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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In this next post covering a third sample character, elf artificer Gwynne of House Midwinter, we’ll be going over choices of skills, perk, and languages. Skills Gwynne has some overlap in her preferred skills: So Gwynne only has seven preferred skills, one of which (Arcana) she’s required to have by the Artificer class. She next…
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Today, I’ll be continuing with the creation of Gwynne of House Midwinter, elf artificer, and introducing the artificer class! The artificer fills a different niche than the two classes I’ve previewed thus far: the fighter is a tough “tanky” character able to protect allies; the skinchanger is a deadly shapeshifter able to quickly bring down…
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Today, I’m starting in on the creation of a third sample character: Gwynne of House Midwinter! Gwynne is an elf artificer, a combination I picked out in response to reader polls. So, as is my wont, I’m going to spend this first post in the series discussing Gwynne’s heritage: Ancestry: Elf Aetrimonde’s elves are a…
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For the last post on Valdo the Bat-Eater, I’m going to provide a peek at how Valdo might advance over the course of his early adventures. Partly, I’m going to use this to show off some different kinds of Spiritual powers, because the powers I’ve given him to start with, which are tied to animal…
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All right, it’s time for another math-heavy post today, as I’m going to be filling in all the numbers for Valdo the Bat-Eater. Health and Healing The skinchanger class gives Valdo 20 base hit points. His <CON> will give him another 12, and he will get 4 from expertise, for a total of 36 hit…
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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…
Aetrimonde 