Character Generation

Contents

• Character Creation
• Gods
• Races
• Rules in Effect
  • Subsystems
  • Feats
  • Magic
  • Equipment & Weapons
  • Combat, Creatures & Alignment
• Banlist

Character Creation

Ability Scores: 25 Point Buy. Note on the interpretation of two of these, since the rules leave them vague.

• Charisma is raw force of presence — not prettiness, not niceness, certainly not likeability. It measures how much air you control in a room, whether sucking it out or controlling the flow.
• Wisdom is raw animal instinct: the ability to just know something, without active thought or any reason you could put into words. It measures attunement and does not measure common sense.
  Please note that in both cases, your skill ranks represents learned capability and training in an application and has nothing to do with your baseline capability.

Starting Age: 11–14. After the timeskip you'll be level 1 and 15–18.

Level 0 Start: Depending on your “real” starting class, choose one of Adept, Warrior, or Expert. Spellcasters (mid-caster / 6-caster or higher) may choose Adept; characters with full BAB may choose Warrior; characters with at least 6 skill points per level may choose Expert. Once you level up to 1st, replace that base class with your real class.

Starting Wealth: 10 gp — you're literally children. More is allotted after the timeskip. For any character much wealthier than that (cough Archi's PC), you're slumming it for the atmosphere.

Race: Men, Elves, Dwarves, Pseudodemons, and Xian are allowed; however, only one of each of the latter is permitted. See Races for blurbs, and the linked pages for mechanics.

HP: Maximum for your class at 1st level. Every level after, either roll for HP or take the average, rounded down.

Skills: Any class that normally gains 2+Int skill points per level instead gains 4+Int. (Background Skills, Skill Synergy, and Skill Tricks are also in play — see Subsystems — and several skills grant bonus feats at 5 or 10 ranks; see Feats.)

Skill Feats: Every 2 levels starting at 2nd, gain a Skill Feat, chosen from:

• 2 Skill Tricks
• 1 Equipment Trick feat
• Skill Focus or Signature Skill
• 4 skill points, or your class's base skill points, whichever is higher

Traits & Flaws: Up to 2 Flaws [3.5e]. 2 Traits [PF]; you may take up to two Drawbacks [PF], or one Major Drawback [PF], to gain up to two more Traits.

Build Options: Spheres of Might / Power is allowed, built normally using its own rules. Most 3.5 and 3.0 content is also allowed. However, Spheres of Guile and the racial Sphere are not in play. Legendary talents are permitted if you ask first; the same goes for Dragon Magazine material. (All “flex feat / sphere” abilities are suspect — tell me ahead of time if you're building one; see also Banlist.)

Firearms (at creation): Setting-wise they are Emerging, but they're uncommon in the starting area and cannot be bought. A Gunslinger may still begin with a rifle their grandfather received from Richard West. Most gunpowder weapons take the much more common form of artillery. (For their weapon category, see Equipment & Weapons.)

Gods

If anyone is playing a character that needs mechanical god stuff, tell me. If not I’m leaving the subpages as PF2e placeholders.

Pantokra, the Father — LG old man god with sun symbolism. Might be dead and turned into mortal conscience. Answers prayers with moral intuition, insanely influential church. Can you live up to perfection, and if not, is perfection possible at all? This one is the navel gazer Christian god.

Ninanna, the Revolutionary — strictly subordinate to Pantokra. “The just war, or at least, the war called just, and all the other evils that men call Necessary are her domain”. Still technically a good girl. Daddy issues. This one is the fire and brimstone purge the infidel Christian god.

Yersinia, the Collector — the faerie mafia who breaks kneecaps just to prove she can and for protection money. She might break your kneecaps even if you pay just to make you cough up even more. You can also pay her to get her to break other people’s kneecaps.

Veil, the Progenitor — it is a mistery, but most people know her as the rain and pregnancy goddess. You can also use her as a condom since she can make you barren for a bit too. Something is very sus with her because she has the ability to hijack every other gods’ high holy days, and every altar, to any god, is also an altar to her, yet she actually gets overpowered by basically every other major god.

Epaeives, the Tyrants — spooky ghost mommies (?) who basically ignore anything that ceases. Not the undead goddess or the necromancy goddess, also not a Pharasma-style hates the undead goddess. It’s not actually clear how anyone knows she rules the underworld — resurrected people always lose their memories of their time below, and not even gods have gone in and made it out before.

Races

Blurbs below; mechanics live on the linked pages.

Men: Humans, basically, except Boromir Mode instead of flexible everyman. Zero DYELs, or at least zero compared to the other races. As a special consideration for PCs, you may take the usual +2 to any one stat instead of the normal +2 Str / +2 Con / −2 Wis.

The base game’s Half-Orcs and Half-Elves are merely Men; you may use those two if there’s an ARF you want from them, but in flavor you are Men.

Elves: The usual suspects giving sloppy at 3 AM behind the dumpster. Pretty, agile, magical, and immune to a lot of bad things that don’t involve being punched in the face.

Drow from the base game are elves; use them if you’d prefer +2 Cha instead of +2 Int, or if you need their ARFs.

Dwarves: DORF FORTRESS DORF FORTRESS DORF FORTRESS, and yes you will tantrum spiral and Strange Mood at least once. Also you’re a literal rock so enjoy being as slow and possibly as hard as a rock.

Pseudodemons: MUH special snowflake race with speshul eyes. Good at everything normal people can't do, terrible at everything normal people can. Tieflings and Aasimar are merged into one race. Tell me what, if any, fiend or angel you want to be descended from, since one of the traits changes based on that.

Xian: 哎呀，被吓到了吗？摸摸头，没事的勇敢宝宝不哭，臭怪物竟然敢吓唬吾娃儿，娘这就派人灭他全家门！
^ you must be at least this Chinese to play. Cao-Cao-raugh.gif

Rules in Effect

Subsystems

On for the whole table:

• Fractional Base Bonuses, Background Skills, and Feat Tax rules are in effect.
• Skill Synergy is in effect.
• Skill Tricks are in effect; buy them with skill points or with Skill Feat slots.
• Automatic Bonus Progression is in effect. Attuning is a free action: any weapon you use or armour you wear instantly gains the abilities. The bonus is Inherent, not Enhancement; the Big Six are close to impossible to find and cannot be crafted. (Note its interaction with DR — ABP does not count as magic for bypassing it; see Combat, Creatures & Alignment.)
• Equipment Tricks are permitted and free to use; any other prerequisites still apply.
• We are not using Minor Gestalt rules.
• Luck: each PC has a single luck point per session, usable to reroll any one d20 roll.

Feats

Item-creation feats are merged. Several collapse into three:

• Craft Artefact ← Craft Wondrous Item, Craft Universal Item, Craft Poppet, Forge Ring
• Sculpt Implement ← Craft Magic Arms & Armor, Craft Staff, Craft Wand, Craft Implement, Craft Rod
• Scribe Magic ← Scribe Scroll, Brew Potion, Infuse Poison, Inscribe Rune
• Craft Construct stays separate and requires all three of the above.

Removed or demoted as prerequisites

• Endurance is no longer a feat but a trait; anything that listed it as a prerequisite drops that prerequisite.
• Weapon Focus is no longer a prerequisite for anything, but still exists and may be taken.
• Feats with racial requirements drop them where it fits the character (Deathless Initiate, Cleave Through). Feats built on a specific racial ability (e.g. Wings of Air) still need a good justification for why your character has something close enough to count.
• Good saves satisfy save-feat prerequisites: Great Fortitude, Lightning Reflexes, and Iron Will upgrade a bad save to good, and a good save fulfils any prerequisite calling for one of them.

Granted free when you qualify

• Combat Reflexes, Quick Draw, and Improved Shield Bash — on meeting their prerequisites.
• Whirlwind Attack — at BAB +11.
• Combat Stamina — full-BAB classes at 1st level, others at 2nd, immediately upon qualifying.

Free from BAB progression

• For any weapon that has Weapon Focus actually taken:
  • Weapon Specialization at BAB +6.
  • Greater Weapon Focus at +11.
  • Greater Weapon Specialization at +16.
• Anyone with Spring Attack gains Improved Spring Attack at BAB +8 and Greater Spring Attack at +16.

Free from skill ranks

• 5 ranks in Acrobatics → Cat’s Fall and Nimble Moves; 10 ranks → Acrobatic Steps.
• 5 ranks in Survival → Live off the Land.
• 5 ranks in Perception plus Alertness → One Eye Open.

Buffed in function

• Point Blank Shot and Precise Shot are merged into Hawkeye; anything that would grant either instead grants Hawkeye. This overrides the Feat Tax ruling.
• Improved Feint lets you feint as a swift action.
• Skill Focus lets you roll the chosen skill twice and take the better result.

Magic

• All Spheres mages also gain the Cantrips feat for free.
• Certain spells cost one level more — Create Water, Goodberry, Heroes’ Feast, Create Food and Drink, and so on. In Spheres, most of these will cost extra spell points.
• The long-range Teleport line passes through the Astral Plane, where people and monsters can intercept you. Horrors in particular have distorted perceptions of space and time, and can and will attack you during the journey.
• The following metamagic feats work for any caster who qualifies, with no feat investment, since they’re basic applications of brute magical force. However, they still cost spell points or a higher-level slot.
  • Silent Spell
  • Still Spell
  • Widen Spell
  • Intensify Spell
  • Heighten Spell
  • Empower Spell
• All spell DCs are normalized to use the Spheres formula; in effect, Heighten Spell is only useful for effects such as Sphere of Invulnerability.
• All spells with scaling damage or modifiers scale indefinitely instead of stopping at a certain caster level; in effect, every spell has Intensify Spell applied for free.
• Magical healing restores temporary HP, not real HP, except for a small fraction of what it would normally heal, equal to either spell level or caster level. This temporary HP is limited to your maximum HP.
  • Temporary HP gained from this effect does not count for the purposes of any effects that require or interact with temporary HP specifically.
• Resurrection is possible, but creatures so brought back die again, permanently, within a year. Once a character has died outright they generally stay dead.
  • Breath of Life or Resuscitate-style effects that occur immediately after death do not trigger this; the idea is that they weren’t properly dead yet.

Equipment & Weapons

• Shield AC (from actual shields) now applies to Touch AC.
• Polearms with Reach now have variable reach by default and threaten adjacent squares. Attacks into adjacent squares take a −2 penalty and deal damage as a Quarterstaff; any feat or ability that mitigates this penalty instead grants a bonus combat feat.
• All crossbows are now Simple weapons, repeaters included.
• Firearms are Simple weapons. (For availability at the start, see Firearms (at creation).)
• Drinking a potion takes a Move action.
• The Spiked Chain [3.5e] doesn’t exist.

Combat, Creatures & Alignment

• Any feat, feature, or ability that requires Fighter level X instead requires BAB +X.
• Grappling no longer costs an action to maintain (as 3.5e), but the check itself must still be made and can fail.
• Alignment: I don’t use it — if it matters, everyone is True Neutral. Outsiders from the Outer Planes (the Heaven/Hell sort, not the elemental or astral planes) retain their alignments. In light of this:
  • Alignment-based spells work on anyone, at half strength or treating them as Neutral where there’s provision for that. They work normally on Outsiders.
  • Smiting works on things opposed to your deity, or — for godless Paladins — on any Outsider, Undead, or Third World creature (aberration). First World (fae) creatures are smitable in theory but rarely in practice, and it can backlash.
  • Detect-alignment spells only work on Outsiders.
  • Any class prerequisite etc. with an alignment requirement no longer has it.
• DR/Magic is now DR/+X. Protection-from spells grant DR/+X, where X = CL/3 (maximum +5).
• Weapons and armour don’t need a +1 bonus before taking special abilities (Flaming, Keen, Anchoring, etc.). However, a weapon without a +1 bonus cannot bypass DR/Magic, and Automatic Bonus Progression does not count as magic for that purpose.
• Creatures (especially Undead) are no longer immune to Mind-Affecting effects unless they are also Mindless. They remain immune to ability damage and drain to their physical scores; however, any Charisma damage or drain is duplicated onto all their physical scores as well. In general, immunities now key off descriptors rather than creature type.

Banlist

Banned classes, feats, spells, and features; more may be added.

Also, all “flex feat / sphere” abilities are suspect — tell me ahead of time if you’re building one.