Abilities
Your character is defined by eight abilities: Communication,
Constitution, Cunning, Dexterity, Magic, Perception,
Strength, and Willpower. Taken together these abilities
map out your character’s strengths and weaknesses.
You determine your abilities randomly by rolling dice, giving
each one a numeric rating ranging from –2 to 4. A –2 is quite
poor while a 4 is outstanding; a 1 is average. The higher the
ability, the better. During play your abilities can increase as
you gain experience and learn how to better harness your
natural aptitudes.
Abilities are a key component of the game and you’ll be using
them frequently. You’ll find it useful to understand the nature
of each ability, so descriptions of them follow.
- Communication: covers your character’s social skills,
personal interactions, and ability to deal with others. - Constitution: is your character’s fortitude and
resistance to harm. - Cunning: is a measure of your character’s intelligence,
knowledge, and education. - Dexterity: encompasses agility, hand-eye coordination,
and quickness. - Magic: determines your character’s innate arcane power.
- Perception: covers all the senses and the ability to
interpret sensory data. - Strength: is your character’s physical prowess.
- Willpower: encompasses mental toughness, discipline,
and confidence.
Determining Abilities
You roll dice to determine your starting abilities. You will
need three 6-sided dice (3d6). Roll all three and add them
together to get a result. If you rolled 3, 4, and 6, for example,
your result would be 13 (3 + 4 + 6 = 13).
You need to make eight of these rolls all together, one per
ability. On your character sheet, you’ll notice a section for
abilities that begins with Communication and ends with Willpower.
Starting at the top with Communication, make a dice
roll, and consult the Determining Abilities table to determine
your starting ability. A roll of 11 on the chart, for example,
means the ability’s starting score is 1. Once you’ve recorded Communication, move on to Constitution, and then so on
down the list until all eight abilities have starting scores.
When you are done, you may swap any two of the abilities.
This gives you a chance to customize your abilities a bit.
Ability Options
The character creation rules were designed with the
beginner in mind. Random elements make the process
easy because they cut down on decision making. If you
have some RPG experience or just want more control
when determining your abilities, however, you can use
one of the following two options for determining abilities
with your GM’s permission.
Arranging abilities
In this option you roll your abilities randomly as described.
However, you can assign the results as you wish, so you
can decide which rating goes with which ability. Instead
of rolling in the ability order of the character sheet, you
simply roll eight times on the Determining Abilities table
and note the results on a piece of scratch paper. Then you
assign each rating to the ability of your choice.
Buying abilities
Option 1 provides you with more power over your character’s
starting abilities, but some players want total control. In this option your character’s abilities start at 0 and you get 10 advancements to increase them. Each advancement you spend raises an ability by 1, but no ability can be greater than 3. You must spend all ten advancements. Backgrounds then modify these starting ratings as normal in Step 3 of character creation: Choose a Background. So you could buy your character’s Constitution up to 3 with advancements, for example, and then choose the Fereldan Freeman background to make it a 4.
Note that unlike some similar systems in other RPGs, this
option does not allow you to make some abilities worse
so you have more advancements to spend on others.
Example
Kate must now roll for her character’s starting abilities. She
rolls 3d6 and gets a 13. Looking at the chart, Kate sees this
gives her character a starting score of 2 on her first ability
(Communication). Kate makes seven more dice rolls, getting
5, 8, 16, 11, 6, 11, and 15. Her character’s starting abilities
are thus Communication 2, Constitution -1, Cunning 0,
Dexterity 3, Magic 1, Perception 0, Strength 1, and Willpower
Kate then has the option of switching two of her
scores. She decides to swap Perception and Willpower, so
she ends up with a Perception 3 and Willpower 0.
Ability Advancement
When characters gain a level, they get an ability advancement.
For lower ranked abilities this translates into a direct increase,
but as a character grows in power it becomes more difficult
and expensive to increase their most potent abilities. The exact
number of advancements required to advance your rating to the
next number depends on the new rating you’re trying to obtain.
- For abilities up to 5, it costs a single advancement.
- For abilities from 6 to 8, it costs two advancements.
- For abilities from 9 to 12, it costs three advancements.
This is summarized in the accompanying table. You get no benefit from advancements spent until you’ve gained the new rating. You should obviously keep a careful record of advancements spent that have not yet increased the relevant ability rating.
| New Ability Rating | Advancements Required |
|---|---|
| -1 to 5 | 1 |
| 6 to 8 | 2 |
| 9 to 12 | 3 |
Ability Focuses
A focus is an area of expertise within the larger ability. While
Cunning as a whole determines how smart your character
is, for example, a Heraldry focus would indicate a special
knowledge of coats of arms and royal families. In game
system terms, if you have a focus, your ability is effectively 2
higher than normal when working within that specialty. This
is explained in greater detail in Chapter 2: Playing the Game.
Ability focuses (or focuses for short) are one of the ways to
make your character unique. There may be another warrior in
your adventuring party, but your focuses can be completely
different. You don’t need to worry about choosing focuses now;
that happens later in the character creation process. Your character will get access to focuses through backgrounds, classes, and talents. For a complete list of and more information about ability focuses, see Ability Focuses.
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