Eclipse Phase Character Creation Simplified

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Making your first character in Eclipse Phase is a somewhat daunting task, especially when it comes to Skills. There are a whole lot of Skills, and the percentile scale means that there are a lot of big numbers involved. This system aims to make character creation pretty much painless, providing templates for very new players to take and customize or use as-is without resorting to pregenerated characters along with a system that more experienced players and Storytellers can use to assemble characters fairly quickly.

Contents

Order of Operations

  1. The first thing you'll want to do is define your character. Determine faction and background, and at least get an idea as to what sort of morph you'll be doing most of your stuff in and what traits you'd like.
  2. Aptitudes come next. These are pretty easy, because there are only seven of them and 105 points to spend before CP.
  3. Reputation is the last set of points you'll have to assign before you get to CP, and as it's purely a function of who your character's connected with socially, it's beyond the scope of this document.
  4. Customization Points are the big, daunting part of character creation. You get 1,000 of them, but since 700 are mandated to be spent on skills, you really only have 300 to do with as you like. Set those 300 aside for the moment, as they're irrelevant until we get done with skills.
    1. Skills are scary. No two ways around that. Well, just like with aptitudes, those 700 points divide up pretty easily, and it's not hard to create a priority lists of the skills you need the most, as detailed below. You'll notice that the templates associated with this document are just that: priority lists.
    2. Choose morph. You need one of these, and they can get expensive, so your 300 free CP will further be reduced by whatever body you get for yourself.
    3. Choose traits. Positive traits cost CP, negative traits give you CP. Traits are their own step because positive traits can be fairly expensive and because you'll need to know the net total factoring your negative traits when you get to the next step.
    4. Buy aptitudes, skills, specializations, credit, rep, Moxie and psi sleights. You probably have around 200 to 250 points to spend. It's a good idea to invest in Moxie and aptitudes first, then go down the line in terms of cost, because it's easier to dump an aptitude point and divide those 10 CP among skills than it is to dig around for 10 CP worth of stuff you want to sacrifice for an aptitude point.

Aptitudes

You start off with 105 aptitude points. Chances are you're going to buy some more later, but for the moment you'll want to lay out your basic scores. It's easiest to start with multiples of five in each aptitude, then tweak them up and down as you see fit. Look over the list of aptitudes and list them in order of priority, then assign the following values:

  1. 20
  2. 20
  3. 15
  4. 15
  5. 15
  6. 10
  7. 10

This will result in a character of generally above-average fitness, with some weaknesses and some strengths, but nothing too major either way. If you decide you want to be better in one aptitude and worse in another, move points from aptitudes lower on the list to those higher. Otherwise, you're done here and can revisit aptitudes after you buy your skills.

Skills

400 of your CP must be spent on Active skills and 300 must be spent on Knowledge skills. Skills start to cost twice as much if you get above 60 (expert level), so we're going to avoid going over 60 in any skill at this stage. The point of this part of the process is to give each character a solid skill base; skills above and beyond that should be purchased at the final step. If you aren't working off a template, you should go through the skills section of the book and choose between thirteen and sixteen Active skills and between eight and twelve Knowledge skills to form your priority list. Then assign points as follows (the following table assumes fourteen Active and eleven Knowledge skills). Since we don't want to go over 60, we're working with a maximum of 40 points, so that aptitudes alone don't bump you over that 60-point soft cap. Now, if you get a background or faction that gives sizable bonuses to your primary skills, it's likely you'll get over 60 in something. If that happens, take those excess points and dump them into the highest priority entry on the list that hasn't hit 60.

400 CP in Active Skills
  1. 40
  2. 40
  3. 40
  4. 40
  5. 30
  6. 30
  7. 30
  8. 30
  9. 20
  10. 20
  11. 20
  12. 20
  13. 20
  14. 20
300 CP in Knowledge Skills
  1. 40
  2. 40
  3. 40
  4. 30
  5. 30
  6. 30
  7. 20
  8. 20
  9. 20
  10. 20
  11. 10

So say you want to make a soldier. We'll make this an infantryman with experience in low- and no-gravity environments and a little bit of experience in aerial morphs. Just go through the skill list, pick out the ones you want the most, and bam:

400 CP in Active Skills
  1. 40 - Fray
  2. 40 - Beam Weapons
  3. 40 - Kinetic Weapons
  4. 30 - Unarmed Combat
  5. 30 - Blades
  6. 30 - Free Fall
  7. 30 - Perception
  8. 30 - Throwing Weapons
  9. 20 - Climbing
  10. 20 - Freerunning
  11. 20 - Intimidation
  12. 20 - Scrounging
  13. 20 - Hardware: Armorer
  14. 20 - Interfacing
  15. 10 - Flight
300 CP in Knowledge Skills
  1. 40 - Profession: Soldier
  2. 40 - Interest: Firearms
  3. 40 - Academics: Physics
  4. 30 - Art: Performance
  5. 30 - Profession: Security
  6. 30 - Language
  7. 20 - Language
  8. 20 - Language
  9. 20 - Academics: Astrophysics
  10. 20 - Academics: Astronomy
  11. 10 - Academics: Biology

Templates

Zero-G Infantry

Aptitudes
  1. 20 - Somatics
  2. 20 - Reflexes
  3. 15 - Coordination
  4. 15 - Willpower
  5. 15 - Intuition
  6. 10 - Savvy
  7. 10 - Cognition
400 CP in Active Skills
  1. 40 - Fray
  2. 40 - Beam Weapons
  3. 40 - Kinetic Weapons
  4. 30 - Unarmed Combat
  5. 30 - Blades
  6. 30 - Free Fall
  7. 30 - Perception
  8. 30 - Throwing Weapons
  9. 20 - Climbing
  10. 20 - Freerunning
  11. 20 - Intimidation
  12. 20 - Scrounging
  13. 20 - Hardware: Armorer
  14. 20 - Interfacing
  15. 10 - Flight
300 CP in Knowledge Skills
  1. 40 - Profession: Soldier
  2. 40 - Interest: Firearms
  3. 40 - Academics: Physics
  4. 30 - Art: Performance
  5. 30 - Profession: Security
  6. 30 - Language
  7. 20 - Language
  8. 20 - Language
  9. 20 - Academics: Astrophysics
  10. 20 - Academics: Astronomy
  11. 10 - Academics: Biology


Space Pirate

Aptitudes
  1. 25 - Savvy
  2. 20 - Reflexes
  3. 15 - Coordination
  4. 15 - Somatics
  5. 10 - Intuition
  6. 10 - Willpower
  7. 10 - Cognition
400 CP in Active Skills
  1. 40 - Fray
  2. 40 - Deception
  3. 40 - Blades
  4. 30 - Kinetic Weapons
  5. 30 - Unarmed Combat
  6. 30 - Free Fall
  7. 30 - Perception
  8. 30 - Palming
  9. 20 - Impersonation
  10. 20 - Freerunning
  11. 20 - Intimidation
  12. 20 - Scrounging
  13. 20 - Networking: Criminals
  14. 20 - Interfacing
  15. 10 - Climbing
300 CP in Knowledge Skills
  1. 40 - Profession: Pirate
  2. 40 - Interest: Booze
  3. 40 - Interest: Firearms
  4. 30 - Art: Singing
  5. 30 - Profession: Security
  6. 30 - Language
  7. 20 - Language
  8. 20 - Language
  9. 20 - Academics: Astrophysics
  10. 20 - Academics: Astronomy
  11. 10 - Academics: Myths and Legends
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