Backgrounds
Your character's background represents that character's life journey before the adventure. While skills can be trained and attributes can be magically enhanced, there isn't a true substitute for years of of reliable experience.
Not every background can be used for every character - your character's backstory must line up with your background choice. The Scholar background can only be used for a character that grew up around a lot of knowledge, the Noble background can only be used for a character of noble noble birth, and so on. Keep your character's childhood and upbringing in mind, not just the stats you want your character to have.
All player characters begin with one background. Some exceptional circumstances can cause a character to gain another background, but this is rare. Usually only events worthy of legend can shape a character's life enough to count as a new background - things like reforging a mythical sword or leading a legendary battle.
Background List
Professional
- Select a trade skill to be your Profession.
- Skill rolls for your Profession automatically succeed if the difficulty is 3 or less and cannot critically fail.
- You begin play with extra money.
Warrior
- Attack and damage rolls cannot critically fail.
- You may perform "Controlled Attacks" in combat, increasing accuracy at the cost of damage.
- Ranks in Weapon Mastery apply to all weapons.
- Your Athletics attribute increases by 1.
Devotee
- Select one soul specialization as your Devoted Magic.
- Your Devoted Magic causes less Drain and cannot critically fail.
- Your Soulpower attribute increases by 1.
Scholar
- You may apply your Academics skill to all areas of expertise.
- Your Academics rolls cannot critically fail.
- Your Intellect attribute increases by 1.
Survivor
- Your Resolve and Willpower rolls cannot critically fail.
- Your hit point total increases by 5.
- Your Endurance attribute increases by 1.
Vagabond
- Your Awareness rolls cannot critically fail.
- The difficulty of Awareness rolls is decreased by 1.
- You need less sleep than others.
- Your Precision attribute increases by 1.
Noble
- You begin play with the signet ring of your noble house.
- You begin play with significantly more money.