Character Creation

Character creation is the process of conceptualizing and developing a new Player Character or non-Player Character (NPC). A lot of different factors come together to shape a Character, but it doesn't need to be overly complicated; this guide will help you establish a method for building a Character in a straightforward way, at least until you're familiar enough with Horizon to make executive decisions on your own. Have fun!

Character Creation Index:

Making a concept

Choosing priorities

Skills and Paths

Equipment

Traits and Passives

Finishing touches

Before building a Character, it's usually a good idea to have some thoughts about the type of Character you would like to play. If you're new to Horizon: out of the ashes, this might be more difficult, since you won't have a lot of knowledge about what the game can offer, so think simple. Whether new or experienced, the main points of a good concept are:

• Who is the Character and what are they like? - What kind of person do you see yourself playing and unless you're experienced with roleplaying, don't try to create something that is too far away from your own personality, since it may make decisions difficult in the future. Is your Character curious, aloof, kind, cruel, flamboyant, sensible; you can make any type of person you like. Remember that physical appearance may also have a factor on how you imagine the Character, including age.
• What does the Character do? - Imagine the Character you want to play. What kind of life does this person pursue? They could be a mercenary, whether benevolent or ruthless. They could be a professional of some kind; most jobs on Horizon today have some immediate practical use, like hacking, medicine, armoring, weapon smithing, trading and so on, but they could also do something more obscure, like investigation, archeology, cartography and so on. They could be an assassin or hitman for whatever motivation suits the Character, whether it be elimination of corrupt officials or simple blood money. They could be a thief or a con man. They could be one of the many scavengers who raid abandoned cities and fallen wrecks for technology and parts. The sky is the limit; be creative!

Once you have a good idea of these two factors, a few more things should be taken into account. Horizon is a wild place; there is no universal law, and no recognized government besides whatever chain of command exists in any given settlement. People guard their liberties fiercely and survive using whatever means they can. In light of this, several factors need to be planned for if you don't want to get caught in a bad situation:

• Your Character will face combat at some point. Whether it's the knife of a lone thief or the arsenal of a mercenary band, have a plan for how your Character will meet this turbulence in their daily life, even if combat is not their forte. This doesn't mean every Character should buy the biggest gun they can; often a supportive role is just as potent during a fight, offering healing or tactical awareness which enable more combat-oriented Characters in the team to lead the fight themselves.
• Your awareness is often the greatest defense you have. The first step in getting your Character killed is walking into danger and Horizon has many threatening conditions you may not anticipate. Whatever form this danger takes, you have a far better chance of overcoming it if you are aware in advance and can either avoid it entirely, or at least be more prepared. Don't underestimate the value of sharp senses and fast reflexes, especially in your enemies.
• Social interaction is powerful. There are people in the world who use their words and wits to manipulate others with great effect - and so can you! It is possible to talk your way out of being robbed, killed or virtually anything else, as long as you have an opportunity to communicate. Equally, it is possible for your Character to be deceived into believing something false, or having information tortured out of them if they are captured. If you realize that your communication is being monitored, convincingly delivering false information to your enemies can turn the tables decisively. Remember that words can be a weapon.

Once you have a strong idea of who you want your Character to be, a good step before starting the build is setting out priorities for our different areas of performance. This will make decisions easier as we go and help to avoid long periods of time deliberating over many options. This can be a significant hurdle early in a Character's development, because resources are very limited when starting out.

• What is the Character's main role? - Do you favor a Character with strong combat capabilities? What about their ability to support their team? Are they rugged and tenacious or do you see them as surviving with their wits alone? The four Traits used by every Character represent these qualities in a general way, so think of the Character's Traits for now as a priority list. The Traits are:
  • Focus - The Character's intelligence and willfulness. The Focus Trait increases the number of dice rolled for many supportive Skills like Medicine, Hacking, repairing equipment, Trading, and Strategy.
  • Instinct - The Character's sharp senses, intuition and fast reflexes. The Instinct Trait increases the number of dice rolled for many specialist Skills, like Social Skills, Sneak and Perception.
  • Physique - The Character's physical power and agility. The Physique Trait increases the number of dice rolled for all attack tests, whether they be Unarmed, Melee, Thrown weapons, Explosives and guns.
  • Vigor - The Character's toughness and tenacity. The Vigor Trait increases the number of dice rolled for durability Skills and Talents. Durability Skills include resisting AP and Stamina loss when being attacked or avoiding unconsciousness from going into shock. Talents include the Character's Skills for playing music, creating art, cooking and other creative pursuits.

For now, order your traits from most important to least important, using your Character's concept. To make things simple for yourself later, do not allow yourself any “ties”, it must be in a strict order of most important to least important. For now, don't worry about getting everything perfect; you can always return and change their stats later, as long as they haven't begun play. If you start using a new Character and find it doesn't play as you expected, be open about this with your Director; where possible they may allow you to adjust your Character even after play begins, especially if you're new to the game.

Skills represent the knowledge and training your Character has. Whenever they take action, their Skills determine what they are good at and how well they can do it. For each rank in a Skill, the effectiveness increases, so the higher the rank, the better your Character will be. The actions a Character can perform include shooting, investigating, healing, crafting, and speaking, to name a few. As a general rule, any action that benefits from practice, training or knowledge will have a Skill your Character can learn and improve. Skills are fairly broad and will often be used for several related actions, such as the Stealth Skill, which includes Sneaking, lock-picking, pocket-picking and hiding things so others cannot find them.

Specializations represent focused training your Character has undergone to improve one particular aspect of a Skill.

• For example, the Stealth Skill includes the Sneak, Conceal and Obscure Specializations, each of which affects different uses of the Stealth Skill.
  • Sneaking is for stealthy movement.
  • Conceal is for picking pockets, picking locks, palming small items or hiding them on the Character's person
  • Obscure is used to hide objects in secret places, allowing them to be smuggled or kept safe from discovery.

A simple way to understand Skills and Specializations is to imagine a pizza with different toppings on each slice. The base of the pizza represents a Skill; it's the foundation of the meal and every part of the pizza tastes better when the base is improved. The toppings represent Specializations; even though toppings are the “best” part of a pizza, different people like different toppings, so each slice is going to be better or worse, depending on who is eating it. In the same way, the Skill is a foundation; higher ranks in the Skill will make it better in every situation. Specializations depend on how the Skill is being used, but when they are needed, they offer the biggest bonuses.

Having covered Skills and Specializations, now let's define how to use them. Using Skills for a test is a simple 3 step process:

• First, check the Skill's rank. Each rank grants a +1AP bonus to the test.
• Second, check for Specializations. These offer +5AP per rank, but only when they are being used specifically.
• Third, check the Trait for the Skill being used, then roll 1 die for each rank in that Trait. Each die with an even number grants +2AP.

Once all this is done, simply total up the bonuses. This is the result of the test. For example, if a Character wants to make a stealthy move;

• First check the rank of the Stealth Skill. If the Character's rank is 10, then they will recieve +10AP.
• Second, Check if the Character has the Sneak Specialization, since Sneaking is what they want to do. If the Character has 1 rank in Sneak, then they would get +5AP.
• Third, Stealth uses the Instinct Trait. If the Character has 11 ranks in Instinct, they would roll 11 dice. If 6 dice succeed by rolling an even number, they will gain +12AP from the roll (+2AP per die).
• Totalling these bonuses gives our Character +10 +5 +12 = 27AP. This is the final result.

The first step in building a Character is determining their starting power. Skill Points represent the Character's personal growth as they make their journey on Horizon. A Character can gain an infinite number of Skill Points throughout their lifetime, but their starting number will vary. Normally, the Director will tell you how many your Character should start with, depending on the conditions of their game. If you're making a Character yourself just for fun, we recommend a minimum of 20 Skill Points for casual play. Anything less than this should be reserved for “hardcore” Characters being roleplayed from the ground up. For a more flexible start, a 40 point Character will be capable and a 60+ point Character will be strong. A Character's initial Skill level has a great impact on how much they can do when they first start out, so it's important to plan accordingly.

The basic elements of Skill level progression are as follows:

• Characters gain Skill Points as they play games.
  • 1 Skill Point for taking part
  • 2 Skill Points for completing a main objective
  • 1 Skill Point for completing a side objective
  • 1 bonus Skill Point if a Player or group did something especially awesome. (Director's discretion)
• Every 5 Skill Points, a Character also receives 1 Lesser Mastery Point. These are used to buy ranks in Specializations, or can be saved to purchase Augs. Specializations grant +5AP per rank whenever they are used, but only improve a specific technique from one Skill and can only be purchased for Skills the Character has already unlocked.
• Every 10 Skill Points, a Character gains a Greater Mastery Point in addition to the Lesser Mastery Point for that level. Greater Mastery Points are used to unlock new Skills or Perks. New Characters do not have any Skills to begin with, so it's recommended that the first 2 or 3 Perks should be used to unlock Skills.
• Additionally, at Character Creation only, each SP gives 200credits for the Character to outfit themselves before beginning play. Otherwise, money will be earned by playing games. If the Director wishes, this reward system can be continued as the game goes on, allowing the Characters a steady income as they earn SP, but they may also choose to grant specific rewards for each story the Players complete.

Now we have a rough direction for our character to go in and we also know how powerful they're going to be, so it's time to start shaping their Skill set! When creating a new Character you generally have two options; balancing or focusing.

• Balancing is a method that places the bulk of a Character's IRIS Points in one area of their performance, while spending most of their Skill Points in other areas. This results in a broad Character that is reasonably good at most actions, but with the downside that they will not excell in any particular role.
• Concentrating focuses both the Character's IRIS Points and Skill Points in the same -or related- areas, making the Character very effective in one or two specific roles, but leaving them less powerful in most other situations.

There is always potential to mix focusing and balancing, giving the Character an advantage in some areas without committing everything to a single style of play, but this is a more advanced technique. Often, finding the right combination of bredth and depth will require more knowledge and experience to get the most benefit, so if you're creating your first Character, it is usually best to choose one side or the other. If in doubt, make a broad Character; it's the best way to get a feel for many different elements of play and will allow you to take part in the most situations.

When selecting your first Skills, we recommend that you use the priority list you created earlier in development. This should give you a good idea what is important to your Character right away: if you wanted a physically powerful Character, you probably have a high rank in Physique, while if you wanted a survivable, tough Character you probably have a high rank in Vigor and so on. Remember that Skills are grouped according to the Trait they use for their dice rolls, so you can use your priority list as a guideline for which Skills your Character will benefit from the most.

If you choose to take your best Skills in the same area as your strongest Traits, the Character will be very effective in those one or two roles you have selected. This comes at a cost however, since the Character has far fewer Skill Points to invest in other areas, making them very weak in any situation where their chosen abilities are not useful.

• For example, if your Character concept is for a stealthy hacker, you will most likely have high ranks in Focus (which represents mental strength for hacking) and Instinct (which represents cunning and intuition for sneaking). Using this as a reference, we would begin looking for Skills in Focus and Instinct, since they are the Character's greatest strengths. In the Focus category, our hacker will need the Tech Lore Skill, which makes them more effective at working with technology and information systems. In the Instinct category, they will need the Stealth Skill, which makes them better at sneaking. Because this Character has stacked their best Skills on top of their strongest Traits, they will be very effective at sneaking and hacking, but take note that the Character has little else they can do. If they end up in some backwater town with no technology and get caught up in a bar fight, chances are it's not going to be pretty. This is an example of a concentrated Character.

Don't be afraid to choose Skills outside your highest priorities, since a Character's Traits are only one part of the AP they can generate; there are also Skills and Specs to give them bonuses. If a Character has strong dice rolls in one area, but chooses their strongest Skills from another area, the Character is less powerful in any given situation, but is less often caught off-guard. This is what it means to make a “balanced Character.

• For example, after a previous Character was brutally mauled in a bar fight, perhaps you decide to take a more flexible approach. For the new Character, we still want to hack and sneak, but it would also be nice to have some fighting and surviving in our Skill set. To achieve this, we're going to take the same two Skills: Tech Lore and Stealth, but we won't put our highest ranks in the Focus and Instinct Traits to miximize their performance. Instead, we're going to put more emphasis on the Physique Trait for combat actions and the Vigor Trait for survivability actions. The new Character is weaker at being a stealthy hacker, but would have much better odds if the situation doesn't go their way. Perhaps they even seek out a few bar brawlers to settle an old vendetta. This is an example of a balanced Character.