Stats and Benchmarks

Generating Base Stats

Generating stats for your character in Al’Akwannon going forward will be a point buy system coupled with some dice rolling to keep a dynamic for a certain level of randomness to your character. However, we will no longer use the traditional 3d6, etc for creating base stats. I believe this blend will allow people to craft exactly the character image they wish yet still allow for some play in the numbers. There is no longer any need to designate a primary stat. Simply roll 3d4 add that result to 105 (108 – 117) and you have your base number of stat points. Divided evenly among all stats this is an average of 13 or 14 for every single stat...WELL above average and highly heroic. Remember, your average NPC is going to be around 14 for their primary stat and between 8 – 12 for most of the rest and generally two or more will be near the low end of that scale.

There are eight base stats: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, Perception and Luck.

For each stat, simply assign a number you’d like that stat to be based on your character concept. When done simply add up your stats and be sure that your number is equal to your pool total. Simply adjust stats up or down to insure you have arrived at this total if you are off and be sure to adjust your stats to fit any class related prerequisites. Generally, no character should have more than one stat at 18 (before racial and other modifiers) without an exceptional character concept approved by the DM. On the flipside, Al’Akwannon characters are meant to be heroes (or anti-heroes) in the making, so short changing yourself on numbers is not recommended either without solid conceptual purposes. On the short end, having any statistic lower than an 8 for a PC should be backed by an appropriate conceptual idea and communicated to the DM.

Calculating Sub-Stats

For six of the eight base stats, there are two sub-stats generated (Perception and Luck are the two excluded.) These substats are: Stamina, Muscle, Aim, Balance, Fitness, Health, Reason, Knowledge, Willpower, Intuition, Appearance and Leadership. Each sub-statistic represents a different aspect of the base stat and is not generated separately, but rather based off of the primary stat. In other words, if you rolled a 14 for Strength, the default for both Stamina and Muscle is also 14. However, you may manipulate these sub-stats slightly to better reflect your character concept.

To manipulate sub-stats, improvement of one must give way to a decrease in another and is limited to a factor of two. Thus you may lower one of the sub-stats by one point or two and raise it’s counterpart by one or two respectively. A couple of examples:

Example #1 Your concept is a young barbarian, strong and rife with natural talent. However, he’s not extremely well trained and conditioned and can tire our when pressed to his limits. Lets say your base strength is your primary stat and you end up with a 17. By default, your Muscle and Stamina scores are also 17. However, you envision your barbarian as a bit more powerful and a bit less hearty. By lowering Stamina to 16, you may raise Muscle to 18 gaining a slight bonus to damage while suffering a slight penalty to endurance related skills and abilities.

Example #2 – Your concept is a middle aged wizard who never quite possessed the natural mental savvy that other mages had. Instead he had to work twice as hard studying, memorizing and taking the hard road to mastering the arcane arts. Your primary stat of Intelligence happens to end up at 16 with base Reason and Knowledge at 16 as well. However your concept shows that your character is book smart and has to try very hard to wrap his mind around the formulae that comprise spell and the craft. By lowering Reason to 14, you may raise Knowledge to 18 to reflect this.

Keep in mind that while concept is king, occasionally your concept cannot be appropriately reflected by stats the way they can be generated and manipulated with the above controls. Remember, these are there to insure game balance and draw a line between concepts and game mechanics that keep the game fun for all. It is generally no fun for others to play with the “wunderkind” type of character. Also keep in mind that you will never be penalized for voluntarily lowering a stat. More than likely that action will pay dividends in the long run because your DM recognizes the sacrifice at the outset.

A good example of this might be Charisma. Perhaps you are an extremely good leader, but have been seriously disfigured in a way difficult to make good in appearance (much different than certain scars that could be attractive to the right person.) If for instance you ended up with a 14 Charisma and felt that raising Leadership to 16 still left Appearance a bit high at 12. Nothing should prevent you from lowering Appearance to whatever seems appropriate. You can make Appearance 8, 6 or even 4 if you feel that is an accurate representation. Feel free to discuss this sort of thing with the DM.