Wrath & Glory Character Creation

This is a fairly hefty chapter, with a sort of clunky layout - it essentially tells you how to make the character twice, printing the 20 tables in this chapter both at the beginning (well, ~5 pages in), and in their relevant areas. Why aren't these at the back of the book? Who knows.

In Summary

We start with a 3 page summary of the 8 steps to create a character, then the 21 tables.

To reiterate what I posted in my previous W&G run-down, those steps are:

0) Establish a Concept

1) Species

2) Archetype

4) Attributes

5) Skills

6) Talents

7) Wargear

8) Special Abilities 

9) A Background

Actually step 9 is part of step 8 but I mean, come on.

And we'll be going through them. Prep for lots of tables.

Conceptual Beginnings

The concept stage is tied into a couple other choices that have been made here, by either the group or the GM. These things are the Tier and the Framework of the campaign.

The Tier is a rough power level, ranging from Tier 1 "One Among Billions", to Tier 3 "Elite Guardians" and even up to Tier 5 "Agent's of Fate". In this capacity, you can play as poor bloody guardsmen, Deathwatch members and Rogue Traders, or even as an anime super-protagonist from Gurren Lagann. Tier is normally expected to remain constant throughout a campaign, but there are rules for changing it known as Ascending. 

Depending on your starting Tier, different archetypes will be available to you. Going up in Tier never bars archetypes off, it just unlocks more - for example while the Eldar Corsair archetype is Tier 1, you may select it in a Tier 3 game with no problem, as the higher-tier Archetypes are more expensive to purchase, and you'll still benefit from Tier 3. The Tier also dictates how many Build Points you have to create your character.

The Framework has no mechanical function, but rather serves to define the scope and goal of the campaign. Are you guardsmen struggling to maintain control over a ball of actually useless dirt versus orks? Are you freebootin' orks running around causing chaos? Maybe you're an actual Rogue Trader crew. The Framework is what defines this.

Personally, I'm slightly more of a fan of the Dark Heresy-esque setup of "band of disparate characters brought together to be problem solvers". It gives it more freedom than the more militaristic setups. For that purpose our framework will be essentially that band aka an Acolyte Cell, and we'll go with Tier 2 to permit some of the more fun options - that, and the generic poor bloody guardsman doesn't generally hit the ranks of the Inquisition, even as an acolyte.

This gives us 200 Build Points, with some associated Maximums.

These Attribute Maximums are further capped by Species.

Species: Select Xenos Only.

The available Species available to us are Human, Eldar, Ork, Adeptus Astartes, and Primaris Astartes. Yep, the Xenos known as Primaris Astartes (hah) are selectable, but not at our Tier - they require Tier 4. Interestingly, Adeptus Astartes are available at Tier 2, so you can have Space Marines (of limited capacity) alongside other types of troops without wholesale outscaling them in power. Apparently. 

No Tau or Kroot (meh) just yet, but hopefully we'll see them at some point. 

Since we're angling the Dark Heresy route in our Framework, that tosses out Eldar & Ork - I doubt the Eldar are interested in ferrying out evil within the Imperium, and Orks are Orks. Primaris are out due to Tier restrictions, leaving us with Human and Adeptus Astartes.

Considering Adeptus Astartes aren't exactly my bag, and placing one (even though it's limited to a mere Scout at Tier 2*) in an Acolyte group is odd, we're going Human.

*More on that in the next section

Humans as a species have no Build Point cost to select, have a Base Tier of 1 (Adeptus have 2, Primaris 4, Eldar 1 [yep], and Ork are 1 as well), have a "Speed" of 6 (that'd be meters of movement in a turn), and have no Attribute Modifications. They also have access to most of the Archetypes (species-specific ones excluded, obviously) Your normal bog-standard baseline RPG species.

At Tier 4, simply being a Primaris eats 1/4 of your BPs.

Bonus image:

"Just keep track of all the implants, bro". Freakin' SMs.

Archetypal Roles

Archetypes are the game's version of a class, but much more "open." If you remember DH 2.0 or Only War, it works mostly via Keywords being granted to you, and specific abilities, gear, talents, etc requiring you possess a Keyword.

Each Archetype has a Build Point Cost (although it might be 0), has some Pre-reqs (Tier, Species, Attributes, Skills), and grants Benefits in the form of Keywords, an Influence modifier, a special ability or two, and some base wargear.

For the sake of full disclosure, here they are, organized in an "Association: Archetype (Sub-choices), etc" format - these subchoices might apply to all archetypes of an association, or just one. Most subchoices have a small mechanical effect, usually a situational bonus.

Adeptus Ministorum: Ministorum Priest, Crusader, Death Cult Assassin
Adepta Sororitas: (Order), Sister of Battle, Sister Hospitaller.
Astra Militarum: Imperial Guardsman (Regiment), Tempestus Scion, Commissar
Agents of the Imperium: Inquisitorial Acolyte (Ordo), Inquisitorial Adept (Ordo), Inquisitor (Ordo), Rogue Trader (Dynasty), Sanctioned Psyker
Adeptus Astartes: (Chapter), Scout, Tactical Marine, Primaris Intercessor
Adeptus Mechanicus: (Forge World), Skitarius, Tech-Priest
Scum: Ganger, Scavvy, Desperado
Renegades: Cultist (Mark of Chaos), Heretek, Chaos Space Marine (Mark of Chaos, Legion), Rogue Psyker
Aeldari: Corsair (Coterie), Ranger (Craftworld), Warlock (Craftworld)
Orks: (Clan), Boy, Kommando, Nob

Whew. As you can see, plenty of options, and with them all you can essentially cover all of what the previous books have done.
Each association/category also includes 3 "Objectives" - narrative hooks that you roll a d3 for each session to determine which one, if you can apply to that session, will generate Wrath (once). You may also come up with your own Objectives - the game suggests you make 3, and thus change the die roll to a d6, rather than a d3.

Archetypes with minimum tier requirements

With all these options, it might be hard to choose - some of them are quite open even in themselves, such as the Inquisitorial Acolyte and Adept (the Acolyte in particular is very generic), and all of the Scum having a free "Keyword" attached to them, so you can associate them with most everything.

To make it simple, however, I'm going to go with a simple Tempustus Scion, as that is the picture I had used in the previous blog entry related to character creation, although the temptation to pick a Psyker or Skitarius is still strong.

We're a Scion, named "Russ Dradur", relatively fresh out of Ordo Tempestus training  and attached to a Acolyte cell, chosen because an Interrogator needed a cell with a bit more "oomph" that could be trusted to handle more martial problems.
.
Our "built-in" objectives as being part of the Astra Militarum  include:
1) Express confidence (or the opposite) in the virture of overwhelming numbers and firepower
2) Explain how the Imperial Infantrymans Uplifting Primer has a lesson appropriate to the current situation
3) Reminisce about your far-flung home world and compare it to the current situation.

The Scion Archetype

So right off the bat our 200 Build Points (from starting at Tier 2) is reduced to 170 to spend (30 on the Archetype), and we know some of our minimum attributes and skills we have to aim for. We've also got an assortment of fun war-gear, including our ever-important Uplifting Primer, which we'll be sure to study in full, daily.

Attributes

The next step would be to purchase our Attributes. Given that we're Tier 2 , we may spend at most 100 BP on attributes. For disclosure, that number increases to 150 at Tier 3, 200 at Tier 4, and 300 at Tier 5. We also know our Base Attribute maximum at Tier 2 is 5.

The game offers pre-assigned attributes and attribute arrays as suggestions for your attributes but if you like you can simply spend the BP as you wish. The Tier 2 suggestion would be "Three Attributes at Rating 4, Four Attributes at Rating 3" and would cost 94BP. For humans, Rating 3 is average, 4-5 is "high average" and Rating 2 is "poor" - Rating 1 is the minimum an attribute can be. 

The Almighty Point Cost Table

The suggested attributes are a good solid spread, but I like characters having at least one "under-performing" Trait so I'm going to make our Fellowship to 2 - Russ is a bit more rough and martial-focused than others, not having time for niceties. This leaves us with three attributes at rating 4 (costing 54 points), three attributes at rating 3 (costing us 30 points), and one attribute at 2 (costing 4 points. This sums to 88, which actually leaves us a potential 12 points to spend on Attributes before we hit the cap. Let's bump a Rating-3 attribute up to a Rating-4, increasing its cost by 8, leaving us at 96pts used.

So with our ratings chosen, we have to slot them into the attributes. We know we need Strength, Initiative and Toughness all at least, so they'll all be at least a 3 - which is easy enough, given all of our attributes except are going to be at least a 3, and that "one" is assigned to Fellowship. I know I want to be a good ranged fighter, given I am armed with a Lasgun (so increase Agility), and I want to not fold too quickly in combat (which is derived from Willpower, Toughness, Initiative) and be able to act fast if necessary (Initiative)

This leaves us with a final attribute array looking like this:

Looks pretty good!

The "adjusted ratings" aren't adjusted at all, but that's because my Species lacks any modifiers, and I have no fancy power armor to increase them. Mechanically, you would use your Adjusted rating for tests, stats, thresholds, etc, and your "normal" rating for advancement costs and requirements.

Now that our attributes have been assigned we have to calculate our "Traits", also known as "derived attributes" - these are simple numbers taken from your Attributes and Tier.

All pretty simple fill-ins, except that Passive Awareness..

Skills

After all this, we're at 200-30-96=74 build points remaining. These will be spent on Skills, Talents, any additional wargear, and any Special Abilities (which we won't have, as those are Psychic Powers).

Skills are purchased exactly the same as attributes, with suggested packages and arrays, and their own BP cost table - the one for Tier 2 costs 70BP, so I don't think you're meant to save too many past this point.

For skill value "meanings" or qualitative statements, we have: 0 is Untrained, 1 is Novice, 2 Initiate, 3 Educated, 4 Accomplished/Professional, 5 Artisan, 6 Master, 7 Grandmaster, 8 Savant. Given we're Tier 2, our max is a skill level of 5, which is fine - they get pretty expensive anyways (20 pts for a single Skill rating of 5, and 10 pts for a Rating of 4!)

Rather than explicitly use their suggested skills, I'm going to fiddle around to create a relatively standard character that specializes in a few things, then has a large amount supplementary skills, keeping in mind I have only 74BP remaining, I have a couple pre-reqs due to being a Scion, and any potential training my character might have received in the Schola Progenium and Ordo Tempestus.

With that, I end up with one Rating-5, one Rating-4, four Rating-3s, four Rating-2s, and four Rating-1s, at a total of 70BP. That Rating-5 is Ballistics Skill, and due to being Tier 2, is the highest I can ever raise it! Unless of course, the Tier is increased (which is intended to be a very significant event). This is perfectly fine, as there are still ways to improve my shooting ability if desired, via talents and wargear.

Not so good at talking unless it's bullying. Alas.

Talents

With 4BP remaining I'm not exactly rolling in the options - Talents are all 20-30+ in cost (and you can start with a max of 3 at Tier 2 - who the heck is affording this?!). There are a few that catch my eye, such as Hardy to make a Toughness test in combat to restore Shock, or Marksman to improve my ability at making Called Shots. Also a fun note, although I cannot get it: characters possessing the Chaos keyword can get a minion/familiar via the warp, as a lesser daemon. In expected behavior it's kind of an asshole and liable to betray you, but, neat.

Wargear

After Talents we're left with Wargear. Wargear is interesting for me, as due to my Influence being only two (Fellowship [2]-1, plus 1 from Scion) I am not likely to be able to acquire much in-game without the help of my fellow cell members, or large stashes of wealth or liquid assets. There isn't too much I immediately want here, except an upgrade from "Carapace Armour" to "Tempestus Carapace Armour" - unfortunately this is out of my reach, and given its value of 6/Very Rare, might stay that way for a bit. It'd be neat, though, as it lets you see in the dark and has a built-in vox bead, among other things.

Some basic armours. My starting armor reduces my speed from 6 to 5.

Selecting wargear past replacing what I have (which have specific rules - EG my armour can only be swapped with another piece of armour appropriate to species & archetype, maximum value of 3+Tier) or adding upgrades to my weapons are up to GM discretion. The Framework itself might also include given equipment, but given that "The Framework" is essentially "the premise for the campaign" and doesn't include anything mechanical in the rules, that's really just a fancy way of saying "You also get whatever the GM gives you."

With my 4 remaining BP I can buy some upgrades for my Hot-Shot Lasgun. Some of them seem helpful, such as a bandolier to carry more Reloads (2BP), a Bayonet Lug to slap a bayonet on it (1BP), a monoscope (4BP), but given their cost in BP I find them ultimately too expensive, even at 1BP.

Last in Wargear, we all get a free "trinket" item, which is something small and more of a decoration piece, but can be used in some purposes - eg a flask of brandy might be a worthy bribe for somebody. It can be all kind sof stuff, and they have 3 d66 tables if you can't think of anything yourself. I like the example ones, so I'm going with "A thick tome of the Imperial Creed, its cover sealed closed by an archaic lock." This feels like something a Scion might carry around, rather than something too much a "harmless curiousity", such as a knife, with the blade melted by acid.

Backgrounds - Where you came from, last.

Technically also "Special Abilities", but, again, no Psychic stuff here, so just backgrounds.

Backgrounds are phrases indicating where they come from, what they have become or achieved, or what drives them. It's intended as a narrative, aid, but offers mechanical benefit; once made, they are assigned a "category", where each gives a different bonus. There are 4 categories of backgrounds: Origin, Keyword, Accomplishment, Goal. 

Origin: This ties to where you came from or what prominently shaped you early in life, usually your home world. If chosen, you get either +3 Shock or +1 Wound.

Keyword: Associating yourself with a Keyword ties you closely to that organization, giving you access to a contact in it that can provide benefits once per session, and making NPCs part of that organization have a higher initial "Reaction" to you than normal.

Accomplishment: Any noteworthy tasks you have completed (if any). If chosen, grants you either +1 Influence or +2 Wealth.

Goal: This might be a personal goal, or a large "will require many lifetimes" goal. It's intended to be a long-standing one, and should be noted it's not necessarily a primary focus for the campaign. If chosen, you gain +1 Glory in addition to gaining +1 Wrath any time you accomplish an Objective.* Presumably, this will only trigger once/session just like the Wrath gain is, but, hey.

Given that we've decided Russ is somewhat fresh out of the Ordo Tempestus (although not 100%), we'll rule out Accomplishment. I also don't have any long-standing Goal in mind for him, so that ones out. That leaves us with Keyword and Origin. My Keywords (Imperium, Astra Militarum, Militarum Tempestus) sort of all speak for themselves without too much wiggle room in them (the examples in the book compare Evil Sunz Mekboy to Evil Sunz Bikey Boy) given Scions are simply Scions, and Imperium/AM are just broader umbrellas for MT, so I want to do something with Origin.

Origin's tables and text largely focuses on home world. I'm tempted to pick a Death World just because that's exciting, but I don't feel my skills properly reflect such harsh living (namely, Survival not being approximately level 5). With that, I like Hive World the most, as it guarantees they will learn combat skills, how to push people around to survive, and isn't a terribly pleasant life, such as some agri-worlds might ultimately end up being. That, and Shrine Worlds are boring. We'll call our made up Hive World "Oeridor II" which yes I just made up with no thought and doesn't entirely fit "traditional naming style" of Imperium planets. I'll go with +3 Shock to represent an enhanced "willpower"-esque style of resilience rather than necessarily physical sturdiness.

Ooga Booga, where my nids at?

Das it, Mane

And now we have a fully completed character, excluding the actual character development of personalities, prejudices, morals, and so forth. Being a Scion imparts some specific stuff onto that, such as the Imperial Creed being stamped directly onto their forehead brain, and morals being "roughly nonexistent."

This was a fairly pleasant enough process. Having extensive Build Points in your character generation system tends to make it susceptible to fiddliness and odd min/maxing (See: Shadowrun, my god), but for purposes of min/maxing I feel the attributes are all fairly useful (Well, Tech-Priests might fail to see any value in Fellowship, given their Influence is tied to Intellect...) as they dictate various core derived traits. Strength is of course a stand-out as usual, but it's tied to ammo carry amount for ranged weapon users (as well as a cap on how big of a weapon you can carry effectively), and is extra damage for melee users - a fair amount, at that. 

For example, a knife has 2+1 ED damage, and you add flat Strength to the damage, so my average strength character becomes 5+1ED with a knife. Proper (chain, force, power, eldar, ork, etc) melee weapons have baselines of 5-6, with +2ED or so.

For ease, well, it's essentially impossible to be as simple as a "you have 5 attribute points, put them wherever you want", and the rapidly scaling costs for purchasing stuff with relatively minimal costs for lower level skills means it incentivizes a nice spread of skills and attributes and not hyper-focusing a single thing, especially because your character generation resource is the same as your advancement resource (Again, you can compare to Shadowrun 5es priority system here - abysmal, if simpler.). I think it was fairly simple. I'd probably still be tempted to make a basic excel sheet*, just to calculate your costs for you. I just did mine as a simple tally system in notepad, but, hey. The relatively small skill list helps keep this manageable, as well, and the game gives you "arrays" that are quite useful, although I feel their attribute ones lacking any noticeable weakness is unfortunate.

*I do this with many things though, to be fair.

A bigger complaint one might have is Talents. If I recall correctly, Talents were quite more important in older 40kRPGs (and indeed, most RPGs in general) - here they are massive purchases. As an example, Favoured by the Warp (Roll twice for Perils) costs 40 BP here, while in DH2e it'd cost a Psyker 400 exp. Wrath and Glory suggests a few BP per session, while DH2e recommends 400 a session (provided "multiple encounters"). The W&G talents seem extraordinarily out of reach, and given the relatively low skill/attribute caps, they might end up some of your primary goals. Or, you could easily just increase all of your skills due to their paltry cost (1BP to raise it to Rating-1, 3 total BP to raise it to 2, etc). I don't expect really any characters to start the game with a Talent, unless they're very high in Tier. Even then, I don't think they expect that. Quick napkin math shows a Tier-4 person has 400BP, can spend 200 on attributes (and you probably should spend as much as possible here, given how important they all are), then their suggested skill package is 137 BP. Given you're likely going to want an Archetype, that sets you back another ~50, leaving you with about 15 or so BP. Not enough for a single talent.

On Psykers, their high innate cost (50 for the archetype) combined with their expensive Psyker powers (5 for trivial ones, 8 for most minor ones, 15 for the bigger ones) mean you're probably not going to be doing much else other than using your small repertoire of abilities. Is that good? Dunno, up to you. I'd have to build one to see if they looked satisfactory, but I expect they'll look very thin outside of their few sort of hard to pull off abilities. Then again, producing fire out of nothing is a hell of a drug.

My Character

Here is the form-filled character sheet /.pdf with the dude I created: click here
If you want an empty form-fillable CS, you can download that at Ulisses' Website here

Am I even allowed to upload these images like this?

Addendum: I forgot I had to spend all my BP at chargen, which included 4BPs. I spent those points on increasing Medicae from 1 to 2 (costing 2 more BP), and buying Investigation & Leadership to level 1 each. I figure medical training is important to all special forces, they're all trained somewhat in analytics and logic, and basic leadership is always expected from experienced and elite troops.