Creating A Character For TFT

Or How Not to Die In Your First Fight

In the Fantasy Trip games of MELEE and WIZARD it is easy to die in combat. Really easy. So how do you create a character that will survive more than one battle?

A lot of people have asked that question, and the fact is no matter what you do your PC is going to get killed. If you are playing arena combat and Ragnar the impetuous dies, you adjust his stats and try again. If you're in a campaign you might want to cross your fingers and hope the GM is a nice guy.

The fact is beginning 32-point characters are easy to kill. In a campaign there is safety in numbers, so don't charge straight ahead into battle and don't split your party. If you have a experienced GM, he/she will hopefully give you a challenge within your PCs capabilities, but if your tactics are faulty you will pay the price. If you fight well or come up with a creative solution, the GM will reward you with the experience points that will let you keep improving your character.

My experience is with warriors so I'll talk about them. If you are building a human fighter in the basic MELEE game you start out with strength (ST) of 8, dexterity (DX) of 8, plus 8 more points distributed as you wish. If you are playing a campaign game using the more advanced In The Labyrinth rules, you'll have ST and DX plus intelligence (IQ) of 8 plus 8 more points for a total of 32. You will also have a number of talents based on your intelligence.

Alos Krupke is the fighter I currently have in our campaign. If you have read this blog before, you know he has died and been revived several times, so he might be a well balance character, but I am not the best player, although I am getting better.

I created him as follows: ST 11, DX 11, and IQ 10 (a total of 32 points).
I gave him the following talents: Knife (1), Sword (1), Polearm (2), Shield (1), Shield Expertise (2), Unarmed Combat I (2), and Alertness (2). The numbers in parentheses are the number of IQ points the talent requires which totals his IQ of 11. My talent choices were guided by my plan that Krupke would be a police officer and the jobs table says he would need four weapon talents plus Unarmed Combat I. I added Shield Expertise to make him harder to hit, and Alertness to make it easier to spot things like ambushes. I armed him with a police billy club (1d+1), a spear (1d), a small shield, and cloth armor.

Cloth armor absorbs 1 hit of damage, but also reduced his DX by one. The small shield absorbs 1 hit as well. Shield expertise brings the protection from damage up to three points. I chose the spear as a weapon because if Krupke charged a foe he could do double damage with it if he hit.

Like I said before, Krupke had his bad days on the battlefield, but over time he gained experience (XP) and added to his attributes. See the Experience Points on page 45 of In The Labyrinth. First I raised his DX to 12 making his adjusted DX 11 to improve his ability to hit. When I accumulated more points I raised his strength to 12 and changed out his spear for a broadsword. Krupke just never was any good with that spear. Once I had another 200 points I raised his DX again, and with the next 300 points I increased his IQ.

Why did I raise his IQ? In the long run I want Krupke to become a woodsman and gain Weapon Expertise with the sword. These are talents that require and IQ of 11. One of the really good things about the new TFT rules is that you can use your XP to gain more talents, but you still need the IQ level for that particular talent. Krupke has reached the 36-point level of attributes with ST 12, DX 13, and IQ 11. For now I am collecting 1000 XP to give him Toughness which will allow him to take one more hit without damage. He may yet die permanently in combat, but I hope not.