Character Creation

HOW TO CREATE A CHARACTER
The character creation process takes a number of steps, and aims to create fictional individuals that are as close as possible to their player’s wishes

HEROIC CULTURES
The character creation process begins with the choice of the Culture to which the character belongs. This defines the hero’s race, his most basic descriptive features, and the area of Middle-earth he comes from.

HEROIC SETTINGS
Some of the heroic races, have different settings open to them, the player may pick one of them provided the setting is allowed on their culture description. The new setting adds more options, cultural benefits, rewards and virtues, but a hero won't have both benefits of setting or culture, they would simply pick the one that best fits her wishes.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR HERO
Once players have chosen their character’s cultural template and have accordingly compiled their character sheet, they then customise their characteristics, by making some additional choices. This step lets players define what motivated a character to become an adventurer

HERO CREATION SUMMARY

 * Select a Heroic Culture or Setting
 * Record a character’s Culture OR Settingblessing and skill list
 * Select two Specialities
 * Choose Background
 * Record Basic Attributes and Favoured Skill
 * Select two Distinctive Features
 * Customise your Hero
 * Choose your hero’s Favoured Attributes
 * Spend Previous Experience to buy skill levels
 * Choose a Calling and Favoured skills
 * Generate the scores for Endurance and Hope
 * Prioritise the scores for Valour and Wisdom (choosing, accordingly, your starting Reward or Virtue)
 * Record Starting Gear and Fatigue

Your hero is ready to adventure

CUSTOMISATION
The very first decision the player must take is their lack previous experience, the hero will be a promising adventurer or an experienced one. Responsability and duty sometimes fall upon unprepared shoulders, for one may never know when necesity may call upon one's door.

PROMISING YOUNG ADULT
Sometimes adventures calls upon your door under the guise of an old vagabond with a staff and funny habits into the main door of your home. Although the hero is still a young adult, and barely entitled the full benefits and responsabilities of other adults in the Seven Principalities, the mantle of adventure is thrust upon them.

A promising young, starts without previous experience and less points to distribute in favored attributes but may pick an aditional virtue to compensate his lack of experience.

CHOOSE YOUR CALLING All heroes have one calling to be adventurers.

FAVOURED ATTRIBUTES
Body, Heart and Wits are the fundamental ratings of all heroes in the game. Each character starts with a set of basic values determined by their chosen background. Players now get to generate their characters’ Favoured Attributes, by adding bonuses to the basic scores.

Favoured Attribute scores represent the character’s potential to excel when drawing on his experiences and training.
 * A promising Adult Young adds 2 to one Attribute, 1 to another Attribute and 1
 * An adult hero to generate the scores add 3 to one Attribute, 2 to a second Attribute, and 1

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE
Players may now raise some of their skill levels, to represent their heros’ experiences prior to their life as fully-fledged adventurers. Players have a variable pool of points to spend on raising their skills. The cost of raising each skill is shown in the two tables below.
 * Promising Young Adult has 6 points to distribute
 * A full adult have 12 points to distrubute

The first table gives the costs for Common skill levels, while the second shows the costs for Weapon skill levels. Players are free to raise their skills as they see fit, as long as they have enough points to buy the desired skill level. They can also buy ranks in skills they previously didn’t possess at all, or buy multiple ranks in the same skill, as long as they pay the cost of each level individually.

Players may also buy a first level in a new individual Weapon skill, but not a new Cultural weapon skill.

A player wanting to go from Athletics ♦ to Athletics ♦♦♦♦ would spend a total of 9 points (2 to raise it from ♦ to ♦♦, 3 to go from ♦♦ to ♦♦♦ and 4 to go from ♦♦♦ to ♦♦♦♦).

ENDURANCE AND HOPE
Endurance and Hope are the fundamental resources that keep a character going. Culture/Setting Endurance Hope Grief/Shadow

STARTING GEAR and FATIGUE
All heroes start their adventuring career fully equipped with all the personal items and gear they consider best suited to a life on the road. For the sake of simplicity, the game presents such possessions as a character’s travelling gear and war gear.

Fatigue Score
A player-hero’s travelling equipment and each piece of war gear possesses an Encumbrance rating, representing the hindrance that the item causes to the carrier, both in terms of weight and discomfort (for example, a helm which significantly limits its wearer’s vision has a higher Encumbrance rating than a suit of leather armour, regardless of weight).

All the Encumbrance ratings of the various items normally carried by a hero are added up to find his Fatigue score, to be recorded on a character sheet alongside his Endurance rating

Travelling Gear
A hero’s travelling gear includes all the typical belongings that he carries when travelling, in addition to his weapons and armour. Players only take into consideration the Encumbrance rating of their travelling gear when they are using the rules for resolving a Journey 

The Encumbrance rating of travelling gear varies depending on the time of the year:


 * Winter and autumn gear (in the cold months of the year): thick warm clothes (jackets, fur-lined cloaks), blankets,water, food. Winter travelling gear for one character has an Encumbrance rating of 2.


 * Summer and spring gear (in the warm months of theyear): light clothes and cloaks, blankets, water, food. Summer travelling gear has an Encumbrance rating of 1.

Both sets of travelling gear include food supplies for one week of travelling (if the journey is going to last more than a week, the companions will generally have to rely on their skills as hunters).

Musical Instruments
Music and song is an important part of the culture of the Free Peoples. Skilled musicians will usually carry one or more musical instruments with them on their travels. If a player-hero possesses a Song skill level of one or more, his travelling gear may include a musical instrument appropriate to his culture.

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Any weapon, suit of armour, helm or shield carried by an adventurer must be individually recorded on the character sheet, along with its Encumbrance rating.

Their total Encumbrance score is taken into account to find a hero’s Fatigue threshold.

Small-sized Heroes
Due to their reduced size, Dwarves cannot use larger weapons effectively.The weapons available to Dwarves are as follows: short sword, axe, great axe, spear, mattock, dagger, bow. Additionally,Dwarves cannot use a great shield or ride normal horses.

Weapons
A starting player-hero is assumed to carry one weapon for each of the Weapon skills he has a rating for. A Rural Haradain hero starts the game with Great Bow ♦♦ and Spear ♦. He is entitled to have a great bow and a spear among his possessions. Heroes with Cultural weapon skills may choose one specific weapon among a wider selection as part of his hero’s possessions. A Wood-elf hero with (Spears) ♦♦ is entitled to choose between carrying a spear or a great spear.

Players should record the statistics for their chosen weapons on their character sheets.

Armour and Shields
A newly-created player-hero starts with one suit of armour, and may choose one piece of headgear and one shield.

Players should record their chosen armour, headgear and shields on their character sheets, paying attention to the following notes: The protection score of a coat of armour is recorded separately from that of a piece of headgear (as sometimes, during combat, a hero might resort to dropping it to avoid becoming Weary too soon).

Shields do not offer direct protection from wounds, but make a hero less likely to be hit, by adding to the Attribute used to parry incoming blows (usually Wits). A shield’s rating is recorded separately from the main box devoted to parry, as a shield can be smashed by an opponent’s blows.

Additional Gear
If a player would like to expand his character’s equipment beyond the scope of a hero’s travelling gear and war gear, the decision is up to the Loremaster. If the Loremaster agrees, they should take the character’s Standard of Living into consideration, to determine the quantity and quality of any additional items. In general terms, the amount of extra equipment carried is as relevant as a Loremaster and his players want it to be: usually, Encumbrance is closely monitored only as far as war gear is concerned.

Armor
*Damage is the harm inflicted, in Endurance points, on a successful hit.
 * Edge is the number the attacker needs to match or exceed on the Feat Die to force the defender to make a Protection test to resist taking a Wound.
 * Injury is the TN for the defenders’ Protection test. If they fail, they will take a Wound from the blow.
 * Parry Modifier is the bonus a shield gives to a defender’ parry rating.
 * Protection is the bonus used when a defender rolls for a Protection test; armour adds one or more additional dice, while headgear adds a numerical bonus.

COMBAT RATINGS
Sooner or later, every hero on the road to adventure faces a situation where his life will be threatened by hostile individuals or creatures. Indeed, many people in Middle-earth experience this without even leaving their home. An adventurer’s basic combat abilities are reflected by his Parry rating and Damage bonus.

Damage
When a character hits his opponent in combat, he inflicts lost Endurance equal to his weapon’s Damage rating. If he achieves a great success, he adds his character’s Damage rating as a bonus to his weapon’s Damage rating. If he scores an extraordinary success, he adds double his Damage rating to that of his weapon.

Usually, a character’s Damage rating is equal to his basic Body score, both for attacks made with a close combat weapon or a ranged weapon.

Players should record their heroes’ Damage bonus scores on the character sheet. Should a character’s ranged attack Damage rating differ from that of close combat attacks, the player should record it in the separate box (special abilities and items might benefit one type of attack or the other).

Parry
This is a defensive bonus, reflecting a character’s ability to keep his head in a dangerous situation, to be aware of opponents’ actions and to ward off an opponent’s attacks. Usually, the Parry rating of a character is equal to his basic Wits score, modified by a positive bonus if the hero is using a buckler, a shield or a great shield (see the equipment tables above). Players should record their heroes’ Parry score on the character sheet.

VALOUR AND WISDOM
Valour and Wisdom measure a hero’s resistance to Fear and the Shadow, and track his stature in terms of power and renown.

Both scores range from one to six, and rise over the course of the game.

Starting Scores
At this point in character generation, players are asked to simply prioritise one characteristic over the other: A starting player gives a score of 2 to one characteristic, and 1 to the other. Both numbers are entered on the character sheet in the boxes labelled Wisdom and Valour.

Virtues and Rewards
Starting with rank 2, characters receive a special benefit with every new rank they reach in either Valour or Wisdom. Benefits obtained by raising a character’s Valour score are called Rewards, while benefits granted by ranks in Wisdom are called Virtues. Thus, when players choose between the characteristics during hero creation, they are also choosing if their characters will start the game with a Reward, or with a Virtue.


 * if a starting character has Valour 2 - Wisdom 1: the hero receives his first Reward.
 * if a starting character has Wisdom 2- Valour 1, the hero recives his first Virtue