the money you automatically spend on necessities (disposable) and money you choose to spend on non-essentials (discretionary). The first 110 points are disposable and the 45 bonus are your discretionary. Actually their all just a big soup but I find it helps me with my 'Must haves' 'Would likes' and 'Would be nices'. IE I spend my whomping sums on DX and IQ out of my disposable and deal with my skills out of my discretionary.

Note that the following advice are just opinions but they seem quite sensible. Feel free to follow or ignore to whatever extent you like.

Must Haves

• DX and IQ at 13 or better, depending on character's focus, and usually both
• Combat reflexes (Addendum by Mark: I don't consider this a "must have" for the simple reason that CR can be bought after generation at book cost. Buy something else that can't be purchased after generation, like Luck. That having been said, you can't beat the bonuses for the price.)
• Bonus skill effects at threshold denominators IE boxing and karate give +1 damage for every 5 points. They should be 10 or 15.
• Combat / weapon skills which will provide you with a decent parry, especially those that offer parry bonuses at 2/3 of skill, instead of just half: quarterstaff, fencing, tonfa, karate. (Compare these to, say "Knife"). Some kind of sheild skill is usually good to have (cloak, buckler, etc.)
• .5 in running, swimming, climbing, and stealth (at least)
• Luck or some kind of rerolling advantage
• No attribute lower than 9. Degradation from 9 to 8 and 8 to 7 offer only 5 points each.
• Toughness 1

Obviously these are general for every character. depending on your emphasis, you'll have different must haves. For you psionics were a must have, for andrew high wealth and status were must haves, for the brigadier sharp shooter. Perhaps above must haves would be 'character core' points.

Would likes

Here's your skill modifiers.

• Any reaction modifier (Attractive Appearance, Charisma, Status, Voice, Reputation, etc.)
• Higher Luck
• DX + HT divided by 4 = interger, preferably one that yeilds a Move of 6
• Eidetic Memory
• .5 in diplomacy, fast talk, tactics, and merchant
• A Contact

Would Be Nice

The following are everything you start off wanting but have to strike to afford your IQ and DX of 13.

• Luck 60
• Increases to HT or ST
• Toughness 2
• Higher Wealth
• All kinds of 5 point advantages (like animal empathy, rapier wit, pitiable, etc.)

It should be noted that if you follow these to the letter you will have a perfectly balanced and very boring character. I made an everyday merchant character according to these stipulations and had instantly no desire to do anything with him although he had some cool quirks.

Don't Touch

Don't waste your precious character points on any of the following.

• Skills the hard way (that one guy's 16 points in naturalist...what were they thinking?)
• daredevil
• lightning calculator (confers no actual bonuses)
• 25 points on looks if you're a male character
• more than 20 points on skills
• any advantage you know the GM will ignore or give you the benefit of anyway (ie wealth if your GM is kayvan). common sense, intuition, absolute direction, empathy (you know when you're going to be double-crossed...I mean, we've all done DNA DOA) fit here. They seem like really good advantages but require more creativity to make work.
• anything inspired by werewolf the apocalypse (Addendum by Mark: I think "Lifebane" is pretty cool...)

Buy It While You Can...

Some additional words by Mark:

Here's some things to keep in mind when you're creating your character:

• You can buy nearly any advantages/powers when you're creating your character (depending on race, TL, etc.); there is a limited number of advantages that you can buy after character creation. (NB: We have made a list of advantages that can be bought after generation right here.)
• Attributes, while somewhat expensive now, are twice as expensive to raise after character generation.
• Skills cost just as much after generation as they do during. The one possible exception is skills that require an Unusual Background to purchase.

From this, you chould logically conclude the following:

• Dump heaps of your points into advantages, but only into advantages that you cannot buy after character generation.
• Dump a goodly number of points into attributes, 'cause it's cheaper to raise them now rather than later. (Alternatively, given that you can raise attributes after character creation but you can't aquire more advantages/powers, lower your attributes so you can get more points to buy advantages.)
• Put little or no points into skills; only spend points on skills that you won't be able to learn after character creation.

These are, of course, very munchkin-ish guidelines, but it's good to keep in mind what you can and can't spend points on and how much it will cost now vs. later.