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Name: Franz-Theodor Torfer "The Boy"
Occupation: Monster hunter / mercenary
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Religion: State religion
Parents: Franz-Walter and Ilse Torfer; peat diggers in the northern provinces
Summary: Towering man with boozy breath and cold stare in his furrowed, bearded face

Franz-Theodor grew up in a small village in the middle of a nigh-inaccessible swamp far to the north of the Empire. Only a few families lived there, and most were peat diggers, like Franz-Theodor's parents.
One day in his youth, his mother Ilse was found dead, drifting in the shallow water, ripped open by some otherworldly creature the villagers were too anxious to hunt down. His father Franz-Walter started excessive drinking and beating Franz-Theodor shortly after.

When a couple of monster hunters heard of the beast and offered their services for more than a few coins, Franz-Theodor ran away and joined them. At first, he was little more than their errand boy (thence the nickname "Boy", by which Franz-Theodor is still called by all but his family) and got nothing but their leftovers, but with the years passing by, he became a professional privateer himself, offering his service to organizations like the Hounds or temporarily dispatched military forces from the Empire as a guide, headhunter or just intermediary to the introverted locals.

Today, Franz-Theodor is a scarred veteran of many fights. He knows the northern provinces better than most and has seen the vast bulk of the brown-trousers stuff, but in the process he's become an obsessive drinker himself. He continues to do his work to finance his thirst, until at last some beast comes out on top or some illness carries him.

In general, he serves the Empire and the state religion as good as any man, but sometimes, when the Empire just searches for a scapegoat and is about to pick someone who might be considered as tainted by more devout men than Franz, but is actualy not guilty of any major crime, Franz takes the liberty to present alternatives...


SOCIAL CLASS: Tier 2

• Low Freeman

ATTRIBUTES: Tier 4 (22 points)

• Agility 5 (+1)
• Brawn 5 (+1)
• Cunning 5 (+1)
• Perception 4 (+1)
• Willpower 3

SKILLS: Tier 3 (35 points)

• Coercion 4 (+1)
• Gambling 4 (+1)
• Manipulation 4 (+1)
• Stealth 4 (+1)
• Streetwise 5 (+1)
• Lore [Northern provinces] 2 free + 1 = 3
• Lore [Monsters & Mutants] 3
• Navigation [Land] 5 (+1)
• Survival [Swamps] 5 (+1)

PROFICIENCIES: Tier 4 (20 points; max. 9)

• Brawling 7 (CP 12)
• Swords 7 (CP12)
• Firearms 6 (CP10)

TRAITS: Tier 2 (4 points)

• 1dT Drunkard (0 points)
• 1dBG Monster hunter of the northern Swamps (0 points)
• 2d Relationship Else (owner of the Baron's Slough; Franz's sister) (1 point)
  1 Pt minor amount of power
  -2 immediate blood relative
  2 pt 2d help as best as can
• 2d Reputation "One of us swamp-people" (3 points)

DRIVES

• Hunt down the cannibals that supposedly live among the people of Krahenhorst hamlet 2
• I'm a man of my word 1
• Protect the people 2

GEAR

• to be defined

Trade: Sailor ooo [3] [Monster hunter]

Monster hunting sailor?

Thx Used Ferran as basis.

Now, the concept of Franz-Theodor just to let the others know, who re-build their characters already:

A dilapidated local monster hunter. Should know the area well and have some reliable contacts among the inhabitants while being a decent fighter himself. Having been hired by the leader of the group as tracker and snooper.

He isn't fixed on the greatsword, especially as he would else be too similar to Gregor in the Floating City. I intend to make him more rogueish to make a change

I'll check out the rules in the next week.

Edit: Foreword: my below musings refer of course to the "power level" of BoB. If it is intended to have the player characters generally more down-to-earth, I'm entirely okay with it!

Original post: Tried to rework The Boy. Wanted him to be some of the following:

1. An acceptable fighter (he was never supposed to be in the front ranks, but his profession of "monster hunter" requires at least basic fighting prowess) - I imagined him to fight with a messer or sabre and maybe a pistol or one-handed crossbow.
2. As a monster hunter and guide to the party, he needed some Survival, Navigation and Manipulation skills. I just now noticed, that Stealth was not anymore available in the range of 30 skill points...
3. He is supposed to be well-known in the region of the northern swamps. He likes the lokals and they trust him. In a conflict between state religion and good-of-the-people, he'd always decide in favor of the latter. But what happens when the monsters are the people and vice versa? Will he always be able to find some scapegoats for the Hounds to burn at the stake in order to protect "monsters" that are his friends?

Anyhow, I found it difficult to comply with the concept in general. The final product feels a bit unfinished and not really "play what you want from the beginning". I think he lacks one outstanding attribute (Cunning was supposed to be that) and a few more roguish skills like Legerdemain and Stealth. But with his Proficiencies already quite low and only 4 points in Traits, there is no leverage to that end... Any ideas?

EDIT: Deleted outdated character sheets

One thing worth noting off the bat is that while the scale of dice has gone up, the general pools have gone down. One of the problems in BoB was that a normal person had 2s and 3s, and 5 was the normal limit for human attribute -- but PCs regularly had 4s and 5s in whatever they actually cared about. It wasn't uncommon for PCs to have multiple 5 on their sheet, which wasn't quite what was intended.

On this scale, normal people have 3s for attributes unless that attribute is tied to whatever they are good at -- in which case it's going to be a 4. I.e. a laborer might have a 4 brawn. A hunter might have 4s in agility and perception. Your character has 4s and 5s in everything but Will. You've got the Brawn of a laborer or farmer and Agility like a professional athlete. I'm not sure what the equivalent is for Cunning, but you're a good two steps above the common person you'll encounter, and smarter than your average "smart person."

Same could be said for proficiencies. Your average brawler is going to have reflex 3 and a proficiency of 4 or 5. So 8 dice. A trained soldier might have a reflex of 4 and a proficiency of 5 or 6 - 10 dice. You're sitting on 12, 11, and 9 -- no slouch at all.

For skills, a 4 is basically the bar for "you can make money at this." 5-6 is "master of the trade" kind of area. You managed to grab six skills (not counting your free lore) and all of them are at or above the professional bar. three of which are master-level or above, and one of which is just shy of "normal human maximum." That 7 manipulation is a powerhouse, given that the average person is going to have a Keen of 3-4.

Skills are a weird area. While I feel like the balance is about right for attributes and proficiencies, skills are hard to deal with because there's two distinct character types to deal with. For the jack-of-all trades, skill-intense character too few points winds up making it so that you're basically required to take a T5 to do everything you want, which isn't necessarily what we want. On the other hand, you're more often going to see the other type who only has a few skills they care about. If you buff up the number of skills too high, that character winds up with all of four skills, but they are throwing around 7s and 8s in all of them, which is also not what we want.

Agamemnon wrote:Skills are a weird area. While I feel like the balance is about right for attributes and proficiencies, skills are hard to deal with because there's two distinct character types to deal with. For the jack-of-all trades, skill-intense character too few points winds up making it so that you're basically required to take a T5 to do everything you want, which isn't necessarily what we want. On the other hand, you're more often going to see the other type who only has a few skills they care about. If you buff up the number of skills too high, that character winds up with all of four skills, but they are throwing around 7s and 8s in all of them, which is also not what we want.

For the second issue (character winds up with all of four skills, but they are throwing around 7s and 8s in all of them, which is also not what we want). Perhaps changing max skill from 10/8/8/8/8 to something like 10/8/8/6/4 (or something similar) might do the trick.

Mh, okay, as I said, maybe I'm biased by BoB. But if req3 is "average" as per page 6, I have the feeling this would be quite hard to pull off with any ability lower than 4, even at TN3. I know, these are not supposed to be everyday tasks, so maybe not applicable to normal NPC's. Anyways, I'm curious to try it out and see how it works.

When I made this character, I thought he should at least be able to succeed reliably at the "normal" challenges, not thinking of really hard things like finding the way through the swamp in the pitch darkness of a cloudy night thing, but finding the way under pressure and that sort of stuff...

EinBein wrote:Mh, okay, as I said, maybe I'm biased by BoB. But if req3 is "average" as per page 6, I have the feeling this would be quite hard to pull off with any ability lower than 4, even at TN3. I know, these are not supposed to be everyday tasks, so maybe not applicable to normal NPC's. Anyways, I'm curious to try it out and see how it works.

Keep in mind that 'BoB was BTN6 on 10 (50%), BTN5 (60%) with advantage. Now its BTN3 on 6 (66.6%), BTN2 (83.3%) with advantage.

Also there's this note on pg 7.

Choosing reqs
If you ever need a req but don’t have the chart in front of you (or don’t want to pause play to look one up), it’s easy enough to guesstimate. Reqs 1-5 are in the realm of mundane tasks. 6-10 are heroic and super-heroic. For most tasks, you can start at r3 and then adjust up or down as necessary to fit the situation. Most tasks characters will need to accomplish under normal circumstances are r2.

Okay, thanks for the feedback. I'll re-arrange some stuff for the next revision (lower skill ratings, but added Stealth and instead of 0d Drunkard changeover to 1dT Drunkard). Let's see what the others come up with...

Btw, that "Religion is not everything - The people are" Drive is a stroke of brilliance.

That is, if we don't end up murdering each other.

Let's chance it

Benedict wrote:Btw, that "Religion is not everything - The people are" Drive is a stroke of brilliance.

That is, if we don't end up murdering each other.

EinBein wrote:Let's chance it

Just the kind of fun I like to see.

When I get the combat stuff out (either this coming release or next) I'll then divert a bit of writing-time to getting this campaign set up properly. I figure you lot would prefer I concentrate on getting the game out and playable first before I start running another game.

So Einbein, is Franz still gonna use a Zweihänder or not? Cause you took Swords instead of Longsword...

That said, i remember several youtube videos on why swords are suboptimal for fighting creatures... almost considering switching to polearms myself - but, alas, i can't. i'm too much of a fan of longsword irl

nemedeus wrote:So Einbein, is Franz still gonna use a Zweihänder or not? Cause you took Swords instead of Longsword...

EinBein wrote:I imagined him to fight with a messer or sabre and maybe a pistol or one-handed crossbow.

I took a step back on combat in order to push some skills further. But let's see what the cost of my preferred equipment will be...