Heroic Roleplaying in a World of Swords, Sorcery, and Steam
I’d like to introduce Aetrimonde, a TTRPG I’ve been designing with heavy inspiration from the houserules my group used back in our Dungeons and Dragons 4e days. I’m not ready to publish Aetrimonde yet, but I’m opening up this blog to discuss its design principles, mechanics, and systems.
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Category: Sample Characters
Posts walking through character creation to provide examples of how different characters work.
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Today, I’m getting down to the details on Valdo the Bat-Eater, the ghoul skinchanger. I’ll be picking his powers, feats (he gets an extra!), and starting equipment. Powers I’m going to approach Valdo’s powers a bit differently than I did Ragnvald’s. The Martial powers Ragnvald was choosing from can really be divided into just three…
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Short post today: we’ll be covering Valdo’s choice of skills, perks, and languages, and since I introduced all of these concepts the first time around when covering Etterjarl Ragnvald, it won’t take much length at all today. Skills Valdo gets the following preferred skills: He’s also automatically trained in Nature from the Skinchanger class. Because…
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Today, following in the pattern I set with Ragnvald, I’ll be introducing our second sample character’s class (skinchanger) and picking his abilities. This character, you’ll recall, is Valdo the Bat-Eater: a horrifying hero with a background in hunting, and messily devouring, the horrible monsters of Der Eisenwald. Let’s see how he actually accomplishes this: Class:…
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I’m excited today, because I get to kick off the post series about a second sample character, who (by popular demand) will be a ghoul skinchanger: this is a combination that I’ve always thought was great from a lore perspective, and yet I’ve never actually built one or seen one played. So, let’s get started:…
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Before we move on from Ragnvald, I’d like to preview what Ragnvald might look like as he gains a few levels. Although Aetrimonde has no hard level cap, I plan for the material in the CRB and GMH to support adventures from levels 0-20, which I think ought to provide enough space for development in…
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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)…
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Today’s post will cover the last (mechanical) choices made when creating a character: powers, feats, and starting equipment. Powers Powers are special things a character can do (mostly for combat), that most other characters cannot. They include among other things special sword strikes and tactics, spells of fire and lightning, divinely granted healing, and the…
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Today’s post will cover the skills, perk, and languages of Etterjarl Ragnvald, the dwarf fighter I’ve been building. Skills Aetrimonde’s skills are things that adventurers commonly need to do, and can be trained in. Things that require raw talent, like lifting a heavy object, aren’t skills, they just use a character’s abilities. Nor are a…
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Today, I’ll reveal the next part of a character: class. Ragnvald has been a Fighter in all his incarnations, so that’s the class I’ll show off today. Meanwhile, the polls continue! This week, tell me what class you want to see next: I’m leaving open last week’s poll on the next ancestry I’ll cover, but…
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Today kicks off a post series in which I’ll be walking through the creation of an Aetrimonde character to illustrate the components and choices that go into a character. However, this series will alternate with other posts covering topics like the reasoning behind certain mechanical choices, peripheral systems like magical items, alchemy, and ritual magic,…
Aetrimonde 