(Slowly) Creating a Character Part 2

I just realized that what I said about Build Points last time is wrong. WRONG.

ABILITIES!

Abilities are meat and potatoes of the investigator. These skills reveal what clues can be found in a particular scene and help push the story along.

The number of players determines the amount of Investigative Build Points the players get, and everyone gets 65 points to go towards General Abilities. For Stingray, we'll say that there are only two players, so I get 24 Investigative Build Points.

Abilities that are related to your job are bought at a cheaper rate, so for every 1 point I pay, I get 2 points in that ability. You don't keep half points, so spend everything!

INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES

With my 24 Investigative points, I outfit Detective Almonds with:

Cop Talk 6
Evidence Collection 4
Interrogation 2
Law 4
Assess Honesty 4
Intimidation 3
Flattery 3
Forensics 4
Streetwise 2
Reassurance 2
Credit Rating 3

It might look like I overspent on the Investigative Abilities, but Credit Rating has a special rule associated with it. Each job has a Credit Rating range associated with it. Police Detective has a CR range of 3-5. Each character gets the lowest CR rating for free, but can increase the CR rating with a 1 to 1 point buy. I decided to keep him on the low end of the pay scale.

GENERAL ABILITIES

I have 65 points to play with, and the occupational ability 2-for-1 point buy counts for these too! I'll start with the abilities with the special rules.

Athletics 10: Normally, a player's Hit Number is 3, but if the Athletics skills is 8 or higher, the HN increases to 4.
Firearms 12: A player with a Firearm rating of 5+ can spend a point to fire two guns at once. Yes, I am John Wooing it.
Health 13: You start with 1 free Health. Yup.
Sanity 9: You start with 4 free Sanity points. I don't feel as if a high Sanity rating is as important anymore, due to the Stability rating.
Stability 7: 1 free Stability point. Stability is the immune system to Sanity's mental health.

And the rest:
Driving 6
First Aid 3
Fleeing 6
Scuffling 8
Sense Trouble 10
Shadowing 5

When it comes to general abilities, the second-highest ability must be at least half of the high ability.

And here is the ability portion of my character sheet!



Next time, Pillars of Sanity and Sources of Stability!

(Slowly) Creating a Character Part 1

This is the character sheet for Trail of Cthulhu. Don't strain your eyes just yet. I'll be focusing on different parts of the character sheet. Mostly because I haven't figure it all out yet. If you do wish to get a better view of it, just download a copy from Pelgrane Press. Then you could play along with me.

I wish I remember my HTML coding, because then I'd just hyperlink to the sheet. C'est la vie.

http://www.pelgranepress.com/trail/files/twosheet.pdf





And here's the starting point.


Investigator Name: Easy enough. I'm still not sure how I ended up with that moniker.

Drive: Your Drive is the reason you do things. It's the "why" you decide to venture down an dark alleyway (Curiostiy) or the "why" you won't stop hunting the man in black (Revenge). For Detective Almonds, I decided his Drive was Duty. Not to justice. His duty is to please that booty.

When you follow your Drive, you can regain Stability points. If you don't follow it, you can lose stability points.

The Keeper: The mysterious blonde in the rain-beaten trench coat leaned over your desk and slowly loosened your tie. "I've got a proposition for you," she purred, "in the next room."

PC: I let her lead me by the tie into the next room. It's my duty to please that booty and by God that booty will be pleased!

The Keeper: Well ok, you're following your drive, so you regain 2 Stability points as you follow her.

Not following your Drive could lose you half of your Stability points! But that's if your Keeper is a jerk. I'll get into that later.

It's worth mentioning that the duty to please that booty is not a good drive to have. You never know when that booty will be attached to an inter-dimensional creature whose very design burns your synapses and drive you to insanity, leaving you a catatonic husk that is eventually impregnated with inter-dimensional spider eggs.


Occupation: It's your job. Different jobs come with different skills. The point cost to buy job-related skills is lower than ones not job-related. FYI, a Police Detective gets to choose from Athletics, Cop Talk, Driving, Evidence Collection, Firearms, Interrogation, Law, Assess Honesty, and Sense Trouble. Those skills come at a lower cost than say Art History or Accounting.

Occupational Benefits: These are special abilities that go along with your job. As a Police Detective, I can use Cop Talk to get access to crime labs, morgues, and other police related hi-jinx.

Description: In a short sentence or very tiny print, describe your character. I had the hardest time with this part.

Build Points: Build Points are what's used to buy your skills. The amount of points a character gets depends on the number of PCs in the game. If I'm in a game with one other PC, I'd get 16 points. Three players total would net each of us 14 points. For simplicity's sake, we'll just say that I have 16 points.

So here we have it. A starting point for an investigator. Next time I'll be buying me some abilities!

The Rundown for Trail of Cthulhu

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