In this article, I’m continuing my ideas for my own fantasy role playing game. This post talks about the remaining elements of character creation.

With the massive changes in D&D’s Open Game License coming out, many publishers are talking about creating their own system. I feel like my ideas for a new fantasy role-playing game are becoming more relevant. I’ve decided it’s time to finish this article series, so I might someday be able to work on it.¹

Species

So far, my series has followed the process of character creation, except for one part, which I saved until now as my changes are cosmetic. But, as it’s a bigger subject, I should probably start with that. In fact, this should be one of the first things decided, even before ability scores.

A diversity of people of different appearances and abilities add to the wonder and fantasy of the game. It fits the tropes of fantasy story for these to exist, so I am definitely keeping the ability to select a genetic-like package of unique traits for characters.

The Name

Wizards of the Coast have announced that they are finally moving on from the term ‘race’. I’m happy with that. A lot of baggage comes with the word “race”, especially when it is used to differentiate stereotypes that once were attributed to different human races. Even when used without the baggage, it implies a closer relationship between types of creatures than may actually exist. I feel that “species” also implies an inaccurate relationship, but it’s still better than “race”. After some time contemplating which word Fantasy Quest will use, I agreed that “species” works best.

I’m basing my decision off of three tests: First, can an in-game character ask “What is their X?” or “what X are they?”, and an in-game piece of lore describe “The many Xs of Midworld.” with limited ambiguity and awkwardness? Second, would a fluent English-speaking player immediately understand what is meant by the word?

Fantasy Quest will use the word Species in its rules, but quest masters are allowed to use other words for their own tables. Some other words that I considered, which I liked but felt didn’t pass the tests above or had other reasons to nix: “ancestry”, “folk”, “form”, “genus”, “kin”, “kind”, “kindred”, “kinfolk”, “kith”, “lede”, “lineage”, “origin”, “people”, “sort”, “thede”, and “type”. Some of those might work better if a longer phrase of “creature X” were used, but this could get confused with “creature type” for creatures, which are more generic than what we are talking about.

Principles of Species Design

I don’t want the non-human species in my game to just be humans with pointy ears or green skin, not that those things can’t also exist. If a creature is said to be non-human, it needs diverse abilities. The issue is making them different whie not making them “lesser”. Part of this is achieved by how the game shows them. Another part of this, I think, requires following a few principles, that Fantasy Quest should follow.

Traits Are Not Cultural. The first principle is that advantages, disadvantages and other traits should be limited to body abilities, not cultural differences. A species should definitely not lean towards savagery, or have an inclination for greed. A species shouldn’t be more or less intelligent, wise, or charismatic than other species, even on average. Differences should be physical, or have physical explanations. Darkvision comes from having different eyes. But why would a character of one species be generally stronger than the other? Are they also larger? Are their bones made of rock, and muscles made of wood?

Traits Should Be Balanced. Disadvantages should always be balanced with advantages, and vice versa. If at all possible, the disadvantages should be balanced with advantages arising from overcoming those disadvantages. For example, a species that is unable to speak with words has overcome this with a finer understanding of body language, and is able to communicate silently, gaining an advantage on stealth rolls.

Humans Are Not The Standard. Humans shouldn’t be more special than other species, they should have advantages and disadvantages that make them different from other species. They shouldn’t be described by their lack of such traits. A tradition is to either make them generalists, with slight bonuses to do everything, or to let each player pick from an advantage. I feel like that’s inadequate in meeting the criteria. Humans need something that really differentiates them from other species.

I’m not yet sure what that difference would be. In the real world, humans are noted for their endurance in long physical activity. Perhaps humans get advantages on exhaustion rolls. Humans also seem to be able to eat a lot of things that other animals can’t, such as capsicum, chocolate, caffeine, alcohol, or too much sugar. Perhaps Dwarves are the wrong species to give poison save advantages to.

The Source Should Be Examined. When we create a new species, we should understand where it came from, what it might represent, and how it is represented in the game. That folk monster you heard stories about, or the creature in that old fantasy novel, may have been a stand-in for another ethnic or racial group. It would be a great idea to run it past people trained in cultural sensitivity. Perhaps there’s a way to separate the good parts from the pejorative aspects.

Blended Species

One thing that comes up a lot is why there are half-elves and half-orcs, but no other half-species, and why there is nothing like a quarter-elf, or a half-elf-quarter-dwarf-quarter-halfling. In Fantasy Quest these options are all wrapped up in something I’ll call “Blended Species”. Rather than limiting the player to a couple of choices, if the player chooses a blended species, they can pick traits from multiple other species. They should work with the quest master and the other players to make sure the advantages and disadvantages are balanced, and they should have a realistic reason why their ancestry is blended. Note that the fact that the term species often means unable to breed together means nothing in a fantasy world where DNA may not even exist.

Alignments and Their Lack

I’ve never had a problem with alignments existing. However, I’ve never used them, and I’ve never felt that the game gains anything by having them in.

Alignments only make sense in a game where your actions for and against those alignments have consequences for your character. If acting against alignment causes a penalty, or acting in support gives you a bonus. Without those consequences, alignment is just an identifying feature, like hair and eye color. At best, it’s a hint to yourself how you should play your character.

I’m not going to get into a philosophical discussion on what is “good”, “neutral”, “lawful”, and so on. Fantasy Quest simply won’t have alignments. If you’re playing, and you want to use some sort of alignment rules, go ahead. There will be no official rules for it.

Character Advancement

I have three problems with the experience point system: 1) the huge numbers involved, 2) its dependence on killing monsters to earn it, and 3) figuring out how to divide it up. One alternative that solves all three is a version of Milestone Experience, where the referee grants level advancement at their own discretion. As a player, however, I like to watch my experience build up.

Experience Points

A few months ago I saw a copy of Dungeon Crawl Classics RPG by Goodman games, and I read its simple experience point system. I can’t remember exactly what it is, but it inspired these advancement rules for Fantasy Quest.

• Players gain experience points by facing challenges. Combat is only one type of challenge.
• After a challenge is completed, the quest master determines an XP value for the challenge from 1 to 5.
• The tougher the challenge was for the players and characters, the higher the XP value.
• The quest master can choose to give partial credit for partial success.
• Every character that participates in the challenge, including companions, gains that number as experience points.

This is pretty simple. Not only are we solving the problems I mentioned above, but I don’t have to come up with calculations to determine how many experience points a monster is worth. In fact, monsters can be worth more experience points for less experienced characters than they are many sessions later as abilities advance. I may still need a sort of challenge rating for aiding the quest master in planning the game.

Buying Skills

Experience points convert into something I will call skill buy points for now. The exchange rate is not determined. Let’s say five XP = one skill buy point. Once per game session, the player may choose to spend a portion or all of their accumulated XP to turn them into skill buy points. They must then use those skill buy points immediately to advance one rank in skills their character already has, buy into new skills, buy an ability score increase, or buy a new hit die. I might add other things to the list, like buying an inspiration point to be used later. At the quest master’s discretion, they may also spend them to buy a power. If they do not use all of their experience points, they can save them to advance later.

Skills and ranking up in skills do not always cost the same for every skill. A player may only rank up one point in any skill at a time, or buy only one hit die at a time. Players may only buy skills once per session, usually at the end or the beginning of the next, to avoid disrupting the game in the middle.

Inter-Story Skills. Characters can gain experience during downtime as well. Between each adventure, a player character gets one skill buy point per month of game-time skipped, rounding down. When the game resumes, the player may use these down-time skill buy points to purchase ranks in non-adventuring skills. For longer periods of downtime, the quest master may allow the player to advance adventuring skills as well through off-screen adventures and training. In this case, the player gives them a story of an adventure or training montage, and the quest master determines the number of experience points they gain in their stories. The player can then convert those to skill buy points and use them as they wish.

I have not yet determined on the various conversion rates and the costs of the advancements. That will probably take some math.

Hit Dice

As mentioned in the second article in this series, there are no classes, and thus there are no real levels. You can’t ask a player what level their character has. The closest you can get is, perhaps, the number of hit dice, although that may not always be useful.

You buy a new hit die with skill buy points. Each player can buy one hit die at a time, and can buy no more than ten hit dice. All hit dice are usually d8. If a skill you buy, or a species feature, allows you to increase to d10 or d12, each of those hit dice will cost more to gain (even if it is a species feature). If you gain a higher hit dice after already having earned lower hit dice, you might have to pay the difference to convert the rest of them before you can buy the new one. Alternatively, the quest master might allow you to track different sets of dice pools.

Once you have purchased the maximum number of hit dice possible (10), you can buy single hit points for the same price that you would have paid to add hit dice, and only once per advancement.

Determining Hit Points. When you gain a new hit die, you roll it at once to determine the number of additional hit points, and add your Constitution bonus. When you do this, if the die roll is less than the average value of that die, you ignore the result and just gain that average number rounded up. For example, if you have a hit die of 1d8, and you roll 1,2,3, or 4, you automatically get 5 hit points.

Reaction Checks

Since later editions got rid of the separate saving throws and turned them into ability checks, the whole concept of these make less and less sense. I’ve also never liked the term “saving” anyway. Unlike the other terms I’ve never liked, at least it has some hint of what it does, but I’m going to change it anyway.

In Fantasy Quest, saving throws are replaced with “Reaction Checks”. These are ability checks that must be made in reaction to something to avoid its effects. They can be enhanced with a skill chosen by the quest master, or with certain species abilities. In general, physical reaction checks – what is called a “Reflex Save” in some games – are related to Strength or Dexterity. Health-related reaction checks, called “Fortitude Checks” in those same games, are Constitution reaction checks, that might be related to your total hit dice. Intelligence and perception reaction checks might be used in cases where the character might otherwise be confused or beguiled by an illusion of some sort. Willpower reaction checks are made against most spell effects, and in that one case there might be a dedicated skill for enhancing those checks.