Serving the Dragon: A Character Creation Example

[Tai Dai Cultist]

That seems weird. Looking at mine, and based on the points I haven't spent yet, I'm right where I should be I believe. I might have to rework the math off to the side to make sure I haven't screwed up the spreadsheet, but it looks right...

Yeah, ideally each module should give as many points as it takes to buy the module.  You should actually end up slightly ahead (6xp per skill per field) than point buy if you take a stage 3 module.  I made my examples the old fashioned way... in pencil on lined notebook paper.  There's no telling where (or even how many) my errors were.  I'm thinking about re-building... making 4 "new" PCs with the exact same train of module selections and see how differently they turn out.  And pay way more attention to my points this go thru.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

Yeah, ideally each module should give as many points as it takes to buy the module.  You should actually end up slightly ahead (6xp per skill per field) than point buy if you take a stage 3 module.  I made my examples the old fashioned way... in pencil on lined notebook paper.  There's no telling where (or even how many) my errors were.  I'm thinking about re-building... making 4 "new" PCs with the exact same train of module selections and see how differently they turn out.  And pay way more attention to my points this go thru.

Unless there's been serious errata since my ATOW book.. you already start losing points in the module process just by picking affiliation.  Costs 150 points to take the Draconis Combine affiliation, for example.  But for those 150 points, you actually only gain 40xp in value. (wealth penalty exactly cancels will bonus, net 0.  Combat Sense/Pain Resistance cancels out Compulsion, still net 0.  Then 40XP worth of skills... 50 if you figure you get the flexible XPs even if you don't take an affiliation)

EDIT: after running this one PC build through the fine tooth comb, I learned the following about module points values:
Stage 0: would have been 125XP short of 1000 points had I not picked a sub affiliation.  Picking galedon sub-affiliation ended up at a net value of 1025XP, so went from a big loss to a small net gain vs point buy just in subaffiliation pick.
Stage 1 (Blue Collar): cost 210XP, got back exactly 210xp in value
Stage 4 (Civilian Job- Child Labor baby!): Cost 600, got back exactly 600 in value
Stage 3 (Military Enlistment) Cost 720+408 in fields after rebate, got a net gain in 2XP this pass for a total advantage vs straight point buy of 127xp.

So I clearly messed stuff up on pencil and paper first go thru :)

[Maelwys]

Yeah, that's sort of why I'm surprised that the Sub-affiliations are considered optional, since you need to take them to hit the Affiliation cost, IIRC. Maybe not al of them, but some atleast.

[Maelwys]

I haven't forgotten about this. Its just sometimes the points don't quite work out how you expected it, and you have to sit and figure out what you really want to keep and what you have to discard to take a hit on.

So I'm still pondering it all :)

[Maelwys]

Alright, at this point we're spending the leftover XP. We actually get a bit of a bonus because the Life Modules took the character to 22, which means aging experience! We also wind up with 90 extra XP from the rebate from the 3 Fields that the character has taken. And that's a good thing. With the experience from the Buying Additional Experience step basically spent on the prosthetic, points are...somewhat hard to come by.

ATTRIBUTES
STR: +400
BOD: +400
RFL: +500
DEX: +500
INT: +400
WIL: +300
CHA: +300
EDG: +100

Traits
Compulsion/Xenophobia: -100
Wealth: +200
Connections: +100
Enemy: -100
Equipped: +200
Enemy: -100
Glass Jaw: -300
Reputation: +100
Rank: +500
Custom Vehicle: +200
Vehicle: +400
Unlucky: -200
Lost Limb (Left Arm): -500
Implant (Type 4 Prosthetic): +400
Property: +100

Skills
Perception: +50
Language/English: +20
Language/Japanese: +50
Arts/Oral Tradition: +30
Martial Arts: +120
Protocol/Draconis Combine: +120
Thrown Weapons/Blade: +20
Interest/Star League History: +20
Swimming: +50
Career/Soldier: +80
Computers: +30
Interest/Any: +30
Interest/Military History: +50
Leadership: +80
MedTech General: +50
Melee Weapons: +50
Running: +30
Small Arms: +80
Driving/Ground: +20
Navigation Ground: +50
Gunnery/`Mech: +70
Piloting/'Mech: +70
Sensor Operations: +50
Tactics/Land: +30
Technician/Any: +30
Administration: +30
Training: +80

Attributes are alright, nothing special. CHA, WIL and Edge are unfortunately low enough that they're going to modify any skill checks that involve them. I could get around that by dropping RFL and DEX down by 100 and bumping CHA and WIL, but meh. Edge is tanked, but that might actually work well for the character concept.

Traits are similar. I added 100 XP to Property to meet the minimum requirements for taking White Collar early on. I also managed to bump up the Vehicle Trait just enough to get to 400, which is enough to get me a medium Mech...and it was a stretch. Also got a Type 4 Prosthetic for the character.

Skills remain mostly the same, though I bumped up Admin on the suggestion of someone else. Observant people will note that both Piloting and Gunnery/Mech have 70 points given to them, which isn't enough to up them to the next level, but I've got plans for those points later.

Up next, Equipment!

[Maelwys]

Alright, there are two things to keep in mind when purchasing equipment. The first is the rating of your Wealth trait. This determines how many C-bills you have to spend on your starting gear. If you have Wealth of 0, you start out with 1000 c-bills to spend. Go negative on the Wealth trait and you're looking at 100 c-bills. If you're really lucky, you can get up to 2 million c-bills to spend on gear. I'm not quite sure what you'd do with 2 million c-bills, but fortunately any c-bills that you don't spend at the end of character creation get tucked away in your wallet for use once the game starts.

The other trait that determines what you can purchase at the end of the character creation system is your Equipped Trait. This determines what's the highest Tech Rating, Availability Rating and Legality Rating of gear you can purchase.

For instance, this character has wound up with 200 XP towards the Equipped Trait, which counts as a +2. Checking the chart in the Trait section, we see that the the Tech Rating of any equipment we want to purchase is limited to D or lower (A-C), the Availability of any item we want to purchase must be C or lower, and the Legality of any item we want to buy must also be rated C or lower. In the end, our rating is D/C/C.

There are two caveats to this. First, if you're a Clanner, no matter what the chart says, you get to start out with a Tech Rating that's one higher than what the chart says. So in this case, if this was a Clan Nova Cat character, our rating would be E/C/C instead of D/C/C. Likewise, if you're a Periphery brat, you get -1 to your tech rating, or in our case, you would wind up with a C/C/C rating.

The second caveat applies to the Availability and Legality rating. Some pieces of equipment are found to be the purview of a single faction, and found rarely outside of that faction. Such equipment has a Affiliation code. If that affiliation code doesn't match your character's affiliation, then you have to increase the gear's Availability Rating and Legality Rating by 1 each.

For instance, lets look at the Nambu Auto-Pistol. The Equipment rating according to ATOW is "C/B-C-C/C" The first C to the left is the the Tech Rating of the equipment. The Middle three characters, separated by dashes are the Availability rating, one for each main Battletech Era, Star League, Succession Wars and Clan Invasion (IO provides the Availability Code for later Eras). So comparing that to our D/C/C, we can purchase it.  The Nambu does have an DC Affiliation tag, but since we match it, the ratings aren't modified. If we were playing a Capellan Character, the Availability and Legality ratings would be modified, making the Nambu "C/C-D-D/D" Since both the Availability and the Legality ratings would be higher than our Equipped trait, if we were a Capellan character, we wouldn't be able to purchase it.

So. We have 5000 C-bills to spend, and can purchase equipment with ratings up to D/C/C.

2xKnives
2xThrowing Knives
Nambu Auto-Pistol w/3 reloads
Laser Sight
Holster
DC Uniform Kit (No Helmet)
MechWarrior Kit (Regular)
Swimsuit
Military Communicator
Video Camera
Noteputer
Sunglasses
5xMicro Power Packs
5xPower Packs
Slug-Thrower Kit
Advanced Field Kit
Medical Kit
Flashbang ZZ10000 Motorcycle
Katana and Wakizashi

So. 3799 C-bills spent. Probably the first noticeable bit is that I'm missing the helmet from the DC Standard Armor Kit. That's because the Legality of the Helmet is D, which is too high for me to afford (more on that later). People that are following along particularly closely might note that the Katana's Clan Invasion Availability code is D, but I checked IO, and that has it listed as C, so I went with that, and assume there's some future errata someplace. The Flashbang motorcycle lets the character get around when not on duty, and is the main reason the character has the "Drive/Ground Vehicles" skill.  With a little over 1200 C-bills left over, there's plenty of cash to pick up whatever you might want, within reason.

Why I'm not worried about the missing helmet. There is an optional rule that states the GM can allow a person's faction to issue them gear. So it belongs to the faction and not the character, and it allows you to ignore the cost of the item, and it allows you to acquire 2 pieces of gear with ratings up to E/D/D (or F/D/D for Clanners). These have to be approved by the GM and should be integral to what your character does. For instance, this character could try to convince the GM to let them acquire the Helmet via the Issued Gear rule.

So there you have it. Perhaps a bit more verbose than I should have been, but people seem to get confused on the ratings. So if you have any questions, let me know.

[Maelwys]

So I made a small mistake here. I forgot the character I was making was utilizing the 3052 rules, and so forgot to take into account the Price Multipliers, which basically adjust the cost of personal equipment depending on the era. Which makes sense. These modifiers are done on a very broad, very general basis, and apply to the overall categories of gear, rather than individual pieces of gear. So you're not going to see a modifier for a Mauser 960 in the Succession Wars, because that's already taken into account by the Availability rating, but you will see a modifier for all "Small Arms."

Fortunately in my case, I had plenty of cash leftover, and the modifiers between 3052 and 3067 aren't very high. With the modifiers averaging around 5-10%, it was no problem to pay the little bit extra (200 c-bills or so) to make up for my mistake. But it is something to keep in mind.

And depending on the era those modifiers might not be that small. Small Arms in 3052 have a modifier of 5%. In the war-torn, communications disrupted Dark Ages era, that modifier is closer to 400%.

Edit
I hope to have the final look and background done soon, though I need to take care of a few things first that have actual deadlines :)
/edit

[Maelwys]

Better late than never, right? Here we go, all wrapped up and finished. I didn't detail everything, but its enough to show off the character generation system. I'll add a second post that discusses how I wrapped things up.

ATTRIBUTES
STR: 4 (+400)
BOD: 4 (+400)
RFL: 5 (+500)
DEX: 5 (+500)
INT: 4 (+400)
WIL: 3 (+300)
CHA: 3 (+300)
EDG: 1 (+100)

Traits
Connections: +1 (+100)
Custom Vehicle: +2 (+200)
Equipped: +2 (+200)
Implant (Type 4 Prosthetic, Left Arm): +4 (+400)
Property: +1 (+100)
Rank: +5 (+500)
Reputation: +1 (+100)
Vehicle: +4 (+400)
Wealth: +2 (+200)

Compulsion/Xenophobia: -1 (-100)
Enemy: -1 (-100) - Jilted arranged marriage fiancee (businessman)
Enemy: -1 (-100) - passed over lower ranking member of the military
Glass Jaw: -3 (-300)
Lost Limb (Left Arm): -5 (-500)
Unlucky: -2 (-200)

Skills
Administration: +3 (+80)
Arts/Oral Tradition: +1 (+30)
Career/Soldier: +3 (+80)
Computers: +1 (+30)
Driving/Ground: +0 (+20)
Gunnery/`Mech: +2 (+70)
Interest/Marine Biology: +1 (+30)
Interest/Military History: +2 (+50)
Interest/Star League History: +0 (+20)
Language/English: +0 (+20)
Language/Japanese: +2 (+50)
Leadership: +3 (+80)
Martial Arts: +4 (+120)
MedTech General: +2 (+50)
Melee Weapons: +2 (+50)
Navigation Ground: +2 (+50)
Perception: +2 (+50)
Piloting/'Mech (Quad): +2 (+50)
Protocol/Draconis Combine: +4 (+120)
Running: +1 (+30)
Sensor Operations: +2 (+50)
Small Arms: +3 (+80)
Swimming: +2 (+50)
Tactics/Land: +1 (+30)
Technician/Cybernetics: +1 (+30)
Thrown Weapons/Blade: +0 (+20)
Training: +1 (+30)

Gear (1039.9 C-bills,starting cash)
2xKnives
2xThrowing Knives
Katana and Wakizashi
Nambu Auto-Pistol w/3 reloads
Laser Sight
Holster
DC Uniform Kit (No Helmet)
MechWarrior Kit (Regular)
Swimsuit (Bikini)
Military Communicator
Video Camera
Noteputer
Sunglasses
5xMicro Power Packs
5xPower Packs
Slug-Thrower Kit
Advanced Field Kit
Medical Kit
Flashbang ZZ10000 Motorcycle


Mech: SCP-1O Scorpion

Background
Born on Nashira in the Dieron District, Hitomi Sarakawa's family is a clan of
merchants that serve the Dragon in their own way. While they aren't a noble family,
they are rather wealthy, even for the Draconis Combine, and Hitomi wanted for nothing
growing up. The War of 3039 could have ended that, as Nashira was targeted by the
Lyran and Davion forces. The Sarakawa clan did what they could, providing money and
supplies for civilians as they passively and actively resisted the invaders. It was
from such actions that Hitomi's life would change forever.

With her life disrupted by the war and then saved by the DCMS, it is hardly surprising
that Hitomi felt drawn to the military service. While such a thing may have been
impossible just decades before, the coming of Theodore Kurita's changes to the DCMS
partially opened the way for her. Her family agreed to help her, sending her to a
military school, though at the cost of gaining an enemy when Hitomi's marriage promise
was broken. The military school toughened her up, but she was unable to enter the most
prestigious schools in the Combine, and instead had to settle for the more liberal Sun
Tzu School of Combat. She even managed to enter and pass their officer program, though
she and her instructors found her skills in a Mech somewhat lacking.

The coming of the Clans changed all that. Hitomi found herself graduated and assigned
to a combat unit. Unfortunately for her, her seemingly bad luck and poor skills had
her assigned to a Scorpion Mech, though even her worse detractors can't fault her
administration skill, as Hitomi managed to find a way acquire the upgrade kit
necessary to convert it to the SCP-1O variant. With the losses the Combine suffered
during the Clan War, Hitomi has found herself second in command of a company, though
many feel it is more due to her administration skills than her abilities in a Mech.

[Maelwys]

So the attributes haven't really changed much since I last talked about them. The low edge really goes with the "unlucky" aspect of the character, but there's something there to keep the character alive in the case of a headshot or something else going wrong.

The positive traits get me to where I wanted to be, but aren't anything major. They let me pick the mech I wanted (I used the MUL for it, rather than a RAT). Amusingly, until the ATOW Companion came out, many of these traits would have gone away after character generation, as until that second publication, traits like Wealth and Equipped only applied to character generation. I left them on so people wouldn't wonder where they went to.

Glass jaw for negative traits hurts. Alot. Taking extra damage is never good in a system as lethal as ATOW is. I would've liked to have gotten rid of it, but I couldn't find the 300 points to do so. I fluffed out the enemies, one as someone she spurred when she went into the military, and one an actual member of the military. While they're low level, they would let the GM tailor any issues however they wanted.

Skills remain the same, with nothing higher than a +4. Her gunnery skill has 70 points in it, which isn't enough to raise it to +3, but it gets it most of the way there, and helps show the character's progression. Her Piloting/Gunnery skill is only a +2, and while I said I had assigned 70 points to it as a placeholder, what I had actually done was assign 50 points to the skill, and then spent 20 points to give her a specialization, which allows me to add +1 to the roll when piloting a Quad Mech. Combined with the Quad's natural advantages, her piloting isn't as bad in practice as it is in the theoretical.

Her Mech is the 3049 variant of the Scorpion, so she can sit back and fire away with an ERPPC and hope to hit. The rest of her gear remains the same, with about 1000 to spend if I wanted. Not to mention two possible instances of issued gear.

Her background was kind of interesting. With her being 22 at the end of chargen, and the character being set in 3052, that means she was born in 3030. Which means her first Life Module basically ends right after the War of 3039, and her military training starts up just about the same time the Clan Invasion does. Nice how that worked out.

Thoughts, questions, confusion?

[Daryk]

I'll run the math after work tonight, but she seems short of points.

[Maelwys]

I don't think so, but checking would work for me. Its possible I screwed up my excel sheet that I use, but I think she works out. Part of it is the Implant which eats the extra 500 you'd normally get for adding additional XP.

Of course, it could be I forgot a plus somewhere in the excel sheet, so people checking is fine with me :)

[Daryk]

Sorry for the delay... Was it just me, or has the site been down for the last two days?  Today was a long day at work, and I probably won't have time to do a check justice until at least the weekend, but I will get to it.

[Maelwys]

No rush, and yeah, the website was down for a few days.

[Daryk]

OK, the math all checks out, though I have to admit I completely lost track of how you were spending flex points around Stage 3.  My spreadsheet lets you spend all the flex at the end (and I used your finalized numbers as a guide there).  I think where I would have done it differently would have been to let some of the zero rank skills (like Interest/Star League History and Thrown Weapons) optimize to zero and invested those points in Gunnery and Piloting instead (that's actually more a comment on my spreadsheet methodology... it's possible spending all the flex at the end defeats some of the intent of the designers).  I also missed where you cranked Administration up.  Leaving that at level 2 would also have enabled her to boost her Gunnery or Piloting.

[Maelwys]

Well, good to see the math worked out. :)

And yeah. I definitely could've done things differently to tweak points here and there. Throwing Weapons and Drive/Ground were things I decided to take on spur of the moment.

So yeah, don't take this character as a "Oh my god, she came out as a 6/6, so obviously ATOW is broken." It was done more of an example and was a sort of tongue in cheek build based on one of Plog's images, and I wanted to see if I could recreate it. I could've slipped in extra points here and there, and made some other choices, but it was more of "Show the process" rather than "Lets get this character great!"

But its good to know the math worked out. I thought it did, but never hurts to make sure.

[Daryk]

Oh, THAT picture... I always figured her for at least regular gunnery.  Anyway, it was a good walk through the process, even if the result wasn't what most folks would be looking for.

EDIT: And just to confirm, dropping Administration to level 2 and allowing Interest/Star League History and Thrown Weapon/Blades to optimize to nothing gives her enough points to be a 4/5 Gunner/Pilot with 10 left over to increase Drive/Ground (or Language/English) to level 1 (from 0).

[ZombieAcePilot]

Per the AToW Companion, "A 5,000-XP starting allotment is generally recommended to produce a decent starting character, be it a green recruit or a low-level “regular” character." That seems to suggest that 'regular' would be something to aspire to, not the benchmark every character will meet. The more you try to accomplish, the less likely you are to hit that benchmark.

Had the example character not gone for OCS, they could have used those points to buy up their skills to be a more competent pilot instead of a more competent leader/administrator. This will be the decision many characters will have to make. Will they be a regular soldier, or will they be a green special forces operator? Did you really need martial arts at +4 or should those points have gone to something more core to the characters concept? Did you really need to spend 250 points on getting to choose which mech you got? Or might you have been better off by being a better pilot and taking that random unit assignment?

When points are so tight you really need to decide what you need for your concept and what you want. It may be painful, but you have to be able to 'kill your darlings'. What you want is less important than what you need. This example character is deathtrap. Even with a lenient GM using something like my suggestions for reduced damage when a mech falls, this character may be bleeding to death. 2 wounds, multiplied by 1.5 for glass jaw becomes 3, which is greater than half the characters body of 4. Now the character must make unmodified body check, on which they must roll an 8 (they have a body of 4). That's a 58% chance to fail. They have 8 wounds total, so even the first fall has them into their -2 wound modifier bracket. And this is from the gentle GM.

Hardass GM will do the full damage of 1m/3 instead. So 3 x 1.5 = 4.5 (which rounds up to 5). Five damage is over half of their wounds, two of these damaging falls is a death sentance. And because the damage is over half (its actually greater than the total) of the characters body, they need to check for bleeding. If they fail, they'll be dead if they can't stop the bleeding in 3 turns.

And in both of these examples the pilot has to check for passing out as well. So in a game with a GM running things by the book, there is a good chance that you end up passed out and bleeding to death with almost no time for someone to rescue you (this is if they even know you are dying).

We're talking about a character that is too fragile for front line combat and greener than green. I'd have counseled the player that they should either shuffle some points around to shore up their weak areas, or go for a desk jockey instead of a mech jockey. Going with intelligence and then either analyst or intelligence as their advanced schooling would have prepared them for officer school and kept them out of the frontline fighting (where they will surely die before long).

[Maelwys]

Oh, there are definite issues with the character, it was more of a "See if I can match the picture," type of character. I probably wouldn't have gone for the cybernetics if I didn't have to, and lets face it, spending points to wind up with a 3050 Scorpion...

But the recent discussion on how lethal ATOW is, have been quite interesting...

[ZombieAcePilot]

Oh, there are definite issues with the character, it was more of a "See if I can match the picture," type of character. I probably wouldn't have gone for the cybernetics if I didn't have to, and lets face it, spending points to wind up with a 3050 Scorpion...

But the recent discussion on how lethal ATOW is, have been quite interesting...

Then I must challenge you to continue until the character is playable! You could simply determine that the scorpion be the random vehicle to which they were assigned, or you could use XP to advance yourself past the 5,000 reccomended starting number (either because its a higher point game or because it is not a starting character.

While some people may have difficulty figuring out how to use life modules, the more important part of character generation is figuring out why you are building the way you are. At the end of every build you should be able to say that it works as intended, the game does not support that at starting levels, or there is something wrong with the game itself. While the consciousness rules may be a good example of something wrong with the game, the survivability factor is something I'd lay upon your creation choices.