Advanced Character Creation

If you’re playing in a long campaign, or have already selected a character concept that isn’t covered by the standard races or classes, you may wish to put a little more effort into your character than is involved in following the Quick Start Guide. Legend offers a great many character options that don't appear in the default races and classes. If you want to learn to use these options, look no further.

Character Concepts

First, though, let's look briefly at character concepts. It’s perfectly all right to flesh out your character with a cool feat you just stumbled across or a couple of items you wanted to try, but it's usually helpful to start character generation with a pretty good idea of what you want your character to do. Some suggestions follow.

The first step in developing a character concept is thinking of a tag line. This can be a description of your character’s profession ("Interstellar Smuggler" or perhaps "Undersized Burglar") or social position ("Long-lost King of a Great City"). Other tag lines that have worked pretty well in the past include "'Wizzard' on the Run," "Bearer of Stormbringer," "Cheerleader Who Kills Vampires," and "Wizard Private Eye."

Once you have a tag line that you expect to hold your interest for the duration of a Legend campaign, start asking yourself a few questions about your character. Usually, your tag line will give you some sense of your character's race and possibly a few clues to answering these questions.

• "What does my character want?" This probably won’t get you much mechanically, but knowing your character’s greatest motivations might give you a clue of how your character goes about getting them. A character that is admittedly just in it for the money is going to make different life choices from a character that is out to do the right thing and help the helpless. Even if the answer doesn't help you at all in picking abilities for your character, it'll pay off in a big way in getting plot hooks for your GM and helping you make decisions in-character.
• "What does my character fear?" This question is pretty good for building a backstory, but it also offers some really rich options for mechanical choices. For example, someone who fears harm coming to his or her friends might focus on learning to protect them, perhaps with the paladin's Virtue track.
• "How does my character resolve conflicts?" Any good story is centered on a basic conflict, and RPGs tend to include a few dozen extra conflicts for good measure. If your character doesn't end up in fights, chances are you'll find social confrontations, environmental hazards, or similarly threatening situations. Ability tracks in Legend offer a broad range of abilities for solving or ending confrontations, and your answers to this question might point you to the right ones.
• "How does my character make a living?" Most RPG characters aren't conventionally employed, especially if your game world is a medieval fantasy setting where wage labor doesn't exist. Still, your character probably has some things that he or she is good at – maybe even extremely good at. RPG characters tend to be skilled in at least a few useful areas, such as arcane knowledge, investigative and social skills, or physical speed and agility. Your answers here will tell you a great deal about your character's skill selection.
• "What special tricks does my character keep handy?" This question will help you select feats, particularly [Iconic] feats. It may also help you select a specialized track, such as several of the rogue tracks.

Race Selection

Usually, you'll have some idea of your character's race by now. If not, you can find the default races in Races, as well as a number of addtional races. If your group is using supplemental material as well, you may have even more options.

For the most part, picking a race is purely a matter of taste, as most races can fit a wide range of character archetypes. Some races, however, represent unusual creatures, such as powerful undead creatures, intelligent constructs, or even dragons. In cases where your race includes dramatic, scaling abilities (such as the undead powers of a lich), your race will have a track associated with it. All members of that race have the associated track, and you will have to incorporate that track in your track selection.

Class and Track Selection

Selecting your class and associated tracks is the single most critical part of character generation, mechanically speaking. If you already have a default class picked out, then you can move on. However, you may want to customize your class at the very least, and choosing a race with an associated track makes this section obligatory.

The classes each contain three "tracks" – progressions of abilities that define much of your character's mechanical role. Each class also has a set of statistics, such as the number of hit points per level that it grants and the saving throw and attack bonus progressions it offers (you can find this information in the class descriptions, or compiled in this table). There are three options for customizing your character's tracks: a racial track, multiclassing, and Full Buy-In.

Racial Tracks

As described above, racial tracks model the abilities of certain powerful creatures, such as dragons, vampires, and angels. These are creatures whose powers are at least partly a facet of their nature; some dragons breathe fire and others rely on clawing your face off, but all of them are flying reptilian creatures who can take a lot of punishment, live a long time, and collect anything valuable they can get their claws on. These are sufficiently iconic and important to justify attaching them automatically to anything calling itself a dragon (unless you’re a Chinese dragon, in which case you would choose a different track).

Since racial tracks are a fundamental aspect of how your character interacts with the world, they include a full set of class statistics, including hit points, saving throw and attack bonus progressions, and key ability modifiers. If you have a racial track, choose any class, then two tracks from that class. Treat this combination of tracks and class statistics as your character’s class. Your two chosen tracks retain their progressions from the chosen class, and your racial track gains the progression not used by either of the other tracks. You can multiclass from that class just as if you had a standard class, except that you can't trade out your racial track.