Chapter 2. Character Creation

Before you begin playing Polyhedral, you will first need to create a character. This chapter outlines the steps necessary for creating your character. Your character is your avatar; it is how you will interact with and experience the worlds of play in Polyhedral. A character is born from your imagination and is represented by a collection of features and qualities that, through in-game mechanics, enable fair arbitration of the actions you perform during the course of the story.

Creating a character straight forward:

1. Choose your character’s origin (lineage, cultural heritage, and background)
2. Decide on your character’s disposition
3. Assign ranks to your abilities and distribute ability rank bonuses
4. Select a starting job
5. Record starting items and equipment

1. Choosing a Character’s Origin

Every character has an origin, this origin includes their biological lineage (i.e. human, elf, dwarf, etc.), the culture that they were raised in, as well as their background. Your lineage, cultural heritage, and background define the traits that your character begins the game with.

Your character’s cultural heritage does not need to be the same as your lineage, for instance a human may be raised in a dwarven city and therefore begin play with one of the dwarven cultural heritages selected.

2. Decide on your Character’s Disposition

In addition to the aspects from your background, your character has a disposition. Your disposition reflects how your character perceives the world and carries themself. You can read up more on dispositions in Chapter: Character Options and see a list common dispositions.

3. Assign Ranks to your Abilities

Your ability ranks influence your actions in the world. When you create your character you assign starting ranks to each of your abilities.

There are three common methods for assigning ranks to your abilities: you can generate them by rolling dice, you can use a point-buy method, or you can use a predefined array of ranks.

Randomly Generating Ability Ranks

To generate the six ability ranks randomly, roll four six-sided dice (4d6) and discard the lowest die result. Add the three remaining values together and record their sum, e.g. if you rolled a 1, 3, 5, and 6, you would discard the 1 and add the 3, 5, and 6 together for a total of 14. Repeat this process seven times: once for each of the six abilities and one extra time. From the seven results, choose six of them and assign them to your abilities however you would like.

Players may roll their ability ranks individually, or the ability ranks can be rolled as a group. When generating ranks as a group, the seven ability ranks are rolled and the results are shared by all players; each player chooses and assigns their ranks as if they had rolled the results individually.

Point Buy

Instead of rolling your ability ranks, players are given a certain number of points to invest (or “buy”) into their character’s abilities at the start of the game. As an ability score increases in value and rank, it becomes more costly to increase it further. Depending on the theme of the game, a storyteller may choose to give players more or fewer points to use when creating their characters.

Using the point buy method, every character begins with a starting score of 10 in each ability and 15 points to spend on increasing their ability ranks. The storyteller can opt to give characters additional points to spend during this process if they so choose. Increasing an ability score costs 1 or more points. You can reduce an ability’s starting rank below 10 to a minimum of 8, by doing so you gain +1 point which can be used to purchase ranks.

The table below shows the total cost to purchase an ability score of a particular value. In the table below, advancing an ability score to 16 or 17 through point assignment is only possible if the storyteller allows it or the characters have been issued more points to spend.

Predefined Ability Ranks

Instead of rolling or buying into your ability ranks, all characters begin with the same array of six numbers to distribute into their character’s abilities. These ability ranks are in alignment with the point costs defined above.

The standard ability ranks array is: 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8

Ability Rank Bonuses

Ability rank bonuses are applied after you’ve assigned ranks to your character’s abilities. Choose one of the two following options:

• Increase one ability of your choice by 2 and a different ability of your choice increases by 1.
• Three abilities of your choice each increase by 1.

4. Selecting a Starting Job

Once you have made decisions about your character’s origin, disposition, and you have assigned ability ranks to the character, choose a starting job for you character. Your job identifies the training that your character has undergone up until the point that they enter the story and helps you to understand part of the role they will play in the group and in the game.

5. Items and Equipment

As part of the process up until now, you were given choices for starting equipment. In addition you have a starting level of resources. You can use your resources to purchase additional gear, goods, and equipment.