Character Creation

The first thing you need to do before adventuring into the dangerous worlds of ITD&TD is create an adventurer or two of your own, often called a Character. Sometimes we refer to player created characters as simply “Player Characters” or “PCs”.

A character is a combination of in game statistics and calculations, and your imagination. You might be a stalwart hero, ready to slay foes with a sword, or an aged hero who still has some tricks to learn or some fight left in him. Although you must abide by the game rules, your imagination has no limits.

Attributes and Characters

The difference in Attribute Bonuses are small, especially in combat. Thus, you do not need a perfect set of attributes to create a character.

If you follow along the example characters, you will notice that Maria’s character Brynjolf would likely make a better Cleric than a Fighter, but Maria didn’t want to play a Cleric. In fact, by attributes alone, Brynjolf would have made a better Cleric than Sarah’s character, Astril, who is a Cleric because that’s what Sarah wanted to play. Neither of these characters are inefficient at their classes, however.

While creatures with higher attributes are certainly at an advantage, it’s not so great that playing an “unoptimized” character will impact your enjoyment too much.

Character Sheets

While going through this document, it is assumed you use the official character sheet. However, a character sheet can be anything. People will make and share their own; people may make digital tools for tracking; and other people still will just use scrap paper.

Regardless of how you track your character, there is a lot to track, and some organization to your way of doing so is recommended.

Keywords

Keywords are simply used for identifying how certain affects will effect a creature. You will gain 2 types of keywords during character creation: ancestral keywords and class keywords. Backgrounds do not offer keywords.

Why Keywords?

Keywords are a quick and easy way to identify certain aspects of a creature to determine how magic affects them. Instead of ambiguous “is this creature a humanoid or a fey?” type questions, keywords directly map what a creature is.

Keywords also interact with magical items; certain magical items might only be usable by a creature with certain keywords.

Keywords also exist for future projects within the realm of ITD&TD, which is why you might find some odd choices for the wording of certain keywords. This is to future-proof this system.

Number of Characters

As the campaign is meant to simulate the lives of an adventurer, most players will play more than one character across a campaign. You will likely not play more than one at a time, but you will likely have a pool of characters, deciding which one will go along for the adventure. It could be based on other characters coming on that adventure, it could be based on needing an expert trap finder, and you happen to have one, you could just feel like playing a different character, or your other character could be recovering from injury.

Some players will like creating their characters ahead of time, others will wait until specific times to create additional characters, there is no wrong answer. However, your GM may have rules at the table for multiple characters, and as such, they should be hashed out ahead of time, preferably during a Session 0.

Character Death

The life of an adventurer is extremely dangerous, and even the most seasoned ones may finally meet their match. Be prepared for characters to die. Although with good choices, good planning, and some luck, your character can make it to higher levels.

There are smart decisions to be made all over the place that will help even the odds. Careful adventures live longer. Characters that work well with others do too.

More than one at a time

Occasionally, either due to player count, or other outside factors, you may end up playing more than one of your characters at a time. A GM must approve this, but if you find yourself in this situation, try not to overshadow other players at your table. For example, if there were 3 players, and you are 2 characters to round out the party to 4, you should still only have about 1/3 of the play time dedicated to you, despite playing half the party.

It’s about everyone having fun at the table.

Hirelings and Henchmen

As you progress, you may find your character needing extra muscle in the dungeon. Loot is heavy, bearing a torch becomes cumbersome, and the more minds trying to discern how a trap works the better. Characters will find themselves likely engaged with Hirelings and Henchmen.

Hirelings are non-adventuring types who are seeking to make a little extra pocket money. They are likely paid a flat rate, and perform simple tasks: carry treasure, cook for the camp, carry a torch etc… Hirelings are controlled by the GM exclusively. Hirelings do not have adventuring class levels (or have low-levels in such a class), and will not likely participate in combat.

Henchmen are different. They can be hired, or found. Henchmen have adventuring class levels. Henchmen also differ from hirelings in many other ways, it is likely that once you obtain one, they are around for the long haul. A player will be allowed to control the henchmen in combat (and limitedly out of combat), but the GM will have tools that may allow them to override player choice in the morale and loyalty scores. Henchmen have a chance to become a player character; either temporarily or permanently.

More about hirelings and henchmen can be found in Chapter 6.

Creation Steps

If you’re already familiar with creating a character, here are the quick steps in the order we recommend creating a character in:

1. Determine attributes
2. Determine your ABCs (Ancestry, Background, Class)
3. Select starting equipment
4. Finalize gameplay math
5. Finalize roleplay