Character Creation
Character creation overview
A Lethean Age character is a sapient survivor with agency, growth, community ties, and a way of facing danger. Your character is not a generic creature. They have a name, a place in the world, a build path, and reasons to leave safety.
Use this draft sequence:
- Choose a character concept.
- Choose an origin type.
- Choose a branch of sapience or people, if your origin calls for one.
- Choose a class.
- Assign ability scores.
- Choose a background.
- Choose starting equipment.
- Record level, XP, HP, AP, traits, skills, faction, and Law status.
Step 1: Choose a concept
Start with a sentence that tells the table why your character goes into danger.
Examples:
- A settlement scout who reads the miasma like weather.
- A Redoubt Changed who hears instructions from a buried command system.
- A Rur medic who wants to prove grown flesh is still people.
- A Scavenger who can smell Warm Glass before anyone else sees it.
- A Sworn whose oath is the only thing that survived their former settlement.
The concept does not need to solve the build. It gives the build a direction.
Step 2: Choose an origin type
Origin type describes what your body is made of and how it interacts with the miasma.
| Origin type | What it means | Miasma mode |
|---|---|---|
| Organic | Naturally descended biological being. | Biological channeling. |
| Rur | Synthetic biological being, grown to template. | Biological channeling, mechanically like organic life. |
| Android | Mechanical being with synthetic cognition. | Technological interface; needs hardware for psionics. |
| Cyborg | Organic base with mechanical augmentation. | Hybrid channeling shaped by implants. |
Origin type does not currently change base ability scores. It matters for traits, augmentation, psionic access, healing, repair, and how communities read you.
Step 3: Choose a people
If your character is Organic or Rur, choose the people or lineage that best fits the concept. Common player-facing peoples include surface humanity, Eloi, Morlocks, Beastfolk, and local mixed communities. Rur, Android, and Cyborg characters may also belong to a settlement culture, faction culture, or lineage community.
The people you choose should answer three questions:
- Where did you learn to survive?
- What does your body assume the world is like?
- What does your settlement expect from someone like you?
For more detail, see 03-origins-and-peoples.html.
Step 4: Choose a class
Class is your player-facing adventure identity. It says what you do when the world turns hostile.
The current locked class slate is:
| Class | Short description |
|---|---|
| Furyborn | Miasma surge through the body; unarmored force and endurance. |
| Tradent | Memory, performance, and resonance as survival craft. |
| Sage | Faction-disciplined clarity that channels rare miasma colors. |
| Shifter | Heritable metamorphosis and local ecology made bodily. |
| Fighter | Training, arms, discipline, and physical mastery. |
| Unfettered | Inner Wind, bare-hand discipline, and unarmored motion. |
| Sworn | Oath-bound will shaped into reliable power. |
| Scout | Tracker, pathfinder, and practical miasma-reader. |
| Scavenger | Speed, leverage, ambush, and ruin-sense. |
| Bloodborn | Innate lineage channel; the blood wakes. |
| Changed | Contracted access through an active intelligence. |
| Mage | Studied pattern, technique-codex, and precise channeling. |
For class details, see 04-classes.html.
Step 5: Record ability scores
The six ability scores below describe what your character is good at. The exact starting-score method is being revised for the current draft.
| Ability | Use at the table |
|---|---|
| STR | Physical force, melee power, carrying, breaking, grappling. |
| DEX | Reflex, aim, initiative, stealth, finesse, escape. |
| CON | Endurance, HP, poison, radiation, miasma tolerance. |
| INT | Old-world artifacts, repair, investigation, technique, systems. |
| WIS | Attention, instinct, medicine, substrate sense, survival. |
| CHA | Presence, resonance, innate channeling, social force. |
Psionics are a power system, not an ability score. CHA is important for innate or forceful channeling, but not every class reaches the miasma the same way.
Step 6: Choose a background
Background explains what shaped you before play. It may grant starting gear, minor bonuses, or traits when the regulations define them.
Current placeholder background categories include:
- Ruin-Born.
- Plains Nomad.
- Settlement Dweller.
- Miasma Touched.
Treat these as starting points. A background should name a place, a skill, a scar, and a reason someone in the world recognizes you.
Step 7: Choose starting equipment
Starting equipment is not fully locked in the handbook yet. Use your class, background, and settlement to choose a practical kit with World Master approval.
A useful starting kit should answer:
- How do you defend yourself?
- How do you travel?
- What tool makes you useful outside combat?
- What object proves where you came from?
- What resource are you afraid to run out of?
Step 8: Record level, XP, HP, AP, and status
Characters begin at level 1 with 0 XP.
Record:
- Level and current XP.
- Hit points.
- Action points.
- Active traits and skills.
- Equipment and inventory.
- Home faction, if chosen.
- Reputation notes.
- Whether you are of the Law.
In the default assumption, player characters begin as beings of the Law. Playing outside the Law is possible only when the World Master wants that premise.