Character Generation

Steps
1.       Think of a Concept – who & what you are

2.       Pick your Origin: Core, Border, Frontier or Ship-Born, this determines your starting attributes and free skills

3.       Pick your Merit

4.       Pick your Flaw (optional, provides additional skill points as recompense)

5.       Determine your Hit & Luck Points based on your Origin and Merits/Flaws

6.       Pick your skills; you have 8 points, plus up to 2 points from having any Flaws chosen.

7.       Pick your gear. These are described later in this book.

Concept
The rules listed in this chapter help you describe your character in mechanical terms; how effective they are in combat, how good they are at fixing machines and the like. We recommend that players start with a brief summary of their character concept to help them add depth to their character before they start to worry about the numbers that represent them. This can be as brief as “Cocky Pilot”, “Genius Engineer” or “Core-world Surgeon” - or something a little more involved, like “A Brown coat veteran, disillusioned by the war and holding a grudge against the Alliance, buys a rickety old ship and forges his own path in an ever-shrinking ‘Verse.” Once you have that, the sections that follow will be a whole lot easier.

This is also a good time to start thinking about a name for your character. You don’t need to know it yet, but as we all know it is by far the hardest part of character creation, so you want to start thinking early...

Origin
This is where your character was born and raised. Some characters are proud of it, some try to hide it and some have been moving around for so long they can’t even remember, but everyone was born somewhere, and knowing where your character came from can tell you a whole lot about who they are and where they’re going.

The four origins are Core, Border, Ship-Born and Frontier, which are the three types of planets your character can come from, along with being born on ship. This is not set in stone - a Core origin may be more appropriate for a sheltered minor noble growing up on a planet that's technically in the frontier, or the Londinium slums might give your wise-ass brawler a Border origin. A list of recognised 'Verse planets and what these terms mean can be found in here: http://firefly.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

Attributes
There are three main stats in the game

A character’s starting levels in Build, Sophistication and Schoolin’ depends on their origin.

Merits and Flaws can potentially alter these further.

Your skills (picked later) may have a prerequisite stat level in order to purchase, and it will cost you more to buy if you do not have the stat at the required level.

Sophistication also determines your starting credits – more details in the equipment and ships section

Merits
Everybody’s got a special talent, a little quirk that picks them out from the crowd. This is their Merit. Each player starts play with a merit which is selected from the list below. If you have an idea for a merit that you would like and that is not listed, send the plot team an email to discuss it.

The advantages a Merit provides may be lost or improved depending on a character’s actions within the game.

Flaw
Be sensible over your combos of Merits/Flaws/Skills and that they make logical sense (i.e. you are unlikely to have Assets and be Dead Broke).

Flaws may be 'awarded' for in game actions taken, and some could eventually be lost.

If you have an idea for a flaw not detailed here, run it past Game Team for approval.

The Point cost of a Flaw denotes its severity, so a Two point version of Debt will be worse than its One point counterpart.

Hit Points
All players start with 3 Luck Points unless Merit/Flaw/Virtuoso says otherwise.

Your hit points are, fairly obviously, how many times you can be hit, shot, or otherwise beaten up before you fall over. When your hit points are above 0, you may be battered and bruised but you're otherwise good to go. Below this, and you're in danger of serious, or even fatal, injury.

Your starting hit points are set by which Origin you pick, but can be changed by certain merits and flaws, the tough skill, and the use of armour.

Skills
You have eight points to spend on skills with a max of two additional if you have taken the relevant level of flaws. You also get some skills free, or at reduced cost, depending on your Origin. Skills that are free still count towards the maximum number of times you can take them for skills restricted in such a manner.

The cost of each skill is listed along with the prerequisite stats you need to have it. If you do not have the prerequisite stats then you can still buy the skill, but it costs you one more point per level you are missing.

If the prerequisite is another skill, you MUST have this in order to buy it. This is to designate certain skill sets as a 'tree' to work through.

For example, Armour [Heavy] has a prerequisite of 3 Build, Armour [Medium] and a cost of 3 points. A character with 3 Build can buy the skill for 3 points but a character with 1 Build must pay 5 points for it and both would need to know Armour [Medium] first.

Once you have attended an event, you may opt to train up more of these Skills or more specialised Virtuoso Skills further, as documented in the Downtime section.

A skill marked with an asterisk (*) may be purchased multiple times for potential cumulative effects.

A skill marked with a ~ indicates that this skill must be taught by another player at some point if learnt in Downtime.

A skill marked with + is counted as a complicated action if used and must end (and be restarted from scratch) if interrupted. Some situations may make these skills take longer to carry out.

Note: Membership skills are mutually exclusive; you cannot purchase more than one.