Level 0 PCs

The goal of the Enchiridion’s Level 0 character generator is to enable the quick creation of PCs without defined specialties, advanced skills, or fancy equipment. I’ve said in other FAL books, that every race needs its blacksmiths and farmers, its cooks and carpenters, just like it needs warriors and leaders. A Level 0 character is the quintessential “ordinary person,” a bystander thrown into a dire situation defending their village in battle or caught up in a wizardly plot. That’s just fun to play with.

For the rest of this post, we’re going to look at an example of a Level 0 character generated by a friend for what turned out to be a very bloody combat session. All of the below took less than 10 minutes.

To start, the player rolled two dice and used a table to determine their heritage, which ended up being Croatallian. (For those of you not familiar with them, Croatallians are a reptilian humanoid species of average size.) After the Heritage was set, the player rolled for their single Boon and received Pilot, which gives a maneuver bonus when operating and controlling vehicles. Even though Level 0 characters only get 1 Boon, they still get 2 Flaws. After two more rolls, this player ended up with Impatient and Skeptic.

The next step was to roll for starting equipment. At least one piece of equipment should be linked to the Boon for best effect, and after a few rolls with that goal the PC had a not-so-new but still-useful cart. A few more rolls for other random equipment yielded no additional armor, but did provide the character with a backpack, a belt, and a tarnished hayfork. Hayforks make sense for a cart driver, and it’s tarnished or rusty or otherwise in poor condition because this is a Level 0 character who also starts with no gold. Putting it all together and with their base stats, a picture starts to emerge of our Croatallian. 

BRT: 2, DEX: 2, WIT: 2

HP: 14, AC: 2, ACT: 2

Actions: 2

Luck: 0 (equal to Level)

Boons: Pilot (MAN). (1). Operating and controlling vehicles such as watercraft, aircraft, wagons, etc. MAN indicates the Maneuver score of the vessel being piloted.

Flaws: Impatient, Skeptic

Abilities: Bite: 1d2 damage. Cazzz Blade Proficiency: 1d6+1 damage. (In the hands of a non-crotallian, the cazzz blade does 1d6 damage and has a -1 die penalty when used). Claws: 1d3 damage.

Boon Related Gear: Cart

Additional Starting Gear: Backpack, Tarnished Hayfork, Belt

All that was left was for the player to create a short background for their character. Keeping it short is good practice with a Level 0 character because you don’t know how long they will survive, and also because each adventure survived on the way to Level 1 will add to their story. With a little bit of light-hearted conversation around the results, the Croatallian cart-driver Fezzeekeka (Zeek) was born! 

“Fezzeekeka was born on a Croatallian farm. His mother died of plague when he was young and he was raised by his single father. He is known in his village for winning the cart races at the annual harvest festival for three years running.”