Character Creation

Creating Characters in AdVarTa is very simple for the players, requiring only imagination, though the GM may be overwhelmed at some character designs, so exercising your judgment is a must.

Basics
If you get to this part, then you probably know already how statistics work in AdVarTa and, more critically, how Traits are to be designed and balanced.

As there are no standard limits, everything can be made during character design. For this reason, however, the GM will probably come with restrictions as to keep the game challenging and interesting. Trust him. You have the right of choice, but the GM has the right of offer.

Character Concept
That's it. In this system, if you think of a character, it shall be possible by setting up traits and all. Whatever limit you may face, it's up to the GM judgement in matters of party and campaign balance, but outside that, nothing is preventing you from building a powerful or feeble character. If you know what you wish for, go on and build it, propose traits and play for fun. Simple enough, isn't it?

Well, obviously there's an easy way to learn how to do that and it's being presented now. Be welcome! Note that you ought to keep in line and don't try to break everything. Remember your GM has reasons to reject a design, so talk to everyone and play accordingly.
 * 1) Are choices limited or the design is completely free? The game may have a restriction for a selection of races/classes/occupations. This being the case, make your choice.
 * 2) Get a character identity and background. What is it supposed to be? What does it look like? What are its specialities and weaknesses? Think of these and proceed.
 * 3) Assign primary attributes the way to shape the character into your concept. There's a hard limit on primary attributes for the sake of logic & reason, but your GM might come up with another limit for his game. Trust him and be happy.
 * 4) Translate its traits into the mechanics. Think of what you want for the character widely, its interactions and overall likeness as a protagonist (remember, PCs are protagonists). At this point, you should ask for the GM's approval.
 * 5) Make preliminary adjustments and define wealth/resources.
 * 6) Don't forget to have fun.

Assigning Attributes (the standard method)
In the standard AdVarTa, the 5 major attributes (excluding Arcana) are customizable. No attribute can be lower than 1 or higher than 9. The Arcana attribute is a special case that will be dealt with later. The physical attributes are a comparison to some kind of creature type. So, some attributes can interact as if they were of a different value depending on circumstances such as size modifier, like imagining a weak Kaiju with a STR of 3, which is still a Kaiju, while a super strong squirrel with STR of 9 is still a squirrel.
 * Agility
 * Dexterity
 * Mind
 * Strength
 * Toughness

A brief description on how to understand attribute value ranges:

The standard way starts with the 5 attributes at 5 points each. One attribute can "donate" a maximum of 1 point to another attribute. This way, Agility, for example, could become 4 so dexterity becomes 6, but you could only get DEX to be 7 if you take it from another attribute, which will be 4 now, just like AGI. Of course, you could take another point from AGI and donate it to that attribute at 4 points so it becomes 5, while AGI gets down to 3. This way, it's impossible to get 2 values to 9 or 1 or even 3 values to 7 or 2.

A "fun" example is to think of each attribute as a lotto box, each with 5 balls of different letters and colors of the attribute box they are in. The number of balls in each box corresponds to its value.

You can move balls from box to box by following these rules: So, it's possible to get arrays like [9,7,5,3,1], [9,4,4,4,4], [8,5,4,4,4], [8,8,3,3,3], [7,7,6,3,2] [6,6,6,6,1].
 * A box can have only one ball of each different color and of each letter from itself. It can receive only one ball of each other box, which translates into a hard attribute limit of 9.
 * A box can't receive a ball of a letter it hasn't of its color.

If you are lazy, refer to the list of every possible array: Remember that this is only one method to play and assign attributes which doesn't even take into account the Arcana attribute. Anytime, you could play maybe with a total balance of 30 points as well, and there are also templates, which could take an attribute higher than 9. Well, do as you please and play smart.

The Arcana Stat
So, I heard you like casting and such, which is completely OK. AdVarTa was made for it.

But because Arcana is quite different, it's best to not mess with it the way you did with the other 5 major attributes. Balance-wise, giving every character the ability to take points from other stats and assigning them to arcana is not a good idea.

Again, the decision will come after the setting of the game. It could be anything from a magic-full campaign, where everyone has access to magic, to a campaign where magic is a rare gift or top secret art, or even a campaign where there's no magic at all and there's also the possibility of replacing Arcana by another attribute or set of attributes.

Anyway, this section deals with Character Creation including Arcana assignment, so deal with it for now.

The Standard Arcana assignment
Depending on your choice, Arcana can work quite as something universal.

Simply give every character an Arcana value of 1 and change it only with traits. That's how it's done in standard AdVarTa. Through acquisition of traits, a character could increase Arcana: Or you could replace that 1 point of Arcana by another major attribute. Traits make anything possible!
 * By taking penalties to another major attribute;
 * As some kind of reward or character progression;
 * Under some restrictions (in this case, the change is temporary)