I am going to admit that I have not had the best success with enjoying Savage Worlds. I've written for third party publications that use it (mostly the fluff). I've run it. I haven't gotten to play it yet, and that may be an issue. I am thoroughly of the mind that if you want to enjoy a game, the GM needs to really enjoy the game they're running. In any new game your going to have some growing pains but at certain point you start to wonder if you're really clicking with a game. That said, you can change as a person and come back to something and find you really enjoy it. Not coincidentally, I've been watching a bit of Saving Throw Show's ETU campaign, a story line I quite enjoy (and am running via MotW). So I'm coming back a bit to re-trying Savage Worlds.
So with that in mind, let's move on toward designing this Gorgon Archer. Now, I could do this as a fantasy setting, but we have a lot examples of gorgons in medieval fantasy worlds. So, in honor of doing East Texas University, I'm going to go ahead and do this as a Pine Box campaign. Pine Box being the town where East Texas University is situated. But, a gorgon really can't fit in to ETU, but Pine Box itself has a lot weirdness and a home-schooled gorgon living on the fringes of the town wouldn't be too out there for a general Texas Gothic campaign.
So, let's get on to character creation. So, while the latest edition doesn't number things out into specific steps. It does have an implied order in the form of listing the basic parts of a character and there is a way that I like to do things that sort of matches with the order that they have listed things. The book lists out:
- Concept
- Race
- Hindrances
- Traits
- Attributes
- Skills
- Derived Statistics
- Edges
- Gear
- Background Details
As usual, the concept is the most important thing when working with generic game systems. We're going with the same concept that we are going with on all these character creation analyses: a gorgon archer. So we don't have to worry too much about this step here.
I tend to hit Race next, because, as with a lot of these games, it has a lot of impact on the decisions that follow. Now, there is no gorgon race in Savage Worlds official stuff as far as I know, so we're going to build our own. There is a list of racial traits that you can give a race in Savage Worlds. In general, races get 2 free points and then anything beyond that has to be balanced with negative traits. One of the possible racial traits is "super power" and we could fluff a ranged, attack to represent the petrifying gaze but that's a little bit out of the range of what characters in a Pine Box/ETU game would have. Heck, even alternate races are unusual for that setting so we're stretching things already. So, we're going to stick to some less severe racial stats. If we were to do the petrifying gaze, the damage would be fluffed as progressing petrification, so a Wound would show as skin partially turning stone.
So, we're going to start with racial negative traits, because they're often the most narrative aspects of creating a race and also tells us what we're going to have to work with. In this case, we're going to deal with the fact that the character is a gorgon in a world of primarily humans who in general don't know about the supernatural and would probably react badly to it. Now, the two things that stand out to me are both Hindrances we can give the character, one is the Ugly trait and one is the Outsider trait. If I wanted to be really mean, I could give her both at minor level (I'll go into Hindrances more later) which would make it nearly impossible for her to interact with people normally. So, I'm going to assume gorgons start out humanish when young and start going more inhuman as they get older. As such, I am going to go with the Ugly hindrance at a Major level to represent how freakish she'd look towards most others. This means we're going to have 4 pts to spend toward races.
I don't normally like taking things like Ugly or Outsider as a racial trait, because those things are very relative. For example, in some fantasy settings, gorgons might not be considered ugly or outsiders, in which case I'd have to redesign this race and when designing for generic games, I prefer racial designs that don't have to be redone from setting to setting, but it's fine for this analysis.
For positive features, let's make some decisions. I'll say she's a little tougher due to scaling, the snakes give her extra alertness. Modeling the toughness is easy, a 1 point positive racial trait gives +1 Toughness. The Alertness we have some options: we can increase her Notice skill from the base d4 (talking about this later) to a d6, we can give her a +2 bonus to Notice checks, or we can take the Alertness edge, which, to be honest does mostly the same thing as the Skill bonus. I think we're going to do the Alertness edge. Getting an Edge is worth 2 pts +1 cost for each level past Novice it requires. Alertness is a Novice Edge, so that's 2 points. The total we've spent at this point is 3 pts leaving us 1 pt remaining. Now, there's a couple of things we can do toward the theme. We can give her a poison attack relating to the snake heads biting things, we can give her immunity to poison or disease, or we can give her Infravision representing snake-style heat sensing. I am going to go with Infravision.
As such, our race looks like this:
- Gorgon
- Many Eyes - The many snakes growing out of a gorgon's head grant them the Alertness Edge and they gain a +2 to Notice rolls to sense things in the world around them.
- Lightly Scaled - Gorgons are lightly adorned with small scales granting them +1 to their normal toughness.
- Heat Pits - As with snakes, gorgons are capable of sensing heat around them granting them infravision. This halves illumination penalties for tracking warm targets, including invisible targets.
- Freaky and Monstrous - Due to the alien nature of the gorgon's appearance, they subtract 2 from their Persuasion attempts.
So, from here, I usually move on to Attributes. This where things get interesting. In Savage Worlds, your traits are represented by dice of varying sizes from d4 to d12. d6 is considered Average and you can't get above d12 in a starting character. (With very experienced characters you can start to get towards d12+1, d12+2, etc). When you attempt to do things in the game, you roll a d6 and another die represented by either a skill or an attribute. If you roll the maximum value of a particular die it explodes and you can roll again. That said, let's move back to character creation.
Every character starts with a d4 in each of five Attributes: Agility, Smarts, Spirit, Strength, and Vigor. We then get 5 points to spread between the stats. Each point increases a stat by 1 die size this means that we could raise each of these stats to d6 and be average in everything. I think it's more interesting to be a bit up and down on stats. Plus, I think we'll go a bit with the way our other gorgons have gone and go with low Strength and either high Agility or high Spirit. Spirit is more in the lines of Charisma and Willpower while Agility is speed and grace. I think, in this case, we're going to go towards higher Agility, it's a bit of step away from our other gorgons, who tend toward high willpower, but we have a few leaning more toward agility. We are going to dump Strength though, going along with our trend that most of our gorgons have been fast but not particularly strong.
The next step we get to is Skills, there are 32 skills in the book, though not all of those would be used in every game. For example, while ETU/Pine Box uses a lot of supernatural things like rituals, psychic sensitivity, and the like, it doesn't do much with Arcane Backgrounds and D&D style magic that is cast over a couple of seconds so a lot of the skills related to the various powers. Five of our skills, called Core Skills, start at d4 instantly. These are Athletics, Common Knowledge, Notice, Persuasion, and Stealth. Each point allows us to raise the die type of a skill by 1 until we hit the level at which they match their connected Attribute. After which each raise costs 2 points. Now, as a person living on the edge we're looking at these skills:
- Athletics(Agility) d6 - 1 pt
- Fighting(Agility) d4 - 1 pt
- Notice(Smarts) d6 - 1 pt
- Repair(Smarts) d6 - 2 pts
- Shooting(Agility) d8 - 3 pts
- Stealth(Agility) d6 - 1 pt
- Survival(Smarts) d8 - 3 pts
From here I usually do Hindrances and Edges next, because they can impact Derived Statistics. Basic humans have a trait called "Adaptability" that allows them to take a free Edge, but since this character is not human, she doesn't get that. Even if we did, I'd start with Hindrances, because, as said before, they are usually tastier from a narrative point of view. The book implies that you should take Hindrances after choosing Races, but I do like to get the Attributes and Skills done first. That said, we are allowed to take up to 4 points of Hindrances. Major hindrances are worth 2 points and Minor Hindrances are worth 1 point.
In older versions, the game specifically said you can have up to 2 Minor Hindrances and 1 Major Hindrances. I find this to be a wise idea. So, in this edition, it just says up to 4 points so, in theory, we could get 2 Major Hindrances or 4 Minor Hindrances. My general impression is that either 2 Major Hindrances or 4 Minor Hindrances is prone to be much more trouble than the points are worth while 1 Major and 2 Minors is a pretty good balance.
So, let's choose some Hindrances. Poverty seems to be a good choice for someone that lives on the edge of town. Poverty was a Hindrance specific to the ETU campaign book, but that was an earlier edition, it has now been included in the core Adventurer's Edition rules. There's also a Townie Hindrance that is definitely ETU specific meaning your character isn't a student but a resident in the town that's friends with the students. This means we can do a basic ETU campaign rather than a Pine Box/ETU campaign. Poverty is a Major Hindrance and Townie is a Minor one (I assume she sells meat and hides to earn money). This leaves us with one more Minor Hindrance we can take. We could make her Hard of Hearing, because snakes are deaf in real life. We could give her Outsider to make her Persuasion rolls tanked. Instead, I'm going to give her the Cautious Minor Hindrance.
This gives us 4 pts to play with to improve our character. The options are as follows:
- Increase an Attribute die - 2 pts
- Buy an Edge - 2 pts
- Increase a Skill die - 1 pt
- Increase starting money - 1 pt
- Calculating - fits with her being Cautious and gives her a benefit if she gets low initiative.
- Would require improving Smarts.
- Dead Shot - doubles damage of first shot when you draw a Joker for initiative.
- Fast Healer - make it quick to recover
- Would require improving Vigor.
- Fleet-Footed - increases her pace and running die.
- Hard to Kill - makes it hard to kill her
- Would require improving Vigor.
- Quick - makes it so that she can avoid low initiative.
- Marksman - improves shooting abilities.
- Woodsman - improves stealth and survival in the forest.
At this point we go on towards the derived statistics. These are Pace, Toughness, and Parry. In the case of Pace, it's usually just a flat 6" but can be modified by Edges, Hindrances, and Racial traits. I suppose that is derived in a sense, but it still feels a bit odd to be referred that way. In any case, we have the following:
- Pace = 6" +2" from Fleet-Footed
- Parry = 2 + half your Fighting die.
- Toughness = 2 + half your Vigor die. Also modified by Edges and racial traits.
I drew a name via a random name generator doing English(American) names and picked up Kiana Livingston.
It isn't as important to this character since she took the Townie Hindrance and can't make use of it, but the ETU setting also allows players to take up an Extracurricular Activity. These provide bonuses and (sometimes) penalties. This includes:
- Auditing Classes - Improved rolls on tests and grading and such, but minus to Persuasion checks.
- Athlete - Bonuses to choice of either Strength or Agility but minus to tests and school stuff.
- Computer/Library Tech - Bonus to investigation, off-hours access to facility.
- Fitness - Bonus to resisting Fatigue.
- Fraternity/Sorority - Limited use of Connections and bonus to Persuasion with people. Penalty to study/test related stuff.
- Gaming - Bonus to Common Knowledge stuff related to supernatural, folklore, and myths.
- Part-Time Job - Bonus money with possible penalty to study/test related stuff.
- Party Hardy - Bonus with student population and limited Connections. Penalty to Study/Tests stuff.
- Performer - Bonus to social interactions, penalty to study/tests related stuff.
- Romance - When spending a Benny gets an additional d6 to roll if the spend represents will to protect their loved one. Penalty to study/test stuff.
- ROTC - Connections with other cadets.
- Student Organization - Gains a bonus to a skill related to the club.
- Teacher's Aide/Tutor - Gain bonus money related to your level of skill in the subject.
- Tutoring - Grants another player a bonus to study/test related stuff.
- Volunteer - Limited Connections, bonus to Streetwise and Persuasion related stuff.
Kiana Livingston - Gorgon Archer
Race: Gorgon
- Many Eyes - The many snakes growing out of a gorgon's head grant them the Alertness Edge and they gain a +2 to Notice rolls to sense things in the world around them.
- Lightly Scaled - Gorgons are lightly adorned with small scales granting them +1 to their normal toughness.
- Heat Pits - As with snakes, gorgons are capable of sensing heat around them granting them infravision. This halves illumination penalties for tracking warm targets, including invisible targets.
- Freaky and Monstrous - Due to the alien nature of the gorgon's appearance, they subtract 2 from their Persuasion attempts.
- Agility - d8
- Smarts - d6
- Spirit - d6
- Strength - d4
- Vigor - d6
- Athletics(Agility) - d6
- Common Knowledge(Smarts) - d4
- Fighting(Agility) - d4
- Notice(Smarts) - d6
- Persuasion(Spirit) - d4
- Repair(Smarts) - d6
- Shooting(Agility) - d8
- Stealth(Agility) - d6
- Survival(Smarts) - d8
- Pace: 8", d8 Running die
- Parry: 4
- Toughness: 6
Edges:
- Alertness (Racial) - When you roll Notice to see, hear, and otherwise sense things add +2 to the roll.
- Fleet-Footed - Increase Pace by 2" and Running die by one die-size to d8.
- Woodsman - Add +2 to Survival and Stealth while in the woods.
- Ugly(Major, Racial) - Apply a -2 to Persuasion rolls.
- Poverty(Major) - Start with half the normal starting funds.
- Townie(Minor) - You are not a student but a resident of the town. You do not take part in Exams, Burnout, or Extracurricular Activities and may have difficulty getting access to university resources.
- Cautious - Likes to plot things out before taking action. Personifies restraint and carefulness.
- Bow - This was where all her money went and is also where she gets her money.
- Used Compact Car - ETU characters get a form of transportation. Since she's poor it was either a compact car or a motorcycle and she needs something to carry stuff. It also has two glitches which I drew randomly.
- Gremlins - The electrical system goes on and off at "random" but only when it matters most.
- Tempermental - Anybody other than Kiana who tries to drive the car suffers a -4 on the roll.
Study Group
Character Advancement
Character Creation and the Gorgon Archer
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