Let me make lists for each skill tree. I'm open to suggestions for more.
Combat Skills
Whatever skill you use to fight or injured/kill someone or something
I have split unarmed/martial arts into two categories, kickboxing and grappling. Ground fighting is mainly influenced by grappling. Feel free to also mention specific martial arts just to flavor the character and keep things interesting. For instance if your character knows a little Muay Thai, do Muay Thai (boxing) 3.
There are blunt weapons, bladed weapons, and stabbing weapons. Each are separate skills.
Ranged weapons can be anything from throwing rocks to firing a laser rifle. Some require strength or dexterity, but either way they require skill. There's throwing, slings, bows, handguns, rifles, machine guns, and energy weapons.
Support Skills
Skills generally used outside of combat, though you could improve in combat. Not to harm.
Skills that give an edge when dealing with people. Charisma for convincing people amicably, Intimidation to scare people into doing what you want, and Deception for tricking people into doing what you want.
Anything dealing with nature or surviving in it. Animal skills are knowledge of how to deal with animals, Survival includes building fires and shelters, Herbalism includes knowing which plants do what and what to avoid, and Hunting involves not only hunting animals but also cutting them up and harvesting what you need from their carcass.
These are more like attributes, which I was avoiding, but without any of these I will assume your character is average in one of these. Strength to lift heavy objects, Endurance to deal with pain, discomfort, and fatigue, Agility to dodge or move quickly, and Dexterity to help land a shot.
There are three skills here. The first is, of course, Stealth which means sneaking or hiding to avoid being spotted, and Lockpicking which works for traditional locks, and Pickpocketing to steal right from someone's pocket without being caught.
Computers, for hacking and possibly creating programs, Repair, for fixing things, First Aid, for patching people up.
Magic is currently a mystery to your characters that will be revealed over time, so I will keep it a mystery to the players as well.
Background: He grew up with an abusive alcoholic father, a mother with a compromised immune system, and three siblings who easily fell into alcohol and drugs. Evan was the only child of the family who aspired to have a professional career and escape poverty. He always wanted to work with animals. One day his father disappeared and he had to work to take care of his mother. Despite his high grades and dedication to schooling, his poor background and responsibility to his mother prevented him from being able to attend University. One day a businessman approached him with a proposal to help him and his mother...
Personality:Conrad has a specific mood that never changes: Tired, stressed, and likely to lash out.
Background:Conrad was abused verbally and physically alike, and struggling to maintain a stable life at their jobs. They had been jumping from shelter to shelter to sanctuary, and often felt like they wouldn't ever fit in. So when an offer came up to leave this [Censored] of a life, Conrad took it right away.
Name: Danny Alston Age: 20 Background: Danny was kicked out of his parent's house at 16 after wrecking his father's car when he took it for a joyride despite not having his license. He's spent the next 4 years on the street stealing and dumpster diving. He was "recruited" by Maniacles when he tried to pickpocket an employee who gave him an offer either join their study or deal with the police. HP: 40
Accepted, but I would change "dumpster diving" to "perception" and "shoplifting" to "stealth." I tried to make the skills list shorter, plus changing those will just expand your character's capabilities.
Accepted, but I would change "dumpster diving" to "perception" and "shoplifting" to "stealth." I tried to make the skills list shorter, plus changing those will just expand your character's capabilities.
Background: William's parents were unsuited to take care of him, so he was raised by his great uncle instead. The old man was the owner and ringmaster of a traveling circus, and he left it to William when he died. But between his great uncle's death and a controversy that happened shortly before that, William inherited a circus that had fallen upon hard times. Many of the performers had moved on, those who remained weren't talented enough to find work elsewhere, and William's lack of experience with running a circus did nothing to help matters. Things looked bleak, but then Maniacles came along and made William an offer: William would go to Palmer Island and participate in the experiment being conducted there. Once the experiment had concluded William would depart from the island with all that he needed to save his circus. Needless to say, William accepted the offer.
Background: Ursula's upbringing was far from tragic. On the contrary, she lived in a reasonably happy and healthy family. They were never well off, and Ursula always spent her youth straddling the line of utter poverty and just being poor. She spent most of her youth drawing, painting, and distracting herself with art to express the subtle feeling of desperation she felt because of her mother. Ursula's life didn't get hard until she was eighteen. Her mother had made it clear that she would have to leave when she was an adult, but she hadn't expected her mother to leave all her belongings on the porch and change the locks while she was at work.
Ursula's life was turbulent since then. They spent years living in their car. They worked a job and tried to stay afloat, but never made quite enough money to get a start in life. It was fortunate then that she was found by a peculiar savior. A group of punks found her in a particularly sad moment, crying in her car. They offered to take her with them to a local concert, buy her some drinks, and let her clear her mind.
That moment completely changed her. She got a taste of the punk scene proper. A putrid basement bar coated head to toe in grime, graffiti, and tattered band posters. The music was loud, and it was shit, and the drinks were warm. She felt at home for the first time since she was a teen. The punks who came with her shared their exploits, both the outrageous shenanigans and their own struggles with poverty. By the end of the night, she had returned to their home, and she never looked back.
Already an artist, this communal living space, full of free love and bibations, was like a sanguine Eden for artists. She spent years with this found family, seeing the underbelly of the city, making art both on canvas and under bridges and in bathroom stalls. Her art, no longer a distraction but an exploration, gained some notoriety in the local scene. At the age of twenty-three, her dreams seemed like they were coming true.
Unfortunately, she bit off more than she could chew. She ended up paying for an art studio to produce and sell her art properly. It ended up being her downfall, as the price of rent was far too high and her art did not flow from the brush as easily as it did before. The stress turned into dread as she watched her built-up equity disappear. Her friends, who had pulled her from the gutter, now saw her as 'fake' and abandoned her. All the feelings: of betrayal, anticipation, dread, and failure, culminated in her last work of art. A piece that was bought but immediately returned, under the pretense of it being 'haunted'. With this new title as a 'haunted artist' they returned to being a 'starving artist' once they could no longer pay for their studio.
That's when the Maniacles Corporation entered her life. They sent a letter offering to buy her art, giving her exactly the money she would need to pay her overdue rent. In return, she would be a part of their experiment in Alaska. As an artist without money, friends or muse, she felt like she had no other choice.
HP: 34/34
Then there are skills. There will be three categories.
Combat: Nothing magic, but anything you would fight with. Could be Improvized weapons (blunt): 3 Fist fighting (self-defense): 2 Firearms (pistols): 3 Knives: 2
Support: Nothing magic here either. It could be anything from culinary skills to engineering. Could be Arts and crafts: 5 Computers: 3 Forgery: 2
Magic: TBD
Equipment:
Items: -Portraits and Easel -Painting tools -Laptop and art pad
Name: Magdalene "Mags" Vulpe Age: 23 Appearance: This lady has slanted blue eyes that are like two lagoons. Her luxurious, straight, collar-length hair is the color of black coffee, and is worn in a right-side parted pixie cut. She is very tall and has a lean androgynous build, so is sometimes mistaken for a man. Her skin is pale, except for reddish scaring on her right cheek, and a sword-shaped birthmark on her chest. She has a low forehead and high cheekbones.
Andrei Vulpe, freelance journalist, found the baby crying inside a dumpster outside an Atlantic City casino - but instead of handing her over to the police, he brought her home with him to his apartment, telling anyone who asked that she was his baby sister, his parents having died in a car accident back in Romania. And her name was Magdalene. His team, while disagreeing with his impromptu adoption, quickly arranged for documentation.
She was two, a toddler, sound asleep in her room when a curtain too close to the heater caught fire. A scrap of burning fabric fell into her crib, burning the right side of her face. Andrei stormed in with a fire extinguisher, putting out the flames, and took her to the emergency room. Mags recovered quickly, but there was scarring. One of her adopted aunts gave her a flesh patch to hide the scarring when she went to kindergarden, but it was itchy and she scratched it off in the classroom on the first day. Older kids seeing it named her "scar-face".
Every Sunday evening, for as long as she could remember, her father's six friends would show up and would read reports to each other, mostly their observations for that week, typically in Romanian but sometimes English and sometimes in something else. Andrei would collect them afterward. Wanting to be a part of that, Mags threw herself into her studies, practicing her penmanship with such zeal that her teachers had nothing but glowing praise with her class essays.
She then began writing her own reports, copying their style of an outsider looking in, and reading to them at the end of their meetings - in Romanian. Her adopted aunts and uncles praised her presentation, with a glowing Andrei adding her reports with the others.
Shortly after her twelfth birthday, they got a new neighbor, Justin Tyrell, a retired FBI agent who offered to babysit Mags when Andrei needed to go out to research something for his articles. While he had a lot of interesting stories, she couldn't help but notice he seemed very interested in her brother.
It wasn't too long after that she realized that she was being watched by strangers as she went to school, and they all knew her name. It freaked her out that she would cut classes, having to do summer school to make up for the lost work.
After graduating from high school, Andrei took her on a trip to Romania, where she made some friends - who took her drinking. Waking up one morning with a pounding head, she realized she was in some sort of barracks - somehow she got enlisted in the Romanian army. Andrei tried to get her out, but was reluctant to involve the American embassy.
Bootcamp taught her how to shoot a rifle, some basic hand-to-hand combat, and some wilderness survival. After training, she was assigned to the armory to repair and maintain equipment and weapons, as well as driving the unit commander's vehicle when they went to the field. By the time her enlistment ended, she was a sergeant, and received 520 Romanian Leu mustering out payment - which after conversion to dollars left her with $119.60.
Fortunately Andrei and the aunts and uncles paid for her ticket back to the states, but she realizes she needs a job.
When she got the offer to go to Alaska to learn magic, it tweaked her journalism interest.
HP: 32
Skills:
Combat: Rifle: 4 Jiu Jitsu: 4 Knife fighting: 2
Support: Wilderness Survival: 4 Weapon and field equipment repair: 4 Journalism: 2
Magic: TBD
Equipment: Romanian army personal issue - M2017 field shirt, pants, and ballcap; O.D. field jacket, V-neck sweater with epaulettes, wool pants, socks, scarf, and gloves, rain cape; brown fur hat, black leather boots, black pistol belt, O.D. canvas duffle bag.
Items: Romanian Army bread bag, first aid kit, survival kit, 100MPH duct tape, 100ft O.D. parachute cord, Swiss army knife, zippo, lighter fluid, sanitary supplies, brush, two Moleskine notebooks, Pilot space pen, smart phone with chargers and cord.
@Expendable Is the hand to hand combat striking/kickboxing like Muay Thai or is it grappling like Jiu Jitsu? What kind of melee weapons is she good with?