ToS: Character Creation Rules

Step 1: Select Race and Class
Tower of Shadows: Races
Tower of Shadows: Classes
Step 2: Spend Initial Skill Ranks

• When you Select your first Class, you gain 5 Ranks that may be distributed among your seven Class Skills. If you choose, you may select a single Class Skill and assign 2 Ranks in it during this Step - but no Skill may be raised above Rank 2 at Character Creation.

Step 3: Spend Starting Experience

• During this Step, you may spend Experience to purchase:
  • Increases to your Abilities at a cost of 10x the New Rank in Experience
  • An additional Career at a Cost of 25 Experience - When you purchase a new Career, you gain its Skills as Career Skills and gain one free Rank in one of those Skills that you did not already have a Rank in.
  • Increase the Rank of any Career Skill at a Cost of 5x its new Rank in Experience
  • Increase any Non-Career Skill at a Cost of 5x its New Rank + 5 in Experience
  • Purchase a Talent from a Career Talent Tree you have - but you must observe the progression of the tree.
  • If you have an Arcane Rating, you may also purchase Spells in a manner similar to Talents.

Tower of Shadows: Sorcery

Step 4: Spend Starting Crowns

• Each Character receives 1000cr to purchase starting equipment.

Tower of Shadows: Equipment

Step 5: Select Character Concepts

• Choose an Emotional Strength, Emotional Weakness, and Motivation for your Character.
  • Emotional Strengths and Weaknesses define how yours Alignment presents itself.
    • First, all Players who compelling Role-Play their Emotional Strengths, Weaknesses and Motivations may be awarded additional Experience at the end of the Session and/or at the end of the Chapter.
  • In addition, at the start of each Session, the Narrator rolls d100 and consults the Alignment and Renown Tables.
    • The Character whose Alignment is closest to the Result will have their Alignment Triggered during the course of that Session. If the result exactly equals their Alignment score, that Character gains +1 to either their Strain or Wound threshold for that Session (players choice). At the end of each Scene where that Character's Player compellingly role-plays their Emotional Strength or Weakness, they may adjust their current Conflict Score up or down by 1 point (Conflict may not be reduced below 0). At the end of that Session, that Player rolls a d10, subtracts their current Conflict, and then adds that result to their Alignment Score. After which their Conflict resets to 0.
    • If the d100 Result is within a Character's Renown range, that Character's reputation is activated for that Session. The Activated Character gains +2 to Strain Threshold and all other Characters gain +1. At the end of that Session, double any Renown generated by that Character.

Skill Modifications

• Skills Available
  • General Skills: Athletics, Charm, Coercion, Cool, Coordination, Deception, Discipline, Leadership, Medicine, Negotiation, Perception, Resilience, Skulduggery, Stealth, Streetwise, Survival, Vigilance
  • Combat Skills: Brawl, Melee
  • Knowledge Skills: Knowledge (Education), Knowledge (Lore), Knowledge (Underworld), Knowledge (Warfare).
• Skills Unavailable
  • Astrogation, Computers, Gunnery, Knowledge (Core Worlds), Knowledge (Outer Rim), Knowledge (Xenology), Mechanics, Pilot - Planetary, Pilot - Space, Ranged - Light, Ranged - Heavy
• Skills Added
  • Ride: This skill governs the use of riding mounts and using certain weapons while mounted.
  • Ranged - Archaic: This Skill governs the use of Bows and Crossbows
  • Knowledge (Cultures): This Skill covers the education and information pertaining to Races, their cultures and customs, as well as their language. It functionally replaces Knowledge (Xenology).
• Updated Skill Uses
  • Leadership: Coordinated Effort - Without coordination, no more than one Character can provide Assistance to another Character. A Character with Leadership may take the Coordinated Effort Action which is a Leadership Check with a Difficulty set by the number of Characters wishing to provide Assistance. If successful, that number of Characters may provide Assistance. may be spent to allow Characters participating in the Check to recover Strain. may be spent to add a to the dice pool of the Character who is being assisted. may be spent to inflict Strain on the Character making the Check and may be spent to inflict a to the dice pool of the Character being assisted.