Character - One for All!

I have gone through a lot of what's has already happened in making up Jean Baptiste de La Pointe. Here is, the first draft so to speak of the character. Unless something dramatic happens, I expect this is the character I will be playing in the next few weeks.

I took Archetype Noble. It seemed like a no brainier with the free resource of Status 2 given by the GM. Two other choices here would have been soldier, given his background, or one of the concepts I was toying with in the back of my head was a doctor of divinity and medicine. Common given the time period and not likely to be something anyone else would have come up. Given that I decided to make him a full out Noble, doctor more or less was no longer a choice. That was a layman's profession in the time period. Historically, it did happen very rarely and this is a fantasy game, I didn't feel as a player that I'd want to combine the two.

With a Noble Archetype duty or honor seemed a strong motivation that would work within his background. I went with honor because it's more fun than duty.

The character's stats are a good strong mix of 2's and 3's. I wanted an even mix and strong skills for this character so pushing for a 4 in there would have been an issue. Besides, the cost versus the return in a die pool game like All For One just isn't worth even that little bit of Min/Maxing. Secondary Attributes calculated right off the primary.

Skills came next. All For One give Musketeers Melee (or Fencing), Firearms, Ride and one other skill for free starting at 0 with only a half point needed to buy them up. I took Warfare as the free bee as it made sense given his soldier background. A skill rating (die pool) in All For One of 4-5 is average, 6-7 is good and 8-9 is great. Given that Jean Baptists attributes are all 2's and 3's, expending 2 points on any skill puts him into the average range, which, theoretically should be good especially seeing how style points can be used to boost things. I took firearms, ride and warfare up to 2's by expending 1.5 points on each giving him a solid average in each. I spent 4.5 to bring his melee skill up to 5 (the maximum allowed for starting character) giving him a rating of 8. More on why later. I went ahead and purchased Bureaucracy, Diplomacy, Perform and Brawl to round out his starting skills. Bureaucracy because he's a noble and soldier, helps deal with the administrations and organizations of the world. Diplomacy because that handles leadership (he was an officer) and etiquette (he's also a gentlemen). Preform because that covers dancing (a lively tune, I'm inspired to dance). And Brawl because I learned very early in the test combat that if you want to hit someone, strength alone isn't going to do the job!

I don't see Jean Baptiste as a master swordsman, and with a rapier in his hands, his starting die pool would be 10 dice. That is above good and rated as excellent. During the play testing, 10 dice against an average opponents 5 dice was a bit of overkill. So why do it? Some of what I've heard from my fellow players and the GM has lead me to believe that I can expect a certain amount of Min/Maxing in the game and to be frank, I was worried that in combat situation designed to be challenging for those Min/Maxed characters, Jean would be left behind. So I maxed a little to give him a better chance to be just one cut below the killing machines. I expect to see players stepping into combat with die pools of 14-18. As I stated before, against an average opponent (5 dice) this is waaaayyyy overkill and a total waste of points that could have gone somewhere else. On the other hand, somewhere along the lines, the GM is likely to throw that right back at us to provide 'a challenge' and with 10 dice, Jean might at least be able to defend himself.

Resources and Talents came next. You get one or the other. Jean already had rank 0 Rank and Follower for being a Musketeer, and the free Rank 2 Status that comes with a +1 bonus resource. I chose wealth for the bonus so I could live a little. A man's got to have some standards in Paris. I decided during the background creation phase, that I wanted Jean to have a home outside of the Barracks so I took a Refuge resource rather than a talent.

A character flaw was next. I decided to go with Merciful as nothing else really fit my vision for Jean Baptiste and I wanted a flaw for him. So despite his great melee score, he is not a man who is willing to kill lightly. Plus I figure it will make for great role playing dealing with the other musketeers, who shouldn't be killing either.

Finally, some experience points to spend. These are suppose to represent the character's development from being an experienced Musketeer. I could have gotten a talent or another resource with these, but looking him over, I felt he was lacking some Musketeer like skills. I boosted his Brawl up because if he's not a killer, he has to have some way to deal nonlethal damage. Then I got investigation and streetwise to represent some experience with life on the streets of Paris. Done.

Keep rolling my friends.