Character Creation Guide

The 9 steps at a glance:

Step 1: Ancestry

Your ancestry describes your hero's humanoid lineage and provides physiological traits and benefits.

Read more: Ancestries

Step 2: Culture

Your culture describes the community that raised you and provides languages and skills. It is separate from ancestry; a dwarf raised among humans has a human culture.

Tips:

• You can defer language choices until a relevant moment in the campaign (e.g., during a negotiation or when you find a mysterious tome). Revealing a hidden language in a dramatic moment is encouraged.
• Before making any skill picks, collect all skill selections from culture, career, and class into a single list, then choose at the end. This prevents flipping back and forth and ensures you avoid duplicates.

Read more: Culture

Step 3: Career

Your career describes what you did for a living before becoming a hero. It provides skills, an inciting incident, and a perk. Some careers also grant languages, Renown, wealth, or crafting and research potential.

Read more: Careers

Step 4: Class

Your class is the biggest mechanical choice you make. It determines your characteristics, Stamina, Recoveries, skills, abilities, and your unique heroic resource: the currency that powers your most powerful moves.

Tip: Every class includes Quick Build options for players who want to skip the full selection process and get into the game faster. Look for the Quick Build callouts in each class chapter.

Read more: Classes

Step 5: Kit

Some classes grant your hero a kit that defines your approach to martial combat. A kit provides equipment, a fighting style, a signature ability, and bonuses to one or more game statistics.

Classes that gain a kit: Censor, Fury, Shadow, Tactician, Troubadour. Other classes have their own systems for gear and fighting style.

There are 25 kits available, covering a wide range of weapon styles and combat approaches, from a heavily armoured tank to a nimble skirmisher to a versatile dual-wielder.

Read more: Kits

Step 6: Free Strikes

A free strike is a basic attack you make outside your normal turn, typically as an opportunity attack when an adjacent enemy voluntarily moves away from you. You can also use a free strike as your main action when you have nothing better to do.

Standard free strikes (before kit or class modifications):

Strike	Roll	≤11	12-16	17+
Melee Weapon	2d10 + Might or Agility	2 + M or A dmg	5 + M or A dmg	7 + M or A dmg
Ranged Weapon	2d10 + Might or Agility	2 + M or A dmg	4 + M or A dmg	6 + M or A dmg

The exact flavour of your free strike is up to you: a thrown dagger, a punch, a quick stab. Your kit and class features may modify these values.

Read more: Free Strikes

Step 7: Complication (Optional)

A complication is an optional backstory element that gives your hero pathos: a dramatic reason to be an outsider, a vendetta, a deep doubt, or an unstoppable drive. Each complication grants both a benefit and a drawback, making your hero more three-dimensional.

Complications are not required. Confirm with your Director whether your game uses them before taking one.

Read more: Complications

Step 8: Determine Details

With the mechanics settled, fill in your hero's personal details:

• Name: who are they?
• Appearance: height, build, distinguishing features, cool scars or tattoos
• Personality: how do they carry themselves? What drives them day to day?
• Backstory: weave together your culture, career and inciting incident, and class into a coherent narrative. What brought these disparate elements together into this one person?

Step 9: Make Connections

Before play begins, ask the Director whether the heroes start the campaign knowing each other. If they do, use the prompts below (or invent your own) to build relationships between characters:

• When you were fighting a monster, one of the party members saved your life. What were you battling and who saved you?
• In your group, who looks after everyone's health and well-being, and makes sure that all the characters get along? If it's not you, how do you view this other hero?
• Who is the grumpiest member of your party? If it isn't you, how do you react to that hero's sour nature? If it is you, how do you react to other characters teasing you or trying to cheer you up?
• What's one thing your fellow heroes know about you that other people do not?
• What's your favorite way to bond with your fellow heroes?
• You've known one of the other heroes in your party longer than the rest. Who is it, and how did you meet?
• Another hero creates food, music, clothing, trinkets, or something else that you enjoy. Who is that hero, and what do they make?
• Another hero is teaching you a new skill. Who is it, and what are they teaching you?

Important: Answer these questions with the other players present, and always get a player's approval before involving their character in your answer.

What's Next

Heroes don't level up mid-adventure. Advancement happens between sessions through Heroic Advancement, a structured system tied to Victories, milestones, and Director decisions.

Read more: Heroic Advancement

See also: Your First Session for Session Zero guidance and how to set up your first game.