Character Creation

[Sen. Crabcakes]

Now this might be a bit complicated.

First, place the normal things like

Name:
Age:
Height/weight:

Creed: (your class)

That's the easy part.

Now for attributes. The attributes table looks is broken into three categories: physical, social, and mental. And out of those are three attributes each.

Physical                    
Strength:  Your Character's brute physical power, from breaking down doors to heavy lifting. Adds to damage in melee combat.                              
Dexterity: Characters Speed, Agility, and Balance. Also includes fine motor skills and hand-eye co-ordination. Used to aim most attacks
Stamina: Your character's physical and mental fortitude, useful for withstanding crippling pain and pulling all nighters without passing out. Also helps reduce damage taken from attacks.

Social
Charisma: A straightforward charm, people with high charisma are approachable and find making friends easy.
Manipulation: Your character's ability to lie, deceive, and generally get others to do what they want.
Appearance: How your character looks, carries themselves, and the ability to make a good first impression.

Mental
Perception: The ability to notice details in the world around your character, sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste.
Intelligence: knowledge, memory, creative and critical thinking. Your character's fancy book learnin'
Wits: Your character's mental quickness, ability to adapt, change, and react quickly.
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All of these are rated 1 to 5, 1 being the worst, 5 being best. All attributes start out having at least 1 point in them so  congratulations.  Now for points.

Next step is to assign points to your physical, social, and mental attributes. For each category you can assign one of these three numbers: 6/4/3.
You can mix it up and assign 6 to mental, 3 to social, and 4 to physical. An example would be like this:

Physical: 4
Strength: 2/5 (1 plus 1 point)
Dex: 3/5 (1 plus 2 points)
Stamina: 2/5 (1 plus 1 point)

Social: 6
Charisma: 1/5
Manipulation: 4/5
Appearance: 3/5

Mental: 3
Perception 1/5
Intelligence 2/5
Wits 3/5

[Sen. Crabcakes]

Abilities: While attributes measure your characters raw physical potential, abilities are how your character uses it. These are different from attributes in that instead of starting at 1 out of 5, they start out at zero out of five. Additionally, you cannot raise any ability past rank 3 at this time. You can have abilities ranked as zero, and there are again 3 categories, each with their own special rules: Talents, Skills, And Knowledge. points are (11/7/4) in any category you choose just like Attributes

Talents are capabilities your character simply has a knack for, regardless of training or instruction. Having no points in a talent doesn't mean you cannot attempt it anyway, you'll just be rolling your straight associated attribute. Talents include:

Alertness- an awareness of your physical surroundings, especially when caught unaware or unprepared. Different from Perception in that perception is used to find small details, while alertness lets you smell a shambling corpse in the shadows before it gets a chance to attack!

Athletics- How well your character can run, jump, swim, climb, etc. etc. Really handy when you have to jump that roof to escape pursuit and actually land on the roof across.

Awareness: Your characters sensitivity to supernatural taint, be it the presence of a spirit in a house, or that feeling someone may be watching you...

Brawl: Sometimes the best weapons are the ones God gave you. Your characters skill in hand to hand combat, weather it be martial arts or just plain brawling.

Dodge- Your character's capacity to get the hell out of the way. Fists, cars, anything you don't want to be hit by can be dodged.

Empathy: your character's ability to share other people's emotions... and sometimes the motives they try to hide. Can be used to check if someone is lying, but no one is a lie detector.

Expression: Your Character's ability to capture people's interest through your opinions, even if they  are woefully misinformed. A skill for great storytellers and writers.

Intimidation: The ability to control other people through fear, weather it be a force of personality, or knowing just how the right words to get people to do what you want. Stronger people tend to be more intimidating, though sometimes words work just as well.

Intuition: some people call it sixth sense.. The more verbose call it "Unconscious logic". Either way your Character is a great guesser, and has gotten out of more than one predicament oon a "gut feeling"

Leadership: Weather through example, ear, excellent planning or sheer confidence, you can motivate people through Charisma.

Streetwise: Your character can blend in with the local scene, knows where to find things locally, and if not, know who knows.

Subterfuge: Your character's capacity to lie and get away with it. Useful for catching other people's lies a well.

[Sen. Crabcakes]

Skills are different from talents. They are abilities that require experience and practice to pull of correctly, and as such if your character has no rating in them, then they have a more difficult time pulling them off. Attempting to use a Skill without a point invested will increase the difficulty of the task.

Skills are:

Animal Ken: Your hunter's ability to control, empathize with, and maybe in some cases understand the subtle nuances in interacting with animals.

Crafts: Building, creating, and maintaining physical objects, from cars to furniture. (note: a specialization must be chose if any points are invested in this skill)

Demolitions: The gentleman's art of making things explode. Setting fuse timers right, knowing where to place the bomb, and making sure they don't suddenly go off prematurely all require demolitions.

Drive: Most people can drive. But it takes skill to pull of tricky maneuvers like threading the needle between two cars while a bmw full of blood-suckers is chasing on the freeway at 90 mph. Even if you put no points in this skill, your character can still drive automatic transmission cars.

Etiquette: Your character's knowledge of the behaviors, protocols, and formalities of society, from black tie affairs to high power business meetings.

Firearms: Sometimes it's just easier (and safer) to shoot the monster. Your character's ability to operate, clean, and maintain firearms.

Melee: Then again sometimes it's better to fight without waking up the neighborhood. Melee is use of all kinds of arms from baseball bats to bricks to broken bottles.

Performance: Your characters skill at a performing art, as well as the stage presence to enrapture an audience. (note: Specialty must be chosen if points invested)

Security: Your character's skill and know how to both secure an area and get through other people's precautions. Picking locks, hot-wiring cars, even cracking safes, to setting up your own safeguards and systems.

Stealth: Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. The ability to avoid detection, shadow other people, or hide objects on your person without anyone noticing.

Survival: Knowledge of the outdoors and the wilderness. Useful if your target runs into the countryside.

Technology: The understanding of, and the knowledge of how to use and repair, electronics Like radios, security alarms, maybe even motion detectors.

[Sen. Crabcakes]

Knowledge is the final category, and it too is a different beast from Talents or Skills. Knowledge is a mental ability that only those that have put in the time to research have. As such, without points invested, you cannot use a knowledge skill at all. You can't suddenly know about the chemical composition of Vampire blood (though bluffing that you know it is a different story altogether...)

Knowledge includes:

Academics: Your characters general grounding in the "humanities" like history, philosophy, literature, and art. (specialties must be chosen upon investment)

Bureaucracy: Politics might get you the line to the governor, but sometimes you just need to know the right people to get past red tape, make sure something damaging gets "misfiled" and get access to restricted info. They are people like councilmen, aldermen, etc.

Computer: Your ability to use hardware and software on a computer, as well as getting past someone else's cyber defenses. Might be nice to hack a computer with incriminating evidence instead of trying to talk to a sorcerer.

Finance: your character's eye for making money, weather its playing the stock market or appraising items. Even appraising stolen items.

Investigation: Formal investigative procedure (and a good dose of common sense). Finding clues, following - and sometimes covering up - leads.

Law: Knowledge of the legal system, and all the neat little ways you can twist it for your own nefarious ends. Really useful for avoiding a jail cell.

Linguistics: Knowledge of different languages other than your native tongue. [1 point grants one extra language. 2 points grants 2. 3 points grants 4. 4 points grants 8, and five points grants 16]

Medicine: Knowledge of the workings and ailments of the human body. includes treating injuries, diagnosing and curing diseases, and even performing surgery.

Occult: Knowledge of rumors, hearsay, and dark myths about the supernatural...although its up to your character to figure out which ones are right and which ones are useless superstition.

Politics: A familiarity with political workings on a number of levels. Who to go to for certain favors, how they got their position, and who answers to whom. Bureaucracy is different as it deals with the little people who keep the machine running, rather than the head honcho like the mayor.

Research: The ability to organize information, use a library or database effectively...and not have it take all damn day.

Science: A general knowledge of the physical sciences like chemistry, biology, physics, and so on.

[Sen. Crabcakes]

Next step is backgrounds: things about your hunter's mundane life, the resources and allies possibly available to them. You start with 3 background points. The backgrounds are:

Allies: Your character has friends in high (or low) places. Maybe a childhood friend in homicide, or you saved the governors life back in the war. Allies can't always help directly, but they often have their own resources to call on. But remember, friends don't like being used, and friendship is a two way street.

1 point: one ally of moderate influence and power

2: two allies of moderate power

3: 3 allies, one of whom is quite influential

4: 4 allies one of whom is very influential

5: 5 allies one of whom is extremely influential.

Arsenal: Your character may not necessarily have a lot of money, but over the years they have acquired an impressive amount of weapons and equipment. If they don't have a particular gun or gear, they know where to get it, legally...or otherwise.

1 point: You might own or have inherited a modest collection of rifles, shotguns, and a few handguns. equipment could include army surplus rucksacks, rations, or first aid kits.

2 points: You own a substantial collection of firearms: pistols, long guns, possibly including vintage military rifles. equipment would be binoculars, urban camo, police scanner.

3 points: You're a serious collector. You own various pistols, shotguns, even semi-auto assault rifle copies. Gear could include night vision goggles, body armor, or military surplus radio

4 points: You make your neighbors nervous. Your sizable collection could include fully automatic weapons, or sniper rifles. Equipment becomes sap gloves, lightweight radios, surveillance equipment.

5 points: People like you give the ATF nightmares.

Bystanders: Not everyone who sees the truth answers the call. Sometimes, there are those who fail to act. These beings are truly unfortunate in the world of the supernatural: They are denied the edges and abilities true hunters receive and yet they know. They have seen. Though they lack in any special powers, Bystanders can still be useful to know. They are people who know monsters are real, and are usually more than willing to help if properly motivated. Others however may be far more reluctant, not wanting to be anywhere that close to pure evil again.

1 point: 1 bystander
2: 2 bystanders
3: 3 bystanders
4: 4 bystanders
5: 5 bystanders

Contacts: Different from allies, contacts aren't quite friends, more of a set of people your character knows who can provide information or services...although sometimes they need more prodding, and aren't always so happy to stick their neck out for you. Major contacts have some standing and influence in their field, while minor contacts are usually eyes and ears throughout the city.

1 point: One major contact and a handful of minor ones

2 points: 2 major contacts, and a few minor ones scattered about the area

3 points: 3 major contacts, and minor ones in every club or bar

4 points: 4 major contacts and minor contacts spread throughout the city

5 points: 5 major contacts and yet you seldom go anywhere without seeing a minor one

Destiny: Everyone has a role in shaping their future, but people with destiny seem to have a much larger role than others. Characters with Destiny seem to be favored by fate. Destiny lets your character retry a failed action per day per point invested.

Exposure: Even without being imbued, the supernatural existed around your character. Maybe they saw a pack of "wild dogs" tear through a mall once, or they were even part of a cult that touched on something more tangible then misguided faith. In any case, now that they have been imbued, they recognize the experience for what it truly was.

Fame: Your character is widely recognized by the general populace for something. People may want to be seen with your character, and they may wield influence with impressionable people. Though this leads to your character being more easily recognized, fame may also sometimes act as a shield...a monster may want to avoid taking action against your character if they are too famous, due to the public attention it would bring.

Influence: Your character is able to direct political and social pressure on some authorities, including police by several means, possibly by wealth, political office, prestige, or even manipulation. it's a measure of the weight they can throw around in their community. Sometimes influence can be used in place of another skill like Bureaucracy or politics.

Mentor: Slaying horrible monsters is a skill definitely learned through hard knocks. Some are lucky enough to have someone to give some guidance. Your character has a teacher, weather it's about destroying zombies, or just life overall. A mentor score 3 or above suggests a hunter, while a lower one suggests a more mundane teacher.

Patron: Most hunters are contacted by beings known as the messengers once, maybe twice after their initial imbuing. However, points in patron means these otherworldly beings contact your hunter with hints and advice more frequently. Higher points can be so intrusive, people may mistake your character for mentally ill.

Resources: Money makes the world go round. Fighting supernatural beings can be a lot easier when you can actually afford a decent gun without breaking the bank. A character with low resource rating probably lives in a small apartment with a beat up car, and maybe one gun. Those with no points in resources are almost penniless, living in a cheap flop house or maybe even on the street.

[Sen. Crabcakes]

Finally, there are two more abilities your hunter has: Conviction and willpower. (both start at rating 3, max of 10)

While still fundamentally human, hunters are now more than they were before. This is reflected in powers they possess called edges. Edges are powered by conviction: a sort of supernatural fuel. Conviction is important in that without it, your hunter becomes just like a normal human: powerless and defenseless against supernatural threats.

Besides Edges, Conviction can also be used to:

Activate a hunter's "second sight" allowing them to see if a creature is supernatural

See through any illusions or spells a monster tries to use

Negate attempts to control your hunter through supernatural means.

Conviction can also be gambled. The more conviction you put in an edge, the stronger it gets. but if it misses...well there goes your points. But if it succeeds, then you get your conviction back, plus one extra.

Willpower is much more mundane, the intangible mental fortitude that allows you to face life's hardships. Willpower can be spent just like conviction, though it can't be gambled. Willpower is used to automatically succeed on a skill check.

[Sen. Crabcakes]

And now the finishing touches on your hunter: freebie points! these are 21 points you can spend to further flesh out your character with two special rules:

Abilities can be raised to 4 or 5 with these points

Conviction cannot be higher than 8 at start.

The exchange rate is:

Attribute: 5 points per rank
Abilities: 2 points per rank
Background: 1 point per rank
Willpower: 1 point per rank
Conviction: 1 point per rank

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