STEP 1: PICK YOUR CLAN
This is the most defining aspect of any Legend of the Five Rings character, and the one that will most impact your role-playing experience. Select the Great or Minor Clan from which your character originates. Basing on the canonical timeline, all the Great Clans (Crab, Crane, Dragon, Lion, Mantis, Phoenix, Scorpion, and Unicorn) are available for our upcoming campaign. For Minor Clans, you can select from Badger, Hare, Sparrow, Tortoise, Dragonfly, Shinsei monk, or Ronin (not recommended).
STEP 2: PICK YOUR FAMILY
Even within a single clan, the various families offer a wide variety of characters that can be created. Once your clan is chosen, pick one of the families that make up the clan in order to receive additional benefits. The mechanical benefits of individual families are listed under the Clan information pages to which they belong to.
STEP 3: PICK YOUR SCHOOL
Within the families of the Clans there are various Schools that teach ancient, secret Techniques of considerable power. These benefits are listed and give characters an edge over their enemies and identify them as a trusted member of the clan. Player characters start at School Rank 1.
STEP 4: CUSTOMIZE YOUR CHARACTER.
Use 40 Experience Points (XP) to spend on purchasing Traits, Advantages, and Skills. Additional Experience Points may be acquired by purchasing Disadvantages. The cost of each statistic is as follows:
a) non-Void Trait = new rank x 4
b) Void Ring = new rank x 6
c) Skills = new rank x 1. Skill Emphasis costs 2 XP.
d) Shugenja Innate ability = 1 XP per Mastery Level of the spell.
e) Advantages & Disadvantages have their cost listed in their description.
You do not have to spend all the starting 40 XP. You can save the excess if you are planning to purchase an expensive statistic in the future. Of course, you risk handicapping your character in the meantime, as the dormant XP do not translate to any skill or talent.
STEP 5: DERIVED ATTRIBUTES
Certain abilities or traits that a character possesses are determined based upon other things.
a) Each Ring value is the lower of the two Traits that comprise it.
b) Honor (defined by School).
c) Status (1.0 by default, +/- any Advantage/Disadvantage you take).
d) Glory (1.0 by default, +/- any Advantage/Disadvantage you take).
e) Calculate Insight Rank.
f) Calculate Wounds.
Insight Rank is calculated by simply adding all the Ring values and multiplying the sum by 10. Then add the total ranks of Skills that the character has.
For the current campaign, the base multiplier for Wounds would be the default, which is at Earth ring x 2 (to be debated upon further). There are 8 wound ranks. The 1st wound rank is Earth ring x 5, the next 7 are at Earth ring x 2. For example, a character with Earth ring 3 would have a total of 43 wounds [(3 x 5) + (7 x 2 x 2)].
NOTE: Choose your Traits, Skills, Advantages, and Disadvantages wisely. There is currently NO Retraining rules in L5R 4e. Therefore, it would be prudent to plan ahead for the next Trait/Skill set you are aiming for.
Of course, after (or even before!) these mechanical steps for creating your character, you can add the details like physical appearance, mannerisms, motivations, philosophies, etc. that will spice up the interaction of your character with other PCs and NPCs.
Comments (3)
Example computations for purchasing Trait and Skill ranks.
a) To raise a non-Void Trait from 2 to 3, you would spend 12 XP (3 x 4). If it is from 3 to 4, you would spend 16 XP (4 x 4). Therefore, raising a Trait from 2 to 4 would cost a total of 28 XP (12 + 16).
b) To raise a Void Trait is the same as example a) above, but use 6 as the multiplier instead.
c) For skills, spend XP equal to the new rank, i.e. raise a skill from 3 to 4, spend 4 XP. To get a new skill, spend 1 XP. To raise a skill from 1 to 2, spend additional 2 XP. To raise a skill from 2 to 3, spend 3 XP. So if you are learning a new skill up to rank 3, you would have to spend 6 XP (1+2+3).
SKILL EMPHASIS Mechanics:
When making a Skill Roll, if the character has an Emphasis that applies to the situation requiring the roll, he may immediately re-roll any dice that result in a 1. This may only be
done once per roll.
Emphasis options for Skills are listed in the rulebook entry for the Skill. It costs 2 XP to purchase an Emphasis. You can have 1 Emphasis for Skill Rank 1, 2 Emphasis for Skill Rank 3, 3 Emphasis at Skill Rank 5, and 4 Emphasis at Skill Rank 7.
Example of Insight computation:
A character with all five Rings at 2 and with a
total of 20 ranks in all his different Skills would have an Insight Rank of 120.
Remember, the Ring value takes the value of the lower Trait that comprises the Ring, i.e. Reflexes 2 and Awareness 5 will only have an Air Ring of 2.