Mortal Template

Currently, all Nocturne Symphony player characters are mortal - which is to say, human. Character creation starts with the base mortal template, after which additional options from the pactholder or stigmatic templates are applied. Additionally, a character can begin as mundane, if that's your style - though note that it's much harder to become a pactholder in play than a stigmatic.

BASIC STAT ARRAY

Characters have an array of stats consisting of their Attributes, Skills, and Specialties. These represent your basic abilities, with dice rolls being made of Attribute + Skill, or sometimes Attribute + Attribute. Skill Specialties add bonuses to rolls where they apply.

ATTRIBUTES

Attributes are the basic abilities that every character possesses, and are the foundation for most rolls. There are nine Attributes, split between the Mental, Physical, and Social categories. If a rule refers to a “Physical action” or a “Social roll,” it is referring to an action that uses an Attribute from one of these categories.

All characters start with one dot in each Attribute, which is below average for that Attribute. Two dots represents average ability, three dots is above average, and four dots is someone who is truly exceptional. A character with five dots in an Attribute has reached the peak of human potential within that ability.

On creation, you gain 5/4/3 dots to distribute to the three Attribute categories. For example, place 5 dots in the Physical category, 4 dots in Social, and 3 dots in Mental.

Once completed, a character should have 8/7/6 dots total in each category (as the character starts with 3/3/3).

SKILLS

Skills are learned and practiced abilities, rather than the innate abilities that Attributes represent. Skills reflect a character’s origins and interests, and can be acquired in many ways, from institutionalized learning to hands-on experience. Skills are divided into the same Mental, Physical, and Social categories as Attributes.

One dot means you have cursory training or dabble in the Skill, while two dots means that you can use the Skill at a professional level. Three dots represents excellent training or experience, four is outstanding, and five dots means you are one of the absolute best in the world. Having zero dots means you are Unskilled, and take skill penalties when rolling (-3 for Mental skills, and -1 for Physical and Social skills).

On creation, you gain 11/7/4 dots to distribute to the three Skill categories.

SKILL SPECIALTIES

Skills represent broad categories of training. Someone with the Science Skill is equally familiar with particle physics, basic chemistry, and genetics. Skill Specialties allow you to differentiate more, focusing on a specific area of a Skill that your character is more knowledgeable or proficient in. A character’s Specialties say a lot about her. For example, a character with a Socialize Specialty in Formal Events is very different from one with a Specialty in Dive Bars.

On creation, pick three Skill Specialties for your character. These Specialties must be in Skills that the your character has dots in.

MERITS

Merits are important facets of your character that do not fall under other traits. A Merit can represent a knack, special training, people your character knows, or even things that they own. They add unique capabilities to your character beyond Attributes and Skills.

Merits can be renamed, in order to further customize your character. For Nocturne Symphony, our central records will use the "official" Merit names, but on your character sheet you are welcome to alter the flavor, as long the mechanics remain the same.

Choose up to 7 dots worth of Merits. Note that some Merits can only be chosen upon character creation, and cannot be purchased later with EXP.

DERIVED STATS AND ADVANTAGES

Some stats are calculated from your other traits. A few, like Integrity and Size, are assigned by default. With Nocturne Symphony's character sheet, these will be automatically calculated for you - but it's still good to know how they are determined.

WILLPOWER

Equal to Resolve + Composure. Willpower can be spent to add a +3 to most dice pools, +2 to most resistances, or to invoke special abilities.

INTEGRITY

All mortal characters start at Integrity 7.

SIZE

Adult human characters are Size 5, unless modified by a Merit.

SPEED

Equal to Strength + Dexterity + 5. A character can move a number of yards equal to their Speed per turn.

HEALTH

Equal to Size + Stamina. The last three Health boxes are considered Wound Penalty boxes, causing penalties when Damage is marked in them.

INITIATIVE MODIFIER

Equal to Dexterity + Composure.

DEFENSE

Equal to Athletics + the lower of Wits or Dexterity.

ASPIRATIONS

Nocturne Symphony does not require overarching Aspirations for characters. However, these may be useful to have during character creation as you build your character concept. What do they want, and how grand or small are their goals? Pick two short-term Aspirations and one long-term Aspiration. For example, a character in the short-term might want to get physically stronger, while in the long term they want to get promoted at their security guard job. If you share these with Storytellers, they may be able to add them in as story hooks.

ANCHORS

When a character acts in accordance with their Virtue or Vice during a scene, they reaffirm their sense of who they are.

These words describe key aspects of their personality. Things like Cruel or Generous work, but a physical description, like Clean wouldn’t. Similarly, you don’t want to pick a Virtue or Vice that is covered by an Attribute or Skill. Athletic wouldn’t really make a good Virtue or Vice (though Competitive probably would). Composed wouldn’t work very well as an Anchor, as Composure is already an Attribute.

A character’s Virtue or Vice isn’t simply indicative of their morality. Having a Virtue like Good isn’t really appropriate, and is kind of boring, to boot. While a character’s Virtue is definitely a positive trait in their view, they should absolutely be able to fulfill their Virtue while suffering a breaking point at the same time. Sometimes even our Virtues can drive us to do terrible things.

While you cannot choose the same trait as both your Virtue and Vice, another character could have a trait as a Virtue that you have as a Vice, such as Ambitious - it's all about framing, and how the trait is invoked. A character might invoke Vice: Ambitious whenever they try to advance socially instead of pursuing a more useful activity in the moment. Another character might invoke Virtue: Ambitious whenever they put themself at risk in order to pursue their long-term goal.

Also, as your Vice in particular will come up repeatedly during play, you should make sure that the Vice you select doesn’t make any of the other players uncomfortable.

VIRTUE

A character’s Virtue is their higher calling, the personality trait that represents who they are when they are being their best. Behaving in accordance with Virtue gives a character a sense of satisfaction and re-affirms their sense of self, restoring all Willpower. Acting on a Virtue is difficult, however.

Virtues are invoked when the character acts in spite of the risks. For example, it is not enough for character with Virtue: Generous to give to charity. In order to invoke the trait for its mechanical benefit (i.e. restoring all Willpower), the character must deprive themself of an important resource or be put at risk due to their Generous nature, such as giving up all of their Resource dots for the month, or giving away their weapon knowing that they will be left defenseless for troubles up ahead. Yet in spite of these dangers, the character acts anyways - that is what their Virtue means to them.

Characters have one Virtue, though may gain a second with a Merit.

VICE

Vice is a character’s short-term comfort. It is the easy way out, the personality trait they take comfort in to avoid confronting their actual feelings or problems. Acting on a Vice reinforces the character’s sense of themself, even if it is self-destructive. It still helps relieve stress and allows them to refresh themself, but it’s not healthy behavior in the long term.

Vices are easier to invoke than Virtues and do not need to be as risky as a Virtue invocation. Still, by the unhealthy nature of a Vice, invoking one tends to be detrimental, whether to the character themself or someone around them. The invocation of a Vice may not always result in consequences, but it inevitably will eventually as the character leans upon it as a crutch.

Characters have one Vice, though may gain a second with a Merit.

BREAKING POINTS

When a character performs certain actions or endures certain experiences, he might reach a breaking point. A Breaking Point simply means that what a character has done or seen has outstripped their ability to rationalize or handle it.

A breaking point can fall into one of the following categories:

• The character performs an action that either violates their personal moral code or that is considered unacceptable in society.

• The character witnesses something traumatic, terrifying, or that rattles their understanding of the world.

• The character is the victim of a supernatural attack, whether physical, emotional, or mental.

Breaking points are somewhat subjective, obviously. A homicide detective with 30 years of experience in seeing dead bodies and hearing confessions of killers has a somewhat higher tolerance for human depravity than a sheltered 20-something in a middle-class liberal arts college.

Note that a Breaking Point is not necessarily something that the character considers wrong. A character might kill someone in a clear-cut, unambiguous case of self-defense, but the experience is probably still a Breaking Point, even if the player (and the character!) feels the act was entirely justified. Actions take a toll on the psyche, regardless of whether the actions were righteous. In addition, remember that Breaking Points take into consideration societal norms as well - a serial killer still rolls Breaking Points for murder, even if the character themself is unbothered. Make sure to communicate these cases with your Storytellers, and Storytellers assign appropriate Breaking Point Conditions. Guilty probably wouldn't apply, but Bloodthirsty might.

During character creation, consider what situations your character would consider a Breaking Point. Answering the questions below is optional, and are provided to help prompt your thoughts.

• What's the worst thing your character has ever done?

  • • This doesn't have to be anything dastardly. If the worst thing your character ever did was steal money from their parent's wallet and lie to cover it up, that's fine. What's important here is to consider something that your character did that made them hate themself. The superlative "worst" is something that the character would apply.

• What is the worst thing your character can imagine himself doing?

  • • We imagine ourselves in various scenarios to test our own self-image against a hypothetical situation. When children do it, it’s called imaginative play, but it fills the same niche. What can your character reasonably see himself doing, but still know that it would be wrong? Can your character imagine killing someone in self-defense? Torturing someone for information? How about robbing a store with a gun?

• What is the worst thing your character can imagine someone else doing?

  • • Of course, we all know that people are capable of some hideous atrocities. What tops your character’s list? Serial murder? Emotional abuse? Torture? Spree killing? If your character is extremely sheltered or misanthropic, he might have a skewed view, here; they might hang on to some lofty, cerebral notion of “dishonor” or “betrayal” as the nadir of human behavior.

• What has your character forgotten?

  • • In the world of Nocturne Symphony, it’s next to impossible to grow up without any exposure to the supernatural - the Symphony exists everywhere, and the gears of the God Machine are constantly in motion. Decide what your character saw and forgot. Did they see the visage of an ordinary person peel away to reveal holy steam engines? Maybe they caught a glimpse of an impossible nightmarescape through a door that should never have been propped open? Describe this scene in as much detail as you can. This is a breaking point that already occurred, but it helps set a benchmark for what your character would have to see in order to experience one now.

• What is the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to your character?

  • • No one goes through life with no trauma. Your character might have been mugged, beaten as a child, in a serious car accident, been kidnapped by a parent during a divorce, survived a life-threatening disease, attempted suicide, been attacked by a supernatural (or natural!) creature, or any number of other traumatic experiences. The goal here, again, isn’t to make a traumatized character. It’s to set a bar.