Character Creation

The google sheet can also generate a print-friendly document containing merit detail if you save a copy of THIS template (keep the name the same) into the same folder as the google sheet character sheet. Then go to “AutoFill Docs” and select “Create New Docs.”

For LARP character sheets, use THIS template instead.

This is done by running a script through the sheet – always be careful when running scripts from unknown strangers! In this case, if you know basic programing you can view the script to confirm it is safe by going to “Extensions”->”App Script.”

When selecting an archetype as guidance, add additional detail. An archetype might show a bit of the character’s history and skill sets. What type of Delinquent is Bob? The difference between thug, cat thief, and class clown can go in vastly different directs.

Delinquent
An individual who acts with disregard to rules or law.
Examples: thieves, thugs, graffiti vandalism, forgers, blackmailers, smugglers
Common Skills: Brute Force, Finesse, Sneak,

Entertainer
An individual who acts with some degree of celebrity for the entertainment of others.
Examples: musicians, artists, street performers, actors, radio hosts
Common Skills: Perform, Maneuver, Negotiate,

Journeyman
An individual who works in specialized trade-skill, often requiring manual labor.
Examples: electricians, carpenters, construction workers, welders, plumbers, police
Common Skills: Craft, Brute Force, Finesse

Outdoorsman
An individual that regularly works in nature and further from centers of civilization.
Examples: park rangers, nature guides,
Common Skills: Survive, Scout, Sneak

Scholar
An individual focused on learning a specific branch of study within academia, often-times with the pursuit to push the bounds of knowledge further.
Examples: chemist, psychologist, historians, teachers, engineers, programmers
Common Skills: Research, Craft, Connect

Socialite
An individual who professionally (officially or unofficially) regularly works through their interactions with other individuals. A socialite might be extroverted and seek out interactions, or introverted yet good at listening and watching people.
Examples: politicians, sales force, consultants, managers, media managers
Common Skills: Negotiate, Connect, Investigate

Combining Archetypes
Some occupations fit neatly within a single archetype, while others may combine multiple. For the occupations that fit squarely within one archetype, consider what other hobbies, interests, or responsibilities the character might have within one of the other archetypes.
Examples: Field Researcher (Scholar/Outdoorsman), Con-artist (Socialite/Delinquent),  Student by day / partier by night (Scholar/Socialite), DJ by night / electrician by day (Entertainer/Journeyman), Stolen-goods Fence (Delinquent/Socialite), Theater student (Entertainer/Scholar)

Consider how you would like your character to handle various common adventure situations. Will you handle them with skills, unique abilities, or hope for an ally to make-up for scenarios you are weaker in? Character legacies provide a brief description of what type of playstyles they fit well in, but a character of any legacy can fit any playstyle with the right collection of merits and skills.

Common scenarios to consider when making a character include:

• How will my character:
  • … handle social interactions?
    • Examples:
      Avoid engagements; Focus on professionalism; Carousing; Silent but watchful; Stay Manipulative; 
    • Helpful skills:
      Negotiate, Perform, or Connect
    • Social Legacies:
      Fetch, Fae, Psychics, Vampires
  • … handle dangerous situations or sudden danger?
    • Examples:
      Hide; Run; Fight head-on; Protect others; Kite-n-fight
    • Helpful skills:
      Finesse, Brute Force, or Maneuver
    • Legacies with an advantage in danger:
      Elementals, Shifters, Vigil, Vampires
  • … gather information?
    • Examples:
      Research online or at a library; online research; Contact an expert; Direct observation
    • Helpful skills:
      Research, Investigate, Connect
    • Knowledgeable Legacies:
      Demonologists, Moirai, Psychics, Spiritualists
  • … get around roadblocks?
    • Examples:
      Utilize one’s athletic talent; MacGyver a helpful tool;  Sneak around threats
    • Helpful skills:
      Maneuver, Craft, Sneak, Finesse
    • Slippery Legacies:
      Fetch, Jumpers, Swarms, 
  • … prepare for a known challenge?
    • Examples:
      Gather resources; Craft new items; Make allies
    • Helpful skills:
      Craft, Survive, Negotiate
    • Planning Legacies:
      Magi, Necromancers, 

A character can have no legacy, 1 legacy or 2 legacies.
Legacies represent the magical heritage of a character – whether that be by blood, ritual, corruption, or other connection. Within witchgates, legacies fulfill various narrative roles and playstyles, unique merits, and may even have various responsibilities tied to them.

Legacies can be gained during the game and even changed. Each legacy has 1 Signature Merit and various smaller merits unique to that legacy. Signature merits are powerful; often versatile and complex. Choosing one also imparts the legacy’s disadvantage onto the character, a drawback that the character needs to work around. Finally, when choosing a signature merit, a character can further customize that merit with Meta merits that alter how it can be used, free upon taking the merit. Each signature merit has a number of slots which represent how many meta merits can alter it. New players are encouraged to hold off on choosing their Meta merits until they are used to how the base merit works.

Supernatural merits are available to multiple supernatural legacies while generic merits can be taken by any character and are not limited to a legacy.

Although each legacy has a general theme, exceptions exist; outliers who break the mold. A magus may focus on maintaining the pinnacle of physique while a lycanthrope attempts to minimize their disastrous nature by tinkering in a small study.

Lastly, flavor is free. Legacies and their subgroups can be renamed and reskinned for a variety of different interpretations. 

Legacy Playstyles: (To align with step 1’s Archetypes)

• Fae (Supernatural): The Folklore Folk. They are wordsmiths excellent with contracts and time shenanigans and stories. Play this if you want a character that is deeply involved in contracts and can take advantage of poor or clever wordplay. Alternatively, play this if you want to have a less rigid interaction with time and chronology within a story.
• Magus: Highly flexible spell casters within their specialized areas. They are very powerful when they can prepare for a situation, but more reliant on luck when caught off guard. Play this if you want a more complex but highly versatile character that is constantly creating new abilities. They are not naturally very resilient, but their spells can assist with that.
  • Note: Magus who want to use spell casting should save some skill points to spend on Knacks, magical areas of expertise.
• Summoners: Individuals focused on summoning and interacting with otherworldly creatures. There are three main different types of Summoner
  • Spiritualists:  focused on interacting with spirits and the ephemeral realm, the manifestation of feelings and ideas. Play this if you want a character that barters with an unseen world and has versatile powers, depending on what help they can acquire.
    • Note: Spiritualists who want to summon specific types of spirits should save some skill points to spend on Knacks, their spiritual areas of knowledge.
  • Necromancers: focused on the undead and death. Play this if you want to directly manage simple loyal minions fully under your control.
  • Demonologists: focused on the thresholds and summoning demons. Play this if you want to utilize your own antagonist, working with powerful creatures that are very willing to assist you, if only to put you in greater trouble later.
• Werebeasts (Supernatural): Physically powerful animalistic incarnations. Shifters focus on their ability to shapeshift into a particular type of animal and take on its traits. Play this if you want a character that is aligned with the animalistic parts of nature and has potential for tremendous physical might and resilience.
• Fetch: Shapeshifters with a focus on appearance and versatility. Play this if you want a character with a fluid perspective of self and which can easily become innocuous within any group.
• Vampires (Supernatural): Supernatural creatures that focus on the domination of others for their own good. Play this if you want to exercise power over others, through supernatural strength and political machination.
• Vigil: Guardian angel-like people with a focus on protective and supportive abilities.
• Psychics: Mortals with mastery of their own mind and the minds of others. Play this if you want unique ways of gathering, covering, or transferring secret knowledge.
• Jumpers: Individuals with excellent mobility as they easily traverse and manipulate space itself: Play this if you want a highly mobile character that is difficult to lock down
• Moirai: Creatures of fate and luck. They manipulate fate’s strings at the whims of their own desires and rules. Play this if you want a character that has more control over chance than any normal character.

Merits represent the core characteristics, abilities, gear, and companions that a character has at their disposal. They give characters unique options that most other players do not have, from new narrative abilities such as the ability to bend metal, to mechanic altering abilities that change how players read cards. They also act as specialized tools, experience, and knowledge that a character can utilize to support action checks. Finally, merits mechanically act as a character’s narrative health, whereby merit tracks are marked as a character has their gear get damaged, they take harm, or are otherwise rattled.

• • Players cannot select merits from more than 2 different legacies.*
  • Merits double as narrative health, and are balanced against it. The more powerful and versatile the merit, the less health it provides.
  • While not always innately magical, generic merits are balanced in the same manner as other supernatural and legacy merits, and should not be overlooked as inferior
  • Some Merits feel best when customized. For example, a character can easily swap out the description and type of harm dealt by a weapon merit. They can also expand on it with other merit options, like an extra damage type or bonus utility. 
  • Don’t over worry about another player taking a merit you wanted. Many merits are versatile enough that they can seem completely different in two different player’s hands, while Signature Merits especially have further customization that can distinguish how they work between players.
  • Lastly, if you take a Signature Merit from a legacy, make sure you understand how that legacy’s disadvantage will affect your gameplay. Also look at the meta merits to consider how your merit will differ than that of others in the same legacy.

• Tutorial Option:

• • Select 4 generic Merits of simple-to-medium complexity that fit your character’s theme but of which are easy to remove. As you play, replace the older Merits with new ones you enjoy.

Balance finding merits that fill gaps in your desired playstyle with finding merits that support each other. Synergy between merits can come in many different ways, but here are a few common synergies to look for:

• Resource Expenditure with Resource Gathering
  Many merits require spending an esoteric or lost word to use their unique ability. Others may have merits that enhance the crafting or direct use of those resources. While any character can attempt to find more with a lengthy action, having another merit that provides an alternative method to either more quickly or consistently gather those resources can allow them to activate the former merit more often.
• Distractions, Mobility, and Stealth
  Characters can use abilities that draw attention away from clumsy allies and then use their own mobility to escape. Good mobility can provide new avenues of stealth, and good distractions can also lead potential watchdogs away from oneself.
• Defense, Threat, and Healing
  Defensive merits are only better than other merits if they are utilized, which often means putting a character in danger. As such, they pair great with merits that draw attention towards oneself or allow the character to interpose themselves between their allies and danger. However, if a character is planning on getting hurt, it’s best that they have a plan for recovering from that harm too, as the normal method is slow and can be resource expensive.
• Damage alongside Expertise and Utility
  Characters that want to do lots of harm or consistent harm will likely take a weapon-based merit that deals bonus harm of a specific type. If a character knows they will make most of their attacks in a very specific manner, taking an expertise-based merit that automatically upgrades glances to hits in that situation can be crucial, especially to reliably inflict a harm’s side-effect.
  Other than that, having a utility based merit that can consistently improve the effect of your attacks or apply vulnerabilities to targets can increase the amount of harm a character deals. For example, consider the threat of a character that can consistently soak their enemies before hitting them with a bolt of lightning or ray of frost.

Distribute 5 points to the attributes (limit 3 per attribute)
Attributes determine the number of dice a character has when they need to instinctually or naturally avoid danger or notice something. (When it is too late to take action).

• Insight: Avoid trouble from deception or misunderstanding.
• Perception: Avoid trouble from ambushes and surprises.
• Physique: Avoid trouble from physical harm or hindrance.
• Resolve: Avoid trouble from mental strain, manipulation, or possession.

Values range from 0 to 3.

Attributes are not strict limitations to a character’s capabilities: A studious chemist may still have a low insight attribute; they are good in chemistry, but easy to deceive and confuse. A body builder might have high brute strength but poor physique outside of their focused training.

Skills rank from levels 0 through 3 and demonstrate a character’s trained and accumulated experience in different fields of general knowledge.

• Overlapping and “Debatable” Skills
  Skills should be broadly applicable, and many times a player may have several that could apply for a situation, or some that only kind of apply. If players agree that the best skill a character has only kind of applies for a situation, or otherwise are not able to agree and no judicator is available, they should apply half the skill’s level rounded up.
• Areas of Focus
  The craft and research skills, require the player to select an Area of Focus when investing points in them. These areas of focus narrow down a character’s knowledge within the skills. When a player attempts an action with the skill, either the action must fall within the broader knowledge that any person with that skill should have, or they must have an appropriate focus that applies. Players can use specialties to represent multiple areas of focus within the craft and research skills.
• Specialty Skills
  Players can also create their own skills unique to their character based on that character’s knowledge and experiences. Specialties should be less generic than other skills. However, a character has more control when using a specialty. When spending a miss-fortune on an action check that is using a specialty, that character can reduce any cut by 2, or automatically succeed on the check if there was no cut against it.
• Knacks
  Spiritualists and Magi gain unique specialties called knacks which detail their spiritual or magical focuses.
• Planning towards your playstyle
  Consider the different ways you may utilize a skills. A player planning to regularly get in fights has many different skills they can invest in to pursue that goal: Brute Force may represent simple brawling, while Finesse may represent the careful movements of a light weapon. Maneuver might be used for a flying kick, and Performance might show the flourish of fancy whipwork. Sneak for a stealthy backstab, or even plan to use Survive for desperate scratching and kicking.
  This goes beyond combative scenes of course. For example, Maneuver can represent quick-witted verbal entrapment by a character trying to trick someone into revealing a secret.

Esoterics are small items and creatures containing arcane energies that characters can further utilize for a wide variety of purposes, but mainly to create temporary abilities and benefits. When a resource is spent, it is given to a Game Master. There are 3 main resource types:

• Esoterics
  Esoterics are namely used to in recovery and to craft temporary merits. Exotic materials, fruits, and creature parts with unique properties that are difficult to acquire in most settings.
  E.G: gravity stones, mithril, adamantium, vantablack, glycerin, crystal fruits, jars of glowing insects, the venomous organ of a felled beast.
• Lost Words
  Knowledge and stories given spirit, lost words are just a single word or phrase waiting to be spoken.
  • Spend to discover information related to the wording without making an action check
  • Spend to alter the world around you in your favor (create a scene aspect without making an action check)
• Coin
  Intrinsically desirable and can be exchanged almost anywhere for goods and services, authentic esoteric coin can be used to trade for other esoterics or as general payment for resources.

Start with 3 resources of the player’s creation. They can be of any type.

Other generic items, from duct tape to rope, are not tracked in game. Instead characters are assumed to have the items they need in their journey, or can otherwise use a flashback to acquire such items.

TBD

Before starting the game, here are a few common mechanics to try out with your GM.

1. Search for 2 new Resources:
   • Make an action check using a Skill and Merit to find and acquire a new resource
     • For example, a character might hit a local tavern to ‘Investigate’ for gossip in hopes of acquiring a Lost Word, using the Merit “Gossip Sprite” to assist you as you eavesdrop on the many conversations. 
2. Create a new Temporary Merit
   • Spend 2 resources and make an action check to concoct a new item that your character can utilize using the Create Temporary Merit action.
3. Use an Esoteric or Lost Word
4. Use your merit abilities once each.
5. Take a hit
6. Deal some harm
7. Spend some Miss-Fortune
8. Take a risky but highly effective action