A lot of new Role Playing Games can be a little intimidating to new players.

I thought we’d shift gears today and make a Dragonbane character by the book to demonstrate how easy and fast it is. First obtain or print off a character sheet and find some dice (four six sided dice if possible) and a writing utensil. (I prefer pencil.) Then you’ll probably want access to the Dragonbane rules in some form. We’ll stick to just the Core rules for this one since maybe not everyone has the Dragonbane Bestiary at their disposal.

Write your Player name in the blank provided. Okay. Easy enough.

So it begins.

Dragonbane Character Creation Steps.

Kin is the type of being your character embodies. My book falls open to Page 9 these days. That’s where character creation starts. That’s also the Kin table. I rolled a d12 (Twelve sided die) and got a 1. Human. I write down the Human innate ability of Adaptive.

I jumped ahead to Step 4 while I was here and rolled my name: Lothar.

Now for Lothar’s Profession. I roll the d10 (Ten sided die) and got an 8. Merchant. That’s different for me. However, I’ve been needing some Merchant NPCs for my upcoming Solo endeavors to use as quest givers and people to fence err rather resell my loot.

The Merchant’s key attribute is CHA, (Charisma.) Hopefully Lothar is a people person.

In case anyone needs them.

Merchant skills include Awareness, Bartering, Bluffing, Evade, Knives, Persuasion, Sleight of Hand, and Spot Hidden. We get to choose 6 of these as Trained Skills, Our Age determines how many additional Trained Skills we receive. We’ll get more into Trained Skills later.

I rolled for my Age on Page 24 and came up with a 1. (These dice are starting to concern me…) Young. Well, that’s new. Lothar is basically a kid. Two extra Trained Skills, but +1 AGL and CON. The youngins are more durable and defter, but not as skilled.

Now for the real meat of character creation.

Now we’re rolling our Attributes. Book standard method is to roll 4d6 drop the lowest, assign as you roll, swap two scores at the end if desired. Remember when I said I was worried about my dice?

  • We started off with a 13. I put that in CON just to be safe.
  • Then an 11, which goes into STR because I don’t really need that stat for anything if I’m a Merchant doing merchantly things, right?
  • Next is Ah! A 15. Yay. I’m thinking INT just in case my luck doesn’t hold up.
  • Good grief. We got an 8. I guess WIL and hope we can swap it.
  • Oooh. A 16. That’s our CHA for sure at this point. CHA (Charisma is the lifeblood of a Merchant.)
  • Last, we have a 13 for our AGL, which will be handy for us when we need to dodge or get stabby.

We bump up CON and AGL by one point each for being Young. I’m happy with how this turned out, so we will not be swapping two scores around.

There are certainly tons of other methods of generating scores not covered in the book. Some people roll straight down the line. I like to roll everything first and then decide on which two to swap normally. There are dozens of other ways to do it if you look online. There is no right or wrong, just preference/GM preference.

Our final scores look like:

STR (Strength) = 11
CON (Constitution) = 14
AGL (Agility) = 14
INT (Intelligence) =15
WIL (Willpower) = 8
CHA (Charisma) = 16

Derived Ratings: the bookkeeping portion of the show.

  • Movement: Human = 10, AGL of 14 = +2. Total of 12 Meters per round.
  • Damage Bonus: STR= 11, nothing there. AGL = 14:+d4 (This will come up in combat later.)
  • Hit Points = CON, giving us 14 precious HP. That’s good when things get combative.
  • Willpower Points = WIL. 8. That’s not so good for using Heroic Abilities.

We have come to one of the most crucial parts of any Dragonbane character: Skills

The first six Skills have to come from the list associated with our profession. Since CHA is our strong suit, I’ve decided to lean heavily onto Bartering, Bluffing, and Persuasion first. Looking at the table on Page 25, all Skills are associated with an Attribute. That determines a Base Chance to successfully perform the Skill in question. Trained Skills start at double the Base Chance. (Which is a good thing.)

The table on Page 25 gives the Base Chance for each Attribute. I like to write them on the sheet below the Attribute for easy reference later. Having a 16 in Lothar’s CHA is really helpful at this point. It gives all CHA based skills a Base Chance of 7, doubled for Trained Skills is 14. Woot!

I write 14 in the blanks next to Bartering, Bluffing, and Persuasion. Lothar can talk a good game. Then I think about what happens in the situations where talking might not be an option. Evade (dodging stuff in combat,) Knives (stabbing stuff to defend oneself with a sharp and pointy object,) and Awareness (keeping a lookout for dangerous things,) all come to mind. Lothar’s AGL is 14, giving us a +6 Base Chance. Doubled for Trained is 12 for Evade and Knives. Okay. INT of 15 gives us a Base Chance of 6, so we put a 12 for Awareness, too.

Our last two Trained Skills can be anything we wish. I’m thinking ahead to Lothar’s career and maybe a little bit about his sordid past. While Sleight of Hand and Spot Hidden are Profession Skills, they seem like a good idea for Lothar to have. I write 12’s in the blank for those and onto the next step of character creation.

It’s important to note Lothar is clueless in the woods (Bushcraft as well as Hunting & Fishing,) can’t swim very well, and is going to be running away from a lot of combat. Lothar seems like a good NPC at this point. I would have liked to have given him languages, but it seems a bit out of character given his age and lack of experience. Likewise adult Lothar will be picking up a crossbow and staying far away from any kind of melee combat.

Making a quick note of our Heroic Ability: Treasure Hunter.

Merchants have the Heroic Ability of Treasure Hunter starting out. Looking on Page 39 we see that for 3 WP (Willpower Points,) when he “comes to a crossroads of some sort,” he may discern the direction of the greatest treasure. Cool. He’s a sort of dungeon compass, dragon finder, or loot radar. Wow. That sounds painful in my game, but we’ll see what happens. The party is going to love this guy someday.

What’s left?

Weakness: Roll a d20. That yields a 2: Greedy. Rather fitting for a Merchant. Lothar wants it all.

Gear: Looking back at the Merchant on Page 21, we see three options. I rolled a 2 on a d6. Lothar has a dagger, sleeping pelt, a torch, flint & tinder, a donkey (named Oedipus,) hemp rope, 4 food rations, and my d12 betrayed me and got Lothar all of 2 Silver coins to start with. (Guess he’s going to be doing some hustling to get more silver.)

Memento: I rolled a d20 and got a 3- Letter from an old friend or relative. This will become important later.

Appearance: Rolled a d20 and got a 4- Constantly smiling. That gives us a little personality to work with. Lothar is both the consummate con artist and/or has a very positive attitude.

Somehow we missed Encumbrance. We can carry a number of slots equal to ½ STR rounded up. In Lothar’s case that gives us 6 slots. Glad we have Oedipus the donkey. A backpack will also be a future investment for Lothar. (2 additional inventory slots.)

I’ll eventually come up with a little backstory and elaborate on Lothar’s appearance. I’ll fill in some more personality as I go, too. His first priority in game is going to be making some more money to acquire goods so he can make more money.

Overall, I think Lothar looks like a solid, fun character. He’s got a bright future ahead of him as an adventurer as long as he can stay safe. Who are we kidding? An adventurer’s life is never safe. I like the Treasure Hunter Heroic ability because I think it will lead the group into a lot of adventures if used judiciously.

The finished character sheet. Ready to start playing.

Thank you for being here today with me. I appreciate you. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy.