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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fissionessence" data-source="post: 4793942" data-attributes="member: 63357">Warning! This section is all boring character creation! It has nothing to do with the story, plot, Instant Game, or Mythic. This is just me making my character and all the rambling that goes along with it. Read at your peril.Well I was going to generate my character in 'silence', then start the story; but, as I was making him I kept thinking of things to 'say' that I was forcing myself to remember, so I may as well log as I create him. First of all, I realized the xax is small. That's fine—as I hadn't yet decided on my character's age, I decided he was a small 14-year-old. He transformed into a 'xax' at that size, and now he'll never grow. In fact, it seems the transformation even shrunk him a little, as the average height for a xax is 3'3" to 3'9". I started with 3 feet, and rolled a d12 for inches, and I got a 9. He's the maximum average height for a xax, so I also gave him the maximum average weight: 100 lbs. His Strength is 16 (9 point-buy points) to support his cosmic sorcerer build. Presumably he wasn't this strong before he transformed. His Constitution is 12 (2 points). The xax is supposed to get a +2 to Con, but that's the bonus I moved to Charisma instead. When I had 2 spare points, I put them in Con as a 'remnant' of this swap <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> His Dexterity is 10 (0 points), which partially explains why he didn't make it as a street urchin. Rogues need to be more nimble than average! His Intelligence is a 14 (12+2; 2 points), which is probably the only good score he had before his transformation. His Wisdom is 8 (0 points), further explaining why he couldn't make it on the streets. Finally, he has a Charisma of 18 (16+2; 9 points) to support being a sorcerer. I had kind of imagined him as a more introverted character, so now I'm wondering how to merge being shy and charismatic. I won't dwell on it now, but I'll try to see if I can make it play out 'in-game' . . . then again I don't know how much roleplaying will really end up taking place in this solo game.My character's first racial trait I include on my sheet is Chaotic Resistance. I roll a d10 at character creation and gain resistance to a damage type according to my roll. The 'choice' is permanent. I'm loving this random stuff mixed in with my solo game based on randomness. Anyway, I roll for cold. I'm not sure how this fits, but it doesn't have to; the xax are supposed to be random. Radiant might have fit better with the moon and stars thing, but oh well. Actually, if I'm remembering right, some of the cosmic powers related to the moon are cold-based. Anyway, on we go. Next is Dual Heritage, which gives my character the elemental and aberrant origins . . . I'm going to skip this one, not that it probably matters. Unlike regular xax, I don't know how my character turned into a 'xax', so I don't even know if this feature applies to him. Next is Memory of Conflict, giving him a weapon proficiency in a superior weapon of his choice! Awesome! I choose the parrying dagger! Oh no . . . the "parrying dagger" isn't a "dagger", meaning he can't use it as an implement. Ah, but that's okay. His Moon's Blade feat (from The Lunar Scrolls) allows him to create weapons from moonlight in both of his hands as a minor action; one can be a regular dagger for using as an implement, and the other can be a parrying dagger (the only superior weapon that would probably do him any good . . . his AC's only a 13 before the bonus from the parrying dagger). Even without the Moon's Blade feat, he could just carry both types of dagger around, no problem. As he generates his weapons from moonlight, I won't give him any actual weapons under his equipment section; however, I will put a note by his AC that it's 14 as long as he conjures up his parrying dagger.The last racial trait of note is We Are One. At the start of each encounter, a xax rolls a d8 to randomly pick another race's racial power for the encounter. This is a pretty neat mechanic I'm excited about trying out. For normal xax, I suppose it represents how random they are. This applies to my character as well, but I think it's also cool how it can be partially justified by him spending so much time around all those different adventurers . . . picking up their tricks with his magic. Also, this is more randomness to infuse to my already random game.It's probably worth mentioning that I'm the author of The Lunar Scrolls, the book from which my character's Moon's Blade feat is taken. I was going to include the full text of it here (which I haven't done for the xax stuff, as I don't have the rights), but then I realized that the entire crescent striker (including this feat in question) is available as a <a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/www.silent7seven.com?thelunarscrolls.html" target="_blank">free preview at our website</a>. Not to pimp out my stuff, but it saves me some typing and some space on this page. Incidentally, multiclassing into crescent striker requires my character to choose a 'Mental ability score' to potentially use for crescent striker abilities that ask for it. Of course, he chooses Charisma, though it's not yet relevant.I'm now filling in my character's class features. Obviously they all come from the Cosmic Magic spell source. The first one lets me change the ability score that modifies his AC from Int or Dex to Strength, which I take advantage of for a net +1. I modify his AC (I already mentioned the adjusted change above without saying where it came from), but I don't take up space on my character sheet to write out that stuff. Next is Cosmic Power, letting him add his Strength modifier (+3) as damage rolls on his arcane powers. He doesn't have any powers from his crescent striker multiclass yet, but they have the lunar keyword as a power source. However, the beginning of The Lunar Scrolls talks about how the lunar power source is kind of like several power sources in one, and how it can mean different things to different characters. Since my character is getting lunar power through sorcerous magic, I'll let him add his +3 to his lunar powers whenever that becomes relevant.So . . . Soul of the Cosmic Cycle. I like keeping my character sheets brief, so this gigantic class feature was a beast to abbreviate. Anyway, my character will probably almost always start out in the phase of the moon. This fits his theme, and helps keep his low AC higher. It also reduces the chance of being forced into the phase of the sun (since the phase of the stars would come first), which totally does not fit his character, and also grants a resistance that's redundant with his randomly selected racial resistance. Of course, the sun phase's resistance also lets him ignore enemies' resistances to cold, so if he picks up cold-based powers, phase of the sun may seem a little bit more attractive. Speaking of powers . . . Whoops, just kidding! Forgot about skills. Arcana is a given. (No choice there.) Next up is Athletics. He has a reasonable Strength, so I may as well play to his strengths (hehe). Athletics can be useful, plus he gets a racial bonus, so it's up to +10. Bluff: probably the only useful thing he learned in his 'troubled youth'. And finally, Nature. I'm not sure why, but maybe it'll be useful if he ends up in the forest or something. It brings his -1 up to +4.Okay, so now we're at powers. First up is blazing starfall. It has the Cosmic Magic tag, so I can't turn it down; plus it's just a great power. I don't really know what combat is going to be looking like in this solo game, but I'm guessing that punishing enemies for coming close to my character's frail body will be useful.Next: storm walk. This doesn't really fit the theme, but I have a feeling being able to shift away to use a ranged attack will be useful. I'm not excited about the attack against Fort, though. I'll be keeping a close eye on this one, as his crescent blade dazing ability with his reasonable Strength might be a better melee option than constantly shifting and using attacks against Fort. Either dragon frost or burning spray would be next on the list. We'll see.Encounter power: ray of the moon. I honestly didn't even look at any other powers. I spotted the power with the Cosmic Magic tag, then saw that it targeted Will—my favorite defense to attack—and didn't both shopping around. Maybe I'll look at them later, but for now I'm satisfied.Daily power: Here I felt like I was metagaming even more than in previous choices. I wanted to go with the themed option of cosmos call, but the damage is measly compared to dazzling ray, and the rider effects hardly seem to make up for that. Some of the other powers seemed to have their focus on hitting more than one target, which I'm predicting won't be too relevant in my solo game. We'll see how that plays out, but for right now I had it between dazzling ray and chromatic orb. In the end, I picked the ray for the higher damage, even on the miss. The effects on the orb seem really good, though, especially since they also happen on a miss. However, unlike in a 5-man D&D combat, I don't need my daily power to be flashy; I just want my opponent dead fast. Of course, that's me guessing again. Oh yeah, and dazzling ray targets Will, too <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Now it's on to equipment . . . I don't have any armor proficiencies, and I generate my weapons(/implement) out of moonlight, so I don't need anything in that regard. I really don't feel like bothering with mundane equipment, and I (as a player) don't like spending gold on consumable items like potions or alchemical items, so I think I'll just sit on my 100gp for now.Which leaves me with . . . a name. I need a name. 'My character' just isn't going to cut it. I've named my character sheet file 'CosmicXax', which has a certain ring to it, but I'm looking for something a little more personal. I happen to have a random name generator, thus following the theme of the character and this experiment quite well. Let's load it up and see if we get anything fitting for this character.In case you're interested, and since I'm hyperlinking everything else, the program I'm using is the <a href="http://ebon.pyorre.net/" target="_blank">Everchanging Book of Names</a>. So, I first load this thing up, and before I even click to generate names I see this: Sami Pyörre. This name seems great. It reminds me of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammy_Par%C3%A9" target="_blank">Sammy Paré</a> from the X-Men. He's a young awkward boy whose mutant power is to look like a fish. Sound familiar? I mean, my character has more powers than just looking a little weird, but still. Sami Pyörre is like an exotic twist on Sammy Paré: perfect for a fantasy game. Then I realize that's the name of the author of the program, not a randomly generated name. Oops. My perfect random name isn't actually random. So, I'll give the random names a couple of spins, but I'm definitely keeping 'Sami Pyörre' in mind <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> First thing is to plug in a 'chapter' to the program. Anyone who wants can make one (although I have no idea how), and it plugs into the EBoN to generate names based on the sounds or syllables the person put into their 'chapter'. I have more chapters than I care to type out here, but I'll start with a Planets and Moons chapter from a category called Oddities. I click on it, then see that it's constructed from terms in Star Wars, StarCraft and similar sources, but I suppose I might still get something that fits the concept of my character. It turns out they don't sound necessarily sci-fi except for the occasional number thrown in to designate a planet in a system, and after about 25 names I find Rinian. I'll click a few more times in case I find something better, and perhaps a last name. Marus seems simple enough. Rinian Marus. It's no Sami Pyörre, but it would be weird to name a character after a guy who made a program to name characters . . . right?If you skipped the character creation, you may want to resume here, where I choose random names, plus learn more about the captain and his tavern ship.Now my character sheet's done. The captain needs a name, and heck, the boat, too. There's a tavern name chapter in the EBoN, so I'll run that a couple times. Hm. They're surprisingly not-tavern-sounding-ish. Drippendlice? Scan-Is-Bell!? Ding-Blice!!?? Mestoncharchor? I can't even say that last one. However, I also got Barring-Ster which I think I'll switch around to Star Bearing as the name of the boat. It's kind of awkward to theme the ship after my character, but perhaps the ship—and maybe the captain's secret—have more to do with Rinian's transformation than any of us realizes. You just never know.So now the captain. First I think I'll roll on the PH races to figure out what race he is. I was imagining him as human, but I need to roll some dice (apparently random names isn't enough for me). There are eight races in the Player's Handbook, so I roll a d8. My <a href="http://paizo.com/store/gameAids/dice/byManufacturer/qWorkshop/byStyle/callOfCthulhu/v5748btpy823u&source=search" target="_blank">Cthulhu d8</a> (okay, now I'm just going crazy with the links . . . although I couldn't find a picture of my dice, which are green with white) shows the elder sign, so tiefling it is. Perhaps this captain's secret is something more infernal. I think I'll use the "Old World - Goths, male" chapter of EBoN for the tiefling captain's name. I don't really like the name Tradaro, but not everyone has a name I like, and I feel like it fits. It's not like he's my character, what do I care <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I think for his last name I'd like something stereotypically tiefling like 'Firedark' or 'Blacklies'. From what I've heard about the random monster namer in <a href="http://www.goodman-games.com/9101preview.html" target="_blank">Level Up #1</a>, it just might do the trick. Unfortunately, I don't have a copy yet as none of my local stores carries it <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" /> I think I'll hold of on Captain Tradaro's last name until then. And now, it's my bed time. Hopefully tomorrow I'll have a chance to actually play! * * * * *~ fissionessence</blockquote>

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