Thursday, January 20, 2022

2022 Character Creation Challenge - Day 20

Three guesses as to what character type this is gonna be.  I'll wait.

To shake things up, though, this will be a B/X Magic-User.  As such, it is 3d6 down the line, and I will keep rolling sets until I get a high Intelligence.

11, 11, 9, 12, 11, 3

7, 13, 12, 15, 11, 8

14, 17, 7, 9, 15, 10

12, 14, 11, 13, 14, 11

6, 10, 12, 13, 13, 6

8, 5, 12, 10, 13, 10

11, 8, 10, 6, 15, 9

15, 10, 13, 8, 12, 11

15, 8, 12, 8, 11, 13

6, 8, 14, 10, 11, 14

12, 11, 14, 10, 10, 12

10, 13, 11, 12, 10, 11

Twelve sets of abilities, both because I had forgotten how little the ability scores affect PCs in B/X and I got caught up rolling dice, mostly the latter.  I suspected the third set would be the best for my purposes, and I wasn't wrong.  The Intelligent, yet incautious and downright foolish Magic-User that relies on brute force and ignorance when his spells won't carry the day, and depending on which spells are known (randomly determined), that might prove to be quite often.

Technically, B/X has a method to adjust ability Prime Requisite scores before play, at a rather specific 2-for-1 cost, so I could conceivably drop the Strength score to 12 to raise my Intelligence to 18, but why?  All I get out of the deal is knowing another language, as 17 already qualifies me for +10% on the Prime Requisite table. 

Over at Doomslakers! there is a lovely table of potential wizard names (amid many other lovely random tables) and I cannot pass up an excuse to use it.

Starting with a name might seem backwards, but Pristinio the Delicious just cries out for creation!

Cinder Seer, by Donato Giancola, WotC (Urza's Destiny)

Pristinio the Delicious, Medium, N Magic-User 1

S 14 +1 to hit, damage, open doors

I 17 literate, +2 languages

W 7 -1 on magic-based saves

D 9 none

C 15 +1 hit points per die

Ch 10 4 max retainers, retainer morale 7

Current XP 0     XP until next level: 2,501

HP 4

AC 10

Languages Known:  Common, Gnome, Orc

Spells Known: Sleep 

Equipment: staff, dagger, adventurer's kit, adventuring clothes (not a robe), pipe, tobacco

Personality/Habits: Hits the pipe regularly in the belief it makes him unpalatable to monsters (in reality it is making him taste smoked). When magic is gone or won't obviously work, will happily charge in swinging his staff and bellowing a battle-cry.  In a tavern, Pristinio leaves magic and staff alone, swinging with fists, instead.  After a brawl, is likely to buy drinks for everyone.  Despite his love of carousing and brawling, Pristinio does enjoy his quiet.

Goals: to not be eaten; to acquire more spells; to find a better tobacco; to become a tobacco farmer, with a plantation all his own.

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Spell acquisition in B/X RAW is rough: a first level character will only have one spell (a first level spell) in the spellbook.  Furthermore, either the DM or player gets to choose the starting spell, but from then on, it is player's choice as to which one spell they learn with each level.   Scrolls still require Read Magic to read, as well as a good light source.  This strongly implies that the spell gained at 2nd level should be Read Magic.

Presuming player choice of starting spell, there are only two of the twelve worth considering: Charm Person and Sleep.  It all depends on if the magic-user player wants servants or not, because Charm Person can last up to a month on creatures with Intelligence scores of 3-8.

B/X also uses race-as-class, something that I would love to see reworked (and am actually slowly working on) so that each nonhuman race is essentially a multiclass PC with extra abilities (this line of thinking stems from this post at Brain Leakage).  A fine example is the Elf as fighter/magic-user.  This is doubly useful because B/X doesn't allow multiclassing.  

Beyond bonus XP in the Prime Requisite, ability scores provide little in the way of bonus - unlike newer games, from AD&D through 5e.  Still, I am conditioned to prefer higher numbers, so here we are.

Most of the sets of abilities I rolled are serviceable characters, except maybe the first one, but even that 3 in Charisma can be mitigated by not letting that PC speak.  Ever.

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