Chapter 3

Creating a Character

Character creation is broken down into 15 discrete steps. I know that sounds like a lot, but most of them only take a few seconds to complete. The list is designed to keep you from painting yourself into a corner and having to backtrack. If you go in the order presented in this guide, you shouldn’t have to back up and redo anything.

Don’t worry about dice yet. Now, you are working out who this person is and writing down what they are good at. If you encounter a word in this guide that is confusing, it is probably in the glossary.

One thing to consider - you can do all of this on paper, but you don’t have to. I know a lot of you old school players will want to crunch numbers and make a character the old way, but 20 Below has a character creator app that can do all of the math for you. It knows every pool and cost and - most importantly - won’t let you go over budget.

1. Name

Name your character.

That’s the whole step. It’s cosmetic - nothing else in this book touches it and no rule cares what you picked, but it is the most important step in character creation. I’ve seen one player spend half an hour on this step. Another just rolled some dice for a random name.

2. Concept

Your concept is a phrase that tells someone who your character is at a glance. It’s not a sentence. It’s not a paragraph. It’s not your backstory. It’s a quick description that you can express to someone in a couple seconds.

A burned-out paramedic who just can’t stop running towards the danger.

An ex-soldier turned burned-out bodyguard.

A retired cat-burglar who sucks at downtime.

Like your character’s name, there is nothing mechanical at this stage. However, the next two steps hinge on it. Your character’s nature (Step 3) is normally sitting right there in the concept and, many times, your character’s flaws (Step 11) are as well.

3. Nature

Your nature is who your character is deep down. It’s what you do when the stakes are high, the pressure is on, and no one is watching them decide. If you lean into your nature during a moment that costs you something, and it will net you a Fate Token. Acting on your character’s core nature will always reward you.

The Nature and Fate system don’t reward you for effectiveness or convenience. It rewards you for consistently playing your Nature.

Writing Your Own Nature

If none of the premade Natures quite do the trick, you can write your own. The following steps will guide you in the process. They are the same steps that were used to write the premade Natures.

One or two words. A label, not a paragraph. If it can’t be read at a glance, it’s too long.

Write the drive as one sentence. - This is what your character wants - how they face the world. It’s not a detail from your backstory. It needs to be a driving motivation or goal. “I lost my brother” is backstory. “I don’t let anyone else lose someone they could have saved” is a Nature.

Make the trigger concrete and repeatable. A character’s Nature should drive their actions in a very real and palpable way. If you have to ask the GM if your Nature applies in a certain situation, it is probably too vague. Opportunities to exercise your nature should come up often, not once a campaign.

Your nature doesn’t have to cause problems, but the best ones always do. A character who blows their cover to make a dramatic entrance is playing to their Nature and making a problem for everyone. And really, isn’t that when it is the most fun?

Premade Natures

4. Attributes

Here comes the part where some people get nervous: numbers.

Every character is described by a series of numbers. The first, and arguably, the most important numbers are your Attributes. I use the words Attributes and Elements interchangeably throughout the book, so don’t get confused by that.

Each of your Attributes starts at 1 for free. You have 20 points to spend across them however you see fit. However, no attribute goes above 10. There is nothing to keep you from specializing in a couple of them and nothing prevents an even spread. Both builds are equally valid. This is the biggest decision in the chapter.

The next step gives you more points for every point you spend here.

5. Sub-Stat Division

Every element is divided into two Sub-Stats. In this step, you divide the points in a given Element into its Sub-stats. A rating of 7 in Earth gives you 7 points to divide between its Sub-Stats - Soak and Potence.

This step is where your character stops being a cardboard cut-out and starts becoming a person. Two characters with Fire 8 are nothing alike if one dumped it all into Ferocity and the other into Presence. The first will win the fight. The second will make sure there is no fight.

There is nothing preventing you from putting all of your points into one Sub-Stat. However, caution is recommended - a Klotho rating of zero will slow your Ki regeneration to a crawl and you won’t have a lucky number while a Health rating of zero leaves you with the bare 5 Health Levels, and only 5 below zero before you’re dead.

Spend wisely.

6. Descriptors

Descriptors add fine details to your character. For every point you spent in a Sub-Stat in step 5, you get a descriptor - a word or two describing the specific flavor that Sub-Stat brings to your character. These traits are free - they come with the points spent in Sub-Stats. Once you pick them, you can’t change them. There’s no way to buy extras. If you want more, you have to raise the Sub-Stat.

If you put three points in Soak, you get three descriptors for Soak. They should be different ways to shrug off damage rather than three synonyms. A character who is Hardy, Weathered, and Unyielding has a body that holds up, has been through it all, and will not give in.

These descriptors aren’t just decorative and descriptive - they are load bearing and one of the core ways that your Target Number is determined. Every skill defaults to a specific Element. When you want to use a different Element to roll, and you will, your Descriptors are how you do it.

Your descriptors are what you point to to justify using an element other than the default. The exchange above is one example of how it works. Intimidation relies on your Presence, so it defaults to fire. However, you can be Intimidating in many ways. For instance:

Sorn serenely describes, in exquisite detail, all the ways in which she can inflict pain. She rolls Intimidate using Air.

Ronan picks up a chair and forcefully folds it into a ball. He rolls Intimidate using Earth.

Serafina pounds tirelessly on a heavy bag for a while and then issues a quiet threat. She rolls Intimidate using Water.

Descriptors aren’t decorative. Or, rather, they aren’t just decorative - they are load bearing decorations. Below, you will find some sample descriptors. You can pick from the lists, but are not restricted to them. In fact, players are encouraged to make their own.

7. Skills

Skills come in two categories: Everyman Skills and Purchased Skills.

The GM presents everyone with a list of Everyman Skills. These are skills that any functional adult in the setting can do because they live there. They are free. You have your Everyman Skills at Trained.

A modern day campaign may have Athletics, Bureaucracy, Computer Use, Cooking, Driving, Etiquette, First Aid, Perception, Persuasion, and Streetwise as its Everyman Skills. The rest of the list is up to your GM, but Perception is always on it.

You have 15-points to spend on Purchased Skills. Each tier costs 1 point and you climb through them in order, so Trained costs 1 point, Adept costs 2 in total, Expert 3, and Master 4. Those 15 points won’t go as far as you would like. As with everything else in 20 Below, this is intentional. You can have two skills at Master tier and a few at Adept, or 7 at Adept, or a wide spread of moderate skill. What you can’t have is everything and choosing makes it interesting.

Every Skill has an Element attached to it. This is the default Element that is used to calculate the Target Number for your roll when using the skill.

Untrained: your target number is just the Difficulty, you don’t get to add your attribute.

Trained: Attribute plus Difficulty.

Adept: Attribute plus Difficulty, with Advantage.

Expert: as Adept, and your critical success widens to a roll of 2 or 3.

Master: as Expert, and a catastrophic failure gets one reroll. That reroll can only soften the blow to an ordinary failure; it never turns into a success.

8. Boons

You have 10 Points to spend on Boons. Boons come in tiers based on how powerful they are - Trivial, Lesser, Greater and Legendary. Trivial boons cost 1 point, Lesser cost 3, Greater cost 5 and Legendary cost 7 point.

A boon is an edge that your character has - a close contact that always answers the phone, a knack for reading the room, ambidexterity. None of them will add dice. They are not quite as powerful as gifts, but they aren’t anything to sneeze at.

Anything leftover from these 10 points rolls over into Discretionary points (Step 12). Don’t try to force the math to avoid waste - there isn’t any.

9. Resources

You have 6 points to spend on Resources. Each Level costs 1 point.

Resources are the material side of your character - money, gear, a place to work out of, people who owe you a favor. If it’s a personal knack, that’s a Boon. If it’s supernatural, that’s a Gift. Resources are just backing.

You’ll notice that buying equipment isn’t part of this step. That’s step 13, and the wait is on purpose. Discretionary points can raise your Wealth, and shopping runs its math against your final Wealth, so Wealth has to stop moving before you can spend against it.

10. Gifts

You have 21 points to spend on Gifts. This is your supernatural budget, and it’s the biggest pool in the chapter.

Every Level of a Gift costs 3 points. A Gift at Level 3 costs 9. A Gift at Level 5 costs 15. Twenty-one points will buy you one Gift at Level 5 with change left over, or two at Level 3, or seven at Level 1 if you want a character who does a little bit of everything.

Two things bend those numbers.

Adders are permanent upgrades to a Gift you already have. A Lesser Adder costs 3 points, a Greater costs 6.

Limiters go the other direction. A Limiter is a permanent catch you accept on one of your Gifts, and it knocks a point off every Level of that Gift. Stack as many as you can live with - there’s no ceiling - though the cost per Level never drops below 1.

Limiters are how you afford a Gift you couldn’t otherwise, and you should expect to pay for it at the table. A Limiter that never inconveniences you isn’t worth anything, and your GM will notice.

Because Limiters leave the math uneven, leftover Gifts points don’t evaporate. They convert to Discretionary points at 2:1.

11. Flaws

Flaws are optional. Take them or don’t.

Every Flaw carries its own point value - there’s no formula, so you’ll have to check the Flaw itself. Whatever they’re worth feeds straight into your Discretionary points at step 12. Your GM decides how many you can cash in this way, so ask before you build a character around six of them.

Here’s the part that matters. A Flaw that never costs you anything is worth nothing. If it doesn’t make something harder for this character, in play, at the table, then it isn’t a Flaw - it’s a note in the margin. Flaws are the one place in this game where you get paid up front for trouble you’ve promised to have later. Take the money and have the trouble.

12. Discretionary Points

Everyone starts with 10 Discretionary points, flat. Add whatever your Flaws earned you, plus anything left over from your Boons pool at 1:1 and your Gifts pool at 2:1.

Now spend them. The rate gets worse the closer you get to raw power.

Resources, Skills or Fate Tokens: 1 point each.

A Boon point: 2 points.

A Gift point: 4 points.

An Attribute point: 8 points.

Fate Tokens have a ceiling. You can’t hold more than three times your Stamina, plus one, so buying past that number gets you nothing.

Eight points for a single Attribute point is brutal, and it’s supposed to be. Discretionary points are for finishing a character, not rebuilding one. If you want a higher Attribute, go back to step 4 and buy it there, where it costs you one.

13. Equipment

Your Wealth has stopped moving. Go shopping.

Buy your starting gear out of the Weapons & Equipment catalog, against your creation-Wealth. The whole procedure - where creation-Wealth starts, how a Wealth Check runs, and what failing one costs you - lives in Resources, under Wealth at Character Creation.

The short version is that every purchase is a roll. Nothing is automatically free. Failing the roll still gets you the thing - it just costs you Wealth to have insisted on it.

14. Figured Characteristics

You don’t buy any of these. They fall out of decisions you already made.

Health Levels: 5 plus your Health.

Poise: 5 plus your Presence.

Sanity: 5 plus your Psyche.

Defense: 10 minus your Atropos.

Movement Rate: 5 plus your Air, in meters.

Carrying Capacity: your Potence squared, times ten, in kilograms.

Ki: your strongest Element, plus 8.

Work them out and write them down. If one of these numbers is an unpleasant surprise, this is the last comfortable moment to go back and move some points around.

15. Finishing Touches

You start play with 1 Fate Token. That’s the same as your daily refill, so you’re starting topped up rather than ahead. If you want a cushion, buy more back at step 12 - up to three times your Stamina, plus one, which is as many as you can hold at once.

Everything that doesn’t have a number attached goes here. What they look like. How they talk. All the little details that grew out of your step 2 concept while you were busy doing arithmetic.

Then hand the sheet to your GM and let them look it over.

That’s a character. Go play them.