Character Generation for Legend of the Seven

Character Generation

At the beginning of every generation (and thus the beginning of every mini-campaign), players must generate a new set of characters or may import an aged character from the last generation. At character generation, one player is elected to the play the emperor (or at least, a member of the royal family close to the center of power), with the other players playing citizens of the empire under the service of the emperor.

All players must write into their background a connection to the emperor in some fashion. That is, they must explain how they relate to the emperor. It can be something as simple as noting the position a certain character has in the empire. This serves to tie all the characters together.

New Stats rules

In this game, characters in addition to all the normal D&D stats, will also have mechanics for a "belief" system. For those of you who have played games like Burning Wheel in the past, this should not be new to you.

There 3 primary new attributes that each player character will have: Beliefs Fate Points Destiny Points

Beliefs

Beliefs are primarily the drive behind a character's actions. Each character should have 3 beliefs written up to reflect their characters goals, aspirations, and belief structure. Beliefs should suggest a course of action or some guidelines as to how a character will act and their agenda. To simplify it, think of beliefs as character goals backed up by some kind of rationale.

PCs with imperial heritage MUST write at least ONE belief reflecting upon the fate of Avalon.

Fate Points

Fate points are basically action points that a player can spend to gain a bonus on a particular roll. Each fate point adds a +2 unnamed bonus to a roll. You acquire fate points by playing to your beliefs and you can gain them at a rate of ONE point per belief per session.

GMs can at their own discretion, award more fate points as an award for good roleplaying too.

All new characters begin with 2 Fate points

Destiny Points

Destiny points are far more powerful than fate points and as such are harder to come by. Destiny points can be spent to assume that you roll the highest possible roll on the die. i.e. instead of rolling for an attack, you can spend a fate point and just announce you just rolled a 20.

Earning Destiny points requires that you not just PLAY to a belief, but that you resolve a belief. Resolving a belief awards you one destiny point. You are limited to earning 3 destiny points per session.

All new characters begin play with 1 destiny point

New Character

When creating a new character, there are several parameters that a player must follow: The character level is limited by the average strength of the previous generation party. That is, if the party was averaging at level 4 at the last generation, then the new generation will have also be limited to creating a level 4 character. When it comes to classes that wields magic, the highest caster level is limited by the relevant magical infrastructure of the empire itself. Thus, if the empire previously has arcane tech level of 2, the highest caster class level is limited at 2 as well. This means that in the case of character level being higher than the caster level, the new character is limited to a 2nd level arcane caster with the ability to take levels in a non-arcane caster class. i.e. Say that the empire is currently at arcane tech 3, with the character level resting at 5 during the generation switch, the new character generated can be a level 3 sorcerer / level 2 non-caster class.

The caveat to this rule is that if your character was a cohort (and thus the apprentice) of a previous generation character who exceeds the casting limit. In this particular case, you can create a character whose CL is equating to the CL of the previous generation character.

After creation, the magic tech limit no longer applies and the character can level freely, provided they can justify this new advancement.

Importing

At the GM's discretion, players can elect to simply age their older characters by the appropriate time frame and keep their old character for the new generation. They gain no XP during this time.