Aetrimonde

Today’s post is going to be math-heavy, as we take all the decisions from the last several posts and work out the relevant numbers for Ragnvald’s character sheet.

Health and Healing

Let’s start with hit points. The fighter class gives Ragnvald 28 base hit points, to which he will add 4 times his CON (+12) and double his expertise bonus (+4) for a total of 44 hit points.

At half HP or below, Ragnvald will enter the injured state, which changes how certain rules affect him; this will occur at 22 hit points. He will also die if he reaches -22 hit points.

The fighter class also gives Ragnvald 4 base resurgences, to which he adds his CON (+3), for 7 total. And it gives him a 1d12 healing die, meaning that he will roll 1d12 when he receives small heals. When he receives large heals, he will add his CON and half his expertise bonus, which comes to 1d12 + 4. (This averages 10.5, which keen readers will notice is just under one-quarter of his maximum hit points; this is by design. A typical character will recover just under a quarter of their maximum HP, on average, from a large heal such as using a resurgence.)

All this makes Ragnvald quite tough: a typical character has around 32 HP, and only 4-5 resurgences. But then, the fighter class is geared around getting enemies to attack Ragnvald rather than his allies, so Ragnvald will need that toughness.

Defenses

We will now calculate Ragnvald’s five defenses, which are all 10 + half of his expertise bonus (+1) + some other relevant values:

• AC: 17 = 11 + 5 (scale armor) + 1 (shield)
• Brawn: 16 = 11 + 4 (STR) + 1 (class)
• Poise: 12 = 11 + 1 (GRA)
• Wit: 13 = 11 + 1 (CUN) + 1 (class)
• Composure: 13 = 11 + 2 (CHA)

Ragnvald has good AC and Brawn but mediocre to poor other defenses. (16 is a typical AC; 14 is typical of other defenses. Ragnvald averages 0.2 points less than typical, and it is largely because his highest two abilities, STR and CON, contribute to the same defense.)

While not exactly a defense, Ragnvald also has 2 armor resistance (AR) from his scale armor. This will reduce any damage he takes, other than bleed, poison, or psychic damage, by 2. A common damage source at level 0 will be averaging around 6-7 points of damage before resistance, so Ragnvald will reduce that by almost a third. It will, however, be less effective against singular big hits like some monsters can dish out.

Attacks and Damage

Ragnvald is convenient to calculate attack and damage rolls for, because virtually all of his ways of attacking work the same way.

To start with, if Ragnvald makes a normal attack with his warhammer, he will just need to add his STR (+4) and the warhammer’s precision (+1) to his core roll, for a total of +5. If this attack hits (vs. AC), it will deal the warhammer’s damage (2d4r1) plus his STR (+4).

All of Ragnvald’s offensive powers feature the same attack and damage (assuming he is using his warhammer to make the attacks). Convenient!

But, he also has a pair of throwing axes, so let’s calculate attacks and damage for those: they have the same precision and also use STR for their attacks (even when thrown), so they will have a +5 attack bonus; the only difference from the warhammer is that they have 1d6 damage dice, so their damage will be 1d6 + 4 (again, even when thrown).

Many characters will have several different sets of attack and damage bonuses, as in the case of a ranger who uses both swords and a bow, or a wizard who carries a staff. Ragnvald is unusually simple in that all of his attacks have the same bonuses.

Skills

Ragnvald is trained in six skills, and these are the only ones where his skill bonus will be any different from the related ability. Training allows him to add his expertise bonus into the skill bonus, so his bonus in these skills will be:

• Athletics (STR): +6
• Endurance (CON): +5
• History (INT): +1
• Perception (CUN): +3
• Persuasion (CHA): +4
• Society (INT): +1

Many characters wearing armor would suffer an Encumbrance penalty to skills based on STR, CON, DEX, or GRA. Ragnvald doesn’t, by virtue of being a dwarf.

Movement

As a dwarf, Ragnvald’s base speed is 5 (slightly below average). He is also wearing scale armor, which would normally reduce his speed further, except that by virtue of being a dwarf, he gets to ignore that. His speed remains 5, meaning that he can normally move 5 squares on his turn.

Ragnvald may not want to move an entire 5 squares on his turn, especially if he is surrounded by enemies: leaving a square threatened by an enemy provokes an opportune strike from it. Ragnvald can, in theory, choose to move safely on his turn: he must do this before using any movement, but it allows him to move a reduced distance without provoking opportune strikes. The reduced distance is equal to his GRA, which is 1; however, his scale armor applies a -1 penalty to his safe movement. So if Ragnvald moves safely, he only gets to move 0 squares; there’s not much point to that.

This is one of Ragnvald’s big weaknesses: once surrounded by enemies, he has a hard time repositioning safely. However, his Advancing Strike power goes some way towards fixing that: he can, if he hits, push an enemy back and move 1 square safely towards it. This counts against his movement for the turn, but gets around his normal inability to move safely due to his low GRA and armor.

Carrying Capacity

A typical Aetrimonde character can carry up to 50 bulk of items, plus another 10 bulk per point of STR. What is bulk, you ask? It’s essentially weight (and is measured in kilograms), but with an added adjustment to account for how awkwardly-shaped things are. A long ladder, such as might snag on every protruding tree root or low cave ceiling, for example, would have bulk exceeding its actual weight because of the care that you would have to take while carrying it.

With +4 STR, Ragnvald can carry up to 90 bulk without penalty, which is more than enough for the equipment he has picked out.

Initiative

The last value to be calculated here is initiative, which determines the order of turns in a fight or other tense situation. Initiative is equal to CUN, which in Ragnvald’s case is +1.

Up Next

The last thing I’m going to do in this post series is preview what Ragnvald might look like as he advances a few levels. After that final post, I’ll take a brief break from character creation to touch on some other topics, and then get to work making the character requested in my ancestry and class polls.

This is the point where I have to confess that I screwed something up in WordPress and accidentally deleted the original polls while making an edit to the posts they were in. I have the results from before I made this mistake, and taken together with the results from after my mistake, I have a pair of ties on my hands:

• For ancestry, there is a tie between Elf and Ghoul.
• For class, there is a tie between Artificer and Skinchanger.

So here’s what I’m going to do: Ghoul Skinchanger is a fun, lore-friendly combination that I actually haven’t tinkered much with, so I’m going to use that for the next sample character. And then I’m going to build an Elf Artificer as the third sample character, because that’s also a lore-friendly combination.

In the meantime, enjoy Ragnvald’s completed level-0 character sheet! This is based on an editable HTML character sheet I’ve put together, although it’s quite bare-bones at the moment.