Building a Character

Level 0

Every character has 3-4 "levels" before level 1. They don't quite work the same way as character levels. They describe your innate abilities, training, background, etc.

There are several types of background "level":

• Race (name tbd): costs 0 or more, usually has negative and positive traits.
• Training: costs 1 or more, represents deliberate professional, military, or similar training
• Anomaly: costs 1 or more, represents something unusual in your past that altered you and your abilities
• Resource: costs 1 or more, represents material resources you gained access to

The process of selecting these "levels" (need better names here) replaces the following in d20/5e/system 7/etc:

• Assigning ability scores
• Racial abilities and modifiers
• Starting skills and feats

While level 1 offers normal choices, the above will be determined by the selections made in this step.

Level 1 and onward

Using 3.5 style classes. Why? Because I've had 12 years to think of something better and I can't.

Class determines:

• basic attributes like attack bonus, Fort, Will, etc
• class abilities