Xathos of Varisia’s Guide to Filling out a Character Sheet in The Brinewall Ascension by Xathos of Varisia Greetings adventurer! Whether you be a grizzled veteran filling out your twenty-fifth sheet or an innocent cherub taking its first tottering steps into The Brinewall Ascenion (TBA), this guide will help you easily fill out a character sheet for a Pathfinder character. We will do this by breaking the sheet down into manageable sections. Along the way, we will explain the reasoning behind character creation details and offer some tips on character development. By now you should have read the setting details and familiarized yourself with the general rules used in The Brinewall Ascension. In order to be play a character here, you as a player need a fully functional and completely filled out character sheet. All character sheets must be filled out correctly, uploaded to either Google Drive or Dropbox, and then a link to that unedited sheet placed on our TBA forums in the New Arrivals section. Always save and link a new file. Editing of your previous character sheets or character thread will be subject to disciplinary action up to and including character deletion. Post a new sheet whenever your character levels up. We know that character generators are available on the Internet. Mythweavers, PC Generator, and HeroLab all are used to create characters. However, our experience with players and characters is that most players fail to understand their character when they use a generator. Because of the verified studies supporting this conclusion, and from our experiences running Pathfinder games on Roll20 and in live game sessions, it is readily apparent to us that players need to fill out a character sheet instead of relying on a generator to do it for them. Don’t get us wrong! The generators are useful tools for developing character builds and we encourage their use for exactly that purpose. But you will learn far more about your character and have a better developed character when you fill out our character sheets. This guide will use a sheet filled out by Xathos of Varisia for his character, Snorri Sturluson, a Human Warpriest in The Brinewall Ascension. You can see the first page of the sheet to the left. This sheet was approved on its first examination by an approver. Xathos also is an approver as well as one of the original founders of The Brinewall Ascension server. The character, Snorri, is currently being played by Xathos on the server. I. Classes and Races A. Prior to filling out a sheet, you should have a pretty solid idea of what kind of character you want to play. Will it be a caster? A melee class? A healer? What race will it be? A Dwarf? An Elf? Perhaps a human? The Core Rule Book (CRB) has that information as do additional rulebooks such as the Advanced Race Guide, Advanced Player’s Guide, Ultimate Magic, and the Advanced Class Guide. B. Races: All Core, Standard, Featured, and Uncommon races are allowed as long as they are under 20 RP. For you Dark Elf lovers out there, that means the Drow are playable. However, the Drow Noble is not. You can roleplay as if you were a Drow of noble birth, but you cannot use the game mechanics from the Drow Noble itself. There are no custom races allowed in TBA. C. Our rules allow for all official Pathfinder classes to be available for play except for the original Summoner class. The Unchained Summoner is allowed. Please use the Unchained Summoner class information including the Unchained Eidolons which making that class. Also, the Synthesist Summoner is not allowed. All official class archetypes are allowed in TBA. D. All official feats and traits are allowed in TBA. E. NO 3PP (Third Party) MATERIALS ARE ALLOWED IN THE BRINEWALL ASCENSION!!!!! Please don’t ask as you are wasting your time in doing so. Additional rules for characters and races are found here: Character Creation Rules. In building our character, we will construct a Human Warpriest which gives us a good melee class build in addition to basic magic spell use. Let’s move to the first section of the sheet. II. The Character Sheet – The Basic Information Block A. Here in this section we find spaces to insert the basic information or our character. First, you need to access the sheet and download it to your computer. You can find the sheet here Character Sheet. Please save a copy of the blank sheet before beginning to fill out a new character sheet. Here is a site which contains very good Character Sheets. As Snorri is a Divine spellcaster, he only needs to use the three page sheet unless the player just wants to write a lot of spell information down. B. We will begin with the Human Warpriest and name him Snorri. Begin by filling in the blanks provided in this section. Some of these should be pretty obvious. The more detail your character has, the more of a personality it has. Life in the Brinewall Ascension is a bit different than many other Pathfinder servers. We value roleplay and character personality here. Characters should be distinctly different from each other. They are not avatars of your personality, but a completely different persona that you roleplay or act as while playing the character. Here you are no longer Al the Accountant or Mary the High School Student. You are Snorri the Warpriest, a man who fights to establish himself in this harsh world as a renowned hero of Brinewall! Play the part when playing the character. C. Race matters! Read about the race your character is. While your character may be different in some ways, the NPCs one encounters will be making decisions based upon their experiences with the various races which are defined in the rule books. So while you may be a Drizzt Do’Urden wannabe, the party of dwarves you just ran into will treat you based on the book definition of the race you are playing. A Human is not an Elf nor a Dwarf nor a Half- Orc. It is a Human with different abilities and philosophies, beliefs, and attitudes. D. Other lines ask for information that help develop your character’s behavior. Alignment matters in The Brinewall Ascension! A Lawful Good character will not participate in the murder of foes who surrendered. Nor will they turn their backs while the rest of the party cuts the throats of bound foes. To many alignments, the means justify the ends. On the other hand, Chaotic Evil characters would kill vanquished enemies. Intelligent enemies would act accordingly if they suspect the player to be the type to wantonly kill people. Surrender might be rejected by an intelligent foe if they suspect they would just be killed anyway. Chaotic Evil characters would almost certainly follow a philosophy of life in which the ends justify the means. In TBA, the GMs will enforce alignment infractions. The GMs communicate with each other as the sessions are set in the wider backdrop we work with. Some character classes must use specific alignments as well. So, read what that alignment is because your character will have to follow it or suffer the consequences of alignment infractions. E. Deities should be selected if the character will be worshipping a primary deity. While some classes do have to follow a deity, not all do. Having one or not having one is also a means to character development. A character’s deity should be within one step of the character’s alignment unless required to be the same alignment due to class. F. Homeland selection is also a character development choice. Each character should have a homeland in the Golarion setting. While we are located in Varisia, characters can be from anywhere on Golarion. This will help you build a backstory for your character. In Snorri’s case, he is from the Land of the Linnorm Kings. While we haven’t indicated on this sheet, you could determine that Snorri is of Ulfen heritage or develop a back story for him in which he of a different human stock and was born in the Land of the Linnorm Kings. Using the Golarion campaign setting and companion books helps you construct a much richer character. The Inner Sea World Guide is a valuable resource. G. Finally, put down the languages your character speaks. This is determined by Race, Intelligence, and in some instances Class. It is important as in over half the sessions I’ve played or ran, language comprehension played a role in the game. III. The Character Sheet – Ability Scores Block Here we find one of the most important blocks of data that set the tone for your character’s capabilities. These ability scores dictate the parameters of what the character can and cannot do. High scores generate bonuses to all kinds of things while low scores create negative modifiers to the die rolls. Let’s see what Snorri will have for ability scores. A. First of all, here in TBA we use a 20-point buy system for creating characters. All of the abilities have a base 10 score. Using this Pathfinder Ability Score Calculator, you can purchase the correct number of ability score points and input the racial ability score modifier(s). Use it! It’s embarrassing to be find out you made an error and cost your character an ability score point. You just never know when it is a big deal that keeps the character alive as well as the others in the party.