Character creation guidelines can be found here.
- Note: This section is a work in progress and decisions have not been finalized. Until such time, characters created using the following rules may need to be reworked slightly.
Contents
The Basics
Characters created for the Phoenix's Last Rise campaign will use Hero System 6E rules. They will be based on 175 points with up to 50 matching points of complications. You can choose to have no complications; however, invoking complications is a primary method of earning experience (and they simply add flavor to the pile of stats that is your character).
Players will have to choose an origin for their character. This is a binary choice. Either they are a member of the Morrow Project (TMP), meaning that they were put in cryogenic suspension before the war; or they are a "topsider," a descendant of the tiny fraction of humanity that survived the apocalypse or some other kind of life form that has mutated into existence.
Additionally, each player may choose a background perk for their character at no point cost. This will enable them to purchase certain skills or abilities that are otherwise unavailable to most characters. A character may have multiple background perks, however each one after the first costs 5 points.
Each character will roll randomly for their starting gear. Each level of the Money perk will allow for more rolls on the Master Salvage tables. For TMP characters, this represents a small bit of the stuff they were issued or brought with them from before the war that has not decayed completely over time inside their compromised bunker. For Topsiders, this array of starting gear represents the items they have been able to scrape together over a lifetime of scrounging through the wasteland and trading. They may have had better stuff at one time, but maybe it broke down, or they had to trade it away for food, water and bullets. At any rate, what they roll on the table is what they currently have in their possession.
Character Origin
As stated above, there are two possible origins: TMP or Topsider. Your character was either born before the war when civilization still existed, or you have lived all your life in the wasteland. Each origin has its own incentives and penalties.
TMP Personnel
Ideally, the CoT would have liked to have the most rigid of standards for inclusion in the Project. Realistically, almost all volunteers had some shortcomings in at least one area or another, but many were allowed on board because of their status as "area experts" in one field or another that would prove useful to rebuilding a post-war society. Still, the applicants were screened to the best ability of the psychologists and medical staff of the day to weed out the physically infirm or mentally unstable.
The Project selected thousands of people for cryostasis to be awakened after the war. Personnel selected for this service will tend to be more capable than the common man and may, in some cases, be considered the "cream of the crop" when it comes to physical and mental aptitudes. Additionally, all TMP staff have undergone rigorous training prior to being placed in stasis, and will always have a number of skills that would be vital to completion of the project.
TMP characters will be built using the following template:
- Normal Characteristic Maxima
- STR, DEX, CON, INT, EGO, PRE--20
- OCV, DCV, OMCV, DMCV, PD, ED--8
- SPD--4
- REC--10
- END, STUN--50
- Running--20m
- Swimming--10m
- Leaping--10m
- Skill Maxima: 13-
- Skill Package (28 points)
- Climbing 11-
- Navigation (Land) 11-
- TMP Team Member: PS 11-
- Vocation Chosen by Player: PS 11-
- Stealth 11-
- Survival (Temperate/Subtropical, Mountain) 11-
- Tactics 11-
- TF: Small Motorized Ground Vehicles, Two-Wheeled Motorized Ground Vehicles, Two-Wheeled Muscle-Powered Ground Vehicles
- WF: Common Melee Weapons, Small Arms
- Weaponsmith (Firearms) 11-
- TMP Rejuvenation Serum
- Power: Regeneration--1 BODY/Day (4 Active Points)
- Penalties: Social skill rolls have a -1 penalty (Pre-war characters talk "funny," have slightly different social norms); No AK skills allowed
Topsider
When the war came, bombs and missiles delivered thousands of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons all across the planet. Few heavily populated areas escaped direct attack, and almost none were spared from the firestorms, fallout and the nuclear winter that followed. Quite possibly up to 95% of humanity perished in the initial attacks and the ensuing devastation, and that doesn't even begin to account for the interference wrought by the evolutionary biocide feeding and breeding chaotically in the irradiated environment. Those that survived in the long run were a hardy bunch, and prepared for survival. They made what they needed out of the world around them. Sometimes, the world around them made them into what they needed to be...
Topsiders have lived their lives in the wastelands, and have managed to survive it all. They are a varied bunch, and come from many different backgrounds. Topsider characters will have fewer mandated expenditures compared to a TMP character, but a life lived in the barren, uncivilized wastes can take a toll on one's mental and physical acumen. Being exposed to the deleterious effects of radiation and lingering bioweapons has, at times, introduced useful mutations in the population, enabling survivors to deal with issues in ways that men and women of the past were simply incapable of imagining. In addition to genetically unaltered human survivors, Topsiders can be mutants with a wide array of mutant powers, human/animal hybridizations, mutant animals that have gained human levels of intelligence and sentience, or even Espers who have begun to unlock heretofore unknown powers of the human mind.
Topsider characters will be built using the following template:
- Reduced Characteristic Maxima
- STR, DEX, CON, INT, EGO, PRE--15*
- OCV, DCV, OMCV, DMCV, PD, ED--8
- SPD--4
- REC--10
- END, STUN--50
- Running--20m
- Swimming--10m
- Leaping--10m
- Skill Maxima: 13-
- Everyman Skills:
- Breakfall
- Climbing
- Concealment
- Navigation (Land)
- Riding
- Scrounging
- Survival (Mountain, Temperate/Subtropical, Urban)
- Stealth
- Penalties: Skill rolls may suffer a penalty when dealing with technology (-1 to -3, depending on complexity); cannot read/write unless skill is purchased.
*Topsiders may select one of these 6 characteristics to have a Maximum of 20
Character Background
Each character in the Phoenix's Last Rise campaign will select one or more backgrounds for their character. Backgrounds are used to encourage specialization among the player characters. It represents that a character requires something other than just some experience points to learn a coveted skill or ability. Backgrounds also signify that a character may have a special origin, and are therefore allowed to have certain special abilities that others may not have.
One background may be selected for no cost. Each additional background will cost 5 points.
Restricted Skills
Some skills are more useful than others, depending on the genre. Not all skills will be available to all characters, either because they logically require a certain amount of specialization and/or to maintain game balance. Some skills will require a specific origin (TMP/Topsider), while others will require a specific background. Restricted skills are as follows:
- Bugging
- Computer Programming
- Electronics
- Forensic Medicine
- Inventor
- KS: Area Knowledge
- Mechanics
- Paramedics
- PS: Doctor
- PS: Mechanic
- PS: Nurse
- Systems Operation
- Trading
- Martial Arts
Background List
- Technical Background--This background perk allows the character to purchase the following skills: Mechanics, Electronics, Inventor, and PS: Mechanic. For Topsider characters, if you wish to spend points on a vehicle of some kind, you must have this perk to build it and keep it running.
- Healer--This background allows the character to purchase the following skills: Paramedics, PS: Doctor, PS: Nurse. This perk also allows the purchase of foci that are medically related (such as med-kits, antibodies and truth serums).
- Mutant--This background allows the character to purchase mutant powers up to 30 active points. Each further instance of this background adds 15 to the active point limit. TMP characters may not take the Mutant perk
- Martial Artist--This background allows the character to purchase up to 15 points of martial arts. Each additional instance allows 10 more points.
- Merchant--This background allows the purchase of the trading skill, as well as PS: Merchant. The character may also purchase wealth.
- Survivor--This background allows the character to begin the game with Area Knowledge skills. TMP characters may not take the Survivor perk.
- Special--The character has some sort of special background that allows them access to something not normally allowed.
- Robot--The character is an autonomous robot with free will. The character is allowed to purchase automaton powers and a wide array of immunities. TMP/Topsider characteristic maxima still apply.
- Mutant Animal--The character is not a human that has been mutated, but rather an animal that has been mutated in such a way as to have advanced intelligence.
- Esper--This special background allows the character to have powers with a "psionic" special effect up to 20 active points. Each further instance of this background adds 10 to the active point limit. (Note: Bruce Edward Morrow was rumored to be a powerful Esper, and this may have been how he was able to foresee the coming war and convince the founders of the CoT to join him in creation of The Morrow Project)
Equipment in the Post-Apocalypse
Nothing lasts forever. As the years have ticked by after the fall of civilization, the world's supply of manufactured stuff has been steadily dwindling. Little should be taken for granted in the wasteland; nearly anything might be of value to someone, or could be re-purposed in a pinch. Players will roll randomly on the Master Salvage list to determine what items their characters begin the game with. If the players desire, they may roll their gear before making any other choices about their character, in case they wish to tailor their character to fit their starting gear (such as selecting weapon skills and abilities to use with items they'll start the game with), or in case their initial gear inspires a particular character concept. Started with a segway and a fishing pole, you say? Post-apocalyptic Segway-Jouster it is, then!
